Cardboard for Christ

Brother Finbar McMullen entered the Winona Middle School woodshop at just before seven on a recent Monday evening with several door-sized pieces of cardboard balanced on his arms. They were material for the eighty-three-year-old’s community education class on the least commercial, but perhaps most intriguing, of his varied pursuits: building furniture from cardboard.

This is the second year he’s offered the class and the first year he’s taught it (no one signed up last year). McMullen built his first cardboard concoction thirty years ago in a decade of disposability, and continues to hone his technique today in an era of recycling, where the latest buzz-phrase is “carbon neutral.” Still, he often jokes that cardboard furniture construction isn’t widely popular because it hasn’t yet caught up with the times.

McMullen is short and trim with buzzed hair and the face of an ex-marine, square and etched with wrinkles that disappear into weathered flesh when he laughs. He’s endlessly social with the exuberance of someone half his age, despite an increasing reliance on hearing aids and a wooden cane.

Just before class was to begin, student Marla Markhamarrived, a middle-aged woman with a medical degree from Johns Hopkins University and an unrelenting fear of X-ACTO knives. “Too much time in the ER,” she deadpanned. She wished to build a decorative garbage can, but her husband, also enrolled in the class, was at home studying Greek and unavailable to do the cutting. She decided to stay anyway, partly to draw up blueprints, but mostly to talk McMullen out of some of his cardboard.

Two other women came in, both roughly Markham’s age, and McMullen began the lesson. Building with cardboard is simple, he said, if you plan ahead and use various tried-and-true design tricks (build surfaces with the grain running horizontally so they don’t sag; place reinforcing honeycombs of cardboard between the smooth layers). A barebones toolbox includes an X-ACTO knife, a framing square, a pizza cutter to crease corners for bending, and copious amounts of Elmer’s glue.

In 1940, McMullen joined the Congregation of Christian Brothers, a worldwide Catholic ministry, to get an education of sorts. He enjoyed the life so much that he never left it. The Brothers took a vow of poverty in the 1970s, and McMullen took up building with cardboard. It was around that same time that St. Mary’s University in Winona hired him to manage its dorms. Retired for almost a decade, he still receives free room and board and, most importantly, has full access to the woodshop.

Over the years, McMullen has crafted enough cardboard accoutrements to furnish an entire apartment, including tables, chairs, bookshelves, desks, and dressers. His unpainted designs are boxy and simple, as if a craftsman had cut a frame but never bothered with sanding or making curved edges.

He used to score plum cardboard from computer boxes, which came by the hundreds as St. Mary’s entered the digital age. When that supply dried up, McMullen turned to the dumpsters behind the nearby ShopKo. “If they came out, I would say, ‘Hey, recycling. Conserve resources. Don’t get mad at me,’ ” McMullen recalled. That source evaporated also, when Winona’s city council passed an anti-dumpster-diving ordinance. Now, McMullen collects mostly from the university, though he still occasionally calls on local furniture stores. Their boxes, he said, are the sturdiest.

McMullen’s friends call him an inventor, though he is more modest, claiming only to solve problems, such as with his handmade cane, are placement for a metal one he left in a gas station in Montana. “It’s always something I need,” he said. “It’s not a matter of some bright idea rattling around in my head unrelated to my life.” He invented the Finbar Hood, a piece of insulated camping headgear so popular that Ann Bancroft wore one on a trip to Antarctica. And Finbar’s Fabric Tucker, a corn-skewer-like device that assists in the sewing of hoods, sold thousands in craft stores.

The lesson concluded with McMullen imparting a few rules of construction (cut twice so the cardboard doesn’t tear; always use more glue than seems necessary). Then his class of three was let loose in the shop. One student worked on a desktop organizer. Another drew plans for wall shelves. Markham pulled a Palm Pilot from her purse and scribbled down garbage-can dimensions. “I really want to put it in the bathroom,” she told McMullen.

He nodded, thought for a moment. “If you take long showers it’ll get soggy,” he said. “Just put it outside when you’re showering.”
Markham frowned. “My husband will never remember to do that.”

“I got it,” McMullen said. “Get a can of spray lacquer and the cardboard won’t absorb the moisture.”

“That’s a good idea,” Markham said.

McMullen laughed congenially and then turned to help another student with a different matter: how tall to build her organizer.


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