“Green Woodworking” by Drew Langsner is a passport to an enormous area of the craft that has been long-neglected in the literature. Using simple tools and materials from around your house, Drew shows you how to coax these materials into useful household objects that would be difficult or impossible to build with lumberyard wood.
The projects range from beautiful Cherokee and Cree containers made from bark and lashed with hickory, to a traditional hay rake and a firewood carrier.
But the projects are really only a small part of Drew’s book. He spends most of the time preparing you to work with the material, from felling a small tree to stripping the bark to making the basic tools. The core of the book is Drew’s explanation of the raw material. After you read his description of how wood works, I think you will look at the material in a whole new way.
Even though I have made many chairs and tables from green wood and willow, “Green Woodworking” filled in a lot of blanks in an easy-to-digest and encouraging style.
“Green Woodworking” has long been out of print, but now Drew has brought it back himself and sells it through his Country Workshops web site. You can order the book directly from Drew here for $35.
It’s an excellent book, well worth having in any woodworking library. And by purchasing it from Drew directly you will be supporting directly one of the pioneers of the green woodworking movement in the 20th century.
— Christopher Schwarz