By
Tim Van Riper
Looking for something different to do on your vacation? If you can
talk your family into letting you get away and you are good
at working with your hands, consider spending a week at Country
Workshops near Asheville, N.C.
At CW you can learn to bust a chair from a tree, whet your
appetite for carving by making a Swedish spoon or hone hand
tool skills while learning from master woodworkers.
At least six weeklong workshops are offered each summer, as
well as eight winter tutorials, in a variety of country
and traditional woodcrafts. Summer enrollment is limited
to 12 per workshop; winter tutorials take two students.
In the fall, Country Workshops will sponsor a crafts tour
of England and Wales.
CW director/founder Drew Langsner,
who has drawn top instructors to his converted tobacco barn
workshop nestled in the North Carolina mountains, has been
holding workshops for 18 years.
"We began back in 1978," Langsner said, "And the courses always
seem to get better.
"This summer's courses include workshops in ladderback chairmaking,
advanced ladderback chairmaking in which students learn
to make a rocking chair, Windsor chairmaking, carving Swedish
woodenware, hand tool techniques and even a mini-workshop
in weaving genuine rush seating."
Winter tutorials, which conclude in April, range from ladderback
and Windsor chairmaking to Swiss cooperage, where students
learn how to craft a staved container similar to the way
wooden buckets used to be made.
Students work together drilling holes for the legs in
a
Windsor chair seat during a winter tutorial at Country
Workshops.
Many of the summer workshops can be tackled by people with limited
woodworking skills, while the winter tutorials are geared
more toward experienced woodworkers.
Although most participants are men, Langsner says many women have
taken the courses. In fact, he has had several husband-and-wife
teams over the years.
Langsner got interested in traditional woodworking methods after
serving an apprenticeship to a master cooper in the Swiss
Alps in 1972. He began making ladderback chairs in 1979
and Windsors in 1985. Langsner also is the author of numerous
magazine articles, plus several books including "Country
Woodcraft," "Green Woodworking" and the soon to be published
"The Chairmaker's Workshop."
While developing his woodworking skills, Langsner and his wife,
Louise, built their own hand-hewn log home on their 100-acre
farmstead 45 miles north of Asheville, N.C. The home provides
a perfect backdrop for Country Workshops, their non-profit
educational enterprise.
To get to the Langsners', you have to travel some rural, but
beautiful, mountain roads. The slow drive is worth it, however,
and the views of inspiring hardwood forests and surrounding
mountains make the getting back to basics of country woodworking
even more natural.
And the Langsners know how to put their workshop participants
up in style. Dormitory sleeping is available in a hand-hewn
guest cabin, or there is ample space to camp. But their
true hospitality is evident when you sit down to one of
Louise's bountiful meals of farm produce straight from her
garden. So good are the meals, it makes you feel guilty
to stop and have a hamburger on the drive back to the city.
- -
-
Ever
since I became interested in green woodworking (working
with wood from a recently cut tree) a few years ago, I've
wanted to make a Windsor chair. I have made a few post-and-rung
stools and ladderback chairs, but have never felt quite
up to the challenge of making a Windsor.
While
reading an article on alternative vacations in a magazine
at a barber shop, I noticed that Country Workshops had Windsor
chairmaking on its list of courses. After a call to Drew
Langsner to make sure the workshops were still being offered
(the magazine was a few years old), I was signed up and
ready to head to North Carolina.
The first thing Langsner asks is how experienced you are in
green woodworking. He advises that it's not a good idea
to jump into Windsors without first tackling a ladderback.
Drew Langsner working at a shaving horse
The Windsor course begins with "finding" your chair within a
log Langsner has had delivered to the workshop site. With
maul, wedge and froe, chair parts are broken out from the
log and are prepared to be assembled in the age-old sense.
One of the beauties of green woodworking is the lack of sawdust
and the noise of expensive power tools. Although a power
lathe is used to turn the legs and stretchers of the Windsors,
the woodworker generally addresses the wood with a drawknife,
inshave and spokeshave.
The work on the chair progresses through hollowing and carving
the seat and shaving delicate oak spindles that connect
the seat to the bentwood back. The back is steam bent in
a form and allowed to dry in a kiln for a couple of days.
After turning the legs and stretchers from maple, the chair starts
to take shape by the final day of the workshop. The adrenaline
runs high as borings are lined up and spindles are custom
fit to each hole. It begins to look like a chair.
Then the moment of truth. "Try it out," Langsner says. "Go ahead,
sit in it."
You do, deep inside hoping it won't fall apart under your weight.
Although the rewards of building a chair are evident every time you
sit in it, the real value of the workshop is in what you
learn. In working the wood on its subtle terms, you come
to appreciate the craftsmen of an age gone by.
Costs, which include meals, range from $75 per day for summer workshops,
which last from 3 to 7 days, to $650 per week for winter
tutorials. A materials fee from $40-75 is assessed depending
on which course is taken. For more information about Country
Workshops, write them at 90 Mill Creek Road, Marshall, N.C.
28753. Or call Drew Langsner
at (704) 656-2280.