I have often blathered on about how this or that event “changed my life.” In 1976, I was an 18-year-old art student. My father had just died the year before and I inherited his basement full of tools, table saw, drill press, router, etc. All I learned of them was how to make picture frames for my paintings. Not even good ones. Then, while I was on a trip to Doylestown, Pa., with my mother, someone showed me some of the first issues of Fine Woodworking magazine. I ended up subscribing when I got back home and would pore through those early issues, thunderstruck by what people were doing. And I still have issue #12 from the fall of 1978, the one that changed my life. In it was an excerpt from John (Jennie) Alexander’s upcoming book Make a Chair from a Tree and a related article by Drew Langsner on splitting wood, which stemmed from his 1978 book Country Woodcraft.

I ordered both books and trudged out to the suburban woods near my home and began splitting logs. And I’m still at it because of a FWW announcement in 1980 about a class to be taught by Alexander at Langsner’s place. I was by no means a stellar student, but I persevered and eventually caught on. JA and Drew became lifelong friends and in the case of Alexander, a longtime collaborator.

These days my mind is on a book I’m researching and writing about the people who taught me woodworking and so I often refer to FWW content. Those two articles I mentioned are burned into my memory, as is one by Drew that caught my eye and stayed with me, his “Making Wooden Buckets: White Cooperage, the Swiss Way.”

That article is tied to Drew’s introduction to the shaving horse and drawknife, which he learned during a 10-week apprenticeship with the Swiss cooper Reudi Kohler in the early 1970s. Ten years later he returned to study further with Kohler, resulting in the cooperage article as well as one about a Swiss chair he worked on with Kohler (Drew Langsner, “Two Board Chairs”). I’ve been making versions of those chairs in the past few years whenever I have the time; the article was my jumping-off point.

Rick Mastelli’s “Knife Work” featuring Wille Sundqvist was cited by my friend Dave Fisher in his Benchmarks, but I’ll add another of Mastelli’s about a chairmaking class at Drew Langsner’s Country Workshops, taught by Dave Sawyer, Rick Mastelli “Green Woodworking.” I never knew Dave but he’s directly tied to several of my teachers and friends, among them Curtis Buchanan. I’ve known Curtis since 1987 when I was in his first chairmaking class. I was a long time away from chairmaking, having detoured into carved oak furniture. But I kept up with what Curtis was doing, sometimes finding him featured in the magazine. Jon Binzen’s photo of Curtis assembling his continuous armchair is, to me, another hallmark FWW moment.

Over the years I’ve been very blessed with great teachers and friends and many of them are in the pages of Fine Woodworking.

Peter Follansbee

 

	Holding the Work   Shaving horse and low bench
	Cleaving Wood   Froe follows long fibers Drew Langsner
	Making Wooden Buckets   White cooperage, the Swiss way Drew Langsner
	Two-Board Chairs   Plans and methods from a Swiss woodworker Drew Langsner
	Knife Work   Make the knife and carve a spoon Rick Mastelli, Wille Sundqvists
	Green Woodworking   How I split and shaved a chair at Country Workshops Rick Mastelli
	The Why of Windsor Chairs   A veteran maker explains the roots, the rationale, and the powerful appeal of America’s classic chair style. Curtis Buchanan