Richard Weiner, 57, of Manayunk

The snow was falling (again) in Manayunk, but Richard Weiner was tucked warmly in his studio, waiting with an ax, a chisel, and a plan to turn a 300-pound log into a sculpture.

A clinical psychologist by day, a sculptor by night and on weekends, Weiner whittles and saws and sandpapers wood, from small, hand-sized pieces to multifaceted figures more than five feet tall.

And he owes it all to having a bad bout of mono as an undergraduate at Franklin and Marshall College.

"I was out for a semester, and reading would make me fall asleep immediately and TV was making me bonkers," he said. "So my mom went out and got me clay. And I started messing around with the clay and I was transfixed by what you could do with this lump."

When he returned to school, the psychology major took every studio art class he could find. The chairman of the program at the time was a sculptor, and together they worked on one piece per semester.

As Weiner progressed through graduate school, he continued working with his hands - studying antique renovation and restoring the molding and other woodwork in Victorian houses.

"Wood was always my passion, for lots of reasons," he said. "It's incredibly warm and a natural medium. It's good to touch it - I want people to touch it, because the oils in your hands help the wood."

For a long time, there wasn't much time for sculpture, thanks to an 80-hour workweek at several area hospitals. Combine that with three packs of cigarettes a day, and at age 46, Weiner had to have a heart bypass.

Now he works part-time at Chestnut Hill Hospital and keeps a private practice in Narberth. But on Fridays and Saturdays, the studio calls.

There, he keeps a few exotic African and South American hardwoods left over from a now out-of-business collector. The domestics - maple, oak, pine - all have a place, too.

"I'll be driving around and I always have an ear out for the sound of a chipper," he said. "I'll just stop and ask if I can pick up a few pieces."

Sometimes Weiner has an idea in mind and he'll sketch out a rough model in clay. Then he searches to find a piece of wood that fits his sketch. Does it have the right grain? The right defects? Does the color match the mood he's looking to create?

Then he takes an ax to the wood, which creates the overall shape. Then come the chisels and the mallets. Finally, he uses the sandpaper. It can take several days for a small piece or six months for a larger sculpture, with prices ranging from $180 to $5,500.

For a long time, he gave pieces away to family members. In 2006, he started showing and selling, mostly through his Web site (www.richardweinersculptor.com) and the Manayunk Art Center.

Mistakes have their own way of making the piece. Cracks happen. So does overzealous chiseling.

"If you take off too much by accident, it's not like you can paint it over or glue it back," said Weiner.

In a way, sculpting wood is a lot like a mental-health practice, Weiner said.

"Patients come in and they dump a ton of stuff in front of you, and it's not always clear what issue they really need to work on," he said. "How do you take away all the noise and find the focus?"