Handwork in Wood

“Timber!” The warning rings through the woods as a giant tree begins to lean; then its crown tears through the branches and the trunk crashes to earth.

William Noyes opens Handwork in Wood not at the workbench, but in the American logging camps of the early twentieth century, where crews survey forests, fell trees, and haul logs over roads flooded into sheets of ice. His account is practical, but far from gentle: he notes how haste and greed helped strip forests, and how fortunes were made by timber thieves. Before a piece of wood can be shaped, it must survive a journey from standing tree to mill—and every step takes skill, force, and judgment. What happens between that thunderous fall and the finished work in a carpenter’s hands?

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