We make sliding bevels here at Crucible Tool, and we love them. But you don’t need them for making chairs.
Once when I couldn’t find my sliding bevel, I made some blocks of wood with fixed angles sawn on the ends. These guided my drill bit while making mortises. A few years later, I saw an improvement on the idea in a photo of someone’s shop (I cannot remember where). These doo-dads (shown above) were in the background – I don’t think they were even discussed in the article. But they are brilliant.
It’s basically a piece of wood (3/4” x 1-1/2” x 5” or so) with a groove plowed down the middle. The groove is the same width as the thickness of hardboard (usually 1/8” thick). Then you cut the desired angles onto the ends of bits of hardboard and slide them into the grooves.
The wooden base keeps the tool stable. The removable hardboard means you can swap out angles for different chairs. The two stationary bevels shown in the photo above do all the leg angles for the staked armchair in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” plus about half the chairs in “The Stick Chair Book.”
The nice thing about these stationary bevels is they don’t lose their setting when you drop them off the bench.
— Christopher Schwarz
DIY speed square! I actually have one similar to that at 14°. Why 14°? because 3:12 pitch is 14.03624° and a 3:12 pitch is a nice angle for saw-horse legs and simple stuff. I find that the more carpentry I do (Not furniture. You can set chair legs/spindles which should be pleasing to the eye and comfortable to the body) having simple ratios you can mark with a framing square or calculate board length without a calculator is awfully convenient. 1:3, 1:4 and 3:4 ratios are probably the most convenient.
Question: I attached my luan (you used hardboard which is a better choice. I may rebuild next project) BEFORE I cut the angle. That gives me an edge where I can continue a mark onto the side for layout… But that’s probably more useful to carpenters? Is there a time where having the grooved base block ends at an angle would be useful for stick chair framing?
What if the angled 1/8″ cards were glued into the block with the end grain cut at a similar angle, it could be set on the angle edge and the drill bit up against the block at the 90″ of the block and card ? {for us who can’t drill a straight hole at any angle to save our skin?} Would that be any better?
I’ve not yet made a chair, but years ago I made a piece that had some odd angles. I made two wooden ‘tri-squareish’ things more or less following Chris’s method for 90 degree wooden squares. Didn’t take much time and was much simpler than wrangling a bevel square.
I use something similar but i don’t even bother with the grooved block. Just a spring clamp will hold it. Then you drill a hole in the angled piece of wood and hang it on your wall.
I have used a 6″ chunk of 2×4 with the angle cut on the end. it worked but I was not real happy with it. I will give this a try.
Slapping my forehead again. These “Cheap(er)” suggestions are brilliant, Thank you. I’m still a bit intimidated at the prospect of tackling a chair project, would you suggest working through some of the “The Anarchist’s Design Book” projects to get some experience?
I would suggest building the staked saw bench. You can easily adapt the proportions to make a stool or a flower pot stand or whatever if you don’t need saw benches. It teaches you all the basics of simpler staked furniture and many of the things you will need for chairs as well. And you can easily build a pair in a weekend using only hand tools.
Claus, I felt the same way. I built the high stool in the design book and then I built a chair. It isn’t that hard and I am really new to woodworking.
Genius… thank you sir.
And if you apply a generous application of beeswax on the bottom you’ve made yourself a stationary sliding bevel!
I love these little suggestions. It’s just another example of the concept of relative dimensioning. Cut once and never measure again.
“Show this piece to that one…”
Same general approach should work as a dovetail marking guide, right?
I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks at some of the commercial jigs and references and says “You know, I could build that. Even if it’s worth having, would buying it save me enough time to be worth the cost?
Yup!
I like it. Your Crucible bevel definitely looks nicer though. I have noticed how when you get a complaint (or many complaints) about your tools or your suggestions for tools being too expensive it really turns your brain into overdrive finding helpful alternatives. Thanks for the tip.
Hi, will you be publishing the final collection of Chairmaking on the cheap” articles in a single PDF on the Lost Art Press website?
I appreciate the magnifying of the simple and cheap…i mean high function to value ratio….
Do you have different angles on each end of the hardboard piece?
Yes
it seems the angle written on the board is not what is left but what has been sawn off. I understand the logic but it was disturbing at first.
I suspect it’s a matter of which side your plans are specifying for that project or that kind of project. You could of course write both numbers, to save yourself the effort of subtracting from 90 on the fly.
Hey! I’ve done that when making a tote with compound angled sides. I just cut two blocks with the angles I wanted. The other nice thing about the blocks is that you can use them to hold the work pieces at the correct angle when you are laying out and transferring marks from one piece to the other.