About Chris

Chris Gochnour discovered the pleasure of building things by hand when he made his own skateboards and snowboards as a teenager. His enthusiasm for carving turns on a board was eventually replaced by a passion for building things out of wood and teaching others the craft. For the past 30 years he has built fine furniture for homes and office buildings throughout the Intermountain West and taught woodworking to artists, hobbyists, and woodworking professionals.

Chris is a contributing editor for Fine Woodworking magazine and has been published in the magazine over 35 times during the past two decades. Chris has authored numerous hand tool reviews and is recognized around the country as an expert on traditional building techniques. In 1998, Chris was Taunton Press’s featured guest at the Woodworking Fair in Atlanta, Georgia.

He teaches furniture making at Salt Lake Community College, the Traditional Building Skill Institute at Snow College, and the Marc Adams School of Woodworking.

Chris is the owner of The Joiners Bench, a fine furniture company that produces bench-made furniture from his studio in Salt Lake City. Chris built commissioned furniture for the Utah governor’s formal office in the Utah State Capitol and has built hundreds of commissioned works for customers over the past 30 years.

Chris loves hand tools and is nationally recognized as a preeminent hand tool expert with a passion for using, and sometimes making, planes, saws, chisels, spokeshaves, scrapers and anything else that aids in the art of fine woodworking. Something of a rag-picker, Chris takes great satisfaction from finding old and neglected hand tools and giving them a second chance at life.

When he’s not in his studio or searching for old tools, Chris enjoys walking his yellow lab, cycling along a river parkway, or skiing with his family — Jake, Rosie, Theo, and Natalie.