BOONSBORO — Mike Cruz was an 8-year-old boy picking up scraps of wood while his childhood basement was being redone.

He took nails and two-by-fours, and started making animals and wooden boats.

“I knew when I was young that I liked doing woodwork,” Cruz said.

On Saturday, Sept. 12, and Sunday, Sept. 13, the 47-year-old Keedysville resident will be among craftsmen and artists peddling handmade wares at the 44th annual Boonesborough Days at Shafer Park.

While his full-time job is caring for horses on the farm he runs with his wife, Cruz, a Montgomery County, Md. native, said woodworking was his livelihood for about five years.

For many years, Cruz did what is referred to as “flatwork.”

“Flatwork is what we call it in the woodworking field. Basically, flatwork uses table saws and jointers and planers. What I was doing before was dining room tables, chairs, built-in cabinets, custom woodwork,” he said.

The woodcrafts Cruz primarily will be displaying at Boonesborough Days are a little different.

“As far as what I do for Boonesborough Days, my art is called wood turning. That means that I create items out of wood and they are turned on a lathe, a machine that spins the wood. I use tools to create objects like bowls and platters, pieces of art, pens and bottle stoppers,” he said.

Besides doing shows like Boonesborough Days, which aims to “preserve for posterity the heritage of the Boonsboro area,” Cruz sells his wares online at www.knottybynature.net.

About 25 years ago, he said his father, who was a chemist by trade, got him started making wooden golf putters. While other crafters make similar items, Cruz’s are unique because they are made completely of wood and leather.

“There are other people doing putters, but nobody really does it like me. That doesn’t make mine better. It’s just that nobody does it like I do it,” he said.

Cruz’s putters are “pretty much all wood,” he said.

The heads and shafts are wood, and the grips are leather. Other crafters make wooden putters, but they usually use wooden heads and steel or graphite shafts.

It was when Cruz needed to make trophies for a golf tournament that he became interested in wood turning.

“A design I came up with for the trophies included two large golf tees,” he said. “I needed to be able to turn those. I had done some lathe work, but after I started working on that, I decided to buy a lathe. That was about five years ago. That’s when I became a turner. I was bitten by the bug to do turning.”

Since then, other than his trademark putters, most things Cruz produces are round.

Cruz does much of his turning with maple, as well as local woods like walnut, cherry and ash. Maple, he said, can have nearly every kind of figure, he said, which refers to the pattern of the wood. Among them are spalting, burls, curl, ambrosia, bird’s eyes and feathering.

Cruz does not cut down live trees for woodworking, he said, but uses ones that died naturally or came down in storms.

Cruz said this will be his third year as a vendor at Boonesborough Days.

“It’s a good crowd. It’s been successful for me,” he said.

While he doesn’t like to leave his booth because he favors being present to interact with attendees, he said the festival draws “some very nice, talented people.” He sees the festival’s mission of preserving traditional crafts as “extremely important.”

“Wood turning specifically is one of those arts that is lost on the youth, quite honestly,” he said.

There are wood-turning clubs that meet monthly in Frederick, Md., Leesburg, Va., and Winchester, Va., he said, to share, demonstrate and discuss the art.

“The average age at these meetings is probably about 65 years old. The reason for that is twofold. One is because it’s an expensive hobby. It really is,” he said. “And a lot of people don’t have time or money to do it until they retire.”

The other reason, Cruz said, is that many shop classes have been discontinued in high schools over the years.

“These classes have just been dropping out of school systems. The younger generation never gets an introduction to it,” he said.

Whenever he can, Cruz likes to team up at shows with other wood turners so one can turn while another interacts with customers.

“It’s nice to have one watch the booth while another is maybe turning a bottle stopper. It’s important to introduce arts like this to children and to adults who haven’t been introduced to it before,” he said.

Though he will not have a partner to turn with this year, Cruz said places like Woodcraft, a woodworking supply shop with locations in Leesburg and Harrisburg, Pa., are “a wonderful place to teach classes to anybody who wants to learn.”

“People can learn wood turning or whatever at places like that do keep the crafts alive,” he said.

In addition to wood turning, Boonesborough Days will feature broom makers, soap makers, beeswax candle crafters, blacksmiths and basket weavers.

WHAT: 44th annual Boonesborough Days

WHEN: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 12, and Sunday, Sept. 13

WHERE: Shafer Park, Park Drive, Boonsboro

CONTACT: www.boonesboroughdays.com or find Boonesborough Days on Facebook