Fire, Water and Steel
Last Friday I delivered a Velda’s Rocking Chair to Patricia. It’s the first time I’d left the house in two weeks and it seemed like quite the adventure, even though it was no more than twenty minutes away. I started building the chair at Curtis Buchanan’s in February, where I spent a week building chairs and proofing his new Velda’s chair plans. We called it my bachelor’s party (Morgan and I are marrying in a couple weeks, just the two of us).
Here’s the story I wrote for Patricia:
Using an inshave to hollow a butternut seat for Patricia’s chair, I suddenly remembered how I got my first inshave:
Crouched on the ground in front of my shop, I was tending a fire that I had been stoking for two hours. Occasionally I would peer into the fire, make a disgusted face and keep stoking. A casual observer might have thought I was just some 17-year-old kid playing with fire. But serious business was afoot: I was hardening my first inshave. read more…
Trugs, Hoops and Poles
For your education and enjoyment, here are three short films of woodland crafts from British Pathe, a huge library of vintage films:
This short English video shows the making of trugs. I love the shot of the steam box. What on earth is the thing made out of?
More steaming, this time ash walking sticks in a huge vat of hot, damp sand.
From 1939, this fellow makes 500 hoops for wooden barrels each day. His shaving break and splitting break are really cool.
Steamboxes: Part 1
Do you really need a steam box? Boiling parts in water serves the same purpose as steaming and requires a simpler set-up with fewer heat-loss issues. ‘Chairmaking in High Wycombe’ references boiling of chair bows and I have bent table legs, shaker boxes and hay forks in pots or pans of boiling water. Boiling require less equipment and has fewer pitfalls than steaming (boiling water is always 212 degreees), so if your parts are small and few, boiling is probably your best bet. Only the section of your part that is being bent needs to be heated.
Heat is the primary factor effecting how well your steam box works. The box should hold a temperature of roughly 210 degree; visible steam can be much lower in temperature, so make sure to measure the box’s temperature with a meat thermometer. Cold outdoor temperatures can make it much harder to get your box up to 210. I have bent green oak with steam box temperatures as low as 180, but this is a terrible idea and leads to much more breakage and requires more effort to bend.
Boxes have 4 main parts: the insulated box itself, the racking inside, the doors and a thermometer: read more…
The Giant Maple
I visited with Curtis Buchanan last week, building Velda’s chairs and going over his new plans for the Velda’s chair. On the way to his TN home, I dropped off Tomi’s Birdcage Side Chair. Here’s a story about her chair:
Last week, I was at the lathe turning crests for a Birdcage Side Chair from some of the nicest sugar maple I’ve had in years. Turning crests is pretty easy, so my mind drifted back to the trek when I, with my love Morgan, picked up this log …
We departed NC with sacks of clothes and a two-gallon pot of popcorn for the road. We love popcorn. We spent the night at my mentor Curtis Buchanan’s house and left with a big box of chair plans for my students. We drove on though the Cumberland Gap to Berea, KY for a week with Morgan’s family, who were busy cleaning out their basement. read more…
A Day in Dave’s Shop
On my way home from a holiday visit to my future in-laws in KY, I delivered Michelle her new arm chair. Here’s a story about her chair:
As I whittled spindles for a Birdcage Arm Chair, I thought back on the day I first made spindles for the man who taught my mentor, Curtis Buchanan, to build chairs.
On my first morning working in Dave Sawyer’s shop, he asked me to shave some spindles for him. Without saying a word, he sat down at his old rickety shave horse and whittled a spindle to show me how.
At age 24 , I’d made a few spindles in my time, and figured I knew what there was to be known. But I asked a few questions and then it was my turn. I whittled a spindle and handed it to him. read more…
Greenwood Week, Women’s Chair Class & More
I have finally got my 2020 schedule finalized. I’ll be co-teaching a class with Roy Underhill at his school in September, teaching for three weeks in Bogota, Columbia in July and teaching these classes in my shop:
Continuous Arm Settee
January 27th to February 1st, 2020 – $1700
Comb Back Rocker
March 8th to 13th, 2020 – $1700 FULL
Continuous Arm Chair
May 11th to 16th, 2020 – $1500 FULL
Greenwood Week
September 14th to 18th, 2020 – $1000
Continuous Arm Chair
November 16t to 21st, 2020 – $1500
Loop Back for Women
December 7th to 12th, 2020 – $1500
Dave Sawyer’s House
Painting a Comb Back Rocker for Sandra and Joseph, my mind wandered over the distant past, and I started daydreaming about Dave Sawyer.
Dave Sawyer is my chairmaking grandfather. I learned from Curtis Buchanan, and Curtis learned from Dave. When I first visited Dave, I was 24 years old and had been building chairs for seven years. That January, I left my home in North Carolina in a flivver of a diesel pickup truck, stopping at Contra dances and woodworker’s homes along the way. The weather got colder and colder the farther north I traveled. It was a sub-zero Sunday evening, just 30 minutes from Dave’s Vermont home, and suddenly my diesel started overheating. I couldn’t believe it — Overheating! I had never been so cold in my life and my truck was overheating.
More Fancy Arm
This post continues my adventures as I figure out how to attach the arm to my copy of a 1800’s writing arm chair for Williamsburg’s Working Wood in the 18th Century conference. My first post is here if you missed it.
The old chair had the post notched to receive the arm.
I probably should have done this step before I did anything else, but it worked OK doing it now. read more…
A Fancy Arm
I am copying this 1810-1820’s KY writing arm chair for the Colonial Williamsburg symposium in January. Seth and I spent two days measuring and photographing it at Williamsburg’s furniture conservation lab, and now two months later I’m trying to piece it all back together. Today was arm day.
Looking at the original chair I found the arm completely baffling – it is curved in all planes , twists from front to back and has to fit tightly to the post in a rather precise and awkward fashion. These old chairs were build fast, with little measuring, few tools and almost no jigs. My solution needed to be fast and easy. I had no idea how the old guy did it, but today I tried to find out:
I adjusted the tracing to make it match measurements I made (getting accurate tracings of curved objects isn’t easy), then I cut out the pattern
Hewing a behemoth bowl/Comb Back class
My greenwood week students are making small bowls this week and I promised them I would post this video of a German dude making a small bowl. I just watched it again for fun:
The tools in the windowsill are very similar to what a chairmaker would use for carving seats – the inshave is very similar to what I use, though his is about worn out.
Beer and schnaps for lunch, anyone?
Peter Follansbee told me not to store my axe in the hewing block, I think. Why? I don’t remember. This dude isn’t listening to Peter. Pay attention mister! (12:15)
The trick happens at the 12:30 mark – but I won’t spoil it for you. I would never have thought to try it.
He’s got some rather impressive axe control. He doesn’t use much else. 15:20
Do any of you spit in your hands? I find the idea slightly disgusting, but I think I’ll have to try it. 18:55
At 19:30 he uses the hand adz with a pulling/swinging motion I’ve never seen.
About 10 years ago my clogging team went to a folk festival in Brazil to preform in a little town first settled by Germans in the 1840. Apearently the population boomed again in the 1940’s as Nazis fled WWII. Most people still spoke German as well as Portuguese and ate German food. We were put up in a school with the German marching band from Germany and we listened to them play for hours on end, whether we wanted to or not. The end of the film brought back memories of parties with lots of cheap beer and Caipirinhas, old German dudes flirting with my young clogging friends and lots of dancing.
Comb Back Rocker Class
There seems to be plenty of interest in a Comb back class so I’ve booked one in March. More info on my teaching page. Also, the settee class just had a cancellation, so there is a spot available again.
