Wood Workin'

Walter Stanul—“Woodshop Walter” to VESers in the know—started his affair with sharp objects at a young age. “In Cub Scouts I learned how to sharpen a knife,” he says. “I’ll never forget the thrill of getting a razor sharp tool.” He used his first chisel as a child in the garage of his rural Florida home. Now the official Woodshop Coordinator for the VES department, Stanulcompares working with a table saw to the fox trot.

“It’s really a dance,” he says, extending his arms in a sweeping motion. “You have to be able to physically move your body.” Stanul fears that if students do not physically engage with the task at hand, they could possibly end up losing limbs. The table saw is the “number one finger cutter-offer.”

Although “Woodshop Walter” has only been at Harvard for seven months, he has been a Cambridge local for quite a while. “I was a street musician in 1979 in Harvard Square,” said Stanul, an accomplished, self-taught classical guitarist and luthier (one who makes stringed instruments.)

Known for his eccentricity and metaphors, he compares wood-working to Japanese tea ceremonies and a good workbench to the Rock of Gibraltar. “Woodshop Walter” is, in the eyes of students Katharine A. Woodman-Maynard ’08 and Luz I. Gonzalez ’05, like a “jolly grandfather.”

Nathan A. Sharp ’08, who met Woodship Walter once through the freshman seminar Paintings & Painters, recalled that Stanul became “really excited” when cutting wood; Stanul reportedly told them to stay back, adding animatedly that the wood “might fly off! Like a bullet! Like a bullet!”

Although there was no airborne wood during the FM interview, Stanul did show off his (literally) chiseled body. After removing two carrots from his pocket (“I try to eat healthy,” he says), Stanul proceeded to chisel the hair off part of his forearm. Now that’s skill.