Sorting out the intricacies of any science or technology is often a recipe for confusion. Most of the experts can’t escape the details of complex formulas and mathematical calculations. Often, they are hard-pressed to translate all of that into practical applications.
Thankfully, Gene Wengert was not like that, which makes us doubly sad to learn of his death.

Over the more than 30 years I knew Gene, I always enjoyed chatting with him and watching him interact with other woodworkers. His relaxed manner, friendly sense of humor, and genuine joy in making sense of wood technology for the non-technical-minded were all a breath of fresh air.

And this industry really needed it. So many people who work daily with wood really don’t understand some of the most important principles of this material. I remember one of the very first calls I got when I took over the job as editor of Fine Woodworking magazine in 1992. It was from a furniture manufacturer in Florida. He was making dining tables and shipping them all over the country. But he was getting callbacks frequently when the breadboard ends on his tables blew up with changes in humidity. He called me because he wanted to know what kind of glue he could use to hold those breadboard ends together.

I told him it wasn’t a glue problem. It was how he made the joinery and not allowing for the natural wood movement. Wood moves. Constantly. And too many woodworkers don’t understand that.

Gene spent more than 50 years trying to educate woodworkers — pros and hobbyists alike — to understand how the material they love is so different from things like metal and plastic. I used to joke with him that I could do his job because every answer to every question was the same: moisture content.

Of course, that’s oversimplifying it, and what Gene did that I could never do was translate all the technical mumbo jumbo into practical applications. What kind of tooling do you need? What do you do to get good glue joints? How do you dry lumber to avoid defects? 

His laptop was full of answers to questions like that, and he could put a hundred presentations together just on fielding common questions, always answering with actionable advice.

Gene loved teaching and sharing his knowledge. He also was a hobby woodworker himself. When his cancer diagnosis first came up, he was concerned about an unfinished rocking chair he had started but was not up to finishing. We found a shop to help him get that done. That’s what Gene was all about, helping others find solutions to get things done.

As so much of his information is timeless, he asked us to continue running his columns in memoriam, but I know many people, myself included, will miss not being able to just call him up and work through a challenging wood question over the phone.