McLaughlin new host of ‘Rough Cut’

Canterbury furniture maker returns to public TV show

CANTERBURY — Award-winning furniture maker and woodworking instructor Tom McLaughlin will be the new host of the Emmy-nominated series Rough Cut, which returns for its eighth season on public television starting Saturday.

“It’s sort of surreal for me. I can remember watching Norm Abrams on This Old House and how well he described the projects he was working on. Now I’m the guy who’s doing that,” saidMcLaughlin, who is still in awe of the fact that the show will be broadcast on 91 stations nationwide.

WGBH in Boston recently completed filming the 13-part series at his 3,600-square-foot Shaker Road woodworking shop.

“It’s been pretty hectic. We spent Tuesdays and Thursdays filming, doing a segment each day, and it took a lot of planning to have everything here and ready for each session,” said McLaughlin.

He said that in each half-hour episode, unusual design inspiration is turned into easy-to-follow projects for woodworkers at every skill level.

McLaughlin teaches the latest wood crafting techniques, as well as tips and instruction for how to create projects that can be passed down for generations. The series has a new partner Fine Woodworking magazine, which has 1.8 million readers, and will now be known as Rough Cut with Fine Woodworking. It debuts Saturday at 4:30 p.m. on public television.

McLaughlin is no stranger to Rough Cut, having made a half dozen appearances on the show with former host Tommy MacDonald, the first of which came in 2011 after McLaughlin’s chair won the Best in Show award at the Boston Wood Expo.

Projects this season will include a Craftsman-style dining chair in white oak, a Shaker-style hall table in cherry, a hanging bow front cabinet in American ash, an Adirondack-inspired lawn chair in cypress, a tilt-top round breakfast table in curly maple, a Shaker blanket chest with drawer in cherry, a live-edge coffee table made from New England walnut, and Shaker oval boxes.

Among those taking part in the series will be well-known New Hampshire furniture masters David Lamb of Canterbury and Terry Moore of Wilmot, both of whom are members of the New Hampshire Furniture Masters Association. McLaughlin was president of the association 2008-10, and had previously worked with the group to establish an outreach program at the New Hampshire State Prison in Concord.

“What I like most about fine woodworking is the power to say something beautiful without words,” said McLaughlin, whose path to a woodworking career took many twists and turns before he established himself.

Growing up in Lowell, Massachusetts, he was the middle child in a family of seven. He says he first felt that power of expression as a 13-year-old in a carpentry program at Lowell Vocational School, where he finished at the top of his shop class when it focused on fine woodworking. But when the emphasis switched to carpentry, he transferred back to Lowell High School and the college prep program.

He went to college at the at the University of Massachusetts in Lowell, earning his way by installing office furniture in the Boston area. He graduated in 1983 with a degree in math and, around the same time he married Kristen MacDonald in May of 1986, seriously pursued and considered a call to full-time ministry.

He earned a Masters of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary in 1989 but says he was drawn in a different direction.

“I realized that what appealed to me and what I really wanted to do was work with wood,” said McLaughlin, who moved to North Carolina in 1990 and served a three-year apprenticeship with master craftsman P. A. “Pug” Moore, making classical 18th-century-style furniture.

In 1993 he set up his first shop in Wilson, North Carolina, building custom period-style furniture, the beginning of designing and making hundreds of pieces of furniture. The couple’s three children, Lucas, Lauren and Quinn, were born there; then, in 1997, the entire family moved back to New England, settling in Canterbury.

A chance encounter by his father-in-law, a summer resident of Canterbury, with Chance Anderson, who owned a mountain top woodworking shop in Canterbury, led to the decision to settle in Canterbury.

Anderson had decided to switch his emphasis to stone sculpture and no longer needed the woodworking equipment, which McLaughlin then put to good use.

McLaughlin worked from that mountain top setting for several years before moving to a workshop he had built on Shaker Road. In 2002 he launched McLaughlin Woods, employing apprentices, while designing and making custom high-end furniture for clients along the East Coast.

In 2005 he started offering furniture-making classes at McLaughlin Woods, and since that time has had hundreds of people, ranging from hobbyists in the legal and medical fields to those interested in woodworking careers, involved in the classes he has offered.

While it is aesthetically and financially rewarding to produce custom furniture, he said he also finds it isolating.

In 2014 he established Epic Woodworking, Crafting a Life Story, in order to focus more on teaching.

Two years ago he announced that he was no longer accepting custom commissions in order to focus solely on creating new content, including plans, videos and classes for teaching fine woodworking.

“Just doing furniture isn’t enough for me. I like to pass along the knowledge and techniques that I’ve learned,” said McLaughlin.