LT15

At the base of Mt. Fuji in Japan, world-renowned woodworker Tak Yoshino creates custom, handcrafted chairs that promote proper and healthy posture through the practice of Zen. As a result of his chairs receiving worldwide acclaim and an increasing number of woodworkers learning Japanese carpentry from Tak, he is currently building a woodworking school with sustainably harvested timber from his own forest.

Thomas Orderud, owner and operator of DesignIce, started harvesting ice from a local lake in Southeastern Norway about 15 years ago. Today Thomas can supply “everything from ice cubes to ice hotels” from his frosty 400 square meter workshop. Even in the winter he keeps the temperature at a steady -5 degrees Celcius (23 degrees Fahrenheit) so his 500-600 ton stock of ice blocks stay frozen solid.

The night was dark and stormy. August is still the dry season, but a tropical thunderstorm accompanied by lots of wind was bearing down on Kikongo, a small village deep in Congo. I was far away in the capitol city of Kinshasa that fateful night, so my wife Rita alone worked to close all the windows and put the barrels out under the water spouts to capture the precious water after months of no rainfall. In the midst of the storm, she heard a tremendous earth shaking crash outside the house. A tree had fallen close by, she knew that right away...

Guitars are Jorge Simons’ passion – the entire journey from selecting the standing Spanish cypress tree to seeing the final instrument in a musician’s capable hands. He runs the Madinter Factory, located just outside Madrid, which specializes not in actually building guitars themselves, but rather in supplying private and commercial guitar makers with all the tools and materials to build their own guitars.

In order to interview Mr. Hutter for the article and video, we packed all our video gear onto the train and began the ascent of Mount Rigi. Known as a ‘cogwheel’ train, the train rests on tracks like any other, but has an additional gear that attached to a cogged track between the two smooth ones. The gear locks into this cogged track, pulling the train up the unusually steep mountainside railway to the summit of Mount Rigi.

Developed by missionary philanthropist John Enright, a co-op style honey initiative, is taking off in Zambia, and improving lives for the 10,000 individuals already involved.

Ever since his childhood, Maik Retz always felt at home in the forest. Growing up two hours west of Berlin in a rural farming and forestry area, he knew he wanted to make forestry his career. His father started a business producing firewood and fencing material more than 40 years ago, and Maik started working in the business in 1994. Maik now operates the business with his brother and one other employee.

James Thomson of Glenrothes, Scotland started Thomson Timber in 2007. Previously trained as a mechanical design engineer, he had worked in Australia and Edinburgh before returning home and taking up teaching woodworking for twenty years.