During the last two decades I’ve entered the orbit of many chairmakers who make Jennie Chairs (from “Make a Chair From a Tree”) and Windsor/Forest chairs. Years ago, I was in a gaggle of them, and they started talking about how little their chairs weighed.
I learned that Jennie Chairs that have been stripped down to their essence can weigh about 5 lbs. A few people have broken that barrier and gotten them below 5 lbs., but it’s apparently tricky to do it without splitting the posts during assembly.
Some Windsor/Forest chairmakers have similar obsessions with making chairs that weigh as little as possible. Because of the massive and solid seat, however, the makers I have talked with usually aspire for about 8 lbs. of material.
How much do my stick chairs weigh? I had no idea until people started asking me. Sure, I’ve shipped a bunch of them, so I know how much the crate, chair and packing material weighs (about 60 lbs.). But the chair itself? It weighs about yea much. As much as a chair made of oak, walnut or cherry should. A child, adult or aged person can move it around without too much trouble. You can pick it up. You can stand on it. It’s not made out of collapsed star material.
I didn’t know there was a contest to make the waif-iest chair possible. (Of course, I’m oblivious to sports. So it might be a personal defect – I’m missing the “competition” gene.)
Recently some Jennie Chair makers were again chatting with me about how incredibly lightweight their chairs were. One of them asked me how much my chairs weighed.
“Weight?” I replied. “Bah. What’s more important is the pH of your chair. If you don’t understand the ‘potential of hydrogen’ of your chairs, then I don’t even know what to say.”
This is why I don’t get many invitations to parties.
My chairs weigh about 15 lbs. Unless you have had surgery recently, you should be able to pick them up OK.
— Christopher Schwarz
The weighing and strength test of a Windsor/Forest chair is one of the early scenes in the movie ‘The Patriot’ 2000, starring Mel Gibson.
Thanks William, I have not seen that movie yet but now I will finally move it to the top of the list.
Your writing is like a breath of fresh air, nothing you don’t need and plenty of the stuff to keep you going in life.
If it’s anything like sports cars, lighter means more expensive. I eagerly await the first carbon fibre Stick Chair Superleggera.
A new title for an upcoming book! “Things that don’t matter”.
I don’t know what the final weight of my first chair seat will be, but the weight of the board I am using makes me worry that the chair will be pretty heavy. I don’t really build anything that starts with 8/4 boards but as I’ve been reading your books I have repeatedly asked myself if the seats really need to be that thick. But until I lose that pandemic poundage I better not push my luck.
The seat is where the chair’s strength comes from. I am hesitant to use anything thinner than 1-5/8″ for the seat.
I guess that’s final thickness (but before saddeling)?
I have an offcut of a laminated beech countertop, but it weighs a ton. And I’m not sure of its long term stability. Meh, the first one will suck anyways.
Hi Chris. In the world of backpacking, we have people affectionately know as gram weenies. I don’t think you’re too far from the Appalachian Trail, where this whole discussion is taken very seriously. Of course in backpacking, the less you bring the more fun you have. It gets extreme. Cut off the handle of your tooth brush. Spend a few grand of a 2 lb tent. You get the idea. I found your discussion of chair weights a reaffirmation of basic human nature in two worlds I’m drawn to now. Thanks for all you do.
Brilliant response! (But then, I don’t get invited to parties much, for similar reasons).
They are the same people who pay $500 for a set of ‘competition’ pedals for their road bike to reduce weight: instead of skipping desserts, and losing five pounds.
(Oh, BTW: my Windsors’ pH is always 7.0. I win!!)
I do find that “lightness” on a windsor can be important. It’s actually “thinness.” Not on the seat and undercarriage, but the upper. There’s a huge difference between a rigid upper half and a light, springy top half. All the difference in the world.
The same thing happens in other aspects of woodworking and other fields. An important skill or aspect becomes elevated to the main thing. People do this with sharpening, and there are those Japanese competitions to see who can get the longest unbroken shaving. People inherently love to find something objective in a field that is subjective so they can compete in it.
Janka ratings for chairs? Should we worry about people who design chairs for people with small steel balls?
Nice.
“It’s not made out of collapsed star material.”
It is, though! Unless you’ve figured out how to make ’em out of dark matter…in which case there’s a whole different book you should be writing (“get out your Stanley #2 vintage hand-cranked particle accelerator, or if you can’t find a good used one, Lie-Nielsen sells a lovely model for just a handful of billions of dollars…”).
https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/are-we-really-made-of-stardust.html
I’m only concerned with the chair’s Maka Hardness number. A 3lb JA chair has a Maka Hardness of eleventy Brazilian because you’re guaranteed to split the posts during assembly. On the opposite end of the scale, a boarded bench has a Maka Hardness of 25 because it takes about 10 minutes to build and you only need 2 tools: a battery operated skill saw, and a battery operated brad nailer.
Love the ph retort! I get invited all the time to parties but I know better than to go. Take two idiots, add alcohol and a dash of politics and someone’s carpet is gonna get ruined. Better to stay home and surf the web for widgets. Besides, I keep better liquor at my house.
Sounds like people with way too much time to me.
I really thought this was going to be about how “janky” my chair designs are (very high on this scale) I’m sorry stick chairs are getting weight shamed in today’s environment, I’d hoped we’d all grown beyond that.
Every weight reduction inevitably comes with some engineering cost to some other function. Stacking plastic chairs are <5lb, but we’ve probably all tested their limits. More sturdy Emeco 1006 aluminum chairs ~7lb, Maloof’s sexy sculpted low back ~24lbs, umbrella camp chairs ~7lb. And then there are the Ferraris… 699 Superleggera Chair by Gio Ponti ~3.75lb) Stick chairs are awesome, Jennie chairs are awesome, well designed chairs are awesome, chairs made from tree stumps are awesome. There is no “one chair to rule them all”
It’s always weird in any field when weight specs get overemphasized. (bicycles, sports cars, running shoes, life partners) Obviously, this is important in elite competitive instances; but if I’m riding my bike for exercise, time spent researching/buying/installing a shifter that’s a couple grams lighter would be much better spent “doing”. I’m not even sure what elite competitive chair usage would entail, but with the proper training, I think I might be in the running next year.
There’s a bird that frequents my feeder that I’ve named Janky. He has one feather that sticks straight out from his side. He tries to fight all the other birds for sole access to the bird feeder. Which is how he probably got the janky feather. He’s kind of a dick.
Around here people say Janky and Jankety. I believe they are interchangeable.
So, which is more important the PH, weight or the parties? My latest chair is made of local Maple and is the lightest one yet.
Now you have me wondering if neutron stars have bogs.
Well done, sir. I believe that you had won that bout.
pH or the chair… you made me look up what is the acidic value of oak, cherry and walnut. Seems like cherry is the most acidic of the three. Well done to the response.
I imagine that ammonia fuming to bring out the grain would raise those values.
My pecan chair is heavier than my cherry chair. Makes no difference.
But is it gluten free?????
What! You don’t measure your work by its harmonic varience?
Yes, sounds more like a sport than making a highly functional object that serves its purpose and endures.
For the bicyclists in the room, both casual and hard core, this post made me think of the Grant Petersen book, “Just Ride”. A great book. Substitute the bicycling references to woodworking references and it’s about the same idea as Chris’ post.
I came to making chairs (Jimmy Possums) from bowyering, where managing weight and moisture, and knowing how far wood can bend and not break does matter…
Okay, now I’m inspired to make a chair out of balsa wood. It will be my first.
I was wondering about that the other day and since I didn’t have a scale handy I used the bicep lift. This involves lifting the chair with one arm, forearm extended 90 degrees and carrying the chair 15 feet or so smiling at my company and without a second breath. On the “ROK Scale” this scores a 10 period.
I could ramble on but suffice to say, thank you Chris for most fun I’ve had in the shop and the best damn sit I have in the house.
Pretty soon the argument will be if your chair material is GMO. See the following article on the efforts to restore the American Chestnut.
https://thehill.com/opinion/energy-environment/3747170-that-new-chestnut-usda-plans-to-allow-the-release-of-ge-trees-into-wild-forests/
As a chemist and a woodworker, if you were at a party and you mentioned the pH of your chairs or the wood, I think I would enjoy the conversation very much. The conversation would only get better as we had more beers, discussed if wood fibers had double or triple stranded structure (DNA is double stranded and gelatin is triple stranded and I don’t know why I know this), etc, etc.