Editor’s note: We get it. It’s easy to feel the need to overstate the obvious when you’re trying to make a sale. However, a three-legged chair with no wobble is like marketing cold ice cream. You don’t really expect it to burn your tongue.
That said, we’re not here to judge. We just like to chat about chairs. It might just be the best way there is to develop a good eye for chair design. And for the record: We love all handmade chairs, even the ones we hate. Because they’re chairs and they’re made by people.
Oh, and if you’re feeling stuck up and not in the mood for fart jokes, here’s a good read instead.
People need food and stick chairs need wedges. They say that there are as many recipes for Spaghetti alla Carbonara as there are Italian housewives. I say there are at least three good ways to make wedges. None of them unfortunately include either pancetta nor Pecorino Romano, but you can’t really expect that from wood. In a mini series of three blogposts, we (Chris, Rudy and me) will share each our way of making them.
To make wedges with a band saw, you need the following:
A randomly sized scrap block of wood (in this case some 24mm Birch ply). Another scrap block of wood with the grain going more or less perpendicular to the long sides. The latter is important, as a wedge with cross grain will be hammered into mush by the first whack from the lump hammer. You also need a knife. And a pencil. And, of course, a band saw. Duh.
The largest block of wood is for the jig. Start by drilling a hole in it. You’ll use it to push and pull the block when you’re sawing out the wedges. It’s not necessary, but unless you’ve got sticky fingers (I don’t wanna know why!) by default, it makes things both easier and safer.
With the hole drilled, it’s time to mark out the size of a wedge onto the jig. But first, make sure that the scrap wood you’re using for the wedges is the size that you want it to be. Its thickness needs to be slightly more (1/16″ is enough) than the diameter of the mortise. So if your mortise is 5/8″, I’d aim for a wedge that is just a tiny bit wider. That way the wedge won’t leave a gap. Second, the block needs to be as wide as you want the length of your wedges to be. When wedging chair legs, I keep the wedges at around 1-1/4″. When I’m wedging short sticks for the arm, I usually end up at around 1″ length. You’ll figure it out.
Use the wedge block itself to mark out a wedge on the jig, by skewing it a bit in over the edge and drawing along its edges.
I usually make my wedges around 1/4″ thick at the top.
With the wedge shape drawn up, cut the notch out. Be accurate. If you make a wonky notch, you will have wonky wedges.
Use the fence to position the jig block toward the band saw blade. You’ll slide the jig back and forth between the fence and the blade so it needs to runs freely, but as close to the blade as you get it. Set the blade guide as low as possible to ensure precise cutting.
Start the band saw. Push the wedge block into the notch as shown above and push forward toward the blade. Push all the way through and pull back. You’ll soon find out that if you do this carefully, the wedge will be neatly pushed out to the right side of the blade when you pull the jig back – getting you ready for the next cut. Flip the wedge block over and you will square it off when cutting the next wedge. Pull back, flip again and on you go. You are now a Human Wedge Making Factory™. Be sure to make a bunch while you’re at it!
Finally, before using the wedges, I like to sort out the best ones. Which are the ones with the straightest grain and the most consistent shape. This is also where the knife comes in. To make it easier to hammer the wedges in, I taper them a bit with my knife. That way the wedges won’t bruise the edges of the mortise and they’ll enter the kerf easier.
Workshop systems have come a long way since this welter of equipment was installed in the John Grass woodturning shop in Philadelphia.
The following is excerpted from “The Workshop Book,” by Scott Landis (first published in 1991), which remains the most complete book about every woodworker’s favorite place: the workshop. This new 216-page hardbound edition ensures “The Workshop Book” will be available to future generations of woodworkers. Produced and printed in the United States, this classic text is printed on FSC-certified recycled paper and features a durable sewn binding designed to last generations. The 1991 text remains the same in this edition and includes a foreword by Roy Underhill.
Like a house, the workshop is a complete environment. It provides shelter and basic human needs like heat and light, comfort and safety. The shop must therefore account for all of the same structural requirements as a house – a floor, walls and ceiling (along with a foundation, windows, doors and a roof, if it is freestanding). Beyond that, the dedicated, functional nature of the workshop and the equipment that is used in it embrace a whole range of issues and specific requirements – electric power, dust collection, task lighting, solvent storage and vapor extraction – that are only peripheral in most houses.
Unfortunately, in too many workshops, these critical support systems are accorded scant consideration. After spending so much time, energy and money on the workshop structure and equipment, we’re too often willing to put up with an inadequate, even unsafe or unhealthy, work environment. But, as Donald Williams, furniture conservator for the Conservation Analytical Laboratory (museum support center for the Smithsonian) told me, these systems should be nonnegotiable. “They may seem extravagant to the person who’s scraping by in the basement,” he said, “but for me that’s where it starts. You do without a table saw if you need to.”
In this chapter I will outline the basic systems that are common to most shops. To attend to them all would require the diverse talents of a small corps of professionals – an architect, a builder, a mason, an electrician and a plumber, among others. You may have some of these skills yourself, or be able to crib enough information from the literature to undertake much of your own construction. If not, you may prefer to hire (or barter for) a professional to do the job. Electricity, in particular, can be dangerous – even deadly – so do not undertake any electrical operation about which you are at all uncertain.
In any case, entire books have been written about each aspect of the subject, covering everything from roofing and insulation to electrical wiring; and there are federal, state and local building codes that apply to just about any structural situation you can imagine. Refer to these sources (a few of which are listed in the Bibliography) or to a licensed professional for more detailed information. And contact your local fire marshal or insurance representative to make sure that what you are about to do is not only safe, but legal, and will not adversely affect your insurability.
Structure Purpose-built workshop buildings come in every shape and size and in every conceivable type of construction, from poured concrete and rammed earth to log, timber-frame and standard balloon framing. Converted shops are at least as varied. In this book you’ll find comfortable shops that are located in a pole shed, several old mill sites, the granite bowels of an industrial building, a Chevy bookmobile and hewn out of a chicken coop. I know of one Arizona sculptor who works in a hogan, the traditional earth and timber longhouse of the Navajos.
Wood paneling has practical as well as aesthetic advantages. It is sturdier than drywall, it helps absorb sound and it provides some additional insulation.
So many different types of buildings and construction methods are used to build shops successfully, that I won’t attempt to discuss them all here. There are, however, several structural considerations worth mentioning, whether you’re building from scratch or working in your basement.
Insulation Insulation is as important for comfort and energy efficiency in a shop as it is in a home. What’s more, insulation absorbs machine noise, making the shop a more pleasant place to work in and to live next to.
After roasting for much of six years in an uninsulated tin garage, Roger Heitzman took action before moving his California workshop into a corrugated-steel, light-industrial building. He attached a separate 2×3 stud wall to the inside of the steel frame with screwed-on brackets. Then he stuffed fiberglass insulation in the furred walls and ceiling and he sheathed the inside with 1/2-in. drywall. The effort paid off. Heitzman’s half of the 2,400-sq. ft. building hovers around a pleasant 70° F during most of the summer, while it sizzles at 100° F in the uninsulated cabinet shop in the other half. During the three cool months of the year, auxiliary heat is supplied by two portable kerosene heaters (10,000 Btu).
Different construction situations and budgets call for different insulating materials. Fiberglass and polyurethane foam are two of the most popular, although Homasote panels and ceiling tiles are also used to advantage. A few timber-frame shops I visited were fitted with stress-skin panels, in which foam insulation forms an unbroken vapor barrier around the skeletal frame, effectively reducing drafts and heat transfer through the walls. Stress-skin panels are expensive but they are installed quickly (the interior wall covering and exterior sheathing are built into each panel), and reduced heating costs will make up for at least some of the initial investment.
Interior paneling contributes to the sound and thermal insulation of the workshop, and several shops I visited were either completely paneled or combined a wood-sheathed wainscoting on the lower portion of the wall with a drywalled surface above. Wood paneling creates a warm, cozy atmosphere and provides a rugged, puncture-resistant surface to which tools and shelves may be easily attached. Drywall is relatively inexpensive, easy to install and is usually painted white for a bright working environment, but it is readily gored by an errant swing of a board, and fastenings must be driven into supporting studs or attached with special anchors. (I always feel more secure with a nail, screw or dowel in wood than with an anchored screw in drywall, particularly if the fastening must cany any amount of weight.)
In a large space, a dropped ceiling will aid significantly in retaining heat and absorbing sound and will reduce the risk of fire that comes with the accumulation of fine sawdust on studs, wiring and lighting fixtures. Of course, these advantages must be balanced against the loss of headroom.
Details like this lumber-camp door latch lend a practical, homespun character to Harold Payson’s Maine boat shop. The latch is so simple people don’t know how to use it. Payson nailed a 3/4-in. by 1-in. by 2-ft. long stick of limber hardwood to the door, far enough from the rounded end to allow the stick to bend as it hits the notched catch, which is mortised into a hole in the casing. A slight pull or push opens or closes the door and, as Payson notes, “a little oil in 36 years is all this simple door latch has asked for.”
Doors It is important to remember that workshop doors frequently must accommodate more than just people. A standard 2-ft. 8-in. wide interior door is too small to comfortably allow movement of machinery and materials, much less a large piece of furniture or a small boat. Even a 3-ft. wide exterior door will prove too narrow for many workshops. The best access is provided by an insulated, custom-made door at least 4 ft. wide, or by a larger sliding door, such as the one shown in the photo above. In many garage workshops or freestanding structures, a standard overhead garage door makes it possible to open up an entire wall of the shop. This access to fresh air creates a pleasant work environment during mild weather and makes it easy to move equipment and materials in and out of the shop.
Garage doors and large sliders are difficult to insulate and seal, however, so they may create problems in cold weather. Since most heat loss in a building takes place around the windows and doors, good insulation is important not only in the construction of the door but in proper weatherstripping. A tightly sealed door will also help contain noise and dust, which is especially important if the shop is located inside the house.
A 14-ft. wide sliding door allows easy movement of wood and machinery in Joel Seaman’s timber-frame shop (left), and opening it on nice days provides plenty of fresh air. The door is framed with 2x10s, 2x8s and vertical 2×4 stiles. Spaces between the frame and stiles are filled with I-in. thick rigid foam, and a layer of Tyvek beneath the cedar clapboards prevents drafts. (Photo by Joel Seaman.)
Martha Collins’s versatile door-within-a-door design (shown above) offers several different options for access. Daily entrance is provided by either of two 28-in. by 83-1/2-in. double-glazed doors. Opening both doors creates a 56-in. wide opening, big enough for most large objects. These doors are, in turn, hung within a pair of larger doors. Though Collins rarely opens them now, the big doors proved useful when she moved in; the 94-in. by 94-in. opening was almost as large as the end of the 45-ft. trailer that delivered her shop equipment. Unlike most overhead garage doors or horizontal sliders I’ve seen, these doors are well insulated and sealed, and she only has to open as much door as she needs.
By hanging two narrow doors within two larger doors, Martha Collins can create four different openings to accommodate movement of objects large or small.
Floors Debate persists among woodworkers over the ideal workshop floor surface. Most shops have either a concrete or a wood-frame floor. The former is the rule for basements, garages and many small outbuildings. It has the obvious advantages of ease of construction, low maintenance and great strength, and its smooth, solid surface makes it easy to roll machinery or other carts and fixtures around the work space. What’s more, the concrete stays cool in the summertime and it is one less combustible material in a shop full of dry tinder.
But concrete has some serious disadvantages over the more forgiving plywood or solid-wood surface. Concrete is often cold, damp and slippery, and it’s hard on dropped tools (and coffee cups) and harder still on feet, legs and back Without a substructure of floor joists, there’s no way to run wires or dust-collection pipes beneath the floor, unless they’re installed in the slab, thus committing you to the original layout. And last but not least, because concrete is a poor insulator and a good conductor of electricity to ground-a much better conductor than wood-it increases the risk of electric shock if your machinery leaks power.
To cope with these realities, the people I visited who work on concrete have adopted several strategies, which vary greatly in their complexity and expense. Some simply cover the concrete with vinyl floor tiles or with rubber-mat runners in high-traffic areas, such as the bench/tool-chest corridor and in front of machinery and assembly tables. You can purchase hard rubber or cushioned mats, which are easier on the feet, but I know of at least one shop that does just fine with oversize truck mud flaps. Of course, any kind of floor mat will interfere with rolling carts and machinery, but this is a small price to pay for the greater comfort they provide.
If you are installing a new concrete floor, it can be made relatively warm and dry with proper site preparation and the addition beneath the slab of gravel, foam insulation and a good plastic vapor barrier. For the ultimate in thermal comfort, consider installing radiant-heat pipes in the concrete when you pour.
A number of woodworkers I visited covered their concrete floor with wood. Curtis Erpelding laid 2x2s on 16-in. centers, insulated between them with sheets of Styrofoam and covered it all with particleboard. (Plywood would make a more rugged, if more expensive, alternative.) He ran conduit between the 2x2s to service outlets on short posts located at each machine. Erpelding wanted to use flush-mounted electrical fixtures, but the Seattle fire department specified off-the-floor receptacles that would not be vulnerable to a splash of coffee. In practice, Erpelding figures they’re also easier to keep clean and easier to reach.
This sort of in-floor wiring is rather permanent, but Erpelding explains: “I had a pretty good idea of how I wanted things laid out.” Plywood ramps bridge the height difference between the wood platform and surrounding concrete floor and make it easy to roll his shop vacuum and production carts around. The built-up floor underlays the entire bench area and part of the machine space, thus retaining the practical advantages of concrete in the assembly and storage areas and around some of the machinery.
A wood floor makes a “friendlier” work surface than concrete, but it is not without drawbacks. When built above bare earth, it is also subject to moisture. Covering the earth with a good vapor barrier and perhaps a skim coat of concrete over gravel will improve drainage and reduce moisture infiltration. The insulation must not be exposed or it will eventually deteriorate, either as a result of moisture or nesting critters. Wood is obviously more susceptible to fire. Aware of this danger, Peter Axtell poured 2 in. of concrete atop the plywood floor in his spray booth.
Considering the weight of machinery and the activity that takes place in most workshops, a wood floor must be heavily built. Kelly Mehler’s wood floor supports heavy industrial machinery with full-cut 2×12 floor joists on 12-in. centers, sheathed with three layers of tongue-and-groove oak flooring. The floor creaked a bit when Mehler installed his 2-ton planer with a forklift truck, but it never sagged. Mehler’s shop was a car dealership in another life, and the floor is overbuilt for most workshops, but 2×10 joists on 12-in. centers (and more support posts and beams than you think you need) would probably not be excessive. Plywood floors should be protected with a good-quality epoxy paint or a porch-and-deck enamel. (Choose a light-color paint to keep the shop bright.) Solid-wood floors can be oiled, painted, varnished or left bare to develop a rich patina.
Here’s what I knew about Caleb James before I interviewed him for this profile:
He makes hardwood spokeshaves that are handsome enough to qualify as sculpture, in addition to being a joy to use. The spokeshaves alone made Caleb worthy of a profile.
He makes Danish Modern chairs based on original designs by Hans Wegner, and those chairs are not just comfortable, but marvels of craftsmanship.
He is a devoted family man with a wife and two daughters.
He’s a clean-cut guy who dresses nicely.
He has a refreshingly down-to-earth take on woodworking, especially when it comes to making furniture and tools as a livelihood.
I had no idea that Caleb does all this while living with an auto-immune disorder, nor that he’d spent years making a good living by selling household appliances – never mind that he once dreamed of being a helicopter pilot and went a good way toward achieving that goal before life caused him to change course.
Caleb with his wife, Tracy, and daughters Claire (left) and Petra. (Photo: Kelsey Joy Hefner www.kelseyjoyphoto.com.)
We spoke by phone on a recent weekend. Caleb was working at home, at the end of a street 5 miles from downtown Greenville, S.C., where he and his family have lived for eight years. “All you see is woods at the back of the house,” he told me. There are deer, bears and wild turkeys just outside the back door. A deer was foraging in the woods about 40 yards away as we spoke.
Caleb’s father, Bill James (left), with his uncle, Steve James, in their military uniforms.
The South has always been Caleb’s region. He was born in 1981 in the Gulf Coast town of Ocean Springs, Miss., where his father, a Vietnam War veteran and a framing carpenter by trade, worked for a manufacturer of mobile homes. When Caleb was 5, his parents split up and he moved with his dad to northern Arkansas, which had originally been home to his father’s family. A few years later they moved to Branson, Mo. After that he lived in St. Louis, where his mother had moved to be near her sister and was attending night school through a community college program while supporting herself by waiting tables; following her training she became a legal secretary.
Caleb’s parents with Caleb (in his father’s lap) and his brother Abe.
That’s a lot of moving. By the time Caleb was in ninth grade, he’d attended 11 different schools and was living with extended family and friends while working for his aunt, who ran a roadside fruit stand. At 14 he dropped out of public school and did his best to keep learning while employed as a dishwasher and waiter. He took college courses in air conditioning and appliance repair work, and earned a GED certificate.
At 17 Caleb moved to Texas; his mother, aunt and two brothers were living outside of Houston. His brother ran a stucco business and invited him to work there; they worked in traditional stucco, as well as Drivit, a cladding system that resembles stucco while enhancing a building’s insulation. Working outside in south Texas weather was not a viable long-term gig for “a white kid out in the sun,” as Caleb puts it. “It wasn’t something I thought I would survive at for very long.” Even his hands got sunburned.
He took a job working for a guy who bought used appliances from Sears – the washers, stoves and refrigerators hauled away from homes where customers had replaced them with new ones. His boss sold the used appliances in Mexico. Caleb was in charge of loading the truck that headed south across the border. “We would stack them to the ceiling,” he laughs. “Needless to say, I was in the best shape of my life.” When his boss expanded into buying and selling appliances that were slightly blemished (“scratch and dents”), one of his fellow employees suggested they repair the damaged appliances and retail them locally rather than sell them wholesale. Caleb found he had an uncanny knack for repairing appliances and removing blemishes. Retail sales exploded. The company he worked for initially had three employees; within three years they had 30.
It was steady work that paid well. “I really didn’t think about much more than survival,” he says of that time. Even so, Caleb played a central role in the business and ended up making better money than he’d ever anticipated.
Caleb and Tracy with helicopter.
He wanted to go back to school and train to be a helicopter pilot. Because his father was a disabled veteran, Caleb could go to school under the G.I. Bill until he turned 26. The authorities approved him for the commercial helicopter pilot program, but the Veterans Administration “pulled the payment” shortly before he completed the private pilot portion of the training – he learned that they were legally permitted to do so by some fine print in the G.I. Bill. So he decided to build on his experience with kitchen appliances.
An Appliance Business of Their Own
In late 2003, at the age of 22, Caleb and his brother, Jeremiah, started a business selling blemished appliances of better quality, among them Gaggenau, Wolf, Thermador and Sub-Zero. They focused on kitchen appliances because kitchen remodeling was big business at the time; it was before the Great Recession, which devastated so much of the housing and remodeling market. “If you’ve got a built-in oven and it’s got a ding on the back side, it really makes no difference. We were a perfect option; if you were going to pay $1,000 for an oven, you could buy it from us [instead] for $500 – $600.”
Caleb and Tracy on their wedding day.
Caleb met his wife, Tracy, through their church community in Houston. Both are Jehovah’s Witnesses. Tracy is from the Canadian town of High Prairie in the province of Alberta. Coming from a family of avid travelers, she had set out on her own at 17 to visit friends in Texas. After she and Caleb met at a church service they stayed in touch; about a year and a half later, they were married. It was the only way they could continue their relationship, he notes – “I couldn’t move [to Canada], and she couldn’t move to the States.” They celebrated their 20th anniversary this past May.
“Maybe my first woodworking project for my home,” Caleb calls this. “A plywood box to put my stereo/DVD entertainment components on, circa 2006.”
In around 2006, Caleb bought a table saw at a yard sale so he could build stuff for their home – “You buy your first house, and then you start building furniture,” he says. Plywood was one of his go-to materials. “A turning point was making an end table,” he says. He made the top and aprons, “having really no idea of what I was doing,” then proudly showed the piece to a cabinetmaker friend. “The look on his face was, ‘Wow, this is terrible.’ At that point I realized I really didn’t know what I was doing. I just kind of piddled with woodworking.”
The following year an acquaintance called out of the blue to tell Caleb about a gentleman who was retiring. He wanted to sell his shop equipment and wondered whether Caleb and Jeremiah might be interested in reselling it. They went to take a look. Faced with a 5-horsepower Delta cabinet saw and dust collector going for $275 (for both), Caleb “quickly realized ‘here’s some equipment I want to keep for myself.’ I was always interested in woodworking.” At that point his training consisted of 7th-grade woodshop class, augmented by what he’d learned through exposure to his father’s carpentry work. He started reading books on the subject; specifically, he cites the series of books by Danish-American furniture maker Tage Frid. Rounding out the year, Tracy and Caleb had their first child, Claire, that December.
Caleb grew more and more interested in woodworking. He appreciated the solitude of the work, which he found therapeutic. He was drawn to Danish Modern design, and also experimented with Windsor chairs and tried steam-bending parts in the garage. People would tell him his work was nice and ask whether he made it to sell. “I don’t have time,” he’d respond. He was building furniture at night and on weekends. But when he started to think about leaving the appliance business he posted some work on Etsy. It sold. “Here I am working every day at my normal business,” he continues, “and I get to a point [where I] ask myself ‘what are you doing? Do you just want to work all the time?’” By the time the James’ second daughter, Petra, was born in May, 2011, Caleb had signed the papers to sell his stake in the appliance business to Jeremiah.
Transition to Professional Woodworking
Caleb’s first large orders were for beds. A contact in Houston who had recently taken over a historic hardware storefront in Rice Village wanted to add local handcrafted furniture to his already hard-to-find items. He was already selling his own line of paints that were free of volatile organic compounds, specialty rubber mattresses, and more, and was looking for a craftsman to represent; he figured that if people were spending $8,000 on a mattress, maybe they’d also spend $3,000 or $4,000 on a bed. In addition to building beds, Caleb continued to sell chairs on Etsy and took commissions through an architect in Charleston.
Tracy “is a go-go-go” person, Caleb says; she loves to learn new things and be involved with people. He, on the other hand, “would probably stay and work in my shop and never leave home unless I was forced to.” When they were living in Katy, a suburb of Houston, Tracy took a course in computer drafting and worked part-time as draftsperson for an electrical company. When Caleb and Jeremiah started the appliance business he convinced her to join them; she handled sales and logistics while Caleb ran the warehouse. He calls her “a perfect salesperson. She has a knack for it – probably because she’s genuine.” Her interest in interior design didn’t hurt, either; clients appreciated her enthusiasm and readiness to go beyond the minimum required when dealing with their projects. She grew into the role of sales manager and kept that up until they sold the business in 2011. Tracy continued to do electrical design part-time while Caleb switched to full-time woodworking in his shop at home.
Caleb has had an unnamed auto-immune disorder since his late teens. After the family moved to Greenville in 2013, he became extremely anemic and developed some other health problems. He had discovered he had celiac disease in 2008; other health challenges appeared to stem from this condition. It took about a year to figure out what was going on and get back on track. Caleb now takes many supplements because he doesn’t absorb nutrients adequately.
While he was having health problems he found himself unable to handle heavy materials – “I’d be worn out in 45 minutes,” he remembers. A few years earlier he’d taught himself to make side-escapement planes, appreciating that a purpose-designed handplane would work well for some of the coped joints he used in chairmaking. He learned a lot from a Lie-Nielsen Toolworks video of Larry Williams on making tools. “I would make a bunch of furniture for somebody, then spend a couple of days making hand tools.”
Side escapement panel-raising plane.
During this period, Tracy worked full-time for about 1-1/2 years. “I was Mister Mom,” he says. It’s one of his favorite jobs.
Handplanes were a product he could make with limited strength and energy, so he started making them, even though he had no idea whether anyone would buy them. As it happened, Peter Galbert, with whom he’d taken a class, called to say he was going to be a presenter at Woodworking in America (WIA) and asked whether Caleb might like to demonstrate turning techniques at his booth; he pointed out that it would also be a good opportunity to gauge interest in his planes.
Fore or Jack plane.
Thumbnail plane in pear.
Hard as it might be to imagine, Caleb was a total stranger to the larger woodworking world in 2013, so he calls attending WIA that year “kind of a new experience for me.” A Lee Valley Tools representative approached him with a colleague, Fred West, who was known for buying and collecting tools. Fred, says Caleb, was reputed to be the kind of person who, “if he liked what you did, would buy as much of your stuff as he could, to try to help you.” He placed an order for almost $5,000-worth of Caleb’s tools, which convinced Caleb that tool making could be a viable way to make a living. Deneb Puchalski of Lie-Nielsen Toolworks invited Caleb to join the company at events around the country, at no cost. “I was very flattered,” recalls Caleb, “and thought this was a great opportunity.” He got his shop in order. Fortunately, he had already brought in a store of beech for the work.
Not long after his introduction to the woodworking community at WIA, Caleb met Christopher Schwarz at another tool event, this one in Charleston. Chris had been blogging about Danish furniture and asked if he could blog about Caleb’s tools, adding, “You ought to write a book on Danish Modern furniture for me.” Caleb had been blogging about his Danish furniture for a couple of years by then; he suspects Chris may have seen his posts, which prompted the offer.
“I thought he must have been joking,” Caleb remembers. “The next day he mentioned it to me again, with ‘I’m not joking. I don’t make this kind of offer unless I’m serious.’”
“I chewed on that” for several years, says Caleb – not least because he was so busy making handplanes, thanks to a blog post Chris had written about a side bead plane that Caleb had started producing. That post resulted in orders for about 100 planes in 36 hours at WIA. “I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” he says. Although he had made dozens of planes, he’d only sold a small number of them before this avalanche of orders. He stopped taking more orders, unsure whether he’d be able to fill them all. As Caleb puts it, “I just wanted to make sure if this was a bad idea it didn’t get any worse!”
Luckily, things worked out. He made side escapement planes for about three years, building scarcely any furniture during that time. Then he turned to spokeshaves for a couple of years. “So I’ve spent as much time doing tools as furniture.” And he’s working on that book.
Training
Caleb attributes his proficiency in part to watching his father build things. His dad never felt any hesitation, he says; instead, his attitude was “If you need it…just build it yourself.”
“I’m very much an auto-didact,” he continues. “I have no problem reading about something, then thinking through it.” That said, he doesn’t consider himself self-taught; as he sees it, “I learned from books.”
He did take one class with Peter Galbert circa 2011, because he wanted to spend time with someone who was making a living from their craft. He wasn’t building chairs like Pete’s; he just wanted to see how Pete was making chairs for a living. Caleb told Pete he was building chairs of his own for a living, in response to which Pete “dropped a big stack of his plans on the bench” and gave Caleb permission to build as many of his designs as he might wish, and sell them – a generous offer that Caleb appreciated, even though he didn’t build any of Pete’s designs for sale. He had his own ideas.
Pete, in turn, had learned a lot from Curtis Buchanan. Curtis contacted Caleb after Pete told him Caleb was good at drawing. Curtis proposed a swap: Draw a chair for Curtis and take a class in payment. So Caleb took a two-week comb-back armchair class; that was the chair Curtis wanted him to draw. Caleb found he had to redo the drawing multiple times “because Curtis builds ‘by feeling’; you had to unpack what his design was” in order to draw it on paper. That process took him into drafting on the computer, which made edits easier. Caleb produced two sets of drawings: the comb-back armchair and a continuous armchair. When they came to a third drawing, he told Curtis that he wasn’t a professional draftsperson and they should find a professional. He and Curtis happened upon Jeff Lefkowitz after a few failed attempts with other professionals. Jeff was already doing the manuals for Brian Boggs chairs, he says, “and did a fantastic job going forward.”
On Woodworking
“I try to avoid a philosophy with my woodworking and just do it,” Caleb answers when I ask for his thoughts about the larger woodworking picture. “I’m very much a ‘do what works and make it fit the application’ person.” While some woodworkers say “OMG, I would never buy anything from Ikea,” he says “I can’t afford to make all my own furniture. Here’s this nice solid-wood pine bunk bed, which probably used fewer materials [anyway]. I could probably take it apart and ship it to someone else after my girls outgrow it.” On the other hand, when it comes to his own work, he makes every chair to the best of his abilities and charges a premium price, even if that’s an indulgence for him and his client. He finds more appeal in Frank Lloyd Wright’s idea that “‘the home will be consumed by the environment at some point.’ If it lasts the entire lifetime of one individual, great. If you can hand it on to someone else after a lifetime [of use], that’s even better.” Caleb thinks of himself as pragmatic.
“I really avoid the philosophical discussion of woodworking, especially in social media,” he continues. “It feels like a source of argument. Opinions in that environment often turn into dogma. And in the end, I don’t know that any of it matters. ‘That’s great,’” he says, as if talking with an acquaintance, “‘have a discussion with your buddy when you’re geeking out on it, and then just leave it there.’”
Someone recently asked how people reacted when he started showing more machines in Instagram posts about his work. “‘Did they react to you like when Bob Dylan started playing electric guitar?’” he recalls. “I laughed. Because I never try to present that all my woodworking is hand tool woodworking. It’s not. I’ve always used power tools to make my hand tools! It depends on your objective. My feeling is, every tool is equal. You use it for what it should be used for. Sometimes I’m working for therapeutic purposes. But then my objective might be to execute a design. And then there’s, ‘maybe my purpose is to make this piece at a price point that’s appropriate to my client and me.’ I just use the right tool for the job and don’t worry about the rest.”
Examples of various triangle chip borders. A single-sided triangle chip changes character depending on where the deepest point is placed and how the borders are placed in relation to each other.
“Slöjd in Wood” is the first English translation of Jögge Sundqvist’s classic Swedish book. It’s a gorgeous peek into a work that is dominated by saturated colors, crisp bevels and handmade work. In addition to introducing you to the pieces you can make for your home, Jögge shows you how to grip the knife to produce the cuts shown in the book safely and efficiently. And shows you how to replicate the deep colors on your pieces that are positively mesmerizing.
“Skureut” is an older, colloquial word for a pattern carved in wooden surfaces. The word skureut was used in dialects in Härjedalen, Hälsingland and Jämtland. When the more strictly geometrical patterns of the Renaissance became popularized as handicraft, this carved ornamentation was named chip carving. Skureut fits nicely with slöjd objects with its free-form folk-art style.
Make your slöjd unique and personal by mixing wise sayings, commentaries on life’s complexities, signatures, names, dates and years with patterns made using chip carving, nail-cut patterns and shallow relief carving. There is great inspiration to be gained from slöjd artifacts at open-air museums and museum collections. Forgotten treasures that glitter in the dark.
Chip carving knives. Svante Djärv makes a useful model with bevels at 22°. The other one is my own make – an old razor knife with sharp carbon steel with bevels at 12°, which can be used only in softwood.
Tools: Chip carving knife, straight gouge No. 9, 5mm and No. 3, 14mm, center punch.
Material: Use deciduous softwoods such as lime, alder, sallow and aspen, but soft birch also works. Avoid knots, which are hard and difficult to cut.
I am studying older slöjd, and I am inspired by this naive folk art. The natural and expressive form speaks to me, and I collect patterns and decorations in a sketchbook. I transform them to tell my own stories.
PATTERNS ARE PART OF THE WHOLE When I work with slöjd, I make quick, rough sketches in green wood to get a three-dimensional feeling for how the shape will be. I make many prototypes before I decide on a basic functional form. The decorations should be part of the overall design and communicate something personal, adding a heightened feeling. A pattern shouldn’t overtake or compete with the basic form. For that reason, I sketch a lot and try out different varieties of decorations before I decide. A useful strategy is to arrange pieces of paper with your drawings on the work before you carve it.
FOUR BASIC RULES Apart from practice, these ingredients allow me to produce my best work:
Shadow effect of the first cut from raking light.
A really sharp chip carving knife. Hone and strop carefully. Feel for nicks by running the edge along your nail. If it grabs without slipping, it is really sharp.
Raking light. Use a strong lamp or spotlight shining from the side opposite your knife hand onto the carving surface. The shadow helps you see the width of the line of the second cut.
A good, essential grip. The thumb and the knuckle create fixed angles for the knife, 45º to the wood and 45º slanted backward toward you. They rest on the work and support the cut.
A peaceful setting so as to concentrate.
CUTTING LINES In general, cut along the fiber direction. It is possible to cut across the grain in short-fibered woods such as alder, linden and sallow, but the wood can tear out when you cut round forms. If you angle the knife 45º toward yourself, it slices the wood surface first, preventing tear-out. It is sometimes necessary to turn the knife and push with the other hand’s thumb. When you cut round shapes such as circles and S-curves, both the blank and the knife turn throughout the cut. Make large arcs with your elbows during the cut. As this rotation transfers to your knife and to your work, the movement is smooth and without nicks.
The basic grip to cut a line. The thumb and the knuckle support the knife on the blank at two 45° angles. This grip provides fixed angles, which makes it easier to cut a variety of patterns. Use power from your back and shoulders. Support the work on your knee for better stability.
Make each cut deep enough so the cuts overlap at the bottom of the V-shaped groove. If done right, the waste pops out cleanly. It is difficult to clean-cut afterward. If you cut parallel lines, the partition walls are fragile so use less power. Think through the pattern you have drawn and the order of cuts to prevent tear-out and other flaws.
TRIANGLE CHIP Triangle chips, together with cut lines, are the most traditional ways of carving decorations in wood. These patterns are triangular. The basic one is made with two 90º cuts and one 35º cut. I call this the single-sided triangle chip. The 90º side cuts appear as deep shadows. The other one, the three-sided triangle chip, has the deepest recess in the center. This is done with three 90º and three 45º cuts.
The triangle can also have sides of different lengths or even be curved. If you place these three-sided triangle chips in a circle, they become a sun circle or can be a component of a rosette.
Different examples of three-sided, three-cornered chip.
Three-sided triangle chip. Start by cutting the fibers at a 90º angle from the center. Press the tip of the knife into the wood so the edge stops at the point of the triangle. The cut is deepest at the center and becomes shallower until it stops at the tip of the triangle. Now cut away the material between the 90º cuts using a 45º angle. Cut toward the center to the same depth and angle. The chips come out easily if the 90º cuts are slightly deeper. The surface will be nice and clean.
FINGERNAIL CUT
Fingernail cut.
This pattern is simple and quick to make. Fingernail cuts can be found on objects dating to the 9th century Oseberg archaeological collections in Norway. The length of each cut is approximately 12mm (1/2″). Leave a narrow border between the individual nail cuts.
Straight gouge No. 9, 5mm that has been has been reground so the profile has rounded corners and resembles a finger. This profile makes the cut look the best.
Use a straight gouge Pfeil No. 9, 5mm. It is reground with rounded corners to be able to cut deep enough in the first 90º cut.
You can vary the length by using shorter or longer strokes. Change to a gouge with a different width for wider or narrower patterns. If you cover the surface with fingernail cuts, the uncut border creates negative space, which adds to the work’s expression.
The first phase is to make a cut at a 90º angle and repeat in a row with an interval of 10mm to 12mm (3/8″ to 1/2″) between cuts. Hollow out the fingernails on your way back to the start. For the hollowing phase, hold the gouge near the edge and support the thumb and index finger knuckle on the blank. Start cutting at a 90º angle then carefully scoop and level out as you cut toward the next 90º cut.
SHALLOW RELIEF CARVING A shallow relief is a form or motif surrounded by a lower layer carved a few millimeters into the surface. This makes the carving dynamic with nice shadow effects.
First cut the borders of the shallow relief to a 45º angle with a chip carving knife. Then cut the motif at a 45º angle away from the motif into the background. Use extra power to cut as deep as you can.
Then use a straight gouge No. 3, 14mm to cut the lower layer flat to the depth of the first cut. With a split blank, you get straight fibers; that makes it possible to cut from two directions into the background. Use the thumb of your non-gouge hand to press on the gouge’s bevel, increasing friction so it doesn’t slip as you cut toward the border.
To emphasize the motif, make markings in the background. For example, small nicks with a knife tip. Punches or stamps also make interesting marks.
How to draw a Viking braid in five steps.
Ideas for different types of single-sided or three-sided triangle chips. Offsets and variations make a great difference.
LETTERS AND NUMBERS Signatures, names, years, dates, sayings or poems make slöjd articles personal and unique. The letters are cut with the same technique as the lines and the triangle chips, depending on how wide and deep you want them. Study your favorite fonts to understand how to transform the letters into lines that can be carved.
The beginning and ending of lines that make up letters and numbers can be finished in three different ways. Pointed is two cuts coming together at a point. Sans serif letters such as block letters need a stop cut. Serif letters get triangle chips at the beginning and end.
