If Jimmy Carter had displayed the same enthusiasm for woodworking while in the White House that Dwight Eisenhower did for golf, the hickory tree might have become an endangered species.
However, Ike was a hacker, giving hope and encouragement to those staggering under the weight of their handicaps, while Carter is a woodworker of considerable skill and accomplishment.
It was not until he returned to his native Georgia as a private citizen that Carter's avocation became common knowledge. The degree of his commitment to the craft might still come as a surprise.
'When I'm at home, I spend three or four hours a day in the shop,' Carter said in a telephone interview from Plains following the Tage Frid seminar in Atlanta late in February. 'I just finished making some picture frames, my first experience of that, and now Rosalynn and I are measuring an entire room for bookshelves.'
Despite a lifelong devotion to woodworking, the Frid seminar - which Carter was instrumental in arranging -- was his first formal learning experience.
'He's been a hero of mine for a long time,' the former president said. 'We had talked on the telephone several times in the past but this was our first meeting.'
It is typical of Carter's commitment to every phase of woodworking that he buys very little wood kiln-dried -- he air dries entire flitches himself, and, yes, he even scrounges some of his wood.
'I have a pretty complete selection of wood, everything from Huon pine to rosewood. I have a separate wood shed down behind my office, and there's a good bit of lumber in there.
'Out at Chip's (his son's) farm we have a shed where if we fell a red oak or a white oak tree we have it sawn and put it in there. We just put in a whole walnut tree to dry.
'In the ice storm a year or two ago we had a large dogwood tree killed. We saved the logs out of that and I turned some bowls out of it.
'We have a plywood factory in Plains here, and some of the bundles are bound with rough teak boards they just throw away. So I've got a pretty good supply of teak.'
It is typical of Carter the man that the world heard nothing about his woodworking while he was president -- 'I only had time to make a few little things in the carpentry shop at Camp David' -- and there is nothing fancy about his shop now.
When he left office, his staff and his cabinet members took up a collection and presented him with an entire shop full of Sears Craftsman power tools.
He finds the Craftsman equipment considerably more accurate than most of us, and with good reason.
'The Sears people came down here to show me how to set up and adjust all the equipment. Every two or three months they call down to see if I need any help. They've been very nice about that.
In addition to the entire line of Craftsman shop tools, he has a Zinken combination machine.
When he needs to bend wood, he steams it himself in a jury-rigged steamer.
His shop has taken over the 22-by-22-foot garage attached to his house.
Carter became a woodworker almost without being aware of it.
'I started as a child,' he said. 'We lived on a farm without running water and electricity and it was part of our lives to do our own blacksmithing and carpentry. I worked with Daddy without ever thinking about learning something.
'When I got married in 1946 we moved to Hawaii and had our first unfurnished apartment,' he said. He was in the Navy then. 'I made all our furniture in the Navy hobby shop there.'
'I've got a voluminous library on woodworking. When I travel in foreign countries, I try to visit a famous woodworker or a famous factory.'
Carter is, of course, best known for his country-style chairs, built the old way of green wood that seasons in place so tightly glue is often superflous. But he has ranged over the entire spectrum of furniture, from small boxes to complicated trundle beds.
Carter never uses plans; most of his furniture has the flavor of early America but there are no replica pieces.
'Shortly before Christmas I designed and built a maple rocking cradle for my fourth grandchild, who is going to come in May. It had woven cane sides and I made the dowels individually,' he said.
'My favorite kind of woodworking is still working with green wood, shaping it with a drawknife,' he said. 'It brings me closer to a relationship with my forefathers. I like exploring the design of chairs made with green hickory, learning what kind of chair holds together for 250 years and what falls apart when the temperature changes.'
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