Green Wood Books

[Andrew Joiner]

I have a friend who has a some land and trees. He's looking for a hobby. I'm mostly a machine tool guy. I live in town and have no trees. If I lived in the country I'd be making more things from green wood and I recommended it to my friend. I'm looking for some books on the process. Ideally a book that outlines the basics of making a stool or chair from freshly cut trees.

Any recommendations?

Thanks

[Matt Lau]

Mr. Follansbee's book should be ideal.
Making a Joint stool from a tree (http://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/tag/make-a-joint-stool-from-a-tree/).

[Michael Fross]

I second the "Make a joint stool from a tree" suggestion. It's an excellent book and he also has a great blog if he follows such things.

Michael

[Steve Friedman]

Green Woodworking by Drew Langsner is amazing and comprehensive. Long out of print, but used ones do come up. The story of how Drew built virtually everything at Country Workshops from the trees growing on the property is inspiring.

I am sure that "Make a Joint Stool from a Tree" by Peter Follansbee and Jennie Alexander is terrific, but don't forget Jennie (John) Alexander's original book, "Make a Chair from a Tree." Out of print, but available used and also available on DVD.

Steve

[Adam Slutsky]

"Make a chair from a tree" by John Alexander. Not sure if it us still in print but this is a great book and has influenced many chairmakers and woidworkers.

[Steve Branam]

Langsner's "The Chairmaker's Workshop" is also very good.

[Andrae Covington]

An additional suggestion: Roy Underhill's most recent book (2008) The Woodwright's Guide: Working Wood with Wedge and Edge. He begins with chopping down the tree (with an axe of course), bucking with axe and whipsaw, splitting with beetle and wedge and froe, and so forth. To be fair, the rest of the book is more about constructing traditional buildings than furniture. Hand illustrations by Roy's daughter Eleanor illuminate the text nicely.

[Prashun Patel]

Making a chair is a hard place to start. Consider getting a lathe. Green wood is immensely fun to turn.

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

Making a chair is a hard place to start. Consider getting a lathe. Green wood is immensely fun to turn.

Certainly if the friend in question doesn't have woodworking experience, a chair would be a difficult place to start. Turning may very well have a lower barrier to entry if a lathe is easily available. I may be way off having never made a chair myself, and very little green woood working experience, but I've talked and observed with a few chairmakers and folks who've worked green wood, and it really seems like the difficulty in making a chair starting with green wood is the "making a chair" part, not the "green wood" part - there are some things to learn when processing and working with wood from a tree and not a lumberyard, but they don't seem nearly as difficult as all the wacky things about chair building. (Wacky, at least, in comparison to what I'm used to!) I've heard chair makers tell folks with little woodworking experience that if they want to learn to make chairs, they should just start making chairs, as little else in the world of woodworking really applies directly to chairmaking once you have the basics of tool handling and sharpening down. I don't actually know how true that is, I feel like it may have been exaggerated, but looking in from the outside, it certainly seems about right.

But along the lines Prashun said - if the goal isn't to make a chair, and rather to do something creative or useful with the materials that have become available, another venture may prove more inviting. What sort of experience does this friend have?

I second the Folansbee/Alexander book - certainly, a joint stool seems a much more tackle-able project for someone who's used to the more straight forward joinery and layout of traditional cabinetmaking. Look at Peter's blog, and some of his appearances on the Woodwright's shop for more ideas - once you've got the basics of processing green wood down, moving towards some of the joined chests he's done doesn't seem too far a stretch, and his spoon carving certainly looks like fun.

Another approach would be to see if he can obtain or get the services of a small portable mill and then build a solar kiln or something of that ilk, if he'd also like more dry lumber to work.

Me, even if I didn't work with the wood, part of me really enjoys just being outside with an axe splitting firewood. That's probably because I don't actually ever have to this.

[Andrew Joiner]

Thanks for the feedback. I recommended he start with a stool first. I was mainly looking for a book on green wood working. The advantages of green stock shrinking around a dry tenon got him excited, even though his woodworking experience is limited. Never hurts to get good basic knowledge and then experiment.

[Prashun Patel]

The other thing about green wood 'flat' building is the need for long, straight, often wide boards. These are notoriously difficult to harvest onesself.

Turning blanks, however, can be had from gnarly/knotty/split/crotchy wood. In fact, the gnarlier the 'better' in many cases. Turning projects are also relatively quick to complete, and one can spend far more time experimenting and being 'artistic' than one can with even the simplest of stools (which still have some tricky joinery).

The difference between a stool and a chair is the back and arms. But the arms and back are the easiest part of the chair. The hard part (IMHO) is dealing with leg splay, aligning tenons, and getting the chair to sit flat and strong. Chair building IMHO involves a big investment in a lot of specialty tools: angled jigs; router bits; scooping/shaping tools. I hate to poo poo it, but I'm just sayin'...

[Jessica Pierce-LaRose]

The difference between a stool and a chair is the back and arms. But the arms and back are the easiest part of the chair. The hard part (IMHO) is dealing with leg splay, aligning tenons, and getting the chair to sit flat and strong. Chair building IMHO involves a big investment in a lot of specialty tools: angled jigs; router bits; scooping/shaping tools. I hate to poo poo it, but I'm just sayin'...

I think the "joint stool" type of stool construction Peter Folansbee and Jennie Alexander show in their book is considerably simpler than a chair without a back type of stool construction, however - it's more like a short table with legs angled in one direction, than anything else really. Attaching the top after constructing the rest of the stool, rather than doing weird angled round tenons on the legs into the top makes the whole thing a lot easier. It might be a nice entry point.

[Noah Wagener]

i got a couple of books at the library by an English guy Raymond Tabor. Traditional Woodland Crafts is the name of one. He gives advice on managing the forest (coppicing), basic skills like splitting and hewing, devices like riving breaks and shaving horses, a few projects (mostly fencing) and a lot of cool pictures of men of yore woodworking in 3 peice tweed suits. Was it a lot cooler 100 years ago? Everyone wore wool suits in summer time. His other book has a lot more projects but less info on basics.