English Roorkhee chairs are one of the missing links of modern chair design.
The form has its roots in the 19th-century late-Victorian era of the British Empire. It was the symbol of the changing nature of war (it’s lightweight and quick to pack). And its simple lines influenced generations of chair designers, from Marcel Breuer to the person who developed the ubiquitous camping chair.
I started building a run of these chairs on Tuesday for an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine and a forthcoming book on campaign furniture. My version is based closely on an historical example – many modern versions are skimpier and have joinery that is unnecessarily complex or just silly (more on that later).
This Roorkhee (rhymes with “dorky”) chair has conical tenons and mortises. And all the stretchers are the same length so they are interchangeable. Also a plus: The seat slopes down from the front of the chair to the back. That makes it nice for lounging. Some of the historical examples I studied had horizontal seats or even seats that sloped forward – perhaps to help keep you awake or to allow you spring from the chair for battle.
As I have no battles planned for 2013, I chose the version that is best for a beer or cigar after safari.
My joinery design is indebted to Greg Miller, a woodworker in Australia who built many of these chairs commercially. He shared his tricks for the joinery and his leg layouts with me.
I should have the chairs all framed up by Friday and finished by Saturday. So here is the plea for help: If there are any leather workers out there who could do the seat and back (for pay, of course), drop me a line this week at chris@lostartpress.com. Otherwise, I’ll head up to our local leather store – they have kindly offered to help me out.
And now down to the shop. I have mortises to bore.
By request, here is my teaching schedule for the remainder of 2012. If a class is sold out, it is always worth getting on the waiting list. Life has its crises, and so spots always open up – usually in the week before the class begins.
June 11-17: Dictum Workshops, Metten, Germany
I’ll be making my third trip to Germany to teach handwork at the Dictum workshop, which is located in an uber-cool pig barn in a monastery (no sarcasm — it’s awesome). I’m teaching three classes — one on planes and saws, a second on building wooden layout tools and a third on building a French-style workbench.
July 7-8: Lie-Nielsen Toolworks, Warren, Maine Shaker Wall Cabinet. This is a fun two-day class in hand joinery. Learn to surface boards by hand, cut rabbets and dados and learn the joys of cut nails. The new Lie-Nielsen classroom is outstanding.
July 16-20: The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Rockport, Maine
By Hammer & Hand: The Dovetailed Schoolbox. This class is based on the 1839 book “The Joiner and Cabinet Maker” – a fascinating look into the life of an apprentice in an English joinery shop. In this class, we build a Moxon double-screw, a shooting board and the Schoolbox from the book. This is an intense class in dovetailing and hand casework. This is the first time I’ve been asked to teach at this school. Hope it goes OK.
July 30-Aug. 3: Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking, Berea, Ky. The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Build the Anarchist’s Tool Chest in five days in the hills of Berea, Ky. Kelly runs an excellent school with a great vibe and tremendous workbenches. I’ve been looking forward to this class all year.
Sept. 4-8: Marc Adams School of Woodworking, Franklin, In. By Hammer and Hand: The Dovetailed Schoolbox. I bring the Schoolbox class to Marc Adams’s excellent school. There’s a reason this is the largest school in North America. Everything is top-shelf, from the workbenches, the new engineered floor to the ice cream machine (yes, it makes swirls).
Sept. 17-21: The Woodwright’s School, Pittsboro, N.C. The Anarchist’s Tool Chest: Yes, you can build this tool chest entirely by hand. And eat ice cream for lunch. And be 10 steps from an awesome tool store and bar. It’s Roy Underhill’s school for gosh sakes. This is a fun class with lots of crazy hand- and foot-powered tools – including a Barnes mortiser.
And that’s it for 2012, except for speaking at both Woodworking in America conferences. For 2013, I’ll be traveling to a lot of new places to teach: Rosewood in Canada, Alaska and Australia. Plus, I hope to be teaching the following two classes, which I am pitching to some of the schools I frequent.
Design & Build a Campaign Chest
Campaign chests are one of the most rugged and masculine pieces of furniture ever made – and their simple lines fit in with almost any decor. In this class, you will learn to design your ideal campaign chest using guidelines culled from old military records and the archaeological records. After spending a day designing your chest with the help of SketchUp and the instructor, you’ll spend the next four days building the upper unit of your chest using a variety of hand- and power-tool techniques. In this class you’ll learn:
1. How to speak the language of campaign chests so you can execute your design and it will look as good as an original.
2. How to design the joinery for these cases, which were designed to survive war.
3. How to surface very wide boards with ease using hand tools and home shop equipment.
4. How to cut full-blind and half-blind dovetails.
5. How to cut rabbets, dados and grooves by hand and by power.
6. How to make the special tight-fitting recesses for the brass hardware that is typical size – both by hand and power.
7. How to age brass and steel hardware to make it look ancient.
8. How to fit drawers toa piston fit.
9. How to use high-angle planes and scrapers to deal with the exotic woods common to campaign chests.
Design & Build a Traditional Trestle Table
Trestle tables are one of the most ancient forms of furniture and appear in Medieval dining halls, Shaker dwellings and in the portfolio of George Nakashima. In short, they are one of the most elemental and enduring forms of furniture in human history. They use a minimum of material and excellent joinery to produce a table that is lightweight and incredibly strong. In this class, you’ll take a historical trip into the furniture record to understand the trestle table, from its beginnings in castle life to the present day. Using this knowledge, you’ll design your own trestle table using SketchUp and the assistance of the instructor. You’ll be able to design your trestle table in any style and in any size. Then you’ll spend the next four days executing your design under the eye of the teacher. In this class you’ll learn:
1. How to make beautiful tabletops that stay flat and are easy to assemble.
2. How to make the wedged through-tenon – the joint at the heart of a trestle table.
3. How to make your table knock down for travel using bed hardware.
4. How to surface large tabletops using power tools, hand tools or scrapers.
5. How to cut and assemble breadboard ends by both hand and power.
6. How to surface all your parts using handplanes.
7. How to make large-scale bridle joints to affix the top braces and ribs of the table.
8. How to use a fore plane or scrub plane to remove material quickly and provide authentic texture.
During the last eight years I’ve tried to refine how I explain how to use a handplane to students. The biggest problem the students have isn’t ignorance. I wish that were the case. Instead, their biggest problem is they have been flooded with so much contradictory information that they are paralyzed.
So I’ve been trying to increase the signal and decrease the noise so they can focus on what is important. To help cement these ideas, I’ve created a list of principles relating to handplanes. Here are the ones for the tool’s cutting edge. The most important one is No. 10.
1. A sharp edge is two surfaces that intersect at the smallest point possible. This is called a “zero-radius intersection.”
2. A dull edge is where damage has occurred (hitting a nail) or the zero-radius intersection has worn away to create a third surface at the intersection.
3. A zero-radius intersection will not reflect light. The third surface created from wear will reflect light. So you can see a dull edge as a bright line. You cannot see a zero-radius intersection.
4. In general, a tool can be made sharp (a zero-radius intersection) by ANY medium – from a grinder to a waterstone. Polishing the edge only makes it more durable. The more polish, the longer the edge will go between sharpenings.
5. A sharp edge is TWO surfaces. Both must be polished for the edge to be durable. But only a small portion of the edge cuts wood (about .010” on each surface). So do not waste your time polishing steel that does not cut wood.
6. There are only three grits in sharpening: grinding, honing and polishing. Grinding removes damage or an edge that has been oversharpened. Honing removes a dull edge and restores the zero-radius intersection. Polishing makes the edge more durable. All other claims are marketing.
7. The larger the angle between your two surfaces, the more durable the edge. However, large angles can make tools unusable. If you sharpen an edge above 35°, you have to educate yourself about cutting geometry and clearance angles to stay out of trouble. If you sharpen at 35° or lower, you’ll stay out of trouble.
8. The smaller the angle between the two surfaces, the less durable the edge will be. Edges that are sharpened at 20° or lower do not work well in planes.
9. Plane edges can have a curve or be straight. Both perspectives work.
10. There is no such thing as “cheating” when it comes to sharpening. Use jigs and fixtures – or don’t. There is only sharp and dull.
You do not have to spend $20 on a corner brace for your next piece of Campaign-style furniture. You can, in fact, spend less than 98 cents per brace and pick them up at your corner hardware store.
While finishing up work on the folding bookcase I’ve been working on the last couple weeks, I walked down to our local hardware store to pick up some cork feet for the bookcase so it wouldn’t scratch the living snot out of the furniture below it.
At the hardware store, I spied some brass mending plates and corner braces that look darn near like the hardware shown on many old piece of Campaign furniture I’ve been researching. A pack of four plates was $3.89. I snatched several sizes and shapes to mess around with in my shop.
The good news: These are available everywhere. You can find them at home centers and hardware stores in a wide variety of shapes, sizes and finishes. You aren’t going to find a corner brace with an ogee ornament, but that’s the price of frugality.
More good news: They don’t totally suck a lemon turd. From a distance, they look pretty good. With some careful insetting and some new screws, them might pass – like bringing home a top-notch cross-dresser to meet maw and pa.
The bad news. The “brass” is one molecule thick on these babies. If you rub them the wrong way with your thumb, the brass will disappear.
Other bad news: On some corner braces the countersink for the screws is on the wrong side of the hardware. These braces are supposed to be used on inside corners. If you have a countersink bit, this problem is easy to remedy.
The bottom line: Don’t buy the “brass” ones. Buy the steel ones and make them gunky with a combination of gun blue, flame and urine. That will give them the grunge they need to look sweet.
I plan to make a lap desk or small chest using these braces – after they have been given a golden shower and the torch (just kidding about the pee-pee). They really are not as bad as I thought they would be. And at less than $1 each, it’s hard to complain.
One of the workbench problems I’ve yet to solve is what you should do if you don’t have a dedicated place to work.
I’ve seen lots of portable, fold-up benches, but none that I thought were worth building. I’ve seen many vintage plans for workbench tops that are supposed to go on top of your kitchen table. But again, none inspired me enough to take up a saw.
Yesterday a reader sent me a link to the photo above. Damn. I don’t have time for this, but I just might have to build that thing and see how it works. It’s just too ingenious (and crazy) not to build.
If you are still a bit confused, the photo is showing the underside of the portable benchtop. The two clamps at the top of the photo attach the rig to a worktable. The whole thing is 1-5/8” thick, 9-5/8” wide and 31” long – smaller than I assumed when I first saw the photo.
Here is why this is clever/crazy enough to build.
1. The face vise. You have two screws and four holes. You can move the screws around to clamp whatever you have at hand. It’s a double-screw, it’s a shoulder vise. It mows the yard.
2. The dog holes. Despite the fact that the holes are deep into the assembly, they are still near an edge. So you could still use fenced planes with this benchtop – a big plus in my book.
3. The wooden wagon vise. That’s just cool.
What are the downsides? My biggest concern is the weight combined with the cantilever. I imagine that you have to clamp this to a pretty stout table or a fixed countertop. Even so, I wouldn’t want to mortise over a portion of this bench that was unsupported.
The example is for sale at this Australian tool auction site. So if you live in Australia and buy it, drop me a note about how it works. The auctioneer’s description says it’s of “Scandinavian origin,” so if you’ve seen one in Europe, drop me a line. I’d love to learn more about this gizmo.
I started building a run of these chairs on Tuesday for an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine and a forthcoming book on campaign furniture. My version is based closely on an historical example – many modern versions are skimpier and have joinery that is unnecessarily complex or just silly (more on that later).
