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TEMPLETON — Easy banter and playful ribbing among the four veterans who recently gathered in the Old Glory Millworks woodworking shop made it easy to tell the group knows each other well.

“He’s amazing, everything he does for veterans is wonderful,” Clear Path for Veterans Outreach Peer Specialist Kelly Ratcliffe said of Old Glory owner Lance Perkins, who hosts veterans monthly and leads them in creating a personalized wooden American flag.

Perkins posted on Facebook following the Aug. 31 workshop thanking Ratcliffe and Clear Path for bringing in “this fine group of characters.”

“I gotta say, when we host a group that are all friends, things can get quite interesting,” he wrote. “Many laughs today and these Heroes definitely made this workshop a memorable one! Very proud of you guys and had a great time today!!”

The veterans worked intently on their projects during the session, a productive atmosphere interspersed with boisterous chatter and directing questions to Perkins, who joked “it’s not quite this rowdy usually.” You could literally see the focus and pride on the vets’ faces as their creations came to life, including Army and Marines veteran Paul Martin, a Townsend resident who said it was his first time doing something like this.

“It’s great how hands-on it is and you can make it how you like it,” he said of the flag undertaking.

Army veteran Dan Leahey of Pepperell, the obvious comedian of the group, quipped, “When do we get to drink beer?” before adding that he was enjoying “everything” about the experience.

“It was terrific, great instructor and meeting the dog was great,” he said of Ratcliffe’s faithful service dog companion, an adorable black lab.

When asked what he thought about his flag and the workshop Tom Moore, an Air Force veteran who’s a Townsend native, said “I absolutely love it” and fellow Air Force veteran Brian Colby echoed his sentiments, stating “I love it, it’s fantastic.”

Although Perkins is not a veteran, he was inspired to start hosting workshops for vets shortly after he started Old Glory a little over three years ago, which was coincidentally around the same time Clear Path launched.

“We both went into business around the same time,” he said.

He remembers that a woman from Devens-headquartered Clear Path saw one of his posts and asked him to make something out of his N. Main Street shop, where he specializes in hand-crafted wooden American flags, custom furniture, and more. Perkins said that while he has been a builder his “whole life,” he didn’t think he had “the patience to teach someone” how to do build something.

That quickly changed after he started asking people to nominate one veteran a month to give a flag to; then Clear Path started coming in each month with male and female vets and he realized he enjoyed being a teacher. He went on to expand his community outreach and besides with Clear Path, pre-COVID he was also doing monthly workshops with groups from Wounded Warrior, Friends of Springfield Veterans Center, and women’s groups, some who “have never worked with tools.”

“We may start doing it again,” Perkins said of partnering with those other organizations, adding that “Mass State Police keeps me busy making gun cases” and that once a state police RTT, a Recruit Training Class, “pitched in to buy cases for their instructors.”

Ratcliffe, an Army veteran who served from 1998 to 2006, had high praise for Perkins and his efforts among the vets community as she hung out at the shop taking in the activity.

“Lance is amazing, we get flags to use for events, Father’s Day we are able to make portable mini flag kits kids can mess with, anything we have thrown at him he’s like, ‘let’s do it’,” she said. “He’s amazing.”

She spoke about a man with Parkinson’s who was able to attach 50 stars to his flag “mostly without any help, he was immensely proud,” and a Marine who got a little zealous and accidentally drilled a hole through his flag.

“Lance fixed it right up, you would never know,” Ratcliffe said. “Lance makes everyone feel welcome and comfortable and you leave with pride with this beautiful flag, happy and beaming.”

She even had the opportunity to make two flags herself at Old Glory, one that she gave to a neighbor who is a veteran and one hanging on her front door that she created alongside her dad, a Vietnam vet who served in the Navy in the late 1960s.

“It was great to be able to bond that way, we never really talked about the military,” Ratcliffe said of the experience with her father. “It was the first time we were able to do something like this, we each made a flag. It was a rekindling of his love of woodworking.”

She noted that even if the foursome of different vets who meet up at the shop each month don’t know each other beforehand, “we are all veterans, we bond.”

Martin, who is retired and joked that he now works for his wife, said he is “used to working with tools,” having been in the maintenance sector in the military and in the federal job he took after being honorably discharged. He was still in high school when he signed up to serve.

“I saw a picture in TV Guide of a Marine coming out of the water and said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’ I went to Parris Island two weeks after graduating high school and haven’t looked back since. I would do it all over again, it’s made me who I am now.”

Also at the workshop was veteran Russ Moore, a Clear Path volunteer who is a local DAV service officer, helping vets “get their claims in.” He watched his son Tom Moore, who was there visiting him from Minnesota, create a flag and talked about his wife, whom he met at the Townsend VFW and has been married to for 35 years. It was the second marriage for both of them that blended their family into “The Brady Bunch,” with six kids between them – two boys and one girl each.

“My wife’s first husband was killed in Vietnam three weeks before he was supposed to come home,” Russ Moore said.

When Perkins asked the vets if they wanted to add 50 stars to their flags or go with the “Betsy Ross version” with 13 stars in a circular formation, the group split in half with Leahey and Martin opting for the latter. Ratcliffe ordered pizza to feed the group while they worked on affixing the stars with an adhesive, carefully lining up each one along a straight line with help from a ruler except for Leahey and Martin, who used a circular block of wood as a guide.

“It gets so quiet when they’re in the zone doing the stars,” Perkins said.

He demonstrated just how strong the glue that holds the stars on is by adhering two blocks of wood together and seconds later handing it to Martin, saying, “Give it all you’ve got.” They all had a chuckle when the blocks didn’t budge.

Leahey suggested Perkins get a stamp to use for the stars, which would be easier than painstakingly putting each one into place.

“Everyone says that. This is a workshop, you need to work,” Perkins replied good-naturedly with a grin on his face.

His shop is filled with bins of various odd sizes of pieces of wood and projects he’s currently working on, including an antique wooden rocking horse that sits waiting to be revitalized. A variety of flags and signs he crafted such as the Marines emblem, a 13-star flag, and a Fireman’s Prayer, adorn the walls along with assorted other creations. He has made over 1,100 flags himself, many commissioned by customers, and some he has donated to charity causes and fundraisers.

Approximately 330 flags have been created by vets and police during the workshops Perkins hosts. He gives them color scheme options and guides them step by step through the typical four-hour process, which includes sanding all the unfinished pieces and then staining and burning them before screwing all the components together. The stars are the finishing touch before the flags are sealed with a clear matte coat.

He said he enjoys getting to know the veterans and while he is not one himself, he has great respect for them and what they stand for, which is reflected in his shop’s name.

“I’m not a veteran so if you start talking lingo, I won’t know what the hell you’re talking about, but I’ve learned a lot.”

He said he tried offering workshops to the public, civilians in military terms, but that “didn’t work out.”

“People want to bring wine and have paint nights,” Perkins said. “For these guys it’s a sense of pride. They’re here for reason.”

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