Greenwood, Rocker and Wheelbarrow classes
Comb back rocker
I am feeling indecisive and I need your help. Are you interested in taking a Comb Back Rocker class? Or building a wheelbarrow with me and Peter Ross? Or taking my new Greenwood week class? Then take a minute and help me pick the dates.
Thanks!
Settee class and other Excitement
I am finally getting around to posting my first class of next year – a Continuous Arm Settee class from January 27th to February 1st, 2020. I taught this a couple years ago and the waitlist was a mile long, so here it is again. Plus I need a settee for my living room (someone bought the one I had as a Christmas present last year).
Since some of the parts have to be made at home, this is only open to returning students.
You can find more info on my teaching page.
Seth and I just got back from Colonial Williamsburg last week, where we spent two days measuring this writing arm chair they have in their collection. We will copy the chair and then present on what we learned at the “Working Wood in the 18th Century” conference in January. I’m really excited to get to spend so much time learning how to build this old chair. The joinery is pretty wild!
“Growth, Mentorship and Joyfulness”
Sangjie Zhaxi is a documentary studies student at Duke University who spent a semester in my shop, taking photos and talking about his life in Tibet. His grandparents in the countryside of Tibet were woodworkers and lived a simple life making many things by hand.
Sometimes I feel that I have a rather selfish job, doing something I love producing something that doesn’t feed the poor, prevent diseases, end wars or fight racism. Narrated by Sangjie’s soothing voice, this video slideshow makes me feel a little better:
Drying Green Chair Seats
I got a load of green white pine seats a few months ago and Seth and I stacked them for drying. Here’s what we did:
The pine on the trailer. These came from the sawmill with the ends sealed with end-grain sealer (a wax emulsion), but otherwise I would paint the ends myself. The sooner you paint them, the more effective the sealer is.
Minding the Base: We were using our brick patio to stack on for the first time, but you can also make piers out of cinder blocks or piles of wood. The piers need to be off the ground, completely straight and big enough that they won’t sink into the ground when you put a couple thousand pounds of wet wood on them.
Walnut Heaven
Cara had been looking for a rocker her size for ten years. I made her a Comb Back Rocker one thickness of Nancy Evans’ ‘American Windsor Chairs’ shorter than it’s usual height, put simpler hand-holds on it and made the seat of walnut. Walnut seats on traditional chairs are not my thing (I feel like the seat is screaming ‘look at me!’), but long ago I decided that I would take any order that I enjoyed building so I took happily took this one. While I was carving the walnut I had second thoughts, but maybe I’ll make some with butternut seats and see if they sell.
Comb back rocker
Here’s how I got that piece of walnut:
It was the biggest walnut tree I had ever seen, laying there in someone’s back yard, dead. Acting on instinct alone, I slammed on my brakes and sent a torrent of apples and herbs shooting out of the grocery bag onto the truck floor. But what did I care for apples?
I knocked on the door of the closest house and a man answered.
“Do you know who owns that tree down in the yard back there? I’m a chairmaker and I might be interested in it.” I’ll admit that was quite an understatement. read more…
German Wheelwright Videos
As I mentioned in a previous post, I’ve been searching for old wheelwright videos. I only found a couple of interest, until I started searching for “Radmacher” and other applicable German words. Score! It makes me wonder how many wonderful videos must be out there, if I only knew all the right language.
To my joy, this old German man seems to be making a wheelbarrow wheel. Somewhat more complicated than mine, but a wheelbarrow wheel none the less:
Is he slopping water onto his mortises and tenons at 5:08? I think I’ve seen old rake-makers dip their tines into water before driving them into the head…I wonder what the water does. I guess I’ll have to try it. read more…
Wheelwright Videos
I’ll be teaching a weelbarrow-making class with Peter Ross the blacksmith next month (there’s still a couple spots left) and we’ll be making the wheels too. I know little about making wheels, but luckily Peter knows quite a bit, having worked at Colonial Williamsburg for over 20 years. Roy Underhill once said that a wheel is simply a ladder wrapped into a circle. Well, I’ve made a ladder….
I’ve been hunting for old wheelwright videos, with limited success. This one, poetically narrated by a fellow who missed his calling as a Shakespearean actor, depicts a English wheelwright’s shop in 1970:
read more…
Glen and Eli
Life’s been busy here. Two classes in April (one here and one at Roy Underhill’s) and a two week class at Penland the end of May means I’ve turned about 200 chair parts in the last month. Morgan and I have put in a garden here. I made my first wheelbarrow wheel yesterday in preparation for my class with Peter Ross in June. I’d post photos, but somehow I’ve lost my camera.
All this means I’ve been holding onto a story for a few weeks, forgetting to publish it. I delivered three loop backs to John and Lynne, to match a chair they bought last year. Here’s their story:
“He can build anything.” “He’s the nicest guy.” I’d heard about Glen Schultz years before I met him.
I was looking for someone to help build my shop, so I drove over to meet Glen. His shop is down a long gravel driveway. As I approached, neatly-stacked piles of lumber towered over the driveway. He stopped his sawmill, walked over to my truck and I introduced myself. read more…
Learning Wood
I love learning about trees and wood. Wood is both one of human’s simplest and most complex raw materials; anyone with an ax can ‘mine’ wood, yet wood’s chemical structure is so complex that there are many mysteries that still defy science.
I have been reading Forest Products and Wood Science: An Introduction, 484 pages of extremely dull reading. Page 46 for example: “Fujita and Harada (1991) describe cellulose microfibrils in a very straightforward manner, describing them as consisting of a ‘core crystalline region of cellulose surrounded by the paracrystalline [less highly ordered] cellulose and short chain hemicellulose.'” Yikes! read more…
Pitch Forks
Curtis Buchanan called last week. We talked of our class schedules, springpole lathes (we are both building one) and the book Curtis is reading Craeft: An Inquiry into the Origins and True Meaning of Traditional Crafts. Curtis is persuasive; I have bought the book and am now on the third chapter about haymaking. read more…