By Daniel Hartill,Staff Writer
TV crew, star Norm Abram visit famous chair maker

AUBURN – Saws whined. Blowers rumbled. And somewhere, a rubber mallet thumped a piece of sculpted cherry wood.

“This Old House” director David Vos watched while his star – Norm Abram, dressed in jeans and trademark plaid – stood stoically off camera, waiting for his cue beside a table stacked with chair parts.

“Have fun with this one,” Vos said. “Energy!”

Abram stepped forward and the scene, one of several filmed Monday at the Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers workshop, began.

For about 90 seconds, furniture designer David Moser demonstrated the assembly of a nearly $3,000 chair, one of two that will occupy the library of this season’s old house, a 1950s-built home in Cambridge, Mass.

While the cameras watched, the chair’s exquisite wooden arches slid together. A delicate wedge locked the unfinished cherry pieces into place.

To Abram, the show’s all about craft.

“You can’t teach someone to make a chair on this program,” said the 56-year-old master carpenter. “There’s so much more to the story than we can tell.”

However, it takes only a few short minutes to give someone an appreciation of the craft.

“That’s what we try to do in a focused, sequential way,” he said.

And they do it with a bare-bones crew of six. They call it “guerrilla television.”

There are no big lights or boom microphones. No sound trucks.

“In seven years, I’ve never used a tripod,” cameraman Steve “Dino” D’Onofero said.

At the Auburn workshop, where Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers creates furniture to order, production went on with little disruption.

Most of the roughly 85 workers continued on their projects – from sleigh beds to credenzas – while Abram and the crew filmed.

Though familiar with Moser’s work for years, Abram said he was surprised by the breadth of styles he saw as he toured the workshop.

“It’s a lot more than I guessed,” Abram said.

Both the show and Moser are branching out.

Though it became known for its austere, Shaker-like design, the furniture maker has begun making modern styles, too.

It ought to fit in the TV show. For the first time, “This Old House” is remodeling a home which, at 50 years old, has a contemporary style.

The craft – much like the filming – is the same, though.

Abram joined “This Old House,” supporting original host Bob Vila, when it began in 1979. He still works as the show’s master carpenter behind new host Kevin O’Connor.

But he has his own show, too.

Eight years after he started on “This Old House,” he unveiled the “New Yankee Workshop.” That show begins its 18th year in January.

It’s made him an unlikely celebrity.

“We have a lot of dedicated followers,” he said. “Woodworkers are a fairly tight community.”

He sometimes startles people when they first see him outside the show, he said. After all, he wears the plaid only when filming. But like his TV persona, he is soft-spoken and patient.

Over lunch in a Moser conference room, he took several minutes to describe a technique known as “flitching,” in which wood is cut into pieces by a knife, rather than by a saw. Then, they are bent, glued and pressed.

The process was used by Moser to create the chair arches.

“If it’s done right, you can’t even see the lines between the pieces,” he said. The wood almost fuses back together with the grain intact.

His description is simple, functional and exquisite. Then, he paused.

“I’m a woodworker,” Abram said.

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