It All Starts
With Jack

March 24, 2021

The day everything changed

Jack was born on July 31, 2019. Like most parents, we were just trying to figure things out as we went.

For a while, we didn’t know anything was necessarily wrong. We just knew some things felt harder than they seemed like they should be.

Then on March 24, 2021, we had a doctor appointment that changed everything.

The doctor asked me how many words Jack was saying. The benchmark they mentioned was around 50. Jack was maybe saying one or two.

That was the moment it really hit me that something might be going on.

Before that, we had spent so much time trying to understand why Jack was struggling.

Why was he crying so much? Why did certain things seem so difficult? Why did everyday situations affect him differently?

As a parent, that was one of the hardest things I had ever gone through.

You want to help your kid. You want to make things better. But when you don’t understand what they need or why they’re struggling, you can feel completely helpless.

When we eventually learned Jack was autistic, things started to make more sense.

The diagnosis didn’t make anything easy, but it gave us a direction.

Jack started therapy on June 30, 2021.

From there, our lives became a constant process of learning, adapting, advocating, changing routines, dealing with setbacks, and doing whatever we could to help him.

COVID made an already difficult situation even more complicated. Services changed. Routines changed. Everything felt uncertain.

But no matter what got thrown at us, we kept moving. Jack was always the priority.

A new rhythm

Staying Home With Jack

I eventually left my job so I could stay home and take care of him.

That was a massive change for me.

I had worked since I was young. I was used to having a job, coworkers, a schedule, and a trade I understood.

Suddenly, I was home with Jack every day.

I loved being there for my son, but it was also one of the hardest and most isolating periods of my life.

Everything revolved around therapy, appointments, routines, progress, setbacks, and trying to understand what Jack needed from us.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I started woodworking.

When Jack would go down for a nap, I would head into the garage and build something.

At first, I wasn’t trying to start a business. I just needed something for myself.

Something creative.
Something I could do with my hands.
Something I could learn.
Something I could control when so much of the rest of life felt outside of my control.

Woodworking became therapy for me.

One project became another.

I started learning new techniques, buying tools, making mistakes, figuring out why something didn’t work, and trying again.

Eventually, those nap-time projects became JackWagon Woodworking.

And of course, I named it after Jack.

Built into the DNA

The Maker Was There Before JackWagon

What a lot of people who know me through JackWagon don’t know is that making things started long before the woodworking shop.

My background is in precision sheet metal.

I started working in the trade part-time when I was 16 years old in Rochester, at the same company where my dad worked for 50 years.

My dad is an old-school tool and die maker, and a huge part of my work ethic and the way I learn came from him.

He taught me to pay attention to the details, understand how things work, take pride in what I make, and keep working at a problem until I understand it.

I’ve carried that with me ever since.

Sheet metal. Woodworking. Laser cutting. 3D printing. Electronics. Arcade controllers.

To me, they’re all different versions of the same thing:

Learn the process. Learn the tools. Make something. Then figure out how to make it better.

The first proof

The First Product That Really Took Off

One of the first big milestones for JackWagon Woodworking actually started with an idea from my wife.

She came up with the concept for a charcuterie board with a removable slate insert, and I figured out how to build it.

That product became one of the first things we made that people absolutely loved.

It combined woodworking, engraving, graphic design, personalization, and problem solving.

More importantly, it gave me confidence.

For the first time, JackWagon started to feel like something bigger than a hobby I was doing in the garage while Jack slept.

People wanted what we were making.

That made me want to keep learning.

A bigger audience

The First Big Woodworking Breakthrough

After the charcuterie boards started catching on, JackWagon had another moment that made the business feel much more real.

Back when we were still JackWagon Woodworking, we had our first major breakthrough and got featured in a way that put what we were making in front of a much bigger audience.

For me, that was a major milestone.

The woodworking had started as something I did while Jack slept because I needed an outlet.

Then people started buying what we made.

Then opportunities like this started showing up.

Each one gave me a little more confidence that maybe this thing I had started in the garage could actually become something.

And eventually, that same curiosity would lead me somewhere completely different.

Arcade sticks.

The next build

Then I Built a FightStick

A few years later, I got back into gaming and discovered the custom FightStick community.

I saw what people were making and thought:

I want to try building one of those.

So I did.

Before there was an official JackWagon FightSticks account, before the products, before the website, and before I had any idea where this would go, I built an acrylic arcade stick and posted it to Reddit.

View the original Reddit post ↗

What stands out to me now is that even with that first build, I was already thinking about the next version.

The case could have more room.
The construction could be cleaner.
The electronics could be better hidden.
The bottom could be easier to remove.

I wasn’t just happy that I had made one.

I wanted to understand how to make the next one better.

That was when something clicked.

I didn’t just enjoy playing on FightSticks.

I loved designing them, building them, finding the weak points, and solving the problems.

That was the beginning of JackWagon FightSticks.

Trust from the community

The First Big FGC Collaboration

Posting builds into the FightStick community eventually opened another door.

One of our first major breakthroughs as JackWagon FightSticks came through a collaboration with a moderator from the r/fightsticks community.

That build was the Sho’nuff FightStick.

It was one of those moments where JackWagon started to feel less like something I was experimenting with on my own and more like something people inside the community were actually noticing.

That collaboration meant a lot to me.

I was still learning. Still changing designs. Still figuring out what JackWagon FightSticks was going to become.

But having someone established in the community trust me with a build felt like a real milestone.

It helped introduce JackWagon to more people in the FGC and moved the idea from:

“I wonder if I can build one of these?”
to
“Maybe I can actually build something here.”

Always the same question

Same Process. Different Build.

Looking back, the charcuterie board, the woodworking breakthrough, the first FightStick, and that first major FGC collaboration all followed the same pattern.

An idea. Build it. Put it out there. See how people react. Learn from it. Make the next one better.

That process became the backbone of how I work.

Woodworking led to laser cutting.

Laser cutting led to acrylic.

Acrylic led to 3D printing and electronics.

And eventually, all of it came together in FightSticks.

I wasn’t just assembling arcade controllers anymore.

I was designing them.

October 28, 2025

The Pivot

On October 28, 2025, I officially closed the JackWagon Woodworking shop so I could focus on arcade controllers and growing JackWagon FightSticks.

It was a major change.

But something else had changed by then too.

Jack was doing great.

The little boy I had once left my career to stay home with had made so much progress that our family was entering another new chapter.

And because of that, I was able to go back to work.

Back where I started

Coming Full Circle

The owner of Roseville Precision, the precision sheet-metal company where I had previously worked, approached me about coming back.

His family also has a personal connection to autism, and that gave us something important in common.

We bonded over those experiences, and he told me they missed having me there and that he would be happy to have me back in whatever capacity worked for my family.

That meant a lot to me.

So I returned part-time.

There’s something pretty special about that.

I left the sheet-metal world because Jack needed me.

Years later, Jack’s progress helped make it possible for me to return.

And now the skills from that world are becoming part of the future of the business that carries his name.

That feels pretty full circle.

The JackWagon mindset

Why We Build Differently

One of the biggest lessons Jack has taught me is that there isn’t always one correct way to get somewhere.

Sometimes you have to adapt.

Sometimes you have to look at the problem differently.

Sometimes the standard solution simply isn’t the right solution for that person.

That mindset shows up in the shop all the time.

A customer wants a layout that doesn’t exist?
Let’s figure it out.

A part doesn’t fit?
Make one.

Someone has a weird idea for a FightStick that probably shouldn’t work?

Those are usually my favorite projects.

That’s JackWagon.