Richard Flinchbaugh has made sure torpedoes sit safely in their submarine homes. He has ensured that giant cranes and other large-scale machinery don’t fall down on the job. He has hand-built a sizable log home on the waterfront in midcoast Maine. What brought this talented engineer to his current occupation of designing, cutting and selling delicate wooden Christmas ornaments?

“You could say I’m a complicated guy,” Flinchbaugh said during a recent interview in his Spruce Head home and workshop. “I’m an engineer, a house builder, a crafter, a musician, and a Christian who understands the meaning of that word. There are two sides of me: the dogmatic, technical, rigid engineer and a very creative little boy who just wants to get out and play,” he said with a smile.

A native of Newton, Mass., Flinchbaugh spent his boyhood summers in Pleasant Point near Cushing, Maine, where he fell in love with the Pine Tree State and also grew in his faith through attending the Broad Cove United Methodist Church. When it came time to attend college, he chose the University of Maine at Orono, where he earned a degree in mechanical engineering. Engineering came naturally to Flinchbaugh, who is the son of an engineer who worked for Polaroid and the grandson of a man who served as an engineer for the NECCO candy factory in Cambridge, Mass.

After college, Flinchbaugh began a long career working for the U.S. Navy in Kittery, at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard, in Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, and in Virginia and Washington, D.C. He worked on weapons systems and on monitoring the safety of weight-bearing machinery. He raised a family elsewhere, but never lost his love of Maine. When in 2000 he had the chance to retire young, “it was a no-brainer,” he said, to build his own home on Spruce Head. His waterfront home offers a view that reminds him of the vista he loved at Pleasant Point.

In the walk-out basement of that dwelling, he built a sizable workshop, which he needs for the cabinetmaking and finish work he has done on his home. He also builds furniture and makes toys there for his two grandchildren. The workshop also houses some of the equipment he uses for the Christmas ornament making business he calls Come Spring Folk Art.

Flinchbaugh said three things inspired him to craft his own Christmas ornaments. He has always believed that homemade Christmas gifts are the most meaningful. The delicate work serves as “a de-stressor.” And the work brings him spiritual satisfaction, too.

Flinchbaugh taught himself how to do the delicate woodcutting called scrolling when he was undergoing a painful divorce. “The concentration required made me forget about everything,” he said. Although the work demands intense concentration, safety-consciousness and skill, it paradoxically alleviates stress for him. He decided to introduce one special new ornament each year, making copies of it out of pale, almost white holly wood, for friends and family only. He also cuts many more designs out of red cedar, apple wood, sugar maple and pine, for sale at crafts fairs and on mainemade.com.

Flinchbaugh’s stock includes 40 designs. A series of ornaments pictures animals such as lobsters, bears and moose shown within an outline of the state of Maine. He is also strong on angel ornaments, which give him the most pleasure in the making, too. “I cut a lot of ornaments, but mostly I cut angels,” Flinchbaugh said. “There’s just something very spiritual about that.”

Spiritual it may be, but the work is also labor-intensive with as many as 67 delicate, inside cuts, and sanding, oiling, stringing and boxing required for each. All of this effort is worth it, Flinchbaugh said, when he presents an ornament as a gift or when a customer delights in buying one. “I get a lot of pleasure from seeing the joy on the faces of people when they get their ornament,” he said.

Look for Flinchbaugh and his ornaments at the Georges Valley High School Holiday Craft Fair in Thomaston from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 29, and at the Rockland District High School Holiday Craft Fair in Rockland from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. Saturday, Dec. 6.