We’re in the middle of building 20 (!!) French workbenches this week down in Barnesville, Ga., a small town south of Atlanta. Here, Bo Childs has graciously lent us his ample workshop and machinery (Martin planers and shapers!) to get the job done in a week.
Benchcrafted organized this massive event, which requires months of preparation (years, actually if you count the sourcing and air-drying of the wood). And like everything Jameel Abraham and Father John touch, it’s just as it should be.
There’s lots of help – you can ask Jeff Miller, Will Myers, Don Williams, Ron Brese, Megan Fitzpatrick or me for a hand with layout, joint fitting or assembly. The lunches are great (who eats bread pudding at lunch? Apparently, I do now). And the wood is just right. We’re using oak sourced from France that has been air-drying for more than a decade.
Some of the students have been a little bemused by the knots, splits and bug holes in the wood, but I keep telling them: That’s exactly what the old benches look like. I don’t want furniture-grade wood for a French workbench. Embrace the defects.
And I think we’re going to get everyone assembled by the end of day on Friday. I probably won’t get to see it, however. I need to be on a plane out of Cincinnati by 6 p.m. Friday to start a chairmaking class on Monday morning. (It’s a stupid way to make a living, but it beats working.)
I don’t know if Benchcrafted and Bo will ever do this again. If they do, I hope they’ll ask me to lend a hand again. And if you ever get a chance to participate, I recommend you start saving your pennies now.
People take woodworking classes for a lot of deeply personal and disturbingly wack-doodle reasons. I’ve had students take a class because they want to change their whole life, and others who paid the same money simply to escape their life for two days.
For most of my life, I couldn’t afford to take woodworking classes, and then I found myself in the odd position of teaching them.
As a result I have a skewed take. On the one hand, hands-on classes are perhaps the best way to learn. On the other hand, I can’t believe how much they cost students. (In fact, they are still difficult for me to afford.)
This dichotomy got me thinking. If I could take only two woodworking classes, what would they be? I struggled with the question until I allowed myself three woodworking classes.
Sharpening 101
If you take only one woodworking class, I think it should be a sharpening course. Sharpening is the gateway skill to learning handwork, carving, turning and many other corners of the craft. And, with a good teacher, it isn’t hard to learn.
Find a teacher who doesn’t sell sharpening equipment (those classes can be a mini Amway convention. If you see a fog machine when you first enter the bench room, run for your life). Find someone who sharpens more than just chisels – edge tools come in all shapes. And try to find out how gizmo-heavy the class is. Sharpening is not about the equipment. It’s about understanding its principles and executing them with the stuff you own (or can afford).
Build a Workbench
A good workbench makes everything easier. But building one can take a year of your life – a year that could be spent making furniture instead. So instead, take a one-week class where you build a workbench using the heavy-duty machinery that makes it a breeze. You probably don’t need a shaper to make furniture, but a shaper sure makes building a bench easier. Take advantage of the school’s equipment and expertise.
Even if you are a hand-tool purist, I recommend you hold your nose and do the deed so you can get on with the good part – designing and making furniture.
Chairmaking or Whatever
Years ago I tried to teach myself chairmaking with books alone and failed. I know that it’s possible to make a chair without taking a class, but chairmaking classes (like sharpening classes) short-circuit the process in a radical fashion. I took my first chair class in 2003 and have taken several more since, even though they are difficult to afford.
If you hate the idea of building chairs (and some people do), then pick a single skill that represents your highest goal – marquetry, bowl-turning, French polishing or whatever – and find someone who knows the magic tricks. There are indeed magic tricks to most woodworking processes, and the good instructors are willing to share them (bad instructors are happy to watch you struggle).
But most of all, make sure you don’t also buy a time-share condominium as part of that package of sharpening stones and flattening plates being hawked by your sharpening teacher. And don’t enroll in the “Waterstone of the Month Club,” either.
I am happy to announce that our Crucible curved card scrapers and design curves are available for sale in the U.K. (and Europe) through Classic Hand Tools. You can order a scraper here and curves here.
Thanks to the crew at Classic Hand Tools for stocking these tools.
We get a lot of questions about when we’ll begin distributing our lump hammer outside the USA. We’re still fulfilling demand here in the States and are still ramping up production until we get to where we have a surplus. I hope we will be there by early 2020.
The Lost Art Press storefront will be open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and we welcome your questions, gripes and general company.
The special 2 p.m. lecture on Saturday will be on my favorite stick chairs from all over the world. I’ll also have a couple of my recent chairs on display plus a real honest-to-goodness antique Welsh stick chair for you to inspect.
If you are looking for other fun activities in Cincinnati this weekend, we recommend BLINK, an amazing and free artistic light festival scattered all over downtown that will spill into Covington this year. We’ve been watching the preparations all week, and this evening Lucy and I saw a dress rehearsal on the Roebling Bridge. It should be pretty amazing.
The Lost Art Press storefront is located in the heart of Covington’s Main Strasse Historic District, steps away from great food, drink and entertainment. Our address is 837 Willard St., Covington, KY 41011.
Families, pets and grumpy spouses are always welcome, too!
When I first learned to saddle seats in 2003, it was with a gutter adze. I stood on the chair seat and swung the tool between my legs. I never developed a knack for the gutter adze, unlike the scorp (sometimes called an inshave), which has always felt at home in my hands.
After working with Chris Williams, however, I was determined to give the adze another chance. Chris learned to saddle seats from John Brown using a small adze. And instead of standing on the chair seat, JB propped it up in front of him at the workbench.
The first success I had was with a Dictum adze. After getting it razor sharp, I could hack out a seat fairly well, just like John Brown showed in “Welsh Stick Chairs.”
Then Chris told me about an adze made by one of John Brown’s sons, blacksmith and woodworker Matty Sears. It was based on an interesting African tool. The handle was hafted to the head in an ingenious manner. The more you used the adze, the tighter the handle became. But you could easily pop the handle off to make sharpening the interior bevel easier.
Matty had made the adze for his father, who used it on chairs he built after the publication of “Welsh Stick Chairs.”
A copy of the first adze Matty saw using this design. It belonged to a sculptor friend of JB (John Cleal) who had lived in Southern Africa. Matty borrowed it, made this one and then with encouragement and input from JB, worked it into the tool it is today. Photo courtesy of Matty Sears.
Chris had one, and after using his I decided it was a significant upgrade from my Dictum adze.
As with any striking tool (a hammer or a hatchet, for example), it’s not just about the quality of the steel or the comfort of the handle. It’s about the balance of the tool, which can make it easy to control or make it unwieldy. This is where Matty’s adze excels. The balance is exquisite. And after saddling only a couple chair seats, I found it incredibly easy to place my strikes right where I wanted them. Plus, the weight of the head removes a sizable chip of oak without a lot of upper body strength.
So, instead of swinging the adze with my arms, I merely lift it up and use my thumbs to steer the edge right where I want it, letting the tool’s weight do most of the work (you do have to put some umph behind it). I’ve now made four chairs with Matty’s adze, and I’m a convert.
The tool came beautifully sharpened, and the hand-forged head keeps a wicked edge. All you have to do is maintain that edge, which I do with fine sandpaper wrapped around a dowel, plus a strop. Separating the head from the handle is easy, and that indeed makes sharpening safer and easier. Its primary bevel is on the inside, but there is a shallow bevel on the outside as well. The edge geometry works well, and is easy to maintain.
It is, like the best axes I’ve used, an incredibly elegant tool, even though its job is coarse work.
One of Matty’s earlier adzes after making the blade curved. Photo courtesy of Matty Sears.
Like all handmade things, it costs more than mass-manufactured tools. The adze is $400 plus shipping. The bottom line is that, like all my favorite tools, I look forward to using it. Holding it. Wielding it. Even sharpening it. It is a thing of beauty and is also (as a bonus) a direct link to John Brown, one of my woodworking heroes.
The best way to contact Matty about making an adze for you is by sending him a message through his Instagram account, mattysearsworks. Note: You can send Instagram messages through a mobile device, not a desktop machine.
— Christopher Schwarz
Full disclosure: I paid full price for my adze. Matty also receives some royalties from Lost Art Press from sales of “Welsh Stick Chairs,” but that is the entirety of our business relationship.
