Steven Rich has been in the woodworking industry for about 15 years. Over the years, although he has gifted handmade products (such as custom bookshelves and wooden robot bars) to friends and family, he has a new opportunity for strangers to buy his works.

Rich is the database editor of the Washington Post Investigative News and the newest manufacturer of Shop Made in DC. He currently sells four different products under the name of Databae Woodshop in the company's store in Georgetown: bowls and cutting boards, each of which is available in medium or large sizes. Their prices are between US$65 and US$120.

"Having a weird idea, I can walk into someone's home I met for the first time and look at my products, which makes me very happy," Rich said. "I don't know if this will happen. But I like the idea that people who don't actually know me will get something I make. I think it's really exciting."

This is a hobby that he became obsessed with between high school store courses and Boy Scouts. He doesn't always have the opportunity to enter the woodworking workshop. He started building his own shop a few years ago. Rich now has a complete basement to store his tools, including table saws, lathes, and band saws. This is an upgraded version of his previous one-bedroom basement apartment. Half of his living room is used as a carpentry workshop, occasionally covering his TV and sofa with a layer of sawdust.

Although he was operating a heavy machine that could "cut my fingers", Rich found that carpentry had a healing effect. "I entered the headspace of this true Zen Buddhism, and it is usually difficult for me to do that," Rich said. "It makes me feel that my brain has calmed down, so I think it's a form of treatment."

Although his extensive repertoire includes cat bowl racks, chess boards, and wall-mounted flower pots, tables are what Rich likes most to build because they are useful and can serve as core decorations.

"I'm building things that I want to be more durable than me. In some ways, I feel like I'm making a mark, I like them to be a topic, or people look at them and feel a certain joy," Rich said. "I really want to bring happiness to people in this way, and whenever they do, I have that secondary feeling."

Although he produces a wide range of products, the bowls and cutting boards of Shop Made in DC present a new challenge: mass production. Rich no longer focuses on completing one project at a time, but must "change my normal thinking" and propose a repetitive process to make the project "as accurate and similar as possible".

Shop Made in DC recommended kitchenware to him. Rich has made chopping boards before, but the bowl is new, "the circle is really hard". But he wrote "I can make anything you want" in the application, and he rises to the challenge and consults many of his woodworking books and YouTube when he needs help.

The first drop includes 24 items. Rich hopes to continue building for Shop Made in DC, as long as they can keep him, and he is willing to build all kinds of things.

“Part of the reason I started making it for others was because I didn’t have enough space. I would build a table and let it sit down because I didn’t have a place to put it,” Rich said, adding that he built a large Part of it was given to other reporters he knew. "That's why I started doing this. It gave me the opportunity to put it in the hands of more people."

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