New London — Richard Humphreville once taught executives from Stanley Black & Decker how to use their own tools.

A cabinetmaker who has been at his trade for more than four decades, Humphreville was 11 in 1961 when his father gave him “a full-blown Stanley tool case” loaded with implements, many that the 68-year-old still uses today.

That early tool box and inspiration from his paternal grandmother led to Humphreville’s life passion — designing, building and restoring fine furniture. His late grandmother, Enid Humphreville, who was ahead of her time when she worked as a contractor in St. Louis in the 1930s,  later encouraged her grandson to work with his hands,

“She would tell me, ‘Dickie, go outside and make something,’” Humphreville recalls, explaining there was always scrap wood and his tool box to keep him busy.

One of six children in a privileged New London family — his grandfather and father ran the former Robertson Paper Box in Montville — Humphreville struggled in school and said his grandmother, who had moved East, recognized his talents were more on the creative side.

“She wouldn’t say, ‘Can you do it?’ She would say, ‘Dickie, go fix it,’” and he did, figuring out a way to repair or build whatever was necessary.

Humphreville said his father “was all thumbs, but somehow he helped me to build a rudimentary tool bench in the basement” of the family home on Hillside Avenue, and when he received Cohasset furniture kits as gifts, he used them to practice with his tools and hone his skills.

But the expectation was that Humphreville would go to college — three of his brothers went to Harvard — so off he went to Ohio Wesleyan University, where he earned a degree in politics and government with a minor in music.

After graduation, Humphreville took a position working in pollution control in Baltimore. But wearing a suit to work and reading dense reports didn’t satisfy him, so “I dropped out of the corporate world two years into it,” he said.

Friends from the church he attended in Baltimore knew he was “a rabid woodworker” and encouraged him to open his own furniture-making business.

“I had this desire to do it, but it was like being on a plane without a parachute and thinking if I jump I can make it,” he said. “So, I did. I jumped without that parachute and I went broke at 27.”

Tools of the trade

Humphreville moved back to New London and started over, setting up shop in his mother’s basement.

This time he would succeed, in large measure because of what some people called “Humphreville’s folly.”

The story is deep in details, but the gist of it is that in the late 1970s for $1 Humphreville bought a circa-1840 Cape with a lean-to addition that was located at the top of Town Hill — upper Bank Street — and slated for demolition.

With the help of friends, he dismantled the property, chimney and all, and moved it to his mother’s back yard, where it sat, until 1979 when he moved it to property in the shadow of New London Harbor Light. It took him 18 months to painstakingly reconstruct and Humphreville still lives in that home today. The publicity around saving and rebuilding the historic home helped to grow his business, he said.

In 1982, he moved his cabinetmaking shop from his mother’s basement into the old municipal garage on Walbach Street, and he’s been there ever since. Step inside, and it’s like Geppetto’s workshop on steroids.

There are pieces of furniture in various stages of assembly and construction, most on benches made by Humphreville. Thousands and thousands of tools are stored in massive drawers, cabinets and trunks, or hung from the walls on hooks.

He works with files, squares, gauges, bevels, rules, chisels, mallets, bits, saws, joints and clamps.

“You can never have enough clamps,” he said, motioning to a collection of hundreds. And then there are the joints — mortis and tenon, dovetail, scarf, and cross lap to name a few.

“I do OK,” said Humphreville. “But a furnituremaker doesn’t make much money. It’s hard to be a furnituremaker. It takes great skill, patience, and it takes a cast-iron stomach.”

Restoring drop-leaf table

When a customer brings in a piece of furniture, he sits down with them and explains what repair or reconstruction will involve and what it will cost them. Some pieces are heirlooms, and some family keepsakes.

In addition to work for customers, he crafts his own, exquisite furniture in his spare time. And he’s mastered all the tools, so expertly, that the New Britain-based Stanley Black & Decker (formerly known as Stanley Works) once had him teach their executives how to use the tools they manufacture.

For Humphreville, the work is a labor of love. He’s been laboring on a cherry and walnut secretary that he’s building for four years now and estimates it will be many more years before it is finished.

“I’ve got 300 or 400 hours into it, and it will probably take a thousand more,” he said, explaining he’s been to the Connecticut Historical Society to look at the original 1780 secretary made by a cabinetmaker in Colchester and draw meticulous plans for his reproduction.

For a customer, he’s working on a drop-leaf table with holly inlays that was impeccably made but needs to be restored.

“It’s an heirloom,” he said.

There’s an old desk chair — from the 1920s — made from walnut and pine that has more sentimental than historic value and he’s rebuilding and refinishing it for a customer.

“All this takes time, and yes, it is expensive, but I sit (a customer) down and educate them. And then they understand and I give them a price, and they know I’m the best and I will do it right,” he said.

Survived eminent domain

Humphreville has opened his workshop to teach hand joinery and furniture construction and one former student helps him in the shop now.

As for his own education in the trade, he credits mentors like the late Harold Hayes of Waterford, as well as self-practice, books and determination.

When times got tough decades ago he did a series of cable television how-to shows — 681 of them he boasts — to share his knowledge and build his business. And he has survived, even the eminent domain battle in Fort Trumbull where his business is located. The old municipal garage that he rents is part of the city’s sewage plant that was built with federal funds and therefore protected.

It’s Humphreville’s woodworking oasis. Among the tools, saws, benches, furniture, and reams and reams of books and plans, he’s in his element.

“I’ll be here until I die,” he said. “It’s a passion of mine. I just want to do it.”

Business Snapshot

Who: Cabinetmaker Richard L. Humphreville

Where: 25 Walbach St., New London

Contact: (860) 442-5003