7 Questions with Steve Latta
In one of our most enlightening 7-question videos, Steve Latta answers life's tough questions, like what is your favorite tool and what makes you passionate about woodworking.
Contributing editor Steve Latta has written for Fine Woodworking since 1994 and taught full-time in the furniture making program at Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology for more than 20 years—but he’s finally setting up his home shop. Now that he and his wife have an empty nest, he’s emptied his garage of bikes and toys and taken the tarps off his tablesaw and planer. And he still has his original bench, a repurposed table from a high school chemistry lab. “I have done my best work at this bench, and plan to do a lot more,” he says.
Last winter, associate editor Barry NM Dima cornered Steve at the Working Wood in the 18th Century conference in Williamsburg, Va., and asked him the following questions:
- Who is your favorite furniture maker alive or dead?
- What is your favorite piece of furniture?
- What is your favorite tool?
- Lie-Nielsen block planes
- Starrett combo square
- 1-in. Blue Spruce chisel
- Gerstner tool chest
- Why are you passionate about woodworking?
- What is the most common mistake you see beginners make?
- If you could only make things or designs, which would you do?
- To do it all over again, would you still become a furniture maker?
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Webinar: Build a Better Cabinet with Steve LattaSign up now! Join FWW contributing editor Steve Latta, Thursday, July 23, 7 pm EST for a webinar on his time-tested methods for building a cabinet efficiently and solidly. |
Comments
I have taken a LOT of advice from Mr. Latta and he's taught me a lot. He didn't answer a letter I wrote to him at the school but I suppose he's busy. Thanks for the interview. And check out his videos at LN; they're worth the investment if you're interested in Federal period furniture as I am.
I'm currently building his Pennsylvania spice box and have three other plans from him that I have yet to buy wood for but oh yes, I will.
Really enjoy Steve's videos and magazine pieces. I also appreciate his answer that teaching is what he would choose to do if only one choice. The passion to educate and pass on the trade to others is so important.
Love the out take at the end. Coffee came out my nose!
I want FW to know that they really understand what we woodworkers like to watch. This is it! I was totally engrossed. Thank you Steve and thank you FW. I'm a fan.
I think if I had to answer the question “ Why are you passionate about woodworking?”, I’d have to say, “Because I don’t know how not to.” I’m 65, female, and wasn’t allowed to take shop classes in high school. After the 1st of my 6 children were born, I took 3 semesters of shop classes for adults with 3 girlfriends and never looked back. I can repair many things but only with wood do I truly understand how it’s designed and assembled, and the best way to repair it. Last year my sister gave me the best compliment of my life. Our mother’s mahogany dining table needed a leg mounting repair. She said she wouldn’t trust it to anyone else. I sat on the floor with the table upside down for an hour first to understand the problem. Solved flawlessly and it’s much stronger, and diagnosed WHY the legs were loose (dragging across carpet). It’s hard not be passionate about a craft if our talents lie there.
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