Good news – we’re adding Tuesday hours to the storefront. Starting on March 24, the Lost Art Press store (407 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky., 40411) will be open from 10 a.m.-2 pm. every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
Kara Gebhart Uhl, author of “Cadi & the Cursed Oak” and Lost Art Press copy editor (among other things), will be there on Tuesdays to help with all your LAP book-, apparel- and tool-related needs.
This four-piece dovetailed step stool is a weekend class I sometimes teach – but unlike for most of my classes, it’s not a project I, er, borrowed from Chris or wrote about myself for a magazine article or book. It’s an excellent beginner’s dovetailing project, and you end up with a nice little stool that’s perfect to help a kid reach the sink or a cat reach a window. So I give it to you here.
I usually make these in cherry. It’s a good-looking wood – especially with a soft wax finish and a few years on it. But most important to me, it grows near where I live, and it’s easy to get in wide widths for a decent price. We usually buy from C.R. Muterspaw Lumber, where 5/4 wide cherry is currently listed at $5.85 per board foot. One step stool takes about 3 board feet (bf). I do my best to get 12″-wide (or slightly wider) boards, because that makes the prep easy – though you can slightly adjust the thickness, width and length as needed to fit your available stock. And you can use just about any wood – but if these are your first dovetails, I’d go with something that has a decent “mash factor,” which is to say you can get away with forcing too-tight joints together. Sometimes. (Pine, poplar, basswood/linden are great choices, and cherry and walnut are good, too, if a little less forgiving).
First, surface the stock by hand or machine, then crosscut the parts to size. I typically start with 5/4 stock and plane it until it’s flat – whether that’s 1″ or 7/8″ – and call it done. Then I rip a ~2″ piece off one edge, and cut the parts to length.
For a stool that will get a clear finish, I sometimes get a little more persnickety with the prep so as to end up with a continuous grain pattern on the legs and top. Before ripping, I’ll crosscut the overall board to 32-1/4″, square on both ends, then rip ~2″ from an edge. I cut one leg off each end, and the remaining middle becomes the top. Cut the stretcher from the 2″-wide piece to perfectly match the length of the top.
Put marriage marks on the top and sides, ideally with the heart sides of the boards facing out, so your nice, tight dovetails will counteract any cupping.
The tails go on the legs; I like five per side, so I end up with a chunky look (to my eye, that seems right for a step stool). If you don’t know how to lay out dovetails, see this video for my preferred method.
Cut the tails, then lay out the curve at the bottom of each leg. Or lay out the curves, then cut the tails. You can also wait until the joints are fully cut on the legs and top to lay out the curve. Doesn’t matter. But I like to lay out that curve before laying out and cutting the sockets on the back of the legs for the stretcher. The closer that stretcher is to the floor, the more stable the finished stool. But I don’t like for the stretcher to be below the cutout – there’s too much chance of splitting off a foot as you chop out the waste. Plus, it would look weird. I typically align the stretcher’s lower edge with the top of the curve, which puts the dovetail’s socket at each end about 1/4″ above the top of the arc.
I like the feet to be about 1-1/2″ wide, so I measure in from each edge and mark that for each foot. Mark a centerline on both legs. Butt together the bottom ends, aligned to each other side to side. Then place the stabby end of the compass about 1-1/4″ to 1-1/2″ up the centerline of one leg, and set the tool to hit your 1-1/2″ mark as you swing the arc. If you don’t like the curve, move the stabby end up or down the centerline as you like, reset the compass, then try again. Make yourself happy. But you don’t want to remove too much material from the legs; that will weaken them. And look weird.
If you haven’t already, smooth plane the top and legs. The pin board has to be planed before you transfer the tails…but on this project, the top and legs are both pin boards, because the stretcher gets a tail at each end; the sockets get cut in the back edge of the legs. Go ahead and cut a tail on both stretcher ends.
Measure from the top of the legs to lay out the location for the stretcher – or do a full dry-fit on the top and legs, and you can simply set the stretcher across the back, lining up the baseline on the stretcher to the legs. Transfer the tails, mark the socket baseline on the legs, then cut the sockets. The only semi-tricky thing is to not tear out at the baseline, which is easy to do when cutting it with the grain as you must here. So scribe that socket baseline as deep as you can with your marking gauge; deepen it with a knife if needed. And use a sharp chisel and tiny bites as you remove the waste.
Now remove the waste on the bottom of the legs with a coping saw or band saw, and fair the curves with rasps and sandpaper, or a spindle sander if you have one. (You could instead of a curve lay out and cut a bootjack – a V-shape that’s easy to cut with a saw and a lot easier to clean up than curves.)
Put glue in the sockets on the top. (I use liquid hide glue for this project – it has a little more open time than PVA, but not as much as fish glue. You don’t need a lot of open time for four pieces, but I prefer to not use the plastic glue.) Fully assemble the legs and top, knocking the joints home. Put glue in the stretcher sockets on the back of the legs and knock the stretcher in place. Use clamps as needed to pull things together.
After the piece comes out the clamps (I prefer to leave things clamped overnight, no matter the glue), it’s time for “make pretty.” Then apply your finish of choice, put felt pads on the bottom of the feet to protect the floor, and you’re done.
p.s. If you need instruction on cutting through-dovetails, there’s lots of info online…but there’s also an exhaustive dovetails chapter in my book “Dutch Tool Chests” … and every book sold contributes to treats for my spoiled cats (they deserve it).
NOTE: This video is being offered at the introductory price of $30 for the first 30 days of its release. After that, it will be sold for the full price of $60.
In this nearly two-hour video, professional chairmaker Chris Williams shows you how he builds a beautiful Welsh lobsterpot chair using simple tools and bent branches from the forest.
Lobsterpot stick chairs are one of the most desirable and tricky-to-build forms. The tightly bent back sticks converge on the comb and give the chair its visual energy. But how were these chairs made? Were the sticks steambent? Bent while green?
Chris has spent a lifetime studying and building traditional stick chairs in the shop in the Welsh countryside. And he’s studied many lobsterpot chairs that have survived for more than 100 years, and those that have broken.
The difference between them, he says, is in the arm. By using a naturally-crooked branch, the arm has no short grain, so it can withstand the immense pressure exerted on the chair by the bent sticks. Chairs with short grain – either in the arms or the sticks – tend to break easily and are difficult or impossible to repair.
In this video, Chris visits antique dealer Tim Bowen (of Tim Bown Antiques) to examine an antique lobsterpot chair to understand how they work and survive. From there, Chris heads to the hedgerows to show you the bent timber that grows there that he harvests for his work.
In addition to the bent sections, Chris harvests some straight ash and splits it in the forest for the legs and sticks. And then he goes to work in the shop.
Dealing with naturally curved material is tricky to dry and cut, and Chris shows you how he manages the process using hand tools and his band saw.
During this process, Chris explains how the shape of the arm dictates the rest of the design of the chair. He works with the existing curves, joins the arm parts with traditional keyed scarf joints and then builds the rest of the chair based on the arm.
Chris learned to make stick chairs directly from John Brown and worked for him for about a decade. Many of Chris’s techniques, such as shaving the sticks, come from JB. Other techniques, such as making the armbow, are the results of Chris’s long research.
In the end, the lobsterpot comes together in the video without plans or patterns. Chris uses the shape of the wood at hand to determine the overall look of the comb and the pattern of the sticks.
The resulting chair is a gorgeous piece of sculptural work that is quite comfortable (we got to sit in it before it went to a customer).
For chairmakers, this video is a rare glimpse into the shop of someone who works at the top of their profession. And it’s encouraging to see how it’s not fancy tools that make the maker, it’s their skill and cunning.
Even if you have no intention of building a lobsterpot chair, it’s a fascinating project. And it is a delight to watch all the parts come together.
Our machinist has been backed up on work for a while, so we’re delighted he found time to get done for us a run of Brass Bevel Monkeys and 1:4 Dovetail Templates. Get ’em while they’re (metaphorically) hot!
– Fitz
p.s. The combo 1:6/1:8 Dovetail Template is in the tumbling hopper, and scrapers are currently in production – so both of those should also be back in stock soon. You can sign up at their links to be notified when they are.
Many of my classes include the instruction to “just put a bead on it.” A bead on the edge of a board protects fragile corners from breaking off, because by rounding it over into a bead, said fragile edge is gone. A bead also creates a shadowline, which helps to make a gap (say, between backboards) look intentional. I love a bead!
But the intrinsic problem with beads is that they can get you into trouble. A beading plane is just so darn fun to use that you will quickly find yourself in want of other sizes and other moulding planes…not to mention a half-set of hollows and rounds. (There are worse vices.)
So where do you find good moulding planes these days? Maybe it’s just my bad luck, but I’ve never found vintage ones worth buying. A moulding plane must be dead straight down its length from heel to toe, and the fences and boxing must be intact. If any of these things is not true, that ex-plane is best used as Cracker Barrel decor. Then there’s the iron. Does its profile perfectly match the plane’s sole? If not, you need to know how to fix it so it does (which is not easy without ninja-level filing/grinding skills and a good set of slipstones). And does the wedge hold the blade firmly in place? Is it even the original wedge? All this is to say that if you know what you are doing plus have a modicum of good luck, you might be able to find a good deal on some old wooden moulding planes. But I never have.
And you can, of course, make your own. There are good articles available online, and Larry Williams’ video “Making Traditional Side Escapement Planes” is hard to beat.
But I recommend buying new – especially if you’re buying just one plane…say a 3/16″ beading plane like the one you might have used in my classes.
I’m sure I’m missing a few good modern makers (feel free to comment below…as I know you will), but the modern commercial makers I recommend and from whom you can still buy (all will likely have a waitlist) are:
M.S. Bickford
J. Wilding
Red Rose Reproductions
New Heritage Woodworks
Philly Planes (caveat – Phil Edwards is in the U.K. Some might argue his planes are better suited to staying in their native environment, but I’ve been happy with my Philly beader for years and have had no trouble – but I live in a damp river valley with similar weather, different accent)
Yes, you could also use a Stanley No. 45 or 55, or the Veritas Combination Plane – but I’m a sucker for a good wooden moulder.
– Fitz
p.s. If You want to know how I sharpen a moulding plane blade, check out Christopher Schwarz’s “Sharpen This” – the pdf is a free download – see the first paragraph here for the link.
