A few days ago I picked up the spikes for my new lathe from blacksmith Peter Ross. He seemed to enjoy making them: “People don’t want work this rough very often, but I was trained to make reproductions like this.”…
Blog Archives
Building a Dominy Springpole Lathe
Last fall I had the joy of spending a couple hours in the Dominy shop at Winturtur to measure their Springpole Lathe. I’ve finally started building a copy of it, for use in the book on early 19th Century chairmaking…
Posted in Built for Speed Book Project, Sprinpole Lathe
How many Hours to Build a Chair?
This is one of the most popular questions I get asked. I never know how to answer it. Usually I say, “About 30 hours for a Continuous Arm chair, including 8 coats of finish.” But the truth is I haven’t…
Posted in Built for Speed Book Project
I Spoke Too Soon
In the months after I last posted about my book project, I read what remains of Samuel Wing’s account books and spent some time comparing measurements. I compared my tracings and measurements of the red loop back labeled “WING” at…
Posted in Built for Speed Book Project
Bending Dents – What do they Mean?
I’ve started getting my act together for my book project and I have a couple puzzles to figure out. As a reminder, I’m building two-dozen copies of this chair in Independence Hall’s collection, hopefully in about 140 hours: The…
Posted in Built for Speed Book Project
I’m Writing a Book
I just got back from a three week trip, equal parts vacation, research trip and photography experiment. Last winter I signed a book contract about early 19th. Century chairmaking with Lost Art Press. This trip was the first step on…
Posted in Built for Speed Book Project
