Join via Zoom (if you can’t make it to Bloomington, Ind., in person) at 6 p.m. Eastern on May 24, for the 2024 Rosemary Miller Lecture, this year celebrating the life and work of Nancy Hiller (1959-2022).
Duncan Campbell will speak about Nancy and her deep commitment to historic preservation, her superb writing and woodworking, and her all-around excellence.
Click here for the Zoom link; the Meeting ID is: 890 1289 0971; the Passcode is 482124.
The following is excerpted from Vol. IV of “The Woodworker, The Charles H. Hayward Years, The Shop & Furniture.” This fourth book in our “Woodworker” series covers three different topics:
1) The Workshop, including the design and construction of workbenches, tool chests and wall cabinets. There’s also an entire section devoted to “appliances,”which are workshop accessories such as shooting boards.
2) Furniture & its Details, includes a discussion of all the important Western furniture styles, including their construction, mouldings and metal hardware. This section also includes the construction drawings for many important and famous pieces of furniture examined by Charles H. Hayward during his tenure at The Woodworker magazine.
3) Odds & Sods. In addition to offering its readers practical information for the shop, The Woodworker also asked it subscribers to think about the craft and its place in modern society. We have included many of our favorite philosophical pieces in this final section.
Although a back may not call for the high finish that is necessary for, say, a cabinet door, it needs to be strongly made and of a type to suit the particular job. “Craftsman” discusses here some of the points to be considered when deciding just what kind of back a job is to have. —Ed.
I am afraid that many of us are inclined to let the backs of our cabinets take pot luck, as the saying goes. We make a job, say, in oak, possibly putting in oak drawer sides, and backs, but hesitate before going to the expense of oak for the back. The reason (or excuse, however you happen to look at it) is that it is seldom seen, has little or no wear to withstand, and that, since the cheap back answers the purpose just as well, it is clearly a waste to spend money on an expensive one.
Well, it is logical enough up to a point, and, providing that it is merely the material that is cheapened and not the method that is worsened, no great harm is done. In fact, there are many pieces of quite light woodwork in which a heavily built back seems almost out of place. Still, it is nice to have a piece of work in which nothing has been skimped, and the argument that a cheap back answers the purpose as well as a better one may not necessarily hold good, as we shall see later. The safe plan is to consider each piece on its merits, and give it the best back that it is worth.
BACKS OF OLD FURNITURE
If one goes back into the past one comes across some curious anomalies. Many of the antiques of the Queen Anne and mahogany periods of which we think so highly had wretched backs. I myself spent a good many years in a repair shop, and I can speak feelingly of the hours I devoted to gluing strips of canvas across gaping splits in panels and across open knot holes. I have seen a mahogany chest of drawers of the Chippendale period with magnificent show work—serpentine shaped drawers, fine carving, and so on—with a back consisting of pieces of 1/4 in. pine nailed across. An extraordinary inconsistency. Apart from its having no strength, the whole thing was bound to shrink and split.
Yet when we come to that much abused period of Victoria, we find exactly the reverse. Probably no finer cabinet backs have ever been fitted into furniture. Open the door of one of those huge Victorian wardrobes (there are plenty of them knocking about in seaside boarding houses). You will find the mirror back more strongly made than many a modern wardrobe door, and the carcase back a finely panelled framework often with moulded stiles or flush panels.
Perhaps one reason why there has been a tendency to fit lighter backs since Victorian times (apart from the all-round cheapening of materials and construction) is the introduction of plywood. It seems such an obvious use for ply, a material which is free from shrinkage and obtainable in such large sizes. Undoubtedly it is perfectly suitable for the purpose, providing the carcase is strong in itself, and does not rely upon the back to make it rigid.
TYPES OF BACKS
There are various considerations that affect the choice of a cabinet back. There is, for instance, the question of size. A single sheet of 3/16 in. plywood might make an excellent back for a little cupboard, say, 15 ins. high, but would obviously be absurd for a wardrobe. Apart from this, however, the first consideration should be: does the job rely upon the back for strength, or will the back serve merely to enclose a space? Fig. 1 shows the idea. At A the back is needed to prevent racketing and to stiffen the carcase generally. At B, however, the carcase is already strong, and only a light back is needed.
In the latter connection, of course, it is sometimes an advantage to build in the back with the carcase. Items such as sideboards are often made in this way. As a general rule, however, it is better to make the back separately, because it simplifies the subsequent fitting-up.
THE PANELLED BACK
For a thoroughly strong back the panelled type is undoubtedly the most satisfactory. It is perfectly rigid and is free from all shrinkage complications. It should always be used for pieces such as cupboards with large, heavy doors, which are particularly liable to distortion unless provided with a stiff back.
Fig 2 shows the usual form. The whole thing is put together with mortise and tenon joints, and the panels are grooved in. One point to note is that if there is a shelf in the cupboard, the middle cross rail should be arranged opposite to it if possible. It may not always be practicable, of course, but the advantage is that it gives a level surface against which the back of the shelf can face (see B, Fig 3). If this is not done there will be gaps opposite the panels as shown at A.
The same difficulty sometimes occurs in a bookcase or similar item, but owing to the large number of shelves it is not practicable to arrange for many horizontal rails. The better plan is that in Fig 4, in which the panels are flush with the framework at the inside. It necessitates fairly thick panels, of course, but it gives a far neater result than cutting out the back edge of the shelf to fit.
MUNTIN BACKS
A somewhat distant relative of the panelled back is the muntin type. It is nowhere near as strong, and is rather a doubtful member of the family. Like some relations, you can’t deny them (and they are useful sometimes), but you are a little shy about mentioning them in the best circles. It consists of a series of uprights, say 3/4 in. or 7/8 in. thick grooved at the edges to take thinner panels, as shown in Fig. 5. The ends of the muntins are cut away as shown inset, so that the panels can be fixed directly to the back of the carcase. Now, as the panels are generally about 9—10 ins. wide, and of deal, it is inevitable that a certain amount of shrinkage will take place. Consequently it is a mistake to drive in nails right across the width because the wood would split in the event of shrinkage. The better plan is that in Fig. 6 in which nails are driven in near the centre only. The edges extending into the muntin grooves are free so that they can draw out. Note that the heart side is outwards so that the free ends are pressed tightly against the carcase by the natural twisting tendency of the wood.
If, owing to the presence of a number of shelves, it is desirable for the back to be entirely flush on the inside, the muntins can be rebated instead of grooved as shown in Fig. 7. The beads along the rebates are not entirely decorative, but they serve to render the gaps less noticeable in the event of the panels shrinking. All these details about shrinkage apply only when solid wood is used, of course. In the case of plywood it does not matter.
Speaking of plywood brings us to another variation of the muntin back. In its simplest form the plywood back is nothing more than a sheet of plywood nailed or screwed in a rebate. For quite light jobs this is satisfactory enough, but to give a neat finish the back in Fig. 8 is better. A series of grooved and rounded horizontals is screwed on. They can be arranged level with the shelves as shown. The plywood panels fit between them in the grooves. For a flush effect the rails can be rebated instead of being grooved (see D).
DRESSER BACKS
These are really in a class by themselves, for although they could be applied to pieces such as wardrobes, they are not so strong as a panelled back. One of two methods can be followed. That shown in Fig. 9 has the advantage of simplicity. The back is really a series of matched boards, tongued one into the other, with either a bead or a V worked at the joints. The boards are screwed or nailed directly to the top and shelves, and at the bottom to a rail specially fitted for the purpose. In the second method, Fig. 10, wide grooved rails are screwed at top and bottom and the matching fitted in the grooves. The wide rails give rigidity, the matching merely filling the space, so to speak. It can be either very thin as at A, or it can be stouter, the ends being tongued as at B.
Incidentally, a detail applying to all backs of any thickness is that the rebates in the ends should slope as shown at A, Fig. 11. If this is not done the projecting portion is liable to curl as shown at B.
If you, too, would like to get bunny ears from Chris while making a chair in our shop, log in to our ticketing site at noon (Eastern) today. Signups go live for:
Build an Irish Armchair with Christopher Schwarz (Aug. 12-16)
and
Build a Welsh-style Comb-back Chair with Christopher Schwarz (Sept. 30-Oct. 4)
– Fitz
I find this difficult to believe…but it must be true. Chris and I have never flown to a place to teach concurrent classes. Or flown concurrently to different places to teach classes. But it is finally happening: Chris and I are both presenting at the London International Woodworking Festival (London, England – not London, Ky.) on Saturday, Nov. 2, and we’re both teaching classes before the festival…which means I had to break down and buy my own hard-sided case in which to pack my tools for the flight. No more borrowing Chris’s Pelican. Or his tools while teaching, as our courses run at the same time.
Chris is teaching a 5-day class in making a Comb-Back Stick Chair (Oct, 28-Nov. 1), and I am teaching a 3-day class (Oct. 30-Nov. 1) in making a Dutch Tool Chest. You can see a full list of all the courses on the Festival website.
– Fitz
p.s. Yes of course I was tempted to title this “Anarchy in the U.K.” (I used to have the T-shirt…thought I was cool. Was not.)
The following is excerpted from “The Stick Chair Book,” by Christopher Schwarz.
“The Stick Chair Book” is divided into three sections. The first section, “Thinking About Chairs,” introduces you to the world of common stick chairs, plus the tools and wood to build them.
The second section – “Chairmaking Techniques” – covers every process involved in making a chair, from cutting stout legs, to making curved arms with straight wood, to carving the seat. Plus, you’ll get a taste for the wide variety of shapes you can use. The chapter on seats shows you how to lay out 14 different seat shapes. The chapter on legs has 16 common forms that can be made with only a couple handplanes. Add those to the 11 different arm shapes, six arm-joinery options, 14 shapes for hands, seven stretcher shapes and 11 combs, and you could make stick chairs your entire life without ever making the same one twice.
The final section offers detailed plans for five stick chairs, from a basic Irish armchair to a dramatic Scottish comb-back. These five chair designs are a great jumping-off point for making stick chairs of your own design.
The arms can be the simplest part of a chair. If you’re lucky, you might find a branch in the woods that grew into the shape of a perfect arm. Or the arms can be as basic as two straight boards: one for the right hand and one for the left.
If you like, you can make a C-shaped arm that wraps around the sitter by gluing three sticks together – one for the sitter’s right hand, one for the spine and one for the left hand.
On the other hand, a chair’s arms can have insanely involved joinery – mitered scarf joints or curved half-laps (for starters).
And if that’s not enough of a challenge, try steambending, where there’s a significant risk of chuck-it-in-the-trash-and-start-day-drinking failures.
With dozens of methods available, deciding how to make the arms of a chair can be daunting. So, let’s begin with some basic principles.
The Goal of the Arm
The mechanical goal of every arm on every good stick chair is simple: Avoid short grain as much as possible. If you plan to build your chair with two separate, disconnected arm pieces, then things are fairly simple. You can easily find two sticks to do the job and avoid weak short grain.
The troubles begin when you want your chair to have what’s called an “armbow” – a curved arm that wraps around the sitter from her right hand to the left. How in heaven’s name do you avoid short grain with a C-shaped arm? There are several strategies:
Typical Dimensions
Arms can vary quite a bit. A steambent arm might be 1″ thick and 1-1/2″ wide. A pieced armbow might be 1″ thick and 2-1/2″ wide. A curved branch or root can be a whopping 2″ thick and 4″ wide.
The arm has to be strong enough that it won’t crack during assembly or in service. And this challenge is made more difficult by all the holes you drill in the arms for sticks. Make the arm too bulky, however, and it might look ugly. It’s a balancing act.
In the world of stick chairs, a typical arm is about 1″ thick, give or take. In a strong material, such as oak, I’ll accept 7/8″ thick. For width, I like 1-3/8″ wide for arms that I’ve bent. And about 2-1/4″ wide for pieced armbows.
If the arm has a shoe, I usually shoot for 1″ thick for that component, though I have seen much thinner ones on historical chairs.
When assembled, the armbow is typically wider than the seat. If my seat is 20″ wide, then my armbow will be 23″ to 26″ wide overall. The depth of the armbow varies according to the design of the chair. If the back of the chair leans a lot, you might have to make the armbow deeper (or not, depending on where you want the hands to end up). Sometimes the hands hang over the front edge of the seat. Sometimes they are in line with the front edge of the seat. Sometimes they are a few inches back. Here’s a good starting point: My armbows are typically about 16″ deep, and that works for most of my chair designs.
All that said, the arms can vary a lot in a stick chair. Don’t be afraid to stray from these guidelines when copying an old chair.
Arms in the Hedge
Among stick chairs from Wales, it’s fairly common to find a chair where the arm’s shape was determined in part by the tree. A tree branch grew in a graceful curve, and it was harvested by a cunning chairmaker. I first learned about this bit of cleverness from chairmaker Chris Williams and Emyr Davies, a conservator at St Fagans. They planted the following idea into my brain: “Chairmaking begins with a walk in the woods.”
That is, you can find a chair’s arms in the branches, and the chair’s design begins there.
During my visits to the forests in Wales, these simple words became real. I looked up into the branches of these craggy Welsh trees and saw the arms of chairs waving back at me. Curved branches are quite common in trees that are part of the intertwined ecosystem of hedgerows and sunken lanes.
When I returned to the United States, I went to the forest to look for arms, but above me I found only legs, sticks and stretchers – straight stuff. The North American forest tends to produce arrow-straight tree trunks as the leaves stretch upward for sunlight.
Of course, naturally bent wood is out there in American forests and towns, but it’s not nearly as common as it is in Wales, where the landscape nurtures these curves.
If you do find curved material for arms, harvesting it, sawing it, drying it and shaping can be a challenge.
Naturally bent wood can possess significant internal stresses. The reward, however, is an armbow with no short grain.
There are two typical ways to use the curve of a branch in an arm.
While I have looked for arms during many walks in the woods, most of my success has come from “walks by the stream.” Trees that grow adjacent to a stream can have roots that bend from the bank then plunge down. Sometimes erosion can expose these bent roots. They are ideal for arms. (Thanks to chairmaker John Porritt for showing this trick to me.)
Steambent Arms
Steambending is challenging, time-consuming and there’s always the risk of failure. Despite this, I have loved it since I bent my first comb in 2003. You need a steambox, a way to make steam (I use a wallpaper steamer), a bending strap and a form. The biggest challenge, however, is getting the right wood. The grain has to be dead-straight along its length, or it is likely to split while being bent. Air-dried or green wood bends the easiest – it still has lots of moisture in it, which helps carry the heat into the stick. If the wood has been kiln-dried, it needs to be rehydrated before bending. Cut the stick to shape then soak it in water for a week or two.
But even when you do everything right, sometimes steambending goes wrong.
After steaming the stick for an hour or so, you bend the stick around the form, secure it with clamps and let the stick dry. You can let it air-dry for a couple weeks, or you can build a primitive kiln using some insulating board, duct tape and a light bulb. You want the bulb to heat the kiln to 115°-125° (F). After a few days in the kiln, the arm will be dry enough to keep its shape.
People have written entire books about steambending. The chapter on the comb-back with a bent arm goes into detail on this technique.
Bent Laminations
I’m not a fan of using bent laminations in stick chairs. Laminations usually look wrong to my eye. Basically, making a bent lamination involves sawing multiple thin strips of wood from a board in sequence. You apply glue to their faces, bend the wet mess over a form and let the glue dry. Then you machine the glue-encrusted part to shape.
I am happy to use bent laminations when making contemporary pieces, but in a vernacular stick chair, I’m going to opt for something else because it can look a bit like fancy plywood.
Cold-bend Hardwood
Surprisingly, the easiest way to bend an armbow or comb is using a high-tech material called “cold-bend hardwood” or “comp wood” (“comp” is short for compression). This material has been heated with steam and compressed along its length. When it arrives in your shop, it is wrapped in plastic and is pretty wet (about 25 percent moisture). It also is flexible. You cut it with a band saw and bend it around a form. It’s like steambending without the steam, strap or failure. I’ve had only one failure in 10 years of working with it.
What’s the downside? It’s expensive. A stick of comp wood that will get me three armbows might cost $150. When I sell a chair for $1,400, a $50 armbow isn’t all that big a deal. If fact, it might be cheaper than steambending because there is almost zero risk of failure when bending an arm. However, if you are a hobbyist, your time is your own and you can make these decisions without worrying about the clock.
After you bend the comp wood, you clamp it to the form. Then you can let it air-dry for a week or put it in the kiln overnight. When its moisture drops below 15 percent or so you can take it out of the form. I have found it quickly acclimates to your shop’s equilibrium moisture content.
The comp wood is indistinguishable from wood that has been steambent, so it looks fine in a stick chair. And I go into detail on using comp wood in the chapter on the comb-back with a bent arm.
Pieced Armbows
My favorite way to make an armbow is the easiest method overall.
A pieced armbow is made from two to four bits of wood that are sawn and glued to avoid short grain. A pieced armbow allows you to use flat boards from the lumberyard (or sticks from your backyard) and, with a bit of cleverness in selecting the grain, create a sturdy armbow.
The joinery can be as simple as butt joints and glue, or as showy as mitered lap joints or long scarf joints.
Making a pieced armbow begins with choosing the shape of the arm, choosing the joinery, then making patterns for the parts.
