His mother died when he was young and his father spent much of the year away from home, so he was raised by an uncle, to whom he was apprenticed at age 13. "I was two or three years younger than the other apprentices, and I hurt myself with the knife a lot because I wasn't as strong as they were.
由於母親早逝，父親經年在外工作，李松林自幼與二伯父同住，十三歲正式拜二伯父為師，「比起同門師兄弟，我小了二、三歲，力氣輕不能靈活運刀，往往為刻好木作而負傷纍纍，不過刻的東西並不輸人。」