While it’s natural to want to have every advanced woodworking tool under the sun available at your disposal – we’re looking at you, Frank Howarth – there is also something to be said about the simplicity of working with the least amount of tools possible, or even having a workshop to work out of at all.
For Oregon-based industrial designer and self-sufficiency practitioner Tom Bonamici, manufacturing products out of wood with the bare necessities isn’t just about working with simple tools for the sake of simplicity – it’s a meditative way of life.
Bonamici, along with fellow designer Derek Lasher and filmmaker Adam Newport-Berra, recently spent a day in upstate New York documenting the process of setting up shop and manufacturing a traditional post and rung stool from an old oak tree. Aside from the chainsaw used to cut down the oak tree, the designers trade the usual sounds of whirring and grinding from power tools for the relatively soothing sounds the woods:
