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.
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.
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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.
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.
Tim Van Riper, a layout designer for the Times in Roanoke, Va., enjoys green woodworking in his spare time.
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