Robin’s Roadtrip: Story City, Iowa
A Plane and Simple Pleasure

Sharpen up your hand tools for a day of dovetailing with master cabinetmaker Robby Pedersen.

By Robin Hoffman
Editor

I can’t remember the last time I picked up a handsaw. And my chisels look like I used them to scrape paint, because I did.

Like most weekend carpenters, I need to get the most done in the least time with marginal skills. So, I use power tools. I love power tools. I’d sooner give up a kidney than my Makita 12-inch power miter saw.

But I also believe there’s a spark of old-time hand craftsmanship burning inside everyone who loves wood. And I’ve come to Story City, Iowa to see if Robby Pedersen can fan that spark into a nice maple and cherry trestle table, perhaps, or the hope chest I promised I’d make for my wife 25 years ago.

(I do, in fact, see the irony in a hope chest I’ll probably never build, and I’ve learned to live with it.)

Robby works out of a onetime men’s clothing store on Main Street, which seems like an unusual place to set up a cabinet shop. But then, Robby isn’t your usual sort of cabinetmaker.

First of all, you’d expect an old-time woodworker to be a semi-reclusive codger like me, puttering out a couple pieces a year for the grandkids.

But Robby’s a sociable 37-year-old who spends his spare time competing in triathlons and acting in regional stage plays. I doubt he could putter if he tried.

If It’s Worth Doing…

In 1994, he was majoring in history and education at Iowa State when he earned an internship in the cabinet shop at Living History Farms in Urbandale.

Tools of the trade. Robby Pedersen has more than 300 planes (top), many of which are always set up for specific jobs. Above, he marks pins for a dovetail joint. Then he hand-saws them and finishes up with a chisel (right).

“Turned out, they didn’t have a cabinetmaker, so I ended up teaching myself—mostly by trial and error,” he recalls. “It takes longer, but you learn things more deeply by making mistakes and figuring them out on your own.”

A card-carrying member of the If It’s Worth Doing, It’s Worth Doing Right Club, Robby threw heart and soul into his new craft. He says, “the only way to get really good at something is to do it all day, every day for a very long time.”

He spent 10 years at Living History Farms, mastering the woodworking, historical and performance skills of his craft. Then 5 years ago, Robby decided to take his show on the road.

His shop, named RVP 1875 after the golden age of cabinetmaking in Iowa, is a showroom, workshop and state-certified museum. He uses only period tools, and comes to work every day dressed like an 1875 Iowa cabinetmaker.

Unlike other museums, though, this is a production furniture shop. “We’ll make our 500th piece right around our fifth anniversary,” Robby notes. “I hope we’ll have 5,000 by the time I’m done.”

And that’s not even counting the breathtaking dovetailed bench I’m about to build. I picked it from a list of projects Robby’s students build in weekend classes he teaches. I love dovetail joinery, but never worked up the courage to try.

“Everybody’s afraid because they think their joints won’t look perfect,” he sighs when I tell him that. “Well, so what if they don’t? To me, perfect is boring.”

Handcrafted heirlooms. Here’s the bench I built and, above that, the partners’ desk I drool over.

Confident, at least, that he won’t find my work boring, I dive in. First, I make a lovely measured drawing of the prototype in his showroom.

Then I pick a nice 1 x 10 from the stack, and Robby lets me use his personal, hand-sharpened saw to cut the top and sides. It slices the pine like butter, and I start feeling sorry for my poor, neglected old handsaw. It deserves better than me.

Next, Robby suggests marking up each piece to show what goes where, “so you don’t have to think about it later.”

And finally, he shows me how to mark, saw and chisel the pin half of a dovetail joint. It seems straightforward enough, so he leaves me to it, and starts making a jelly cupboard for a customer.

Fiddle-Free Joinery

That’s when I find out what makes Robby Pedersen tick. Put a saw or plane into his hands, and he turns into the Dale Earnhardt Jr. of cabinetmakers.

There’s no wasted motion, head scratching or second-guessing. You see all those years of practice in every fast, sure, fiddle-free cut, and he takes a lot of proper, historic pride in that.

“I’ve always been more interested in how normal, everyday people lived,” Robby explains. “History books tend to show these perfect pieces that some guy in Philadelphia spent 400 hours on. But almost nobody could afford perfection—until machines replaced hand tools.

“To earn a living making furniture for rural Iowans, a cabinetmaker would’ve made that same piece in 30 or 40 hours. That’s what we try to do. My pieces don’t look machine perfect, but I like them that way. They have character. They’ve got a story in them.

“People either love my stuff or hate it,” he admits.

I’m firmly in the “love it” camp. Everything he and his three apprentices build seems lovingly authentic, right down to the beautiful, hand-rubbed finishes made from natural dyes like walnut husks, onion peels and berries.

Many are extinct pieces like chimney cupboards, sawbuck tables and partners’ desks that were cleverly designed to save space in small houses. And everything’s held together with sturdy, hand-cut mortise-and-tenon or dovetail joints.

“Our big thing is the joinery,” Robby says. “We’re making furniture that should last hundreds of years.”

Meanwhile I’m starting to think it could take me hundreds of years to finish this bench. When I try to fit my first joint together, all the pins are a good 1/16 inch bigger than the tails (due to a faulty pencil, I suspect).

That Sweet “Sha-thunk”

As I chisel away my oversized pins, Robby test fits a joint on his cupboard. It slides together with a sweet “sha-thunk” that almost brings tears to my eyes. I even love the sound of wood.

While we work, Robby tells me stories about his tools. He has more than 300 planes, many permanently set up for specific jobs, which is one of his secrets to being so fast.

Visitors to Robby’s shop can browse through dozens of beautiful pieces or just watch him work—really fast (far left).

To him, though, these are more than tools. They tell the story of how our ancestors tamed the wilderness and built a nation. And it’s such a pleasure to listen to him, to watch his eyes light up when he talks about Big Bertha or the Stanley 45 combination plane.

“Colt advertised the Colt 45 as the gun that tamed the West, so Stanley advertised the Stanley 45 as the plane that built the West,” he smiles.

Halfway through the afternoon, Robby leaves to run an errand, leaving me alone with my second dovetail joint and some old-timey bluegrass fiddle music playing in the background

Having “learned deeply” from my first joint, I’m feeling good about this one. I stop thinking about photos I need and questions I should ask. My chisel slices the pine in clean, sharp strokes.

Something Robby told me about working with hand tools drifts into my head: “Utilize the strengths of the wood, while taking advantages of the weaknesses.” I suspect there’s something profound in that, but I’m too content to think about it now.

Eventually, the moment of truth arrives. I set my pins against the tails, wiggle them into position and push. It sticks for a moment…then “sha-thunk!”

Nobody will ever confuse my bench with one of Robby’s or one you could buy in a store. But every time I sit on it to take off my muddy barn boots, I’ll remember this day with Robby, my half-hour of perfect peace and that wonderful “sha-thunk.” To me, this bench is a masterpiece.

To learn more about Robby Pedersen, visit our links page.