German Rakemaker

by | Aug 20, 2022 | 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 opportunity to get in a rhythm carving seats, but it’s getting faster and better – I’ve got it down to around a half hour per seat, minus the scraping and sanding. 

In my downtime I’ve been watching Youtube videos.  I re-discovered this rake making video last night – I  love making rakes and pitchforks and have sold them sporadically to museums and re-enacators over the last 20 years.  I live in America’s plentiful forest, so I start with a huge log just like American tool makes have done for 200 years (and how Drew Langsner’s book taught me).  Europeans often have a different take. This video is from 1978 Germany and shows the making of an angled, two-sided rake such as I had never seen before:

They start out in the fields cutting saplings.  I love their steaming setup for straightening the saplings (I won’t spoil it for you).  Then they head to a very nice shop for some indoors work. 

Roy Underhill would be happy to see him waxing his saw blade – I’ll always remember Roy going from bench to bench with a block of mutton tallow, greasing all the saw blades and offering encouragement as students cut out their seat blanks.  

I’ve never seen someone loosen a holdfast by hitting the end under the bench – what’s that about? 

I love how they can eyeball all the hole angles, even though random-seeming handles will go into into the holes.  Do all trees grow branches at the same angle?  Probably not.


Photos of my chairs-in-progress:

 

 

 

 

 
 
 
Subscribe
Notify of

2 Comments
Newest
Oldest
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
David Jones
1 year ago

Elia’s Chair One-Person Factory. Holy moley, that’s a lot of chairs!

Sylvain
1 year ago

“I’ve never seen someone loosen a holdfast by hitting the end under the bench – what’s that about? “
Probably because the head was too low due to holding a thin piece and the hole in the workbench has grown a bit too large.
I have done this 55 years ago but I didn’t knew I was supposed to hit the back of the holdfast head.

Subscribe to Elia's Blog

Search the Blog

Donate

If you enjoy this blog and would like to donate, click the link below. Thanks!

Archives