Randy Ogle weaving in a seagrass seat on a walnut dining chair, from “Backwoods Chairmakers,” by Andy Glenn.
Tickets are on sale now for the June 2 “Backwoods Chairmakers” Event in beautiful Berea, Ky.
The all-day event (9 a.m.-5:30 p.m. EDT) will feature 13 Appalachian chairmakers from Andy Glenn’s book. We’ve asked each demonstrator to bring some of their chairs so you can see the work in person. All the chairs will be assembled in a gallery for you to enjoy. We’ll also have four other “stages” going all day for you to visit:
• The Storytime Stage: Where chairmakers will share their tales of how they got into the craft and manage to keep their business afloat in a world filled with mass-manufactured goods. • The Turning Stage: Several of the turners use lathes in their work and will demonstrate how they make parts using this machine • The Shaping & Assembly Stage: Chairmakers will demonstrate the techniques they use to shape posts & rungs and assemble the chairs. • The Greenwood Stage: Splitting, hewing and hickory bark demonstrations will take place in this outdoor area. • Plus Andy will be there to sign books (we’ll have some books available, but if you already own a copy, bring it along!).
Please note that this is not a money-making venture. Berea College has donated the space for the event, and the organizers are donating their time and effort. Your ticket price covers only the honorariums for the chairmakers. If you would like to add a small amount to help cover incidental costs, we’d appreciate it!
Fig. 1.32 It’s a subtle curve, but here you see how the “corners” are lifted up. This keeps the hatchet from digging in as you hew with it.
The following is excerpted from Peter Follansbee’s “Joiner’s Work.”
Forget what you think about 17th-century New England furniture. It’s neither dark nor boring. Instead, it’s a riot of geometric carvings and bright colors – all built upon simple constructions that use rabbets, nails and mortise-and-tenon joints.
Peter Follansbee has spent his adult life researching this beguiling time period to understand the simple tools and straightforward processes used to build the historical pieces featured in this book. “Joiner’s Work” represents the culmination of decades of serious research and shop experimentation. But it’s no dry treatise. Follansbee’s wit – honed by 20 years of demonstrating at Plimoth Plantation – suffuses every page. It’s a fascinating trip to the early days of joinery on the North American continent that’s filled with lessons for woodworkers of all persuasions.
Don’t be put off by the scarcity of single-bevel hewing hatchets; you can perform this work with double-bevel hatchets, too. Larger hatchets take some getting used to, but in the end they are quite efficient at stock removal. I keep a large Swedish hatchet around for times when there’s a lot of stock to remove, then I switch to a finer hatchet for more accurate hewing. My largest hatchet has a double-bevel and weighs more than 4 lbs. Its cutting edge is more than 7″ long. Regardless of the head size, I use fairly short handles on my hatchets, about 14″.
While you can make either a single-bevel or double-bevel hatchet work in dressing stock for joinery, the single-bevel hatchet is ideally suited for hewing stock prior to planing it. Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” describes its use and shape to some degree:
“Its use is to Hew the Irregularities off such pieces of Stuff which maybe sooner Hewn than Sawn. When the Edge is downwards, and the Handle towards you, the right side of its Edge must be Ground to a Bevil…”
If you’re scouring old tools or want a smith to make one, here’s some of what I recommend you look for. My favorite hatchet is a single-bevel hewing hatchet made in Germany in the early 1930s by a firm called J. F. R. Fuchs. It weighs about 3-1/2 lbs., and has a cutting edge around 6-1/2″ long. In describing these hatchets, it’s easy to think of them as having a flat back, but that’s not exactly the case. The bevel is on the right-hand face for a right-handed joiner, as Moxon describes. But the “back” is not truly flat; it has a very shallow sweep to its cutting edge.
Fig. 1.33 A slight curve in this direction as well is another subtle detail found in the best hewing hatchets.
Think of it as a very large and shallow, incannel gouge. The benefit of this shape is readily apparent when you try to use one that is not shaped like this. A hatchet with a flat back digs into the wood; a proper one scoops the chips out. Additionally, there is a slight sweep from the eye socket toward the cutting edge. Some of this is the shape of the tool, some is exacerbated by honing.
I have another hatchet by the same maker, with an excellent refinement of its shape. The eye is cranked over, to keep your knuckles safe when hewing. This leans the handle away from the plane of action without having to make a bent handle. I use this hatchet particularly when hewing wide panels. These German hatchets are not readily found. One type of hatchet you will, however, find regularly in the U.K. and U.S. is the so-called Kent pattern hatchets.
Fig. 1.34 Here the back of the hatchet is sitting flat on the board, and the canted eye results in the handle being tilted upward.
There are several nice things about the Kent hatchets. Not only are they fairly common, they aren’t expensive. They can work, and – unlike many other hewing hatchets – they are reversible for lefties. Their symmetrically shaped head means you can knock the handle out and put one in from the other end. But often, the cutting edge is straight; I prefer a curve to the cutting edge. The shape of the back should be the same as those shown above.
Fig. 1.35 Some careful hunting around can often turn up a Kent-pattern hatchet in good condition.
Roy Underhill (left) and Whitney Miller (right) both graced the Lost Art Press shop this week!
Update: Comments are now closed.
We’ve had a grand week of visitors and video shoots. Roy Underhill made a quick trip to town, then headed a little farther northwest to experience eclipse totality. And Whitney Miller, author of “Henry Boyd’s Freedom Bed,” spent the week recording a video on how to make a Swedish tool chest. Not only is she the video star, she’ll be doing the editing…so you know it will be more entertaining than most of our videos! (Look for it in our store later this year.)
After a busy week, it’ll be a bit of a relief to sit at the computer and answer woodworking questions – so queue ’em up in the comments section below, and I’ll answer. As will Chris, once he’s back late today from a whirlwind trip to the Chicago area to drop off the projects for “The American Peasant” with Narayan for photography.
As always, brevity is appreciated.
Comments will close at around 5 p.m. (but we may answer later in the evening).
– Fitz
Whitney with the finished tool chest. (We planned to use pine or linden…but the wide cherry was just too tempting!)
Woodworker and musician Joel Paul – you might know him as 13starsfarm (and formerly as punckrockshaker) on Instragram – had a devastating accident while helping a neighbor to fell a tree. Joel’s injuries are severe, and his recovery will be long and expensive.
If you can spare a bit, please consider a donation to the GoFundMe set up by his daughter, Rachel. Any amount will help.
Plate 13 from M. Hulot’s “L’Art du Tourneur Mécanicien” (1775). Plate Courtesy of John and Eleanor Kebabian
Any time a picture or video shows up of Chris or me or a student using the low bench to shave spindles, I get questions about the “planing stop” against which the workpiece is held. That’s the “Hulot Block” or “head” that shows up in 1775 book “L’Art du Tourneur Mécancien.” Chris reproduced it for the Roman bench in “Ingenious Mechanics.” It’s on page 97 in Chapter 5: Early Workholding Devices. (There are many other simple and clever workholding devices in that chapter, too – but this is the one that always catches people’s collective eye, and it’s the one that sees the most use in our shop.)
– Fitz
If the shaving horse seems too complex, consider shaving spindles and legs using a setup from M. Hulot’s “L’Art du Tourneur Mécanicien” (1775). Hulot details a low bench he calls a “saddle” for chairmaking. The bench includes a “head” for shaving pieces and wedge-based clamps for holding chair pieces.
Detail of Plate 31 from M. Hulot’s “L’Art du Tourneur Mécanicien” (1775). Plate Courtesy of John and Eleanor Kebabian
To shave pieces, you don the “belly” in front of your belly and immobilize the wood between the belly and the head, as shown in the plate above.
We translated the original text (thanks Tom Bonamici) and offer it here for you to interpret.
The Figure 4, Plate 13, represents a type of bench which is named a Saddle for planing and assembling; it’s a piece of oak of 5 feet in length by 12 to 14 inches in width, and very thick, carried on four strong legs below, R, Y, X, Z, which enter through as many round holes drilled in the bottom of the Saddle, A B. The Worker has his face turned toward the head, H B, which is a big piece of softwood, such as alder, and of which the bottom forms a flat tenon which passes through a mortise in the Saddle; the upper part [of the alder head] forms a type of stepped stop, of which the steps are notched in different ways, some perpendicular and shallow, for receiving the end of flat pieces to be planed on their edge [see vertical notch just to the left of the letter B, Fig. 4, Pl. 13]; the flat steps receive pieces to be planed on their face. Other steps are notched horizontally and vertically in the form of a little spoon, for receiving the end of a baton. There are more little vertical notches next to this hollow, which can be seen in the figure [Fig. 4]. Independently of the tenon which fixes the head H, it [the head] is supported by the cross beam K, also named the transom, head, or buttress of the head, & which is supported at the end & across the Saddle, by two strong pegs of strong and binding wood, such as ash or dogwood, which pass perpendicularly across the cross beam and the Saddle.
Minute made. The “belly” is a remarkable appliance for shaving chair components. While it’s not as adept at shaving long, thin spindles, it excels when shaping legs or short spindles. Photo by NN
If the wood to be planed is big & long, one doesn’t sit on the Saddle, but one stands upright, & one places the end of the wood in the corner H K formed by the cross beam and the side of the head of the Saddle.
The Worker is obliged, in planing a piece of wood, to support its end against his stomach; & so as not to hurt himself, he has in front of him a mass or block of wood that’s named the Belly.
This Belly is a type of wooden piece of oak, a foot long, 6 inches wide, & about 1/3 of an inch thick, Pl. 13, fig. 10. The top part is cut in a roughly oval shape, F I, f G; the bottom part, F I, f k, is made in a roughly semicircular shape; & as the Turner places this Belly in front of himself, the cord of his apron passes from F to f, and by this method the Belly is held fast. In the middle of the oval, one places a block L, of softwood, round, 3 to 4 inches in diameter, by around 2 to 3 inches in thickness, made of end grain, and in the center of which has been inserted a pin l of hardwood, & which is held by a friction fit in a hole in the center of the Belly’s oval; one cuts the end of this pin flush off at the back so that it doesn’t hurt the Artist. On the face of this block, one makes a very shallow groove in the shape of a cross, which serves to hold the flat pieces to be planed, either on their face or on their edge. See Pl. 31, vignette, fig. 3, where the Turner is occupied in planing. Below figure 10, Pl. 13, we see the block shown in perspective; l, is the tenon or pin which enters in the hole in the middle of this block. The holes I, I, which are at the bottom, in the semicircle of these Bellies, serve to hang them on the wall when not in use.
Good design. The block in the middle is thick for good reason. Its thickness allows you to get your drawknife right up to the end of the work with remarkable control. Photo by NN
Making the head is simple. Like the shaving horse, the palm and the planing stop, these fit into a 2″ x 2″ mortise in the benchtop. Construction begins with a post that is 2″ x 2″ x 9-3/4″. Plane it so it fits into the benchtop mortise with mallet blows.
Now mortise the post into the 3″ x 3-3/4″ x 5-1/2″ head. Cut a mortise that is 3/4″ deep. Glue the post into the head.
Cut a series of rabbets in the head. I made mine roughly match the plate in Hulot. There also is a blind hole in the middle and a few kerfs. All these notches and kerfs are used to hold onto one end of the work. And, judging by the plate showing the head in use, you place the stick’s tenon in the hole when working a spindle or leg.
Head
The belly is a thin plate of wood that you wear – like an armored breastplate. A block of softwood with two trenches plowed across the end grain serves as the other end of the clamping action. Hulot specifies that the block is friction-fit into a hole into the breastplate, which I assume will allow the block to rotate (if needed).
I made the breastplate from a thin piece of poplar – 1/2″ x 10″ x 14″ cut to a rough oval shape. The block is white pine – 4″ in diameter x 2-3/4″ long. The 3/8″ x 3/8″ trenches cross in the middle of the block. I attached the block to the breastplate with a large screw, which allows it to rotate.
Hulot says the worker’s shop apron string can secure the belly while working. However, my shop apron doesn’t look anything like the aprons shown in the plate. So, I riveted the belly to a pair of $6 suspenders (a couple screws could also do the job of the rivets).
If you are shaving only a couple of pieces, you can prop the belly up on your legs. For long sessions, you’ll want it tethered to you in some way.
The belly is remarkably effective for shaving legs and other chair components. The block holds the work so you can knife the end of your workpiece without the drawknife’s handles hitting your body. Also, the rabbets on the head are all useful – especially the small rabbet at the top, which allows you to shave small components along their entire length.
Belly
The belly is an effective alternative to a shavehorse in many cases. It can be used at a high or low bench. It takes up no floor space. It allows you to shave the entire length of a leg or spindle in one swipe. It’s as fast as a shavehorse.
It’s not as effective when dealing with long, thin spindles, such as the 5/8″-diameter back spindles on a Windsor chair. They are so long and flexible that they are a handful when using the belly.
