Philippe Lafargue, my Roubo translation collaborator and long-time friend, has been insulted.
Deeply. By M. Roubo himself.
Roubo’s chapters on chairmaking are technically sublime, with many profound insights and word pictures I find captivating. However, he is incessant in his demeaning descriptions of chairmakers, accusing them of being sloppy, careless, unskilled and slothful. Somewhere between the lines he is probably implying that they are hung over, their feet stink and they don’t love Jesus. Though he does not comment on their table manners, we can guess what he might say.
As a graduate of the renowned École Boulle curriculum in classical French chairmaking, Philippe unsurprisingly takes umbrage at these characterizations. He has gone so far as to wonder out loud (well, in print correspondence) why it is that Roubo was so contemptuous of chairmakers.
If we knew where Roubo is buried, it might be worth trying to dig him up and asking him. When you read Roubo’s accounts of chairmaking, you will no doubt ask yourselves the same question.
The principles behind the Roorkee chair can be easily adapted to other forms of furniture besides chairs. Its loose-tenon joinery has been used to make beds and even tables on occasion.
Today, however, I saw my first Roorkee footstool.
This weekend I visited the new Lee Valley store in Vaughan, Ontario, to deliver a couple talks on workbench design and campaign furniture. For my talk on campaign furniture, I brought along five campaign pieces (Me to border guard: “No, I am not invading your country”). But I didn’t have a Roorkee chair with me – my last one sold to a customer.
So I was happy when local woodworker Vincent brought along two Roorkee chairs he had made – plus a Roorkee footstool that was built using the same principles.
Made using purpleheart, the stool had a thigh strap and a slanted seat cover, just like a Roorkee chair. The rest of the attendees were gaga over it, taking photos and trying it out.
Vincent also made some nice modifications to the original Roorkee plan. Instead of turning round stretchers, he made his stretchers octagonal and terminated with a tapered tenon. They looked very nice – I’ll have to try that on a future chair.
Also, the “grip” turning at the top of the chair bowed out slightly in the middle instead of being straight. It looked nice and felt nice in the hand as well.
All in all, the new Lee Valley store is quite nice. The company is trying out some new things with this store. So if you are ever driving north of Toronto on the 400, be sure to stop and chck it out.
Tucked between my trips to both coasts and editing Peter Galbert’s in-fricking-credible book on chairmaking I’ve been building this folding campaign bookcase in sapele for an article in Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The bookcase looks so simple: two boxes that are hinged together. Truth is, this has been one of the most challenging pieces I’ve built in a long time. Most of the joinery is just dovetails, easy-peasy. But the backs of the cases attach to the carcase with a wack-a-doodle joint that has no name. I call the joint “banjo.” If you think that is a reference to the film “Deliverance,” you might be correct.
But what’s been even more mind-bending have been the mechanical aspects of the piece. For everything to work, the adjustable shelves and drawers have to clear the glass doors when pulled out. The hinge barrels of the glass doors have to be placed precisely to allow them to open fully without binding against the case and yet allow the two halves of the bookcase to close tightly.
And all the hardware (there’s a buttload) has to co-mingle, sometimes in unexpected ways. I destroyed the edge of a chisel while mortising the strikes for the door locks. I kept trying to lever out a little piece of waste that wouldn’t budge. Turns out the “waste” was a screw.
Like many campaign pieces, this one has more than 30 pieces of hardware that have to be mortised flush. After writing a book on campaign furniture, that’s easy. What was hard was what happened when I opened a new bag of brass screws that were decidedly soft. Within a few minutes I had four screws that were buried in the work with broken heads.
Good thing I have this screw extractor. I bought this in the 1990s from Woodworker’s Supply and it is the only one I’ve ever used that works (for me).
Today I’m dovetailing the two drawers and cleaning up the exterior for its finish (shellac and wax). I am sure I’d make my April 15 deadline if I didn’t have to go to Canada on Thursday.
Yup. I’ll be at the new Lee Valley store west of Toronto this weekend to conduct a couple of seminars and hang out with our northern neighbors. The address of the new store is: 167 Chrislea Road, Vaughan, ON L4L 8N6. Here is my schedule:
Friday, April 11, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Everything You Need to Know About Workbench Design
Friday, April 11, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Book Signing & Meet & Greet
Saturday, April 12, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
An Introduction to Campaign Furniture
Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, will also be there conducting a seminar on her recent adventures in kitchen cabinetmaking. Reading her accounts of it on her blog make me want to move into an apartment where I never have to work on my kitchen.
So all this is the long way of saying: Sorry I haven’t answered your e-mail during the last few months. I do answer all e-mails. But I still have about 40 in the queue.
My recent article on the new polissoirs from Don’s Barn and a long-term test of the burnishing effect from the tool had a significant error: The photo showed the wrong sample board.
That similar-looking sample board was given to me by woodworker Steve Schafer – he’ll be blogging about the finishing schedule on that sample board in the near future.
Last tight I rooted through my wood rack to find the mahogany sample that I prepared 18 months ago. I made it halfway through the rack without finding it; when it turns up, I’ll post a photo of it.
In the meantime, here are photos of two projects that I finished with a polissoir about the same time I made the sample board. These two stools were finished with a polissoir only on the lathe. Like all properly prepared polissoirs, it had a little wax on the tip, which was applied when I first got the tool. But I wouldn’t call this a wax finish. It’s a burnished finish, much like the burnishing finish you get when you use shavings to polish a piece spinning on the lathe.
So the result isn’t wrong – just the photo.
Apologies for the error. I should have marked Steve’s sample board as it is very similar looking to mine.
Rhett Fulkerson of Nice Planes in Frankfort, Ky., showed me a cool trick for setting a chipbreaker quickly, precisely and perfectly parallel to the cutting edge.
Take a feeler gauge whose thickness is equal to the distance you want to set the breaker back from the cutting edge. In this example, I used a .005” feeler gauge. Tape the feeler gauge to a flat surface.
Touch the back of the iron to the flat surface and against the edge of the feeler gauge. Slide the breaker down the back of the iron until it contacts the feeler gauge. If your iron has a curved cutting edge, apply the downward pressure in the center of the iron and the breaker.
Tighten the breaker’s screw. You are done.
Rhett showed me this trick during the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Cincinnati, Ohio, this weekend. I also got to check out his planes, his plane kits and his new irons and chipbreakers that you can use to make your own wooden handplanes.
The O1 irons and breakers are very nice. The breakers have a machined lip like the improved chipbreakers found on Lie-Nielsen and Veritas chipbreakers. So the parts precisely on the back of the iron.
His plane kits in maple are also sweet. Thanks to pre-cut Dominos in both halves of the plane body, it is almost (almost!) impossible for the parts to shift as you glue them up. If you are looking for a plane kit, this is a very good one.
And his finished planes are excellent as well. Since I first saw Rhett’s planes, they have become sleeker and more comfortable in the hand. Definitely check out his site if you have any interest in wooden planes.
(Note: His site says his company is Nice Ash Planes. He recently dropped the “ash” as he started using other woods.)
