Route 89 Northwest to Burlington is one of the prettiest bits of interstate in the country. Just about an hour's drive through upland woods, the ride is restful and the jaunt prepared me for a trip back into the seventeenth century.

Just past Montpelier, I followed the Winooski River through a charming agricultural landscape before taking exit 11. I drove the River Road toward Essex Junction, turning right onto a dirt thoroughfare called Lost Nation Road. Just a half-mile down, I found Rob Tarule's faux gambrel house and shop set on a 10-acre parcel of woods and wetlands.

I marveled that this completely rural landscape existed only 15 minutes from Burlington as we walked around to the back of the house.

"Burlington's just about as big as a city needs to be," Rob told me, perfectly content with this isolated spot. "We get lots of waterfowl and migratory birds, and we're far enough from our neighbors."

The 500-square foot workshop sat only 50 feet from the vegetable garden and a small pond. I thought how easily I could get used to working in this spot. The building, a little larger than a single car garage, is really a story-and-a-quarter Cape with a simple pitched roof to accommodate the storage attic. It's got the feeling of an old New England clapboard sided building.

Lumber Racks and Power Tools

As we entered the near end of the shop, we passed a lumber rack on the left and more wood on the right. Nearby sat a table saw, a jointer, and a portable planer along with a large lathe. Purchased years ago for only $10 from a North Montpelier woolen mill, the lathe's huge gears and pulleys indicate that the machine was originally powered by water.

"This machine is enormously heavy and I'm quite fond of it," Rob volunteered. "A real nineteenth-century beauty, it's a funky lathe that can turn a diameter of five feet. I can reach almost architectural proportions with it rather than just chair legs."

The far corner of the room housed workbenches along the walls. This is the portion of the shop where all the handwork is done. Many of Rob's carving tools (maybe 100 - 150 pieces) stick out of wooden blocks and racks. His saws, mallets, hand planes, and clamps hang on the walls. About two-thirds of the floor space here is open and used for assembly, carving, and planing.

Rob makes seventeenth-century furniture using seventeenth-century methods.

Heart of the Wood

Rob's business, which he runs along with his partner, Ted Curtin, is called 'Heart of the Wood.' The two met at Plimoth Plantation years ago. Ted has a BFA in Photography from Rhode Island School of Design and most of the images on the Website are Ted's. In winter, Ted teaches elementary school, so he ordinarily works with Rob during the summer. This season, together they will produce a set of chairs for a client.

Just about everything they make is done on a commission basis.

"We make two types of furniture," explained Tarule. "Furniture that looks English we make from sawn oak, and more American stuff is riven out of a log."

He explained that sawing took more labor, but produced less wastage, so the English used it because oak was expensive and in short supply. In early America, however, the forests appeared to be endless, so American craftsmen used the quicker method, which had the advantage of being able to be done in the forest. This meant they could leave all the waste behind, and only had to haul out the timber they were going to use. The seventeenth-century joiner generally worked from green wood to make the frames of pieces, although, as Rob said, "Top boards want to be dry to avoid splitting."

Rob explained that there are lots of advantages to working with green wood. Mortises are easy to chop and planing is much faster, but rougher. He demonstrated by using a thick setting on a green board and got a very large shaving. He pointed out that when you plane oak, the planer tears the grain. If the same surface dries and gets hard, it's more likely to plane cleanly if you use a fine setting. Yet on a dry board a plane with the thick setting stops dead.

Starting With an Oak Log

Rob talked as he worked.

"I began my career as a medievalist," he said as he prepared to show me how he started work on a coffer. "I guess you might say I've always been interested in old-timey things."

Tarule taught Medieval literature, Mythology, Architectural History and Material Culture at Goddard College before retiring several years ago.

He buys oak logs at a sawmill, which generally split agreeably when green. He has to work fast before the wood dries out. He starts with a work list of pieces by dimension and, using wedges and mauls, he splits out his parts. He splits a log into half, then into quarters, and so forth. It takes a tree 20 inches in diameter to get an eight-inch wide panel because the heart of the wood has to be cut out.

Only Pins Hold Mortise

and Tenon Joints Together

Once each piece is cut, a hatchet is used to further rough out each panel and post. The pieces are next taken into the shop to be planed. The planing brings the parts to their true dimensions. Joinery needs to have exact geometry in order for it to work. He asks me to remember that there is no glue in seventeenth century furniture. Only pins hold the mortise and tenon joints together.

He next makes his mortises and tenons, working one side at a time. He drills holes into the tenons and corresponding holes through the sides of the mortise that are just a tad off-center. He showed me how driving the pin through the holes draws the tenon tightly into the mortise. The pin does all the work.

"It's a wonderful thing to watch a coffer take shape," he tells. "A piece like this takes 30 mortise and tenon joints. It's much more labor intensive than making a six board chest." It takes two days to split the wood, cut it into lengths, and perform the initial planing work. It then takes another day to fit it together. The last thing he does is to plane every surface to remove the roughness before fitting a piece together.

Labor Intensive but

Technology Low

The piece takes four legs, two rails on each side, two muntins (braces) on each side, and then the panels. There can be up to two-dozen individual pieces of wood in the framming of each coffer.

"It's a very labor intensive process, but technology low," he admits.

Once the frame is loosely assembled, the panels are installed and the frame tightened up around them. The front faade is completely covered in carving, which is done at the workbench on a green piece of panel. Carving green speeds up the process, but the carver has to work fast.

All the joinery is done first and all the grooves for the panels are set in place. The carving is done last. As to finishing the piece, the process is simple. Sometimes Rob only uses several coats of beeswax, but generally pieces in period went without finish. Often he uses linseed oil cut with turpentine or no finish at all. When beeswax is used, he dissolves it in turpentine.

An Altered State

It's clear that Rob loves his work. He tells me to look at the grain. If you see the grain, you see the tree, you see the landscape. He asks me to count the growth rings. Then he tells me that when he looks at an old piece of furniture, he knows the kind of seventeenth-century forest the trees were cut from. He also can see the artisan at work just by looking carefully at a piece.

"When I'm working, I don't wear hearing protections or a respirator," he muses. "I'm sensually aware of everything I'm doing. Modern furniture makers spend their time restraining power tools, but I spend my time in the opposite direction."

He tells me that he learned his work habits from the old Vermont farmers. If you have to work 10 to 12 hours per day, you can't sprint. You have to pace yourself and not work too fast. Many of the operations he performs are extremely meditative.

"When I'm sawing tenons, I get into a mental state," he said. "If I think too much about it, I make mistakes. At its best, this type of handwork brings an artisan to an altered state. That's the best part of handwork." n

Rob Tarule is the author of The Artisan of Ipswich, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. Learn more about his work by visiting www.heartofthewood.com.