By request, here is a short movie showing the process of making the long sticks. This is almost identical to the technique shown in “The Stick Chair Book.” The only difference is a change to the sequence of cuts in Stage 1.
Using planes to make chair sticks is not my invention – not by a longshot. I first learned to do it this way in “Welsh Stick Chairs” by John Brown. The only difference is I’m doing it on a low workbench. JB put a stop in his machinist vise for this operation.
John Brown making long sticks with a block plane and a stylish hat.
I never thought this process was weird (what was really odd to me was doing it with the Ashem Crafts trapping and rotary planes). The goal with this handplane technique is to use bench tools and not have to purchase a drawknife, spokeshave and shavehorse. If you have these tools, ignore me.
I am always looking for a faster way to make the 26”-long sticks that make up the backrests of my chairs. Making the 12-1/2”-long short sticks is easy. I can bang one out in a minute or two with a block plane.
But the long sticks have a complicated shape. They have a 5/8” tenon at the bottom. Then the stick swells to 3/4” and goes back down to 5/8” along the next 8”. I have to get the swelling exactly right because the stick wedges in a 5/8” mortise in the arm and supports the arm from below. Finally the stick tapers to 1/2” at its tip.
Anatomy of a long stick.
I first learned to make long sticks with a drawknife and shavehorse. Then I was taught to use “trapping planes” on a lathe. Finally, I settled on using a jack plane and block plane. These were tools I already had an intimate relationship with. And I don’t need a shavehorse.
The process to make long sticks that’s outlined in “The Stick Chair Book” is one I have used for many years and is pretty fast. But during the last few months I have been experimenting with different combinations of strokes to see if I can speed the plow. The following process cuts my stick-making time in half. That cuts almost an hour off the time I need to make a chair.
Note that when I make sticks using planes, I skew the planes significantly (about 30°) to speed their cutting action.
Three Stages
As mentioned above, I use a jack plane and block plane to make my long sticks. I place a little stop block in a vise so it is 1/2” above the jaws of the vise. Or I use a planing block (shown in the photos) that is 1/2″ tall. I press the tip of the stick against the stop with one hand and push the plane with the other. The weight of the jack plane keeps it in the cut.
My long sticks begin as 3/4” x 3/4” x 26” octagons of straight hardwood. The work is divided into three stages.
Stage 1
I hold the tenon with one hand and the jack plane with the other. I make two tapering strokes with the jack plane. The first begins about 13” from the tip of the stick. The second begins back at my left hand. I make this pair of strokes three times without rotating the stick. This creates a significant flat on the stick. And by the third set of strokes, the jack is a little difficult to push.
A short stroke.
Long stroke.
Then I rotate the stick until an arris (aka a corner) is facing up. Then I repeat the above strokes – making the arris into a wide flat. Then I rotate the stick again. I keep stroking and rotating until the stick’s tip is about 5/8” in diameter – or about 1/8” above the 1/2”-tall stop in my vise.
Here is an arris before planing.
That arris becomes a flat after three short strokes and three long strokes. Then I rotate the stick so a new arris points up.
Then I enter Stage 2
Stage 2
Stage 2 is simple. It is just full-length strokes on the stick – from my hand (still holding the tenon) to the tip. I start on an arris and take three strokes, again making a flat. Then I rotate the stick until an arris faces up. Then three more strokes to flatten it. Rotate. Repeat.
I keep this pattern up until the tip of the stick is 1/2” in diameter and does not stick up above the stop in the vise.
Here you can see the tip of the stick is just about 1/2″ in diameter. A few strokes will finish it.
That’s when I enter Stage 3.
Stage 3
I turn the stick around and press the tenon against the stop in the vise. Then I use a block plane to taper the bottom of the long stick down to the tenon. I do this by making quick, short cuts and rotating the stick. This work is quick.
I leave a little bit of a shoulder so the stick fills the mortise in the seat.
Then I turn the stick around again, pushing its tip against the stop in the vise, and I clean up the top part of the stick, making sure it is round and the facets are nice and even.
I check my work by dropping the long stick into a mortise in my armbow. The stick should get wedged with about 8” of the stick (plus the 1-1/4” tenon) showing. If I need to remove more material, I remove the stick from the arm and shave it more with the block plane. Look for arrises and smooth them out.
This might not be the fastest way to make sticks, but it’s the fastest way I know of today.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Why don’t I turn my sticks on a lathe? I don’t have a steady-rest or any other equipment that could make this work. I prefer to work with bench tools when making chairs in order to keep my tool kit as small as possible. Plus, I’m a fairly lame turner.
I have a few important restock notices today. We’ve just posted a big batch of Crucible 4” Sliding Bevels. The machine shop is cranking them out as fast as they can, and we hope to catch up with demand before February.
Also – we have Crucible Card Scrapers back in stock. I wish I could blame the supply chain crisis for these being out of stock, but that would be a lie. I plum forgot to order the steel when we ran low on the tools and then – bam – we ran out.
The other news is that we have chore coats in stock in the new cavalry twill. Tom Bonamici, our clothing designer, wrote this up about the new fabric.
“We’ve tried a few different fabrics for our chore coat. The first was a hauntingly nice heavy sateen from Japan, custom-woven for the project. It was amazing, but outrageously expensive. Like, sell-a-kidney expensive. So we switched to a nice sturdy brushed twill from a U.S. vendor for the next two production runs.
“For our latest run, which is now available, we’ve switched to a mid-weight cotton cavalry twill from Brisbane Moss, a long-running mill in West Yorkshire, England. Cavalry twill is a tightly woven hard-wearing double twill, originally developed for military riding breeches. It’s very similar in construction to wool whipcord, with a harder face that’s easy to brush clean of sawdust and plane shavings. And it’s slightly lighter weight than our last two fabrics, making a chore coat that’s really the perfect weight for a year-round layer in the shop.
“The coat’s construction is the same as ever – reinforced lower pockets, custom debossed buttons, and a fit on the trim side of regular. And we’re proud to keep working with Sew Valley here in Cincinnati for the cut and sew.”
One more note about the coats. We had them listed at $135, which was a price we were selling out some small sizes in the old material. I forgot to restore the price back to $165. So some of y’all got the bargain of the year (I know, it’s early in the year).
Some people were left confused by the correction to “The Anarchist’s Workbench” I posted yesterday. And I don’t blame you – the ideas of right and wrong, correct and incorrect were being juggled furiously in the entry.
So let’s start over.
Construction lumber is usually sold in a wetter state than furniture wood. I’ve bought about four metric tons of it in my time, and it seems to come in about 14 percent to 18 percent moisture content on average. That means that as the wood dries to your shop’s equilibrium moisture content, the board is going to move a bit on you.
When wood loses moisture, the bark side of the board (the outside of the tree) tends to cup. The heart side of the board (the inside of the tree) tends to bow out. See my drawing above.
If you need to laminate the construction lumber face to face – such as gluing up four layers to make a big workbench leg – you should use the above fact to your advantage.
I glue up my legs so the heart side of one board faces the bark side of its neighbor. That way as the boards dry, they will all move in unison and keep the joints closed. Like this:
If you flip one of the boards, so the heart side faces the heart side of its neighbor, the edges of the lamination tend to open up as the boards dry. Like this:
If you glue the bark side to the bark side of its neighbor, the interior of the lamination tends to open up.
I’ve seen this happen. I’ve never seen the joint fall apart because of it, but it ain’t pretty to look at.
I hope you will forgive me for yesterday’s confusion. In the coming days I’ll correct the free pdf.
There are so many things that I admire about my spouse, Lucy, that I could easily double the size of this blog by starting a list of them. We’ve been married 29 years, have raised two fiercely intelligent women and I still love spending every waking moment with her.
One of the thousand bonds that we share has been our dedication to front-line work. Neither of us ever wanted to move into management and have remained front-line writers throughout our careers.
Lucy has been a professional journalist at several daily newspapers, a weekly business newspaper and – most recently – as a TV reporter at WCPO-TV here in Cincinnati. While many journalists burn out after about a decade of covering this miserable world, Lucy has been on the front lines for more than 31 years, covering everything from the Kentucky Legislature to crime to difficult issues of homelessness and race.
And this month, Lucy starts a new job as the host of “Cincinnati Edition” on WVXU-FM, our local National Public Radio affiliate in Cincinnati. It’s the perfect job for her. She has been an NPR nerd as long as I’ve known her, and has been a huge booster for WVXU ever since we moved to the Cincinnati area in 1996.
This new position keeps her on the front lines – she’ll have a show five times a week that focuses on local news. And yet it will allow her to use her vast perspective on the city to help listeners make sense of the news. Lucy was born here, grew up here and has long been a fiercely independent journalist. She can get almost any Democrat, Republican or Charterite on the phone for an interview with ease because she has a reputation for fairness, thoughtfulness and (this is odd for a journalist) kindness.
I can’t wait to see what she is going to do.
Why am I telling you this? Because if it weren’t for this woman, we wouldn’t have Lost Art Press. John and I call her “madame president” – and mean it. She packed boxes, sold books and – most of all – said “quit your job” when I wanted to leave Popular Woodworking Magazine and do this stupidness.
So today this blog is for Lucy, who has made the lives of thousands of people – including me – better.
Your biggest fan,
Christopher Schwarz
P.S. You can read the “official” story of Lucy’s new job here.
P.P.S. Don’t bother leaving a nasty comment about journalists or NPR. No one will see it.
