by Elia Bizzarri | Apr 3, 2023 | Craft Films | 4 Comments
One of my readers sent me this video. It's from 1964 Sweden, of an old fellow making a spinning wheel. The film is beautifully shot and silent, so you can can choose your own soundtrack. There's a lot of great parts, but my favorite is the boring and...
by Elia Bizzarri | Feb 20, 2023 | Built for Speed Book Project, Classes | 5 Comments
Last week I had four friends over for a trial run of a class set in the year 1803, building a copy of Samuel Wing's loop back chair. It was a great week. We all learned a lot, none more than me. Thanks to Damon O'Gan for the black-and-white photos below: We split,...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 29, 2022 | Classes | 0 Comments
For the first time in three years, I am teaching a chair class. Or really a chair-and-table class. I'm co-teaching with my friend Eric Cannizzaro for two weeks at Penland in the NC mountains. Come spend your days building chairs and your evenings watching the...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 20, 2022 | Chairs For Sale | 1 Comment
About eight years ago I taught a class at The Woodwright's School. That wasn't anything new - I've been teaching there twice a year for over a decade now. One of my students in that class built this chair - entirely with hand tools, of course. That's...
by Elia Bizzarri | Dec 11, 2022 | Antique Chairs, Finishing | 14 Comments
I got some photos back from my photographer of a reproduction chair I made for a collector in Kentucky, who owns the original of this chair. It is the only signed Windsor chair from KY known to exist, made near Lexington KY between about 1810 and 1830. The old chair...
by Elia Bizzarri | Oct 8, 2022 | Spoon Bits | 0 Comments
I got a bunch of questions about using spoon bits. Here's the answers to a few of them. How do you get the spoon bit to start where you want it? My favorite answer is to adjust your expectations. But there are some tips that will give you more...
by Elia Bizzarri | Sep 21, 2022 | Classes | 6 Comments
"I was talking with Dave Sawyer last week and I asked him if you could go work with him. He said 'yes.'" I was standing in Curtis Buchanan's garden, helping him pick vegetables. I had been apprenticing with Curtis for six years and he was worried that I was...
by Elia Bizzarri | Aug 26, 2022 | Classes | 1 Comment
My blacksmith friend Peter Ross called last week. "I bought a couple lathes in an auction. Could you help me move them this afternoon?" This can be a fearsome request, for Peter has a habit of buying machinist lathes weighing in the thousands of...
by Elia Bizzarri | Aug 20, 2022 | Craft Films | 2 Comments
Morgan and I got back from a west-coast vacation a couple weeks ago and I've been carving seats and gluing up chairs ever since. I've got 18 undercarriages together and 22 to go. I might switch to putting backs on for variety. I've never had a...
by Elia Bizzarri | Jul 5, 2022 | Chairmaking Tools and Supplies | 3 Comments
I've been turning a lot lately. Five weeks ago I got an order for 40 chairs (28 loop backs and 12 Continuous Arm chairs) for a Michigan hunting camp's dining hall. I've turned 250 legs, arm stumps and center stretchers on my 1800# pattermaker's lathe. Seth...
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