One of the dimensions on page 161 of “Campaign Furniture” is incorrect. The height of the front stretcher of the Roorkee chair should be 12-1/2” from the floor, not 13-1/2”.
You can download a high-resolution pdf of the corrected page via this link. If you own the pdf of the book, you can make the correction in the text yourself (one of the beauties of having a file that is free of DRM).
Apologies for the error.
— Christopher Schwarz
The most gratifying class I teach has got to be the one on Roorkee chairs.
To be certain, there is the normal amount of “explaining how to make things out of wood” in the class. But in addition to that, we get to explore:
• Cutting and riveting leather.
• Stripping and installing steel hardware.
• Mixing shellac without a digital scale or math degree.
• HVLP spraying.
• Applying wax finishes.
• Make a three-legged stool.
• Dirty Irish songs.
Thanks to the simplicity – and genius – of these chairs, the pace of this class allows for crazy stuff. Sing a shanty. Demonstrate how to hand-stitch leather. Argue about wood species. Drink 3 liters of beer and talk about the state of woodworking.
Today we wrapped up a four-day class on building Roorkee chairs, and the students were able to complete building all of their chairs, including finishing them with shellac and wax. They completed all of the leatherwork. And they all built three-legged stools that were not on the lesson plan. (Thank you William Ng for allowing us to do all this crazy stuff and supplying us with tools, parts and awesome doughnuts.)
But the best moment (for me) came when one of the students sat in the chair he had just completed minutes ago and said the following words:
“This,” he said, “is going to get me some strange with the wife.”
Yup, I know that’s a little rude, but until someone says it about the class you just ran, shut up.
— Christopher Schwarz
One of the nice things about teaching different places is you get to see how each school has its own personality or vibe, if you will.
I can say this: If you like taking classes at Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking, you’ll feel right at home at William Ng’s school in Anaheim, Calif. Like Kelly, William has a laid-back, almost soothing personality. And (also like Kelly), William takes his equipment very seriously.
(Teaching here made me realize how much I’ll miss teaching at Kelly’s this year – he’s taking a sabbatical for a year to travel and do other stuff.)
On Monday we began turning legs for Roorkee chairs on sweet Oneway lathes and began boring the leg mortises on a monstrous General drill press. We also started all the leatherwork for the chairs by making what seemed like a mile of belting material from vegetable-tanned leather.
Teaching the class made me realize I have a slight dimensional error in “Campaign Furniture.” I’ll publish an errata tonight after class.
Today we crack into the chromium-tanned hides that will make the seats and start the tricky process of making the socketed mortises and tenons that create the chair’s frame.
So next time your family wants to go to Disneyland, simply agree. Send them there and book a class down the street with William Ng. Win-win.
— Christopher Schwarz
Stools that have an X-frame for the base are some of the oldest pieces of seating furniture (aside from a stump and buttocks). Sometimes called a “curule,” they were, quite literally the seat of power in Roman times.
These X-style seats have long been produced in metal and wood and were very common campaigning items, according to the Army & Navy Co-Operative Society catalogs. The stool shown above is featured in the 1907 catalog and cost 2 shillings and 1 pence (the catalog entry is shown on page 304 of my book, “Campaign Furniture”).
Thanks to dumb luck, I acquired one of these stools for $25 and have been traveling with it every since. It is remarkable.
When assembled, the stool is 16” high, 15” wide and 8” deep. It can hold my weight (and more) with ease. When knocked down, it is 12” x 8” x 1-1/2”. The stool weighs less than 4 lbs.
I’m bringing this stool, my Douro chair and some pieces of furniture I built to the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event in Charleston, S.C. Details are here. On the day before the event, I’m giving a free lecture on the origins of campaign furniture at the American College of the Building Arts. The public is welcome. Details on that lecture are here.
— Christopher Schwarz
The first campaign chest I built I used sledge feet – simple square blocks that raised the lower case off the ground.
Soon after, I received a pleasant note stating that I had made an amateur mistake. Campaign chests with sledge feet were merely missing their turned feet.
I felt like a fool at first. It was like sculpting a female torso and leaving off the naughty bits. After recovering from my shame, I started looking around at original source material.
First I checked my copies of the Army & Navy Co-Operative Society catalogs. Sure enough, all the chests shown in my copies had turned feet that screwed into blocks in the bottom of the lower chest unit.
But something else nagged at me.
As you know, we love old paintings and drawings here at Lost Art Press. Thanks to Jeff Burks, Suzanne Ellison and our own efforts, we have amassed many hundreds of images relating to woodworking from Roman times to the present. These are important, if sometimes flawed, documents that are as important as written, if sometimes flawed, accounts.
So I began scanning my library of paintings and drawings relating to campaign furniture. Sure enough, I immediately found several that showed campaign chests in use on their sledge feet – no turned feet.
There are several explanations: The turned feet were still in the lower drawer or had been destroyed by bugs or water. Or perhaps the owner of the chest was lazy or didn’t care for the feet. Or perhaps that chest was made without the turned feet.
No matter what the explanation, don’t feel like you are wrong if you don’t include them on your chest. Personally, I really like the feet, but some people are turned off by turning.
“Campaign Furniture” is now available in our store (with free domestic shipping until April 5) and from Lee Valley Tools.
— Christopher Schwarz
