Teen builds award-winning chair

Hannah Gross
NLJ Correspondent 
 
Many kids showed their talent for craftsmanship at the 2021 Weston County Fair through their static exhibits, and Connor Stolhammer’s wooden deck chair secured ribbons for both champion woodworking and overall craftsmanship. Guided by his dad, Lucas, the 14-year-old had fun building the chair while also learning an important skill set. 
“It’s fun to do, and it’s a good thing to know how to do,” Connor said. 
The idea to build the chair came from Lucas, who had already built one of pine wood. One day as Lucas and Connor were looking for firewood, they found some cedar trees and decided to make two more chairs. 
“All this wood came from a couple miles from our house,” Connor said. 
Not long after the project was started last winter, Connor said, it was put on the back burner for some time. When fair week was approaching, son and father thought it would be fun to finish the chair together and enter it into the fair. 
A friend of theirs, Bob Martin, converted the tree into boards, and the process of sanding, routing and staining began. Lucas has done many woodworking projects in the past, and Connor said he couldn’t have done it without him. 
“Dad’s good at it, and he helped a fair amount with it,” Connor said. “It would have been a lot more challenging if Dad hadn’t helped.” 
He said dealing with cracked wood was a challenge that made it difficult, but in the end, it all came together. By July, it was finished. Evidently, the judges thought so too when they awarded the chair with two ribbons. 
After the county fair was over, Stolhammer’s chair qualified to go on to the Wyoming State Fair, where it earned a purple ribbon. Now that the fairs are over, he plans to put it next to the first one his dad made as a deck chair. Overall, Connor said he enjoyed woodworking with his dad and hopes to do more projects in the future. 
“I think it’d be fun to do something like that again,” Connor said.