For the cover story of our December/January issue, I had the great pleasure of spending an afternoon with Nick Offerman, who, when he's not playing the iconic Ron Swanson on the NBC comedy series Parks and Recreation, makes fine furniture, boats, and other objects in wood.

Tucked away at the end of a quiet little street in a nondescript Los Angeles neighborhood, the Offerman Woodshop is the actor's "dreamy man-cave," a personal retreat he's designed for himself, where he can shake off the pressures of show business, get his hands on tools, and recharge his creative energy by making things. The place is spacious and well-equipped, and so perfectly atmospheric (stacks of massive wood slabs, canoes hanging from the ceiling, a homey office/kitchen with bottle-green vintage cabinets, bluegrass on the sound system) it looks like the set of a TV show - and in fact has doubled as the onscreen workshop of Ron Swanson, himself a pretty fierce amateur woodworker.

It could also be the setting for a smart, warmhearted sitcom (or reality show?) about a Hollywood actor leading a dual life as woodworker/TV cult hero. Even Offerman's crew is a character-rich ensemble. There's his younger brother Matt ("the mule" of the operation, Offerman jokes), a tool guy straight out of Central Casting, complete with bushy beard, muscular build and wry demeanor. Whizzing in on her bicycle is shop manager Rebecca Lee, a petite, energetic and (according to Offerman) "massively powerful" young woodworker. And (though, alas, she didn't drop by the day I visited) there are occasional guest shots by Offerman's wife, Megan Mullally – who was, of course, a supporting actress on an actual sitcom, Will and Grace, and who has played Ron Swanson's (ex-)wife on Parks and Recreation. Nick Offerman's life is very meta, when you think about it.

Anyway, his work in wood is the real thing, and so is he. If you've seen him on David Letterman or Jimmy Kimmel, you know he's very funny. I can tell you he's also gracious, intelligent, and – as you'll see in the interview below – quite thoughtful and eloquent on the subject of craft.

We started with a walk around the studio, as he showed off his collection of beautiful reclaimed wood. . .

Where does your wood come from?
One thing that's a very sticky point for woodworkers is that our civilization has spent the last few thousand years denuding our planet of all the greatest trees. And so by now, we have to be incredibly conscientious about where we source our wood.

I know a few guys in northern California, and they're like dealers. They know when a tree comes down, either from storm or from age or from construction. Some of my walnut has come from the city of Santa Rosa, where the city had to pull out a couple old trees. And I also have some redwood; there are a lot of areas where the redwoods were logged, where you can imagine a hundred years ago, if they toppled a huge redwood tree, and it fell in the wrong direction into a difficult gully, they'd say, well, all right, screw that, let's go get these other trees. And so they're peppered around the mountains up on the north coast. I've gotten in touch with guys who know where these pieces are, and so all my stuff comes from there. It's all green.

That's something customers enjoy, too.
It is. I think that's important. It's really important to me. I mean, one thing I love probably more than woodworking is trees. And the kind of tree you need to make especially these slab dining tables, you know, is necessarily a majestic, humongous old tree, and I'd hate to be responsible for one of those ever coming down.

So what finished pieces are here? This is beautiful. . .
This is finished. I just finished it for a big article for Fine Woodworking magazine.

A coffee table?
Yeah, and my wife laid claim to it. [Laughs.]

Woodworkers' wives will do that.
It's a perk. She always comes through. Seven out of eight pieces, she'll say, "Oh, this is nice." And that eighth piece she'll say, "Who's this for?" And I'll say, "It's for that magazine article." And she'll say, "That's for Mommy."

Tell us about the tabletop.
This is a piece of California claro walnut, and it came from a house, a private yard in – oh what is that town? – it's called Healdsburg, in Northern California. If somebody wants to take out a tree, it's common knowledge by now that if it's a furniture tree, you can call on one of these guys [a wood dealer], and maybe they can get [the homeowner] a few bucks for it.

Must be a booming business up there.
Well, when you look at the price of a tree service, they're charging you a few thousand for the privilege of removing a tree. It's a nice alternative to actually make a little money off it. So these folks were expanding their home, and this walnut tree came down, so I went in with my friend. He uses a chainsaw with an eight-foot bar. To give you an idea [points to a saw nearby], that looks like a huge chainsaw, right?

Sure.
That's a three-foot bar.

Okay. Wow.
So the Fine Woodworking article was about this jig I came up with for flattening slabs with a router. I took this slab and made part of it the legs and we did a big article, which I'm incredibly excited about.

I read about that online. I thought it was so charming, the way the editor, Asa Christiana, talked about how thrilled he was to discover you were a real-deal wood guy, and how excited you were to meet him.
I know! We met at the Martha Stewart show, and I was so star-struck. You know, he probably doesn't get that from someone in the entertainment industry that much. But he is a big comedy nerd, so he was real excited to meet me. I said, "You have no idea. You're like Elvis!"

Thank you for giving us this time.
I'm always happy to do this. One of the greatest perks of my job is that it allows me to bring not just woodworking but craft in general to a greater audience.

[We move into the little office/kitchen, sit at his desk. He offers cold drinks and candy.]
Would you like some garbage for your teeth? This is the remnants of a gift bag. I hosted an awards show recently [the Television Critics Association Award, where he tied with Ty Burrell of Modern Family for Achievement in Comedy]. And they made me the coolest gift bag. The lady in charge did some homework, and it had a couple different woodworking magazines, a couple of boat magazines, and a little mini Leatherman pocket tool, and of course the usual candy and wine and whatnot.

This is a great place. I love the cabinets.
It was a photo studio when I moved in, so I built all the walls, I made this little kitchen. It's really a dreamy man-cave. It's an embarrassment of square footage for an amateur woodworker.

You've got your brother here today, but do you normally have other guys?
We have an apprentice, who at the moment is riding his bicycle across the country, so he's unavailable. It's very seasonal. My brother works one or two days a week as a regular gig, out of the goodness of his heart, and also because we're trying to bring his matriculation along in the woodworking sciences.

I have a great shop manager who will probably show up at some point, a massively powerful little woman from Berkeley who – are you familiar with the Exploratorium? It's a museum up there, I've not been there yet, but I think it's kind of kid- and kind of science-themed. It's this really cool-sounding museum where they have these huge interactive displays, of maybe a giant corkscrew that you can operate. So she moved [from working there to] down here. She's also an artist and she was looking for work, and she came with museum shop discipline and training. And so I'm going to do everything I can to keep her here, 'cause she makes us toe the line.

You know, if I get backed up and I have three pieces due, then there's a couple pals that I bring in. It ebbs and flows.

There were these two scenes on Parks and Recreation, which were so hilarious, and so iconic. The harp – [Offerman giggles. Editor's note: He's got an endearingly goofy, teenage-boy giggle.] – and the woodshop. Can you tell us the story behind those?
Well, when we were creating the show, we cast the characters, and the writers – which, by the way, in every interview I do, I immediately point out that a large portion of the genius of the show comes from the writers, who you never get to see, but we're so lucky that we get to be the vessels for their incredible brains.

To wit, when we were creating the character of Ron, we were on the phone a lot. They were all in an office in Studio City, and I would say, "Hang on, I'm at the shop, let me turn down the music, let me turn off the table saw." And after a couple of these, they said, "What do you mean, you're at the shop?" I'd say, "I'm at my woodshop, I'm working on a canoe or whatever, some paddles." And they said [pause], "We're coming over." And they piled in a bus, and 10 writers came over here to see me in my shop. And they said, "[We] think Ron Swanson is a woodworker." It just fit into the sort of flavor of the character we were developing, that this guy would have these sort of self-sufficient skills.

And so, you know, there's more of it to come. The harp was a really funny example. And I have to say, they egregiously crossed the lines of shop safety and all things we would preach in American Craft magazine, or Fine Woodworking, or what have you. On a television comedy, I have an open fireplace in my shop.

With an oxygen tank next to it.
That's right. And even the harp was an example of what Ron could make in one night after drinking six glasses of whiskey.

So what does that say about woodworkers?
Well, I suppose woodworking does require a certain hardiness. It definitely toughens your skin and fingers and hands and arms and shoulders. It's a very physical activity. You always want to have proper mats on the floor, you want to have good footwear, and you want to have ample lighting. Like with many crafts, you need to take care of your body, otherwise you'll have a horrible crick in your neck by halfway through the first morning.

The thing it doesn't say about woodworkers is, I generally find woodworkers to be a very sober bunch. I come from the world of theater, and so I was a magnificent hedonist in my years in Chicago theater, when my craft involved a lot more scenery and prop building. I made a lot of masks and puppets. And those are all things that could be much more safely done under the influence of some sort of mood-lifting substance. When you get into a shop, with several different ways to instantly chop off fingers and limbs, having a couple beers at lunch doesn't seem like as good of an idea.

So that would be the first thing I would say when people bring up the harp is, you shouldn't really get shitfaced on whiskey [laugh] and try to build anything and use sharp steel.

But it was a beautiful piece. Where did it come from?
It was. The prop department found it. And I got asked a lot, "Could you make that?" And my answer was, "Yes. It would take me three solid weeks, and I'd probably screw up the first two." But I was absolutely delighted, then, when they decided to actually set an episode at the shop. And two of my canoes were in the episode. I just had that home-field pride.

Right in there?
Yep, that's where Mark Brandanowitz [the city engineer on the show] tried to shut me down.

So they dangered it up a bit.
Oh yeah, the art department put in the fireplace. They put in a rats' nest of wiring in vents. There was like an old water heater over against this wall. They put in a bunch of code violations. Sadly, to my shame, there was a bit written in the script about how Ron goes to put something out with the fire extinguisher and it's 17 years lapsed. And when [the production staff] were here, as a location for a show, they had to check things out for insurance and whatnot. And they said, "Do you have a fire extinguisher?" I said, "Oh yeah, I've got two." And I went over and I was like, "Oh. . .'93." [Big giggle.]

That was already in the script?
It was. That was a little true life there. So, fortunately, that happened, and they're ready to go now! And can you see that canoe hanging in the other room? That's the one that ended up in Mark Brandanowitz's office with a bow on it, as a gift. That was my olive branch.

Ron is such a great character, in his quiet way.
Thank you.

Obviously he's a caricature, but I have been happy to see him become more complex and interesting, more human.
Me too.

I think the fact that he's a wood craftsman speaks well of him.
I think so, too. I think it's charismatic. People in all walks of life that I come across have something between admiration and bafflement in [learning that] I make things out of wood.

A friend of ours – my wife has done a lot of work on Broadway, and there's this great lady who she's worked with. She's one of these incredible Broadway talents who we may never hear of, but is just known as an incredibly dependable journeyperson. I love a lot of things about her, but from her youth she brings all of these skills. She can knit you a three-piece suit in two days. One time when they were working on a Broadway show, she showed up and had a variety of felt bags she had made over the weekend, and being someone who loves to make things, I was not familiar with the felting process. I had her walk me through it, and I just was so astonished, like this felt is amazing! I was so blown away by it.

And I think Ron has that quality that, you know, people have to respect. Even if you're like a person that makes funny potato-face intarsia people, that's so much more of a beautiful way to spend your time than, you know, playing a video game.

That brings me to a question, and as a parent of teenagers, I feel strongly about this. There is a generation of young people now who spend all this time online. Gaming. Watching TV [interviewer suddenly remembers she's talking to a TV star] – which is good!
Well, to an extent. TV is a sticky wicket, because it's just like going to the grocery store. There are seven things you need that are good to feed you and your family, but then there's a gazillion other things that are screaming out at you, "Eat me!" And TV's the same way. You know, I grew up with three channels.

It was easier, in a way, wasn't it?
Yeah, I mean, you could still be unhealthy, even then. But I grew up in a great family, and we would watch "Happy Days" and "Laverne and Shirley," and that was it. My parents were very strict. But I interrupted you, you were leading up to a question.

Well, just that at our magazine, we also sense a real longing out there to make things. Sort of like in the '60s and '70s, as an antidote, is what we're picking up.
I hope so.

So do you think of yourself as having a bully pulpit in that regard, as a TV celebrity who is able to get a message out?
Oh, I can proselytize, absolutely. I had to be seduced by Asa, the editor of Fine Woodworking. Because when I decided to switch from building scenery – and I was building cabins and decks in people's yards here in L.A. – a couple things happened. I was working on a yoga hutch in somebody's yard –

Only in L.A.
Yeah. It's a beautiful building. I got a movie job, and I had to leave this thing half-finished. Fortunately they're my friends and it was friendly, but they had to leave this thing in their yard for six weeks while I went and did a movie. And I felt like such a jerk. I said, OK, I need to be able to do work like this but in a way that's not inflicted on people's homes.

At the same time, the last couple cabins that I built, I did straight post-and-beam construction, and the joinery involved – the old-school mortise and tenons, dovetails and shiplap joints – in a post-and-beam barn or house are the exact same joints that a Shaker table uses. And just then, a contractor that I knew that I often get advice from – I think I was talking about how I was really falling in love with this joinery – and he said, "Get Fine Woodworking magazine. It'll be absolute catnip to you."

So I did, and I drove my wife crazy, because for a period – I really still do it – everywhere we would go, I'd get on the floor, underneath furniture, looking at the joinery – "Oh, uh-huh, yes, this was not made before 1950." I got really obsessed with the way things used to be made, simply. And seeing all the sort of catalog furniture in people's homes around me. You know, I'm always the guy that men and women alike would say, "Hey, we just got this dining table, can you help us put it together? Do you have what they call a socket set?" [Laughs.] And I'd say, "Yes, I do. Both metric and imperial."

And so I saw this stuff, and I just feel like these days, our consumerist tendencies are really being taken advantage of, and we're being sold disposable goods from our furniture to our cars, or our shoes, you know? It's become commonplace that you need to go through a pair of shoes a year, or if you scratch the fender on your car, you have to throw it away and get a new one. I grew up in this farm family, which, of course, is very frugal.

They had a farm?
Well, I grew up in the country, a few miles from my mom's family's farm. Her two brothers are still there farming corn and soybeans.

In Illinois?
In Illinois, yeah. Minooka, Illinois. And until I was in high school, they also had pigs. They raised pork. And so, in a way, I had a very cushy time of it, because I didn't live on the farm, but I was able to grow up working on the farm.

That's great for a boy.
Yeah, it was incredible. My dad, my uncles, my grandfathers out in the shed – you know, the women were just as facile and powerful, but I wasn't in the kitchen with them, or wherever they were, as much as out in the shed with the guys. And if these guys scratched a fender, they didn't care. But if they destroyed a fender, they'd make a new one or they'd pull one off a different vehicle. They were incredible.

So I just really had an epiphany where I said, well, here's something I can do as sort of my "get on my soapbox and start talking about the way things used to be made," and I can make furniture like this. And as soon as I started researching furniture, I just was astonished by specifically the Craftsman movement, the way the furniture went from being really decorative to using its joinery as its decoration. There was an honesty to that, in specifically the work of, like, Gustav Stickley, where the parts of the table that hold it together are also the decoration. I just really loved that aesthetic and that philosophy.

And then there were a couple of guys, a couple of Americans who sort of took it to an artistic place. George Nakashima, and Sam Maloof, and a couple of other guys. I'm woefully ignorant to sort of what I suppose I would learn at furniture college [laughs]. As soon as I got to Nakashima and Maloof, I was like, Okay! I'm off and running.

Have you been to Maloof's home and studio museum in Alta Loma?
I have, yeah. It's just incredible. It's a beautiful place.

And have you been to Pennsylvania to see the Nakashima place?
I have not; Lee, my shop manager, has. I'm dying to get there. I was in a house the other day with an incredible slab coffee table. And I was like, aw, man! It was such an amazing piece of walnut burl. And I said [assumes analytical, appraising voice], "It looks like Nakashima, but the base has a little too much flow, it's a little modern." And finally, I couldn't resist. I laid on my back and scooted underneath the table, and it was a piece by his daughter.

Mira.
Yeah, she's still thriving.

See, you were getting good.
And tells you it was an expensive house.

Did you look at books, go to museums? How did you learn about this stuff?
Well, mainly Fine Woodworking, and books. Nakashima's books, James Krenov. Are you familiar with his college? [Krenov established the fine woodworking program at the College of the Redwoods in 1981.] Lee, my shop assistant, went there and did their program. But after him – he passed away a few years ago. She just went a couple of years ago.

He was said to have been an incredible teacher.
Yeah. Quite a character. But an amazing school. It's one of the many – if I could just have three years off to go to that school. And then another three years to go to the North Bennet Street School in Boston, because that's a whole other set of Federal and period techniques that are mind-blowing; the men and women that go to that school, the stuff they turn in at the end of their first year – I'm just like, wow, astonished. And then I'd take a third three years and I'd go to the Wooden Boat School in Brooklyn, Maine. But I don't know when I'm going to find those three-year periods.

Anyway, I found this shop space, and I was really lucky. Somebody commissioned a slab table, and I kept just doing one after another. Just in time, I'd get my next commission. This was early 2000.

You were a successful working actor at this point.
A working actor. To be a working actor is a great success. But I was simply making a living. I wouldn't say I became successful to where I was making a really nice living until '07 or so. But 2000 was also the year that I met my wife, and she was an insanely successful actor, so I was very spoiled because I didn't have to worry about making the rent. So there were a lot of factors that allowed me to teach myself the ins and outs of woodworking.

So that was the point where you went from construction-based work to fine furniture.
Yeah, basically. I mean, even when I started building the cabins in people's yards – the Greene and Greene brothers have houses all over, but in Pasadena there are a couple that are maintained as museums. I went to look at their houses, and that's when I started with my post-and-beam work. So I was really inspired by them as well.

Do you sense a division between the DIY/builder type of wood craftsmen, the cabinetmaker/furniture makers, and then people like Wendell Castle who take it to the sculptural level? Does all that interest you at all?
It does, but only in theory.

Where do you see yourself fitting in?
It's a good question. I've had this shop for about 11 years, and it's been a supplementary income for a lot of that time. I feel really spoiled, because my acting affords me the ability to not have to – I have another friend who is an actor and a writer in town, and he has a shop, but he has to crank out kitchens because he is making ends meet. I'm really spoiled, because I don't have to do that. I can turn down plywood jobs in general, and so I guess I see myself as a high-end hobbyist or a weird specific custom woodworker. I've done this string of furniture, peppered with a couple of canoes and a great many paddles.

And now – when I got my job on "Parks and Recreation" – I keep having to make life-change decisions. For example, when I started out as an actor – when any young actor starts out – you voraciously take any job you can, because you need to get your SAG insurance, you need to get points, and you also just need to get paid. But you also need to get a resume, you need to get things on tape that will allow you to say, look, I did this professional job, you can trust me to do your professional job. And so once you begin to build up a resume, and what's called a reel – which is examples of your past work – then it's really hard when you realize you can start saying no to things. Shows that are not of your taste, or things you would rather not do. It takes years to be, like, OK, I don't have to do that show, I can afford not to.

So I never would have built my canoes if my wife hadn't gotten "Young Frankenstein" on Broadway, because we have a rule where we don't take a job that'll keep us apart for more than two weeks. We've seen too many marriages founder from working on the two coasts. So, in order for her to do a Broadway play for a year and a half, I agreed to go with her. And I said, OK, I'm leaving my shop, I can finally build a canoe, which I'd been thinking about and getting ready to do. And that allowed me to make my first canoe. And we made a how-to video for this great company, Bear Mountain Boats. We went and spent some time up in Canada with them.

So that's what you did on the East Coast.
Yeah. I did a play and a movie as well. I had a really good time in New York. And my friend – look up Jimmy DiResta. John DiResta, his brother, is a comedian. They have a new show on Discovery called Dirty Money. Jimmy lives on the Lower East Side. I think you would love him. He's got a shop that you access through one of those little sidewalk trap doors, and he can take sheets of plywood down that thing. This guy can make anything. He's sort of a Lower East Side Robin Hood. Who's the Dirty Jobs guy? Mike Rowe. He's like that. He also teaches at the School of Visual Arts. He just teaches people to make stuff, out of anything. Like one episode of his show will be like, [Noo Yawk street voice] "Eh, today I'm gonna make a rocking chair out of, uh, plumbing things." And he takes a Sharpie, and he draws a perfect chair. He's like, "Eh, these are elbows, these are Y joints. I dunno, let's try it." He's mind-blowing.

Anyway, so Jimmy I got to know because I had worked with his brother, the comedian. And Jimmy agreed to shoot the whole video and edit it. I said, look, if you do this with me, we'll make two canoes and you'll get one of them. So the second canoe is for Jimmy. If I ever get it done.

And now I've reached this point where I'm doing really well, suddenly, as an actor. The sense, for the last couple of years, [is that] I've been making pieces for my friends who want them, because I feel obligated. You saw my wood store. That's eight years of collecting wood. I'm very picky. Every piece I get, I think is a work of art. And so when somebody wants one of my pieces, it's very special. I want to put something in their home, and so I say yes. I say, well, it might be Valentine's Day, but yes.

So someone might come to you and say, I want you to make a table –
Yeah, a bed, a coffee table.

Just someone you know, or who has heard of you? It's word of mouth?
Yeah. I know a lot of actors and writers, but also designers. And my wife is an obsessive, incredible interior designer. If you look at Elle Decor, September 2010 issue, our house is in there.

Do you have any of your work in your house?
It's an arc. There are a few pieces in my house. But she can shop a lot faster than I can make stuff. I'd love for there to be a few more. But over the years, I'm trickling stuff in. She's claimed this coffee table, but there'll be more.

So I feel obligated to make things for people. But I just this summer realized, I had this hiatus from [Parks and Recreation] and the Nate Berkus Show wanted me to do a couple pieces for an episode of their show, and I got this Fine Woodworking thing, and I said yes. And then I did my schedule and I said, oh, that's my whole vacation. So now I'm stepping back. Now if someone says, can I get a chest of drawers, I'll say, talk to Lee.

So you're not stopping, but –
I'm pausing. Because I've got all this wood sitting in the next room, waiting to become ukuleles. That's my primer course, because then I'm going to start trying acoustic guitars.

Do you play?
I do. I've gotten a couple of nice guitars, and I started reading about making guitars, and I realized, I love making music, I love making things out of wood. It'll be no sweat to make all the pieces. I've made stuff like all the pieces on a guitar. But when you get to the finesse –

Of how it sounds.
Of how it sounds. Basically making this wooden shell shaved just enough that it's beautifully resonant, but not so much that it'll explode when you tension the strings. And the frets – like you can't miss by a thousandth on your fret location, because it'll be out of tune.

So I'm very spoiled that way. It's sort of answering my own obsession. That's a very longwinded answer to where do I fall. But I'm not interested in DIY, like – we have a really nice house. A ridiculously nice house, because my wife has amazing taste; I don't. So if our house needs work, we get a bonded, licensed guy, also so he'll be liable [giggles].

But all these famous wood guys – Art Carpenter built a house, Maloof built a house, Nakashima, Wharton Esherick. Do you ever dream about building the house?
Absolutely. I would love to.

Do you have a plan in your head?
I do, I do. And we've talked about it, and it may come to pass. The problem is the timing, because I'm not a woodworker first. I'm an actor first. And I'm 41, and I just arrived, so to speak. And this is a business where you have to strike while the iron is hot. So as long as I'm getting work. . . now, if I get really lucky, and have another good eight or 10 years, then I'll be in a position where I can say, okay, I'm gonna take a year off.

So that's the dream.
Yeah. Me and that guy with the beard in there [nods toward brother Matt out in the shop] would have a really good time.

You're completely self-taught? Have you had any formal training?
No.

Raising barns and building decks?
It was a very slow-rolling snowball. My dad taught me to drive a nail probably when I was five. I remember down in his basement shop, I was trying to hammer something on my lap. And one of the first lessons I remember is he said, "Look [slaps both hands down on the table], put it on the bench. Whenever you're using a tool, make sure all the force is being exacted upon the implement that you want to move, whether it's driving a nail or tightening a nut, don't expend any of your force holding something still or, for God's sake, don't drive a nail into your lap."

My dad taught me to use a shovel and an axe and a saw and a chainsaw. My uncles would make MacGyver look like a schoolgirl. Just recently my uncle was driving a pickup, pulling a full wagon of corn to town. This is a modern wagon that drives on the road – you know, it's not a horse-drawn wagon. But he's driving this wagon, and the tongue, which connects it to the truck, it was old and it started to break loose. He could see that the wagon was kind of swinging off to one side. So he pulled over, and he had everything in the back of his truck to make a new tongue on the wagon, and welded it on. In 45 minutes he was back on the road.

So by the time I got to high school, I had helped them build houses. I had roofed buildings. To pay for college I spent a couple summers blacktopping. I spent a summer framing houses. It was a very fortuitous sequence, because then I got into theater school [at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign], and I was very bad at acting. I was a baby, and all these kids came from Chicago and the suburbs and they had done Shakespeare – who was a playwright, it turned out. I was like, "Oh. I've seen Happy Days." And so while I was at a great disadvantage in the acting classes with them, in the scenery classes – I'm not kidding, these kids had not used a hammer. Twenty, 18-year-old kids, they were like, "Wow, you've done that before?" "Uh, yeah. I have." Everyone would put me in their show because I would build scenery. It allowed me to then slowly learn how to be a decent actor, while I was building everything.

Then I became a professional scenery builder in Chicago, because it was a great way to supplement my income acting in plays, which is hard to make a living at.

You probably learned a little art in the process.
Oh, plenty, sure. Building scenery is incredibly gratifying. One of my best friends from college on, who helped me build this shop actually, was also interested in woodworking. He's kind of running a theater department now at Carthage College in Wisconsin, and he is an incredible artist. Scenic designers are amazing artists. They're architects, they're painters, and they're also engineers. They have to combine all these skills to make scenery that's beautiful and practical, and moves on and offstage. So building that with them takes a lot of ingenuity, and that's one of the most attractive things about building scenery is that it's full of tricks: You know, this throne flips down and sits on a crate, and becomes the peasant's bar. It's really fun.

In theater school, you take costume class, makeup class, lighting class. And I've done a lot of sewing. I really love – you know, I've never done anything very good – but there's nothing more satisfying than, like, sewing a patch on your jeans. Or fixing a button, and knowing it's not going to come off again, by God.

So I've had an incredible accumulation. By the time I decided to become a woodworker, I'd had a pretty good mastery of a lot of tool skills, all of which I learned through collaboration and osmosis, from many masters before me.

So you don't necessarily need an MFA to be a furniture maker.
No. You don't.

You're in a business that's very high-pressure, very much about image. What dimension does handwork bring to your life?
That's a very perceptive question. I don't know how many people in the entertainment industry you've talked to, but it's horrendous. Even if you're doing well, there's just a great deal of rejection, because you are ostensibly a person with an artistic agenda, trying to create whatever it is you love, in an arena commanded by corporate finance [laughs]. Me specifically, ever since I started in theater, I've called it "bringing the medicine to the people." Because when you're onstage, you can feel the palpable transaction going on when you make an audience laugh or cry. It feels amazing. It's still my favorite medium, because the response is immediate. The audience tells you, "Yes, you're doing it right." It's really incredible. When you take that and subject it to a huge company that's trying to sell advertising space via the funny faces you can make, or your beautiful blond hair or whatever it is, it can be a really hard struggle.

And so, one of the hardest things for me is what's called a pilot test, when a new show is being created, and they're casting it. Say, Seinfeld. They look at all these different people and finally they always end up with three or four people for each part. Even if they know they want Julia Louis-Dreyfus, they're still going to look at three or four choices, because that's the corporate way: You have to have a choice. And so it's one of the most gut-wrenching days you can go through, because up until that point, if you're auditioning to be Kramer, you're in a room with creative people – it's producers and writers, and even network executives are generally fans of comedy, and so they're laughing, you know? You're doing your bit. You come through the door in a very funny way and they laugh, and say, "Oh, I think this could work." Finally, when you get to the test, it's a room full of bankers, and they're not an audience, they're not looking to be entertained. They're scrutinizing you, they're like, "Well, we should cut her hair a little shorter. Maybe she should not be wearing blue." You never know what they're thinking. They could be thinking, "You know what? Maybe we should go with a black guy. Or what if – you know what Nick makes me think of? We should make this character a woman!"

So you leave – that's my favorite day, to leave that room, come straight here. And whatever it is I'm doing, even if I'm just sanding a board, I sand the board, and I look at it. Maybe I'll put oil on it. And I've done something tactile that I can look at and see that I've achieved something. And that's representative of how woodworking is for me in my whole life.

I'm so lucky that I'm on this show that I think would be my favorite show [even] if I wasn't on it. To be in that position as an actor is literally harder than winning the lottery. I'm a very lucky guy. Even so, to be in a position where so much is out of my control, this is such a safe haven for me. It's such a fortress of solitude, where everything except for the actual nature of the wood material is under my control.

It's real, it's solid. . .
Yeah. More than anything furniture-wise, I love making a bed or a dining-room table, because those are two very necessary pieces of furniture. You're making someone the board off which they'll feed themselves. Or they'll play cards, or they'll drink and have a rousing good time. Or, obviously, a bed. To me there's something holy about getting to do that for people.

Even a canoe paddle, when you're making something practical. I love using a shovel. I had a lot of shovel in my youth. There was a time – a brief time – when they called me The Shovel, when I was a blacktopper. I was very good with the shovel. And when you're shaping a paddle, it reminds me of a shovel, because you can begin to feel its use as it takes shape. To me, there's something really profound about that. I love paddling a canoe, and whether you're sanding or using a spokeshave on a paddle, as you're refining it down towards the end of its creation, you can just feel – wow, I've taken this board and turned it into something I can locomote myself across a lake with. So it carries a lot of medicine for me, to get in here and be able to improve the world around me.

Which dovetails nicely into the idea of the spiritual side of craft: the soul of a tree, as Nakashima titled his book, or the soul of an object. The idea that part of that soul comes from use, and the interaction between the maker and the object and the person who eventually lives with it.
Absolutely. There are few things you can do with a tree. If the tree is no longer going to be performing its most majestic job – you know, a tree has an incredibly beautiful function in its life. When its life has to come to an end, there are few more beautiful things I can think of to do with it than to give it a further life. When I make a table, I think about, "In 200 years, if this doesn't go through a fire or something, somebody will be eating off this table." That makes me feel really good.

And building a boat – the two canoes I've built are two different designs. One is more like a pickup truck, and one's more like a Corvette. But this man named Steve Killing designed them, and I think Ted Moores, who runs Bear Mountain Boats. I think they collaborated on the designs. But these designs, the lines of a boat, have been being perfected for centuries, and you can feel it. As it begins to take shape on your bench, it feels like a Corvette is appearing, where you see, "Wow, I've made this with a bunch of wood, and if I got good weather, I could take this thing to England." [Giggles.]

That's powerful.
It is. And also, in the realm of spirituality, I had the really good fortune when I was in college to have a teacher who a master of several Zen disciplines. His name was Shozo Sato, and he was getting ready to retire, and he taught kabuki theater class. I was just in the lucky year where we got into his kabuki show. It was The Iliad, done in traditional kabuki style, called Kabuki Achilles. It was '91, the year the first Gulf War broke out – which is so sad to have to say, the first Gulf War – but it was this antiwar show, and we ended up touring Japan and Europe. He and I really bonded. He is such an incredible guy. He lives up in Northern California now. But this was in Champaign, Illinois. He taught ikebana, flower arrangement. He taught tea ceremony. He taught sumi-e black ink painting, kabuki dance, kabuki theater, and then just a class on Zen meditation. He had taken a three-story farmhouse on the campus – it looked like a white clapboard farmhouse on the outside – and he completely turned the inside into a traditional Japanese house, with tatami mats and rice paper walls, and the whole nine yards. There were fountains and bamboo sculptures. He was incredible. And among the many lessons that have stayed with me from him, is he would always talk about how in Zen, in the Shinto discipline, the way of the arts is the way of the Buddha. He said, if you can do something – whether it's make shoes, or sing, or paint a picture – when you practice that, that is a consummation of the part of God within you. The reason you can paint a beautiful flower is nature is doing that through you, so that others can experience that beauty.

Gifted.
Yeah. I'm so lucky I ran into him. The most important lesson he taught me was to always maintain the attitude of a student, so that no matter how old you are, or how much you accomplish, if you always look at how much you have left to learn, then you'll always be happy every day, because you're striving and achieving something. Rather than when you decide you've become a master, and then you sit and you look in the mirror and say, "Where's my parade?" [Laughs.] "When are they coming with my trophies?" That's when you become bitter and miserable. And for a bunch of kids in the middle of a cornfield to run into this guy who taught us these things was such a great piece of fortune. I stay in touch with him. I went to visit him when I started woodworking, and he showed me a couple of pieces he had made, and I never knew that he used tools. He just used traditional Japanese tools, which have a much lower emphasis on electricity. And he showed me a couple of beautiful pieces and reminded me of that lesson, that whatever you can do, you should do it-both for yourself, and for your fellow man.

You live a very creative life – two creative lives, you could say. Both involve craft, art, and a collaborative environment. Producing a piece of furniture, producing a piece of entertainment – a performance, crafting a role. Is it the same creative process? Does the acting inform the woodworking, or does the woodworking inform the acting, or both?
Well, that's a very good question. I guess it comes from the same seed. The gestation is the same. Because woodworking is so much more tangible, it necessarily takes much more accurate planning. I mean, there is intuition involved. That table that I showed you that I just made – I had a general design, and I began cutting the pieces and shaping them. You know, Nakashima talks a lot about letting the wood tell you what it wants to become. And it's true. It really works. The piece that runs between the two legs, it's called the stretcher, and there's a curved stretcher on that. I've done a few tables with a straight stretcher that sits on the floor. And I had pulled a piece out, I was kind of in a hurry, so I was doing something that I knew for the purpose of this magazine article. And I pulled this piece of walnut out, and it had this beautiful arc in the grain. And I said, "Oh, OK, you're gonna be an arc'd stretcher."

So there is an intuition, an element of improvisation in both arenas.

Also a foundation of training, skills, discipline. . .
Yeah, there are a lot of analogies that can be made. In both disciplines, your tools have to be honed and kept sharp for the most effective execution and performance. At the same time, there are sort of vast differences in a three-dimensional, solid sculpture versus a piece of performance that's ephemeral. It's also another thing I love about theater versus TV or film, is that in theater, you experience it with the audience and then no one will ever have it again.

One of a kind.
It's really a beautiful thing, I think. That if you weren't there, you missed it, you know? At the same time, it's great to have things recorded, so that you can have it.

I've learned a lot from my wife in general, but concerning just creativity in life. . . when we started dating, she just taught me how, almost every aspect of her life, she tries to approach creatively. Her wardrobe is ever-evolving. Part of it is being someone who gets photographed a lot. There's a sort of understanding that you never want to be photographed twice in the same outfit, if you're in the biz. But she takes that as an opportunity to always be creating what she feels like at the moment. She's recently been getting into really fun colors and accessories, in such a healthy way. Like she announced, "You know what? I'm going to start hitting some vintage stores. I'm doing color, and some fun, like big, jangly jewelry and accessories." And as soon as she started doing it, I said, "You look younger. I can see the vibrancy in what you're doing, in how you look." She recently had some stress she was dealing with, and she decided to take up painting. And so she bought some oils, and started painting, and painted eight small portraits in eight different styles. She's just a ridiculous font of talent. Each one was really cool in its own way. And before she would start painting them, she would do a pencil sketch, and then paint it.

She's not formally trained?
No, she's had no training. She was a deeply trained ballet dancer, but she's never taken a singing class or an acting class, and those are her two greatest talents. But she spent countless hours in her bedroom, listening to the radio, singing into a hairbrush, teaching herself.

But she had done about eight of these little paintings, and she had done the pencil sketch for the next one, and she stopped. And I happened through, and I stopped. And I said, "I think that's done." And she said, "Yeah." So she was playing with paint and discovered – and she may very well continue exploring paint – but she then did a whole series of pencil drawings. They got [laughs] annoyingly incredible. We were on a plane together, and I was watching a DVD and she had her sketchbook out, and she had a photograph she was going to draw that she pulled out of a magazine, of a young guy. I looked over, and she had done the outline of the face shape, basically. I just glanced and I was like, "Nah. She's gonna be erasing that." I'm watching my thing, and three minutes later she had the eyes and the nose and probably the mouth, and I was so taken aback. It looked so perfect.

So that's what we always turn to when we're in any kind of distress.

There is something [therapeutic] about making – the creativity, but also just sometimes the rote activity of working with your hands, wouldn't you agree?
Absolutely. When I was a young teenager, that was right when video games sort of hit. First they were at like, the pizza place – Donkey Kong, PacMan. I was one of the 13-year-olds begging quarters to go play those games. Then by the time I could drive, there was a video arcade with 30 kinds of games you could go spend your quarters on. I definitely lost many hours I'll never get back playing Donkey Kong, or Joust. Then by the time I got to young adulthood, I got into theater and my life took me into the arts. I didn't even have time to read as much as I wanted to, let alone play video games. So I missed a lot of it.

But then in my late 20s, I was staying with a guy in Los Angeles. He played a lot of video games. I forget was his system was, but he got two new games. And it was just at a time when I had landed on his couch and I had nothing going on. He said, "Do you wanna play these games with me?" And I said, "Yeah, sure." And I think each one of them, we kind of stayed up all night for like a week. We played until we defeated the game – you know, we got to the end of the game. We just ate pizza, and these games just consumed us for a week each. So I lost two solid weeks. Well, at the end of it, we won: "Ah, there! We did it! We defeated the game!" One minute later I said, "That was such a waste of time. I feel no gratification, no sense of accomplishment. That was a waste of my time."

I know that as human beings, we need diversions. It's good to have amusement, certainly. But I know so many people, even people my own age, who consume all of their free time with these online games, that they can go to immediately. And I just challenge them to do that for eight hours, and then read any book for eight hours, or make something with your hands. I'm not smart enough to have crafted a mission statement about this particular philosophy, but have you ever heard of Wendell Berry?

The philosopher?
He's an agrarian. He's a Kentucky farmer, agrarian, essayist, poet and novelist. He's my favorite writer. He's amazing. Such a wise, wise writer, and really funny, too. Reading his stuff really helped put a name to a lot of these feelings I had been having.

You know, part of why I wanted to have this furniture concern was so that I could still feel like part of my family, in a way. Even though – you know, I feel very successful as an actor, I don't feel like they can comprehend that. They're so heroic to me in that they all have the most salt-of-the-earth jobs – librarian, farmer, schoolteacher, paramedic, on and on and on. There's no one who doesn't fall in, like, service. They're all in service. My mom is a labor and delivery nurse.

So there's a really important part of this that just allows me to still feel like one of them. Because the life of an actor can be incredibly douchey. If actors let themselves, they'd spend their days getting their hair cut, bugging their agent, reading the trades to see all the things that they're not working in. It's a horrible existence, if you let it be. So I was determined to place my focus elsewhere, so that I would never go down that road.

When I started reading Wendell Berry. . . at the core of his writings is the philosophy that we've lost touch with the land that we come from. A lot of that ties into what we're talking about with the craft movement. He starts with the Industrial Revolution. He says people used to pride themselves on being self-sufficient, and raising everything they need, and you'd just go to town to get a bag of sugar. You could make everything you needed on your farm or at your household. Then the Industrial Revolution came, and advertising kicked in, and we were all sold a bill of goods in which we were taught that working with your hands was dirty. "Housewives, you don't need to be sewing those dresses! Put your feet up!" Get our sewing machine, get our vacuum cleaner – you know, get all of our machines. It's now extended to our entire lives. So the vast majority of urban and suburban dwellers have lived these lives maybe one or two generations back that they've never known anybody who used a shovel or a hammer or a sewing needle.

You have to make a conscious effort these days to get your hands on things.
Right, right, absolutely. So for me, anything that I can do from my bully pulpit, I would love it. If you break it down, I have nothing to gain from telling people that they should make stained-glass windows. The stained-glass window folks are not sending me a subsidy. It's for your own good if you can find something you can make. And there are so many choices, from things you can make in the kitchen, in the garage, in the woodshop, blow glass. There are so many amazing things, and with the Internet, you can now learn how to make so many things without ever needing to go to, you know, Windsor Chair school.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Oh no, I would kill to go to Windsor Chair school. I just think that a lot of our social problems, we'd begin to see a solution to them if we'd just take back our self-sufficiency. And a lot of that can be grasped by realigning ourselves with the crafts that we've lost.

Well, we're seeing an artisanal boom right now, in food –
Yeah, everybody's making beer in their basement.

I think we're looking for something.
It's exciting. I hope it continues. I hate how exceptional I am, simply that I use tools. I mean, there are a million woodworkers in the country that are doing much better work than I am. I just happen to be the one that's on a TV show. It drives me crazy that people in social circles will introduce me and say, "You should see this guy's woodwork, he's a master, he's a genius." I say, "You know, I'm actually not. I'm a student. I can show you some masters, men and women who've devoted their lives to it."

So, just a few nuts and bolts questions. The shop functions with a varying number of workers. You have Matt, what's his role?
Matt's the mule. We both can lift a very heavy load, but we're getting older, and I'm seven years older, so hopefully he's got seven years of heavy loads left in him. He also comes from our family, so it's great having someone with our family work ethic around. I don't have to pussyfoot around him. He can see what needs doing and gets it done.

So you're the [sole] designer, or is there some collaboration there?
We're in a transition right now. When I got this job, and the show went and looks like it'll stick around, I knew that I had a choice in front of me: I could either basically lock up the shop for eight months out of the year, or I could find Lee and try to keep the show thriving.

[On cue, Offerman's shop manager rides in on her bicycle, hops off, says hello.]
So then I found Lee, and as I described she was fresh from Berkeley and from this great museum, the Exploratorium. And so Lee was the perfect person to maintain the shop operations. She started working with me on the pieces that I had, but then pretty quickly, my time became so minimal that we now are going through this transition where I'm basically saying no to anybody, but if you want something from my shop, Lee is running the shop.

You mean, do you have a portfolio of basic designs?
No, actually, if you wanted a dining room set right now, Lee will take you through it, soup to nuts. She is a full-time woodworker. A couple of commissions that came through me, I've already given to Lee, and she designed them, and they came out of my slab stock. So it was a little more collaborative, but basically now everything that gets made out of here, hopefully for the next seven years because my show will keep going, will be overseen by Lee. We just had a brand made, that says Offerman Woodshop. With the new system it'll have the shop brand, and then it'll have Lee's signature.

But you obviously share a basic aesthetic.
Nick: Yeah, we do.

Lee: Yeah, and everything I work on, Nick's got plenty of input. I'm always asking him questions.

Where did you study, Lee?
Lee: I mostly just trained on jobs. I've been doing carpentry since I was little, and like Nick said, I worked for the Exploratorium building cabinets for eight years or something. And similarly worked on theater sets. I did a summer course at College of the Redwoods up in Mendocino. That was right after I met Nick, actually, and I was just sort of starting to get excited about fine furniture, coming from like more of a cabinet and rough-scenery background. So it was really pretty instrumental, I think, in my being able to work here.

Nick: It's funny, in this business, I've learned – I've been in L.A. for about 14 years, and I've learned that when I meet people's kids – I mean, I promote good manners at all times wherever I go, because I think we need a lot more "please" and "thank you" in the world. But when I meet people's kids, I say, "It's really nice to meet you. I look forward to auditioning for you in about five years." Because invariably I'll be asking them for a job one way or another. And I think I'm looking forward to working for Lee in about three or four years. Because she's doing it all the time. Her discipline continues to grow while mine sits on the shelf.

Do you feel a kinship with woodworkers? Do you have a sense of the field, do you get to go out to Furniture Society events and conferences?
I do feel kinship with woodworkers. I've never been to any kind of woodworking show or meeting or club or society.

You'd probably love it.
I'm sure I would. When Asa Christiana was here from Fine Woodworking, he had to run down to San Diego to judge – they have the biggest woodworking guild in the country – and he was judging their annual show. So I went with him. Unfortunately the fair hadn't opened yet, so we were alone with four or five of the guys from the guild. But even just seeing the work of 200 woodworkers and meeting the four or five guys was really moving to me. Because in a way, it's a very solitary practice. And so to get together and commiserate or talk about tools is really nice. Just like researching or getting to go to any kind of classes. I don't ever have time to do it, and that's considered a champagne problem, because of my pesky dream job. It really cuts into my woodworking-class time.

Do you hear from a lot of woodworker fans, about Ron?
Quite a few, yeah, which is really nice. It's very gratifying. I hear from people who just say thanks for shining a light on woodworking.

Anything else you'd like to say?
I'm really privileged. I feel honored to be asked to be asked to be part of such a great magazine. I really look up to craftspeople, and part of it comes from the fact that I don't have time to spend full time on woodworking, and so it makes me have a lot of respect for all the people that all they do is blow glass, or sculpt.

I love being someone who can affect change on the world around me with my hands and with tools. It's a fellowship that I'm very proud to be part of.

And I guess the only other thing I would say is I would just encourage – I imagine anyone who likes making things would love Wendell Berry. I started with his short stories, and by now I've read all of his novels and short stories, and a lot of his essays and poetry. It's really beautiful and it really speaks to the heart of the craftsperson. You're actually being a great American citizen by practicing a craft.