vacation and family outings in this woodie. Mike was dabbling in Model As in high school, but the love of woodies never waned. In 1979, he bought a 1929 Ford Woodie. It was in boxes, but Mike put it back together, restoring pieces as he went along. He took it to Vermont for a woodie meet, where he met Will O’Neil, founder of the Woodie Club. Right there, Mike joined the club, and became member number 559. Later, Mike bought a 1947 Ford Woodie in a hundred boxes and turned it into a birds-eye maple beauty which earned the Dearborn award.
Mike Nickels Woodie Restoration Shop Destroyed in a September 5, 2021 Five Alarm Fire By Octie Ham
It was early Sunday morning, when Mike received the alarm that his Traverse City, Michigan shop was on fire. In spite of five fire departments and 48,000 gallons of trucked-in water, the 50 year old, 8,000 square foot wood building and ten vintage woodie wagons were destroyed in less than an hour. Mike had operated this shop for 50 years, restoring/ rebuilding over 100 woodie cars/ wagons. Mike has had a lifetime of love for the old wooden bodied cars/ wagons. It started with his father’s 1948 Pontiac Woodie Wagon family car. At age four, Mike has great memories of the
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On the professional side, Mike worked in various wood-crafting shops, cabinet making shops, and millwork shops. Then, in the early ‘90s, Mike decided to turn his woodie restoration hobby into a full-time effort. His completed woodie restorations include Phantom Ford Sportsmans, Barrel Back and post-war Chryslers, a stretched LaSalle, many early Fords, a 1915 Allen Car and the list goes on. I first met Mike at his swap space at Hershey after reading a story about his woodie restoration shop in the Detroit News. We talked about my two 1941 Plymouth wagons, one for each of my two daughters. In 2014, I asked Mike to finish a disassembled ’46 Town and County. Over the next four years, he beautifully restored my car. He also built new wood and painted my two ’41 Plymouth Woodies. During that time I also got to work with Mike, remotely finishing smaller pieces. He was amazing to work with, always upbeat and kind. I now have these marvelous woodies to enjoy, thanks to Mike. Mike has said several times that it’s the people behind each woodie he restores that makes his mission in life so special. He recalls fondly some of the things people have said about his restored woodies. His favorite one is when a car is done and you want to know if you have done a good job, they ask, “Can I touch it?” I always say you bet you can. This string of finished woodie restoration has stopped for a while. Mike’s shop sits in rubble and his tooling/machinery are unusable. A few hours after the fire, Mike said to his wife Lana, “I’m going to rebuild.” As his shop evolved and grew over the years, the insurance coverage did not keep up. We started a Go Fund Me to help Mike in some way rebuild his shop and his life. Please consider donating to this cause and please pass it on to other who have not heard about Mike’s devastating fire and loss of his shop. I believe with help from his friends and others in the hobby, we will see a new Nickels Woodworking Shop come to life in 2022. https://gofund.me/eb5fa97b
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