My Craft Genealogy project

Part of my intro and inspiration from Daniel O’Hagan

I’ve had an increase in new readers lately, I’m happy to welcome you to this blog. I hope you find something of interest here. Some of the posts are shop-oriented, about what I’m making at a given time. Others are about research I’ve done, mostly into 17th-century oak furniture. And others, like this one, are about a writing project I’m obsessed with. It’s a documention/book I’m researching and writing about the people who introduced me to woodworking, specifically “green woodworking” - splitting open logs and processing the parts directly from the freshly-split log. I call this project my “craft genealogy” - I learned from so-and-so, they learned from this other person and so on. 

When I showed a draft of this project to Chris Schwarz he was very encouraging. One thing he wanted me to add is short introductory sections about the people in the book. Including me. Yuck. Like most people, I hate writing about myself. But yesterday I spent all day driving en route to a workshop I’m teaching this week. Lots of time to myself and I tried to frame this in my head. I’ll dump it here, not sure if or how much of this will make it into the actual text. 

I’ve written before about how, as a 17-year old, I inherited from my father a shop full of power tools - tablesaw, drill press, lathe, jointer, etc. 

1975 - April, my father Moe Follansbee died at 51. June, I graduated high school. September, I turned 18 and began my first (and only) year at Massachusetts College of Art. I was learning from neighbors and friends how to run the tablesaw, making picture frames and stretchers for canvasses. Both useful things for a budding artist. 

But I was a budding artist who never flowered. There was also the factor of the times I lived in and how I lived in them. Pot, reefer, grass, dope. My goal for about 9 years from 1973-1982 was to keep what we used to call “a steady high.” That meant getting high as soon as I was awake and keeping at it until bedtime that night. I nearly succeeded - most of that period I was high. Semi-functional, but high none-the-less. 

In 1976 someone showed me the then-new magazine Fine Woodworking. Over my head, but I subscribed just the same. And it was through the magazine that I found out about Jennie Alexander’s book Make a Chair from a Tree. Ordered it, made a few clunky chairs from it. Then saw an ad for a class JA was to teach at Drew Langsner’s Country Workshops. That was 1980. I signed on and made arrangements to get from southeastern Massachusetts to western North Carolina. Never flown, terribly shy. Made it to the class, fumbled through it and went home to make more chairs. One thing about that week - I went cold-turkey, too afraid to try to smuggle a bag of weed onto the plane. Got back home, picked up where I left off, but added chair-making to the list of things I was fumbling my way through. 

Then came psychedelics. I had dabbled in them when I was younger, but now about 22-23 years old I took to them with gusto. Neither acid nor weed helped me make good decisions. Imagine that. Things unraveled a bit in 1982 - in addition to the dope,  there was a woman involved. It came down to me being alone and miserable. At which point I said to myself, “I’m still spending all this money on dope, and it’s not making me feel better.” So I quit full-stop. Other than one brief 2-day stint 7 years later, I’ve not touched it. Now cannabis is legal in my state, there’s shops everywhere you turn. Micro-dosing psychedelics is gaining popularity - but I wouldn’t touch either with a rake. I’ve wasted enough time for one lifetime. 

By 1982/83 I was getting serious enough about woodworking, having given up painting some years before. But my skill level was slow to match my enthusiasm. I had a new job, working in a frame shop in Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts. That’s where I met my friend Heather Neill

https://heatherneill.com/

(I’m writing this post in her house, 42 years after we met). I introduced her to chair making and various other woodworking crafts - mostly book-based. Then in 1984 I took a class at the Heartwood School, then in Washington, Massachusetts. Timber framing. I had a pipe-dream to build my own house and read everything I could find on the subject. The Heartwood class was fun and exciting - it was a mix of hand-and-power tools. But then I saw an advertisement for a class coming up in 1985 back at Drew Langsner’s - more timber framing, this time all hand tools. Daniel O’Hagan was the instructor. I’ve written from time to time about Daniel and he’ll get his own introduction in this series and in the book - but his impact on me was significant. One week taking a class with him and I was so inspired I went home and gave away all my power tools and have never missed them in the intervening 39 years. 

That decade from 1975-1985 had several false starts for me - the JA chair class, as fumbling as my participation was, planted the seed of me becoming a woodworker. Shaking off my demons/habits in the midst of that period helped matters. Then book-ending things was meeting Daniel and seeing his positive example of what was possible with hand tools and practice. So I’ve had a few beginnings to my career. 

There’s a letter from Daniel that I’ve saved all these years, reminding me of where I was and, indirectly, how far I’ve come. Thanks to the people who taught me. 

“Woodworking must have saved a many a man’s life and turned him completely around in a new direction of awe, of enthusiasm, of “never a dull moment again.” And, though he live to a ripe old age, makes his days full of interest, of curiosity, of planning projects for the future. 

Truly blessed are we who see the beauty of things made with wood; and understand which tools to reach for to fashion it just right.”

One stop on this trip I’m making is to see Drew & Louise Langsner. Without them, none of this would have happened. If not for them, today I’d be a picture-framer, ready to retire. Instead I’m a woodworker hoping I can work 10 more years.