Bill Houghton, Sebastopol, CA
We're just back from a week at Calaveras Big Trees State Park, in California's Gold Country (link below, for those who want to see some nice, accessible, stands of Sequoia redwoods). The picnic table at our site had a very obvious recent "repair" on one of the benches: one edge had a bevel about a foot long, fading in and out of the weathered surfaces, where, it was quite clear, the wood had splintered and been smoothed off. The work was nicely done, and clearly not done with power tools. Looking at the bevels and other features of the surfaces, I thought I saw drawknife work, and quality drawknife work at that. Certainly not a power tool.

I was tempted to track down the maintenance staff to ask if that's what they had used for the repair, but it would have generated a serious case of eye-rolling on my bride's part.

There were bears in the park - two of our neighbors suffered from chewed up tablecloths, apparently from food residue on the tablecloths - so I suppose it could have been bear-claw smoothing, but probably not.