Story by Lee Rennick
Photos by Erin Kosko, Lee Rennick and Ransom Jones

Tucked into the rolling hills of Lascassas, Tennessee, Ransom Jones has built a tribute space to his favorite hobby – wood working. Over the years he has supplied his shop with every tool necessary to make the fine furniture, bowls, cutting boards, boxes, doors and gun bodies from the wood he became enraptured by when he was a child. 

“First time I remember doing woodwork I was a little guy, maybe 10 or 12 years old, and my father had a stack of lumber,” Ransom shared in that singsong, matter of fact tone of a long-time storyteller drawing one into his tales. “I got ahold of it and a hammer and some nails and started driving nails into it, then much to my chagrin my dad said, ‘let me get you something else.’ I started using a saw, and then a hammer. The more I did it, the more I liked doing it.”

Exploring a Lifetime Passion

Beginning in college, Ransom started to teach himself the fine art of woodworking. As time went by, he got better and better as he took on more and more challenging projects. 

An engineer by aptitude, education and training, like any engineer he chose to read the book, read the instructions and then go do it. No lessons or YouTube videos for him. He was a professional engineer for a while after college, then he took that training to both the family business and running a family farm, but he never gave up his woodworking.

His first project was a box about three feet long and 10 inches wide with compartments that he could put in different sized nails. The first big furniture project he made was a primitive style corner cabinet, which he still has. Then he made a hutch-board. As his skills grew, his projects became more finished and more complex. His shop space becoming more expansive with the increased quality of his work. 

Eventually, he and a few woodworking friends built his current workshop from the ground up, giving it the look of being from the past. It is someplace where you could see the folks from Mayberry being very comfortable sitting by the fireplace in the mis-matched chairs shooting out tall tales on a cool evening. Andy might even pull up a guitar, sitting on the front porch swing to sing an old ballad. 

Much of the truss work is done with pegs, not nails. All of which were made from scratch, as was the staircase, and even the large back door that provides the ability to get large projects out of the building. 

Walking through the front door of the cabin-like space, it feels like stepping back into the 19th century when everything was made by hand, and quality was not only appreciated, but expected. It is, however, not only supplied with every hand tool made to do woodworking the old-fashioned way, but it also has the latest technology to make it a dash easier to work on larger pieces, and do the prep work of sawing, planing and grooving. Although, Ransom prefers to do much of the detail work by hand. 

“At first I wanted to use a lot of machinery,” he explained. “Then I discovered there was a lot of joy in hand tools. Sharp hand tools. I have a whole wood working shop that’s better than most commercial wood working shops. I’ve got wide-belt sanders and planers and all sorts of machines that you’ll find in commercial woodworking shops, or maybe you won’t find in some of them. And I’ll use them at times because they will save a huge amount of time, but on the other end I enjoy using hand tools.”

All of the intricate inlay he does by hand, sometimes he makes all the tiny inlay pieces himself, like on the cabinets he made for the kitchen of his home. Sometimes he purchases it already completed, like the trim he used on a desk he made for his son, Jennings. 

When Ransom talks of his long-time hobby, he gets that half smirk smile, and the googly faraway look of being transported into the “creative zone.” When he talks of raw fine-grained wood, passion bubbles through his words. 

“Remember the Good Friday tornado,” he asked. “Well, let me tell you, the Good Friday tornado came around and it tore down thousands of trees across Rutherford County. And so, I salvaged a bunch of storm damaged cherry and sawed it up. With that salvaged cherry I made 42 slat-backed chairs. They turned out very nice, and it was all out of Good Friday cherry.”

Inspiration and Production

“What I really found I enjoyed is 18th and 19th century antique reproductions,” said Ransom, sitting in his office-study filled with books on woodcraft, photos from travels with his sons and trophies of his adventurous life. “I’ve made stuff other than that, but that is what I really enjoy. As a matter of fact, everything in this room I have made just about -- the cabinets, the fireplace mantle -- including the floor. And the photographs as far as that goes, and printed them, and framed them. I’ve done a lot of things.”

His travels have taken him to the wilds of Montana, the peak of Mount Rainier and dogsled riding across the glaciers of Alaska with is two sons. Formerly an F-16 pilot, Ransom’s namesake oldest son currently lives in Alaska. His younger son is District Attorney General Jennings Jones, who is named after Ransom’s father. He comes from a family who has ties to Rutherford County that go back as far as the 1700s. Maybe that rich personal history is part of the reason for his affinity for furniture from that age. 

A simple cabinet will take him a few days to make, with the most time spent waiting for paint to dry and glue to cure before he can go on to the next step. However, more complex pieces, like a breakfront he made for the dining room of his home, take more time. The breakfront is one of the most involved pieces has ever made. Everything was unique and special. It took about three months to complete. 

How he completes a project depends on its scope. Some are stand-alone projects like a table, but once he chose to make 24 Queen Anne chairs at one time. They can be found all around the home he shares with his wife of more than 50 years, Wren. 

“Twenty-four was A LOT at one time,” Ransom laughed. “I found out later from professionals that they don’t make but eight at one time. There was a woodworking club, Tennessee Woodworkers Guild. They were just about all professionals who made fine craft stuff. They formed the group, and I joined it. I was a little bit of an odd ball because I did it for fun. They had a show and tell one day, and people brought slides of what they had made. So, I had slides of these 24 chairs I had made. These people were just aghast that I’d made 24 chairs at one time. They never made more than eight because it is so confusing about parts, which parts go where. You get them confused and they don’t fit, then you throw your hands up. I was kind of amused that the professionals don’t make more than eight at a time, and I made 24. I wouldn’t do it again. They were smarter than I was.”

His style of furniture is very much influenced by a trip he once made to Colonial Williamsburg, where he viewed their furniture collection many years ago. Then he saw the craftsmen there making reproductions of the museum pieces. They were one of his greatest inspirations.

According to their website, “The Colonial Williamsburg furniture collection encompasses a broad range of goods produced in Great Britain and America from the middle of the 17th century through the 1830s.” Jones borrows ideas from Shaker and American Primitive, Queen Anne and Sheraton and Louis XVI -- all of which had influence on the American Federalist style found at Colonial Williamsburg. 

Ransom learned a lot about making fine furnishings from his friend Alf Sharp. Semi-retired now, Alf is a professional woodworker with a national reputation. He still makes single commissioned pieces for those with discerning taste in finely crafted furnishings in styles ranging from historical to contemporary through his website. 

“I met Alf when the Linebaugh Library had a table made by him and I was on the library board,” Ransom explained. “I’d go visit him out in Woodbury, and I’d learn from him. That is where my fine skills developed.”

Making Furniture for Others

Over the years, Ransom has made lots and lots of furniture. For his wife. For his family. For his friends. For his church. 

“A lot of this stuff I have made is in my son’s house here in town, and also a lot of it is in Alaska with my oldest son,” noted Ransom. “In fact, most of the furniture in those houses has been stuff that I made. I also made a formal type desk for Jennings at the district attorney’s office.”
Two favorite projects include a table he made for the Milton Church of Christ, where he and his wife attend, and a table that he made for Anna Claire Tuma, the daughter of family friend Dr. Robert Tuma who grew up playing with his sons, when she graduated from the Air Force Academy.

“Making that table is an interesting story. There was a road project that Bobby Tuma’s grandfather, who was also a dentist, was against because it went through his property. It went to court, and a bunch of stuff, but in the middle of the project out in the Barfield area they took a tree down. I think it was a second road project after the grandfather was dead. It was a maple tree. A red maple. I sawed it up and it was extremely unusual. It’s got figure in it, and what’s called ambrosia, and all kinds of weird grain in there.” 

When Ransom gave Anna Claire the table, he presented her with a written story about how the old tree it was made from had long watched over her grandad’s property where it had stood, seeing births and deaths and marriages, “and all that.” He led off the story with how Anna Claire went off to the Air Force Academy, and she was able to do what few end up doing because she was smart enough, and persistent enough and because she had the “right stuff.” (He loved using these words in the story.) Then, he went on to explained that the compass rose pattern inlayed into the center of the table was symbolic of explorers finding their way, and she would be out there exploring the world flying tankers for the Air Force. 

“I have also made a lot of bowls, which is right interesting,” Ransom continued. “There are a bunch of them in the kitchen there. They are a little bit unusual. I make them because I enjoy doing them.”

The kitchen cabinets in his home were made by Ransom. He made more than 110 inlaid doors of different sizes. Each has fine hand inlay in the face of them. He worked on that project for two or three months. 

A trestle table he made for the breakfast room is unique in that the top is one solid piece of mahogany that is 12 feet long and about 42 inches wide. It is so heavy, it took four people to carry the top inside of the house from the workshop.

Walking through the Jones home, every room has pieces he has made, including side tables and storage cabinets, beds and desks. 

He also enjoys making elegant cutting boards from different kinds of wood that are all laminated together. 

“These are not the floppy wooden ones that fall apart in a week,” explained Ransom, “these are substantial. I make them and give them to special folks for various reasons. It is pretty interesting how they are put together.”

He also makes furniture with friends. He and Trey Smith made a big old farm table out of a cherry tree that fell over on Trey’s farm. Ransom added 12 of the slat back chairs he made from the Good Friday tornado cherry wood that he had saved. 

Wood is such a joy to him that in 2005 he bought a sawmill. Since that time, all of the lumber he has used to make these things has come from that sawmill. Much of the lumber he has had processed in the mill is from naturally downed trees. He has had the material dried and then stacked for future use. 

“I have piles of wood stacked up,” he shared. “I won’t live long enough to use it all. Not even close.”