Category: Country Woodcraft: Then and Now

In 1978, Drew Langsner released his book “Country Woodcraft” to the world, and it sparked a movement – still expanding today – of hand-tool woodworkers who make things with mostly green wood.

The 304 pages of “Country Woodcraft” showed you how to split wood from the forest and shape into anything you might need, from a spoon to a bowl, from a hay rake fork to a milking stool, a pine whisk to a dining table.

After more than 40 years, Drew revisited this long-out-of-print and important book to revise and expand it to encompass what he has learned since “Country Woodcraft” was first released.

The result is “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now,” which has been expanded by nearly 100 pages and has been updated throughout to reflect what Drew has learned since 1978. Among many other additions, it includes greatly expanded sections on building shavehorses, carving spoons and making green-wood bowls.

The original book’s text is intact, and the old photos are in black and white. Throughout the book, Drew has added text, which we set in a slightly different font, to explain what he does differently now after 40 years of daily work on the North Carolina farm he shares with his wife, Louise.

In many ways, the book is a delightful conversation between the younger Drew, who is happy to chop down trees with a felling axe, and the older Drew, who now uses an electric chainsaw and band saw to break down stock to conserve energy (and likely aspirin). New illustrations and color photos throughout show how Drew works now.

Below is an excerpt from the Appendices.

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A Few Usually Useless Woods – Then
Trees are generally defined as single-stemmed woody plants that attain a height of at least 20′. The smaller shrubs are often a nuisance to commercial woodsmen. Unsurprisingly, certain shrubs contain excellent-quality wood. Like roots and branches, the irregular sections can be used to advantage in specific situations.

In rural Finland, lilac is considered to be the best material for rake tines. Rhododendron makes fine spoons, shelf brackets and clothes hooks. Holly, generally planted as an ornamental, will grow into a fair-sized tree with excellent-quality hardwood.

Roots are generally not considered wood. They are often gritty (dulling sharp tools), difficult to work and hard to adapt to profitable production. They are a stringy fibrous material, with shrinkage and other characteristics shared with the wood above ground. As might be anticipated, peasant and nomadic craftsmen found special uses for these tough, twisted subterranean forms. The natural curvatures of roots are used for hooks, handles, and other special uses. Knotty roots are also tough and can be used for maul heads – hickory and dogwood – or even bearings for slow-turning machinery. The Swiss Alpine butter-churn stand is traditionally made of dry pine roots.(1) Large spruce roots, cut with the lower trunk, are used in boatbuilding.(2) Finer spruce roots can be split into lacing thongs or basketry material. During a recent project removing roots in our driveway, I learned that roots have reaction wood, just like tree trunks and limbs.

Bark, another waste material of industrial technology, has many uses for the woodland crafts worker. Birch bark has surprisingly fine, lasting qualities when wet. It can be peeled in early summer, then used for the hull of a canoe or the underlayment of a sod roof. Birch bark baskets are made throughout Scandinavia and northern Europe. Tulip poplar bark can be scored and folded into containers such as berry-picking boxes. Basswood bark was used for making shingles in Russia and other places. The inner bark – called bast – of hickory, bass and tulip poplar can be cut into strips for post-and-rung chair seating and to make a tough, durable lacing material, and even rope. Leather tanners used bark from oak, birch and alder as their source for tannin. In nearby Greeneville, Tenn., Cecil Self and his brother were tanning cow hides for horse harnesses with oak bark until about 1970.

Even twigs and small limbs can be useful. Fences can be woven from many pliable species; willow and hazel are often considered best. First-year willow growth is the standard basketry material in many areas. Young pine limbs may be shaved down and used for bucket hoops. Birch twigs and many kinds of brush are used to make broom sweeps.

Before the takeover of industrial economics, trees, shrubs and even roots were valued for many uses that have since been superseded by synthetics and manufactured products. The following list provides a few examples from traditional handcrafts of Europe and North America.

Bark – Entire, or Outer
· Alder. Tanning leather
· Birch (white, paper). Canoes, basketry, roofing (Scandinavia, under sod), clothing (Pacific Northwest native Americans)
· Linden (also known as bass, and lime in the U.K.). Shingles
· Oak (various species). Tanning leather
· Tulip poplar. Primitive shelters, folded boxes
· Willow. Aspirin

Bark Bast (Bast refers to inner bark.)
· Elm. Rope
· Hickory. Chair seating, basketry, thongs and lacing
· Linden (Also known as bass, and lime in the U.K.). Basketry, rope
· Tulip poplar. Chair seating, cordage

Limbs
· Apple, pear and other fruit woods. Spoons, ladles, hooks for hanging just about anything
· Birch (any kind). Spoons and ladles, wall hooks for clothing, harness
· Dogwood, holly and other slow-growing hardwoods. Spoons and ladles
· Pine limbs. Bucket hooping (Swiss Alps)

Roots
· Dogwood. Mauls and clubs (Integral with the lower trunk of saplings)
· Sassafras. Root beer
· Spruce. Thongs and lacing

Saplings
· Hickory and other tough hardwoods. Clubs and mauls, splitting gluts
· Birch. Fencing (Scandinavia)
· Conifers (various). Fencing (Scandinavia)
· Hazel, sourwood and other small saplings. Walking sticks

Shrubs and Scrub Trees
· Lilac. Rake tines
· Rhododendron. Spoons and ladles, wall hooks

Twigs and Rods
· Birch. Besom brooms, rope, fencing
· Hawthorne. Living shrub fencing
· Hazel. Baskets, walking sticks, fencing
· Willow. Basketry
· Any species. Fire starter, fuel for cooking/baking

A Few Usually Useless Woods – Now
Tulip poplar bast chair seating. During the early years of Country Workshops’ ladderback chairmaking classes, we learned that the inner bark from tulip poplar can be used for woven chair seating. The idea was quickly dismissed. It was assumed that poplar bast is an inferior material that would tear or deteriorate quickly. Also, we were in love with hickory bast, which is an exceptional material – for appearance and strength.

The problem with hickory bast is getting it. Hickory grows in many parts of the eastern U.S., but it’s relatively scarce in our area, compared with tulip poplar, which seems to sprout almost everywhere.
More than 30 years had passed when I received a phone call from Jack Ruttle, back then the editor of Organic Gardening magazine, and also a participant in one of Country Workshops’ early chairmaking courses. Jack told me that when he returned from the CW course he prepped and wove a seat for his chair using tulip poplar bast.

DL – “Great! How has it held up?”
JR – “That’s what I want to tell you. We use the chair every day.”
DL – “And?…”
JR – “It’s still looking fine. No tears or other problems.”
DL – “OK! That’s fantastic. I’ll give poplar a try, ASAP.”

That summer, Will Burney and I cut a nice-looking tulip poplar sapling. The diameter was about 5″ at breast height; it was straight, with just a few small knots. The pole we hauled to the shop was about 15′ long.

The shaving and peeling technique is the same as for getting hickory bast, only somewhat easier. Like hickory, poplar bark can be peeled from mid spring to about mid summer, during the early year growth when cambium cells are dividing, forming new layers of wood and inner bark. Sometime around mid summer, growth slows, and it becomes difficult – or impossible – to peel the inner bark.

Once in the shop, our poplar pole was set on two sawhorses. Will and I took turns holding the pole and shaving off the outer bark. We used a straight drawknife, held bevel down. We quickly learned that this needs to be done carefully; it’s easy to cut into – and destroy – the bast. Depth of cut is determined by trial and error along a narrow test strip, maybe 2″ wide. We used a chalk line to define strips about 5/8″ wide.

A box cutter – a carpenter’s zip knife – works well for cutting through the inner bark to make the strips. If you do this between spring and summer, the bast will peel loose from the cambium with little effort. If it seems to be too stiff – more than 2mm in thickness – lay the bast back on the pole and do some more shaving. This fine-tuning can be done with a spokeshave. Remove the first strip.

With a strip removed you can see the thickness of the two adjacent sections that will become the next strips. This greatly helps in determining how deep to shave. Use a spokeshave for the final passes.
Because a tree isn’t a true cylinder you’ll need to cheat here and there, letting the strips wander or die out.

Where a strip intercepts a knot there are several options. If the knot is to the side of the strip, you can continue as if it doesn’t exist. There’s about a 45-percent chance that this section will end up on the bottom of the seat, or become overlapped with the weave on the top of the seat. In tension, narrow sections of bast are almost as strong as full-width sections. Sometimes a very small knot will be almost centered within the width of a strip. I leave these; they become a visual feature. You can also just come to a stop, making a shorter strip. Long strips are nice, but you can use various lengths when it comes to doing the seat weaving.

As you proceed, slime from the fibrous bast will attach to the drawknife and spokeshave blades. Wipe this off with a wet rag. Continue working with wet tools. Water seems to minimize slime accumulation. (Dry and oil the tools when you’re finished.)

Let the strips dry before weaving the seat. The fresh strips are somewhat fragile. Also, they will shrink in width. Seats made with green bast will result in gaps in the woven seat. Roll and tie the strips in coils for drying. This might take a week. Coiled bast can be stored indefinitely.

As with hickory bast, the best weaving pattern for poplar seating is a herringbone. A one-over/one-under checkerboard weave becomes too tight to finish the weaving process. A double checker board (two-over/two-under) is OK, but it’s not as attractive as the herringbone.

On weaving day, plop the coiled bast into a bucket of warm water. It becomes pliable in about 15 minutes. Don’t soak all the bast at once; you want it to be workable, but you don’t want it to soak up so much water that it expands in width.
Directions for the herringbone weave, including how to tie strips together with a weaver’s knot, are in my book, “The Chairmaker’s Workshop.”(3)

Both hickory and tulip poplar bast hold up well. With use, hickory bark takes on a nice sheen on the upper surface. (A true butt rub!) Poplar smooths out some, but never looks polished. On my poplar bast ladderback, the material crumpled slightly where it wraps around the rungs. This doesn’t weaken it, but it would be nice to eliminate. Perhaps pre-limbering in both directions will do the trick. As it dries on the seat, poplar bast shrinks in width a little more than hickory. But the shrinkage might also tighten the weave. We’ve been using the chair in the photo with poplar bast seating for three years; we’re happy with it. Still, hickory bast is king.

A later note on poplar bast seating. Recently I found myself looking at the chair with poplar bast under low level and low angle light. I discovered that the crumples correspond to the arrises of the small spokeshaved flats of the rungs. I’m now quite sure that crumpling would not have happened, or be less prominent, if the upper seating rungs had been made rounder and smoother. This could be done with a hollow sole spokeshave, scraper or just sandpaper.

Wood scraps from a green wood chairmaking workshop. When I visit city-based woodworkers I’m often surprised to see that wood scraps are tossed into the trash, along with package wrappings, the newspaper and even food waste. This is a shameful situation that was even worse before recycling.
During 39 years of Country Workshops’ ladderback chairmaking courses, vast quantities of wet, green wood waste were produced, along with the many chairs. We produced drawknife shavings, followed by spokeshave shavings, plus waste cutoffs from over-long chair parts and wood that didn’t meet standards of quality. There was very little saw and sanding dust. Here’s how this stuff was utilized – and almost everything was utilized, even some of the wood dust.

Dry drawknife shavings from any kind of wood are among Planet Earth’s best fire-starters. Because we and our neighbors mostly heat with wood, we can always use wood shavings. We store drawknife shaving until needed in plastic trash cans – like the ones sold for curbside pickup. (Which we don’t have out here.) I use a 2″ hole saw to bore 50 or so air vents in the plastic side walls. This is for ventilation so that the shavings will dry, which is what’s needed for fire-starters. The trash can lids are nice to use if the shavings are stored outdoors.

One tip that would drive some CW students nuts is that the drawknife shavings are roughly sorted before going into the trash cans. 1. Sweep the shavings into a pile. 2. Grab a bunch of shavings and shake them, so that small, frassy stuff falls away. Don’t shake on top of the shavings pile! 3. The remaining shavings go into the trash can. The reason for this is that the rejected small dusty stuff tends to fall on the house floor and be messy. You’ll appreciate this when you do it.

Spokeshave shavings can go into the same fire-starter. But there’s a much better use if you’re doing woven chair seats… Once upon a time this woodworker/teacher/author rejected the tradition that woven chair seats should have a stuffing between the layers. But as I got older, and learned that even hickory bast chair seats stretch and sag, I came to agree with conventional wisdom. But what to use? Several layers of cardboard is common, and also plastic foam sheeting (various kinds.) One day Brian Boggs was visiting when our class was finishing their ladderbacks. Brian told us that he had been testing “just about everything” for the stuffing and that he had concluded that the very best is spokeshave shavings. By far the best are from green wood when you’re finishing rungs with a spokeshave. Green wood shavings are springy, whereas dry wood shavings tend to crumple and weaken as they pass over the spokeshave chipbreaker.

Sweep the shop floor when switching from drawknife to spokeshave. When spokeshaving is finished, put the shavings into a box to dry. They will keep indefinitely. The shavings are also premium packing material for anything shipped in a cardboard box. Or just put them in with the fire starter.

Green cut-off wood scraps are dried – in other hole-y trash cans – then burned in the shop woodstove. Any other leftovers are tossed in the forest to decompose, which might be what all of this stuff should really be doing. Amen!

1. Drew and Louise Langsner. “Handmade.” New York: Harmony Books, 1974.
2. Herbert L. Edlin. “Woodland Crafts in Britain.” Newton Abbot, UK: David & Charles, 1949.
3. Drew Langsner. “The Chairmaker’s Workshop.” Original edition published in Asheville, NC: Lark Books, 1997. Author’s reprint edition Marshall, NC, 2008.

The following is excerpted from Drew Langsner’s “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now.” In 1978, Drew Langsner first released this book to the world, and it sparked a movement – still expanding today – of hand-tool woodworkers who make things with mostly green wood.

“Country Woodcraft” showed you how to split wood from the forest and shape into anything you might need, from a spoon to a bowl, from a hay rake fork to a milking stool, a pine whisk to a dining table.

After more than 40 years, Drew revisited his long-out-of-print and important book to revise and expand it to encompass what he learned since “Country Woodcraft” was first released.

The result is “Country Woodcraft: Then & Now,” which was expanded by nearly 100 pages and updated throughout to reflect what Drew has learned since 1978. Among many other additions, it includes greatly expanded sections on building shavehorses, carving spoons and making green-wood bowls.

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Axes are honorary members of the primitive tools family. Axes are simple tools, but the good ones are also refined, the result of countless generations of use and thinking about specific requirements.Simple means that you need to do most of the work. There’s a definite learning curve, and practice is necessary to develop and maintain technique. As an example of this, you can watch Wille Sundqvist hewing a spoon in 1982 in a video posted to the Country Workshops YouTube channel. The video records Wille at his prime…a world-class axe master who grew up in rural Sweden when men used axes every day.

Safety First! Axes are easily the most dangerous hand tools. This is because they work with a throwing action. There’s accelerated force that doesn’t let off until overcome by friction. When using an axe, you must always be extremely careful – on your best woodworking behavior. During spoon carving, you’re holding the workpiece with your free hand, so you must be extra careful.

The first rule is that your holding fingers must always be on the backside of the workpiece, never gripping around or over the top. This rule always applies.

A few terms. These aren’t official, but offered here so that we understand one another. Axes are one or two handed. Single-handed axes are also called hatchets. Carving axes are single-handed hatchets designed for wood carving. In contrast to a camping hatchet, carving axes are a refined and tuned instrument. “Hewing axe” refers to double-handed axes that can also be a broad axe – heavy, with a massive blade, and a single bevel on the outer side of the cutting edge.

Carving axes are what we’re concerned with here – for working on spoons, ladles, bowls and maybe sculptural work. Broad axes are usually used for architectural work – timber framing and working on log structures. Much was learned about carving axes in the years after the historic Spoon Carving – Then photos of Wille Sundqvist hewing a spoon with my Kent hatchet were taken (in Chapter 26).

This appendix is an introductory guide to selecting a carving axe. Makers and models are provided, but these aren’t exclusive picks. Everyone has their own requirements, and different makers and models are available at different times.

Weight isn’t a major factor with double-handed axes, but it’s an important consideration with carving hatchets. Because they are single-handed tools, all of the grip and heft – power – are concentrated in one hand and arm. This statement seems overly basic. But consider trying to fasten something with one connector compared to using two connectors that are spread apart. The single fastener requires enormous connectivity when stability is a consideration. With a double connection the stress per connector is much less than half.

With a carving axe comfort is exhausted quickly as axe weight increases. This is felt in your hand, wrist and forearm. This is not only tiring, but can lead to a loss of control – even releasing the axe unintentionally. Older users – like me – should be particularly concerned with axe weight.

A carving hatchet should be light enough that you won’t become tired using it. Svante Djarv’s Baby Axe weighs less than 1 pound, with the handle. Spoons are small things that don’t ask for a big axe.

The cross section of a carving axe handle is critical to the user’s comfort, especially after the first minute or so of use. I’ve been trying to understand what makes the perfect feeling/gripping handle cross section going back to before Country Woodcraft was originally written. I still haven’t figured this out. I have favorite carving axes with handles that contradict one another.

Balance. One of the problems with the Kent axe is that the head hangs below the axis of the handle. It always wants to flop downward. It also has double bevels, so you need to hold it at a rotational angle for the edge to slice wood. This means that you’re always expending energy to correct the hanging angle. The problem is – sort-of – remedied by increasing the size of the poll, the hammer-like protrusion at the top of the axe head. But this increases the weight – probably not a significant problem in the past when axe users were tough and strong.

Angling the piece being axed partially solves the problem. Then the axe swing is closer to plumb.

Balance comes about with good design. The axe head shape, and the angle of the eye relative to the handle, can be made so that the handle axis is in line with the center of gravity of the head. The objective is that the axe can be deployed at a rotational angle without needing to physically pull it into the desired plane. This can take various forms, all with pros and cons, of course. The carving axes in the photos all have good balance.

The reproduction 10th-century Viking axe (shown on page 99) has exceptionally good balance. The original was probably an all-purpose tool, used for butchering, fighting and even woodworking. The axis of the handle is in line with the center of balance of the head. This means that it can be swung in any direction, without the distraction of the head wanting to angle downward.

Bevels. There are three possibilities – symmetrical double bevels, single bevel and hybrid double bevels. A symmetrical bevel is the most versatile configuration, even allowing a moderate scooping action. But it requires angling the axe to get a controlled, supported cut. This is where axe balance is consequential.

The single-bevel version is known as a broad axe or broad hatchet. It’s like a chisel used with the flat side inward. There’s minimal angling needed for getting a controlled cut. This makes single-bevel axes easy to control. Gravity does much of the work. It’s possible to hew a convex shape, but concavities are out of the question.

The hybrid version is sometimes called long and short bevels, or asymmetric bevels. The inner bevel is longer and at a lower angle than the outer bevel. These often come about as a user-made modification of a symmetrical-bevel axe. With this configuration you get some of the advantages of the double-bevel and single-bevel variations.

With any of these three configurations it’s important that the inner bevel is flat. If the inner bevel is convex – slightly curved from cutting edge toward the head – you would need to tip the axe outward to get it to cut. Then you lose support of the bevel during the cut. The axe will tend to bounce away from the work.

There’s some confusion in the broad axe realm as to what version is right- or left-handed. Right-handed means that the left side is the flat side of the head when the axe is held in your right hand. The bevel is now on the right.

Clearance. There should be some clearance when you hold a straightedge on the inner bevel – or the flat side – laying the ruler from the cutting edge toward the eye of the head. The straightedge shouldn’t bump into a bulge at the eye for the handle. This doesn’t matter with very light axe cuts, but it’s a disqualifying factor if you’re using the axe with enough force that the eye of the axe head passes the work during each swing.

Clearance is a design problem, not impossible to solve, but annoying to get right for some toolmakers. Clearance can sometimes be jimmy-fixed by regrinding the angle of the inner bevel on an existing axe head.

Cutting edge curvature. Axes are most efficient when used with a slicing action – the wood fibers are cut in succession and at an angle. That’s the reason for the curved cutting edge. The cutting angle is also regulated by the angle of the edge relative to the handle axis. And to how the user swings the tool – a matter of skill and preference.