by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 21, 2018 | Classes | 0 Comments
Seth (resident toolmaker, rivings splitter, cook and nice guy) suggested I run a two week class, from log to paint. Since my new Greeenwood Week is filling up, I figured I might as well try this too. I've been building a spring-pole lathe and intend to park it in my...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 11, 2018 | Craft Films | 2 Comments
César's Bark Canoe, Bernard Gosselin, provided by the National Film Board of Canada A follower of this blog sent me the link to this video about a Native American making a canoe with a dozen tools and four materials: birch bark he strips from a large birch tree, cedar...
by Elia Bizzarri | Nov 20, 2018 | Antique Chairs | 0 Comments
My girlfriend and I went up to Brandywine, PA over July 4th to visit friends. One day we walked to a 19th C. three story milk barn that had been converted to an enormous used book store. I spent more time looking at chairs than I did books - they had over a dozen...
by Elia Bizzarri | Nov 2, 2018 | Classes | 0 Comments
I've been wanting to try this class for a while now and this year I finally decided to take the plunge. Roy Underhill used to teach a class like this at his school and I always enjoyed the day when I'd go and 'help', which mostly involved watching students work and...
by Elia Bizzarri | Oct 28, 2018 | Chair Stories | 2 Comments
Last week my sweetheart Morgan delivered the last four loop backs in a set of six loop backs and two sack backs. Who knew four chairs would fit in a Prius! Here's the story I wrote about the chairs: I was off recently to buy a white oak log for a set of loop...
by Elia Bizzarri | Oct 5, 2018 | Craft Films | 4 Comments
The Chairmaker and the Boys, , provided by the National Film Board of Canada Since my last post I found this fictional video from 1959 of a couple boys playing at Ernest Hart's mill and chair shop. The shop seems to have been cleaned out somewhat for the film,...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 24, 2018 | Craft Films | 3 Comments
This well shot, if rather hokey video shows a post-and-rung chairmaker at work in his water powered shop. It looks like he also cards wool, weaves baskets, does some wagon wheel work, smiths... His lathe looks to be a pattermaker's lathe similar to mine, with a...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 6, 2018 | Classes | 0 Comments
I must apologize; I've been dilatory with my blog posts the last couple months. I've been busy building two sheds off my shop, one off the front for outdoor shaving-horse work and one off the back for Seth to set up for tool manufacturing. We've also put down about...
by Elia Bizzarri | Jul 2, 2018 | Chairmaking Tools and Supplies, Classes, How-To | 4 Comments
I recently posted about drill bit varieties for chairmaking and got a number of comments about Wood Owl bits. I had never used them, but someone kindly sent me a couple to try. Here's what I found: There is no such thing as a perfect bit. Designing a drill bit is a...
by Elia Bizzarri | Jun 14, 2018 | Craft Films | 0 Comments
Starting in the the linden forests of Russia, this video follows the making of nesting dolls from tree to paint. From what I could find on the internet this is still a localized craft industry in Russia, like so many trades were in England and...
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