BY DUNCAN ADAMS

THE ROANOKE TIMES

FINCASTLE

"I'll be upstairs trying to get something done and I'll just hear them laughing down there and I'll wonder who's working," she said.

The "them" are Porter Caldwell, 77, Faye's husband since 1958, and his assistant, Elliott Muncey, 31, of Fincastle. And the business is Caldwell Mountain Copper, housed in the home that the Caldwells have long shared off a gravel road in Botetourt County.

When they're busy, Porter Caldwell and Muncey handcraft copper sheeting into kettles, buckets, chocolate pots, bowls, double boilers, foot tubs and more. Their products include replicas of items from the 1700s that can be seen in collections at Jamestown and Williamsburg.

Sometimes it doesn't feel much like work.

"You pull into the parking lot in the morning and you don't have to cringe before you get out of your car," Muncey said, noting he once had a job that elicited cringing daily.

Some steps in turning a sheet of copper into a bucket, tub or kettle can be tedious-- but then another step follows, Porter Caldwell said.

"It just goes from one thing to something else. You're not standing there doing the same thing all day," he said.

"The most boring thing, if you ask Elliott, is the grinding," Caldwell said. "There are several things you wouldn't want to do all the time for a living."

Muncey chimed in.

"Polishing. I don't like polishing," he said.

Caldwell said that he and Faye, also 77, have worked full time at coppersmithing for more than 30 years. He rubbed his fingers together as if handling paper money when asked what initially drew him to the work.

"That was the first incentive when we started. We had to eat and we like to eat three times a day and we like to be able to pay our bills," Porter Caldwell said.

Caldwell's work history includes laboring at his father's sawmill in Botetourt County, being an employee of the Virginia Department of Forestry and working as a self-employed carpenter, electrician and plumber. He and Faye once traveled on weekends to crafts shows, selling apple butter, jellies, home-ground grits and other items and demonstrating a steam-engine-powered grist mill. Faye retired after working more than 36 years for social services in Botetourt County.