Free Livecast on Stick Chairs on Aug. 22

Y’all know how much I love to do videos (truthfully, I’d rather eat a hairball). So at 1 p.m. Eastern on Aug. 22, Megan and I will put on a live webcast from the shop that will transform the way you think about chairs forever (not really, we’re just going to answer some questions and show some techniques).

In addition to answering reader questions about chairs, I will unveil two techniques that have never been seen before on the face of this planet during the last 1,000 fortnights (actually, they’re quite well-known among chairmakers).

I’ll show you how I ream mortises in chair seats using an electric drill plus the Lee Valley standard reamer. Most students ream too hard and too fast, resulting in a cooked reamer and a burnished mortise. I’ll also demonstrate how I sharpen the reamer after every few chairs. This obscure and frequently secreted sharpening technique will literally blow the front of your skull off (OK, you’d probably come up with it yourself eventually).

If you have a question about stick chairs – how they are made, how they sit, the woods used, etc. – please send that question to Megan using email: fitz@lostartpress.com. Please use the subject line: “Megan, I prostrate myself for a morsel of truth” so she can keep it separate from the 600 other pleading emails she gets every day. Please submit your question before the end of the day on Friday, Aug. 20, so we have time to go through them all and write considered responses (really, we’ll just pick the ones we can make fart jokes about).

The livestream will be broadcast here. We will also provide a reminder on Sunday. After the livestream is over, we will archive it so anyone who missed it can watch it.

Also, we are selling a digital version of “The Stick Chair Book” here for $25. We don’t normally release a book like this, but paper shortages have changed our industry. Our next book might be have to be released on papyrus or on Arby’s wrappers.

— Christopher Schwarz