The Wood Owls are about $3.50 each, and the Star M bits are about $9. Both work fine. But here are their important differences.
With the Wood Owls, I manage to build about two chairs before they are too dull ($1.25 per chair). I can easily sharpen the spade bits two more times, so I can squeeze six chairs total out of the bit before it goes to the recycler. So 58 cents per chair.
With the Star Ms, I get five chairs out of one bit ($1.80 per chair) before I recycle it. I haven’t found a good way to resharpen them. The bit’s cutting geometry is above my pay grade.
The Star Ms have some advantages compared to the spades, however. The Star Ms cut much faster, which is nice. Also, they leave clean exit holes, so I don’t have to use a backing board when drilling through an arm or a seat. That feature is worth a lot to me because it easily cuts my drilling time in half.
So which bit do I prefer? Whichever one I can find. Both bits in the 5/8”/16mm size are tricky to find in stock. (As I type this, I can’t find either brand in stock.)
I’m sure y’all have a lot of “but what about this other bit?” questions, but I don’t have many answers. Apologies in advance.
This six-stick comb-back chair is a close cousin to the chair shown on the cover of “The Stick Chair Journal No. 1.” The only significant differences are that the arm parts on this new chair aren’t mitered. And its comb is taller.
I am selling this chair for $1,500 via a random drawing. Instructions on purchasing the chair can be found near the bottom of this blog entry. Here are some more details about its design and construction.
This particular chair is set up for general use. The back is fairly upright at 13° off the seat. And the seat tilts at 3°, giving the chair an overall tilt of 16°. The seat is 16-1/2” off the floor to accommodate both short and tall sitters, and the chair is 38-1/2” high overall.
All the straight components of this chair were sawn or split out to be as strong as possible. The arms are made from four pieces of curly cherry from Pennsylvania. All of the chair’s major joints were assembled using hide glue, so repairs in the (far) future will be easy.
The through-tenons in the chair’s hands have been left proud and are faceted using chisel cuts. This provides a nice tactile detail.
The finish is Soft Wax 2.0, a non-toxic finish made from raw linseed oil, beeswax and a small amount of citrus solvent. The finish isn’t particularly durable, but it is easily repairable and appropriate for a chair.
How to Purchase This Chair
This chair is being sold via a random drawing. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Tuesday, Sept. 27. In the email please use the subject line “Chair Sale” and include your:
First name and last name
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
After all the emails have arrived on Sept. 27, we will pick a winner that evening.
If you are the “winner,” the chair can be picked up at our storefront for free. Or we can ship it to you via common carrier. The crate is included in the price of the chair. Shipping a chair usually costs about $200 to $400, depending on your location. (I’m sorry but we cannot ship it outside the U.S.)
Our storefront on Willard Street in Covington, Ky.
We are offering some new classes and old favorites at the Lost Art Press storefront during the first half of 2023. All these classes take place in our bench room at our Covington, Ky., location.
Our storefront is located in the center of the city’s Main Strasse village, and we are surrounded by lots of places to eat, drink and stay – all without ever using your car. The bench room is a nice place to learn handwork. Every student gets a heavy workbench, the bench room is filled with natural light and the floors are oak, which is easy on your back. Oh, and the class size is small: a maximum of six students.
Registration for these classes opens at 10 a.m. Eastern on Sept. 26 through our Covington Mechanicals classes page (where you’ll see “Register Now” buttons on each class – but you can’t until 10 a.m. Eastern on the 26th). Classes tend to fill up fast, but there is some turnover. So we encourage you to sign up for the wait list if the class you want is full.
Here are the classes for January to June 2023. (And we may add another class or two in the weeks to come – if so, they’ll be announced here.)
Comb-back stick chair in black cherry.
Comb-back Stick Chair with Christopher Schwarz Jan. 16-20, 2023 Build a comb-back stick chair, an excellent introduction to the craft of chairmaking. Students will construct a comfortable chair using mostly bench tools and just a few specialty tools. Students are encouraged to customize their chair by combining different hands, arms, stretchers and combs. This class is open to anyone who can sharpen their own hand tools.
Traditional sawbench
Build a Sawbench with Megan Fitzpatrick Jan 28-29, 2023 Build a traditional sawbench as you learn fundamental hand-tool skills including how to lay out your cuts, use handsaws, chisels, bench planes, router planes and more. Plus, you’ll learn how to properly use cut nails (without splitting the wood). Sure, you’ll get a nice sawbench out of it, but the real joy is in the new techniques you’ll pick up.
Anarchist’s tool chest
Anarchist’s Tool Chest with Megan Fitzpatrick Feb 6-10, 2023 In five days, we are going to build traditional full-size English tool chests – a.k.a. “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” from Christopher Schwarz’s book of that title – using hand tools. If you don’t like dovetails, this is not the class for you. If you’d like to learn dovetails (while you build a sturdy chest that holds about 50 hand tools…which is to say almost all the hand tools you need to build furniture), this is absolutely the class for you – you’ll get plenty of instruction and practice.
Plus, we’ll make handsome and (almost) bomb-proof raised-panel lids, and cut the mouldings, skirts and lids by hand. And though we will have time to build only the outside of the chest, I’ll discuss how to divide up the interior for efficient work, and show you some options.
Staked backstool in ash.
Staked Backstool from the ‘Anarchist’s Design Book’ with Christopher Schwarz Feb. 18-19, 2023 This contemporary side chair is a two-day introduction to many of the operations involved in chairmaking, including drilling compound angles, making tapered mortise-and-tenon joints and creating short sticks. This class is open to anyone who can sharpen their own hand tools.
Dutch tool chest
Dutch Tool Chest with Megan Fitzpatrick March 3-5, 2023 This handsome tool chest is a great three-day introduction to several bedrock hand-tool joinery techniques: dovetails, dados, rabbets and more. Plus you’ll learn how to cut a fingernail moulding, raise a panel, use cut-nails and rules for carcase construction. By the end of Day 3, you’ll be able to pop all your tools in your new chest (which fits in the back of almost any car) for your drive home.
Lowback stick chair in black cherry.
Lowback Stick Chair with Christopher Schwarz March 20-24, 2023 Build a lowback stick chair, a fairly simple chair that involves a good deal of cutting and shaping compound curves. This is a great dining chair and offers excellent lumbar support. This class is open to anyone who can sharpen their own hand tools.
Dovetailed Shaker trays
Dovetailed Shaker Tray with Megan Fitzpatrick April 22-23, 2023 Make a classic Shaker silverware tray in this introduction to hand-cut dovetails. In this two-day class, you’ll learn: dovetail layout using dividers; how to saw to a line with a backsaw; how to wield a coping saw; how to pare and chop with chisels; how to fit dovetails;cut and fair curves and more.
Staked sawbenches in poplar and oak.
Staked Sawbenches with Christopher Schwarz May 13-14, 2023 During this weekend class you’ll build a pair of staked sawbenches, which are essential for any shop that uses handsaws. During the process of building your sawbenches, you’ll learn about compound-angle joinery, making tapered mortise-and-tenon joints and leveling the legs to the floor. This class is open to anyone who can sharpen their own hand tools.
Dutch Tool Chest with Megan Fitzpatrick May 19-21, 2023 This handsome tool chest is a great three-day introduction to several bedrock hand-tool joinery techniques: dovetails, dados, rabbets and more. Plus you’ll learn how to cut a fingernail moulding, raise a panel, use cut-nails and rules for carcase construction. By the end of Day 3, you’ll be able to pop all your tools in your new chest (which fits in the back of almost any car) for your drive home.
This post originally appeared on Peter Follansbee’s blog, Joiner’s Notes. Reprinted here with permission.
I read last week that chairmaker Dave Sawyer passed away. I never knew him, but I felt very connected to his work through our many mutual friends. Over the past ten years or so I’ve been working on this idea in my head (and down on “paper” well, really this screen) about the people who taught me woodworking and about others, like Dave, who were part of what I call my “Craft Genealogy.” My intention is for it to be a book, but it’s a long ways off.
Dave Sawyer, c. 1981 photo by Drew Langsner
Four people who were huge influences on me were Jennie Alexander, Drew Langsner, Daniel O’Hagan and Curtis Buchanan. Dave was close friends with all of them, and their stories are intertwined.
I worked most closely with Alexander and Langsner; in and out of their homes on a regular basis. When Jennie was getting older we often spoke of what would happen when she went to the “boneyard.” Among the concerns were what academics call her “papers.” These eventually went to Winterthur Museum’s research library, where I then began to sift through them, all the way back to about 1973 or 74. The pandemic interrupted that research – but I’ll pick it back up before too much longer.
PF JA Theo; photo Drew Langsner
I knew Alexander as well as anyone did. From time to time, I used to ask how she came to write her book back in the 1970s. “It was in the air” she used to say. “If I didn’t write it, someone else would.”
In the mid-1970s, Alexander was a very-part-time woodworker. A busy lawyer with a young family, she could only work her chair stuff on sporadic weekends and holidays here & there. Many of us begin that way, squeezing in our craft when real life allows us some hours here & there. She learned mostly by studying old chairs in museum collections and experimenting with the tools and materials. And asking questions of anyone who might know something.
J. Alexander, c. 1978
Through a couple different connections, JA was told of someone in New Hampshire who made chairs “the old way…” or something like that. And so, in 1976 Alexander wrote to Dave Sawyer and introduced himself and his chairs. And that connection pushed JA’s chairmaking further along than anything before.
So yes, chairmaking “was in the air” – but what I found out when I began studying JA’s letters is that it was in the air around Dave Sawyer.
Dave Sawyer at Country Workshops, early 1980s, photo by Drew Langsner
Unlike Alexander, Sawyer was a full-time craftsman, at that point, making wooden hay forks and ladderback chairs. So Alexander would fire off questions in the mail & Dave would send ideas and comments back and forth. Eventually they got together in New Hampshire and down in Baltimore. From that beginning, they became lifelong friends.
Dave Sawyer ladderback, mid-1970s
Sawyer’s first letter to JA notes: “I’ve made near 200 ladderback chairs, most 3-slat, most with hickory bark seats – using just the same methods you do (unless you turn your posts – I shave mine).”
Alexander did turn her posts at that time, but soon shifted to an all-shaved chair. A version of that story is recounted in the new version of Make a Chair from a Tree. I suspect Sawyer was an un-credited catalyst for that change in technique. After some back & forth, Sawyer got right to the point:
“I want you to come here next June for a couple of days – ride the train from Baltimore – I’ll meet you in Bellows Falls at 12:30 AM or whenever (can also meet buses in Charlestown or Claremont, or I suppose you could drive if you wanted to be so foolish.) We can do barking one day and I’ll show you anything you like about chairmaking too.” [PF emphasis]
In the early 1980s Dave, then in Vermont, shifted his attention from ladderback chairs to Windsor chairs, and those are what he became most known for. And his were the best Windsor chairs produced in this country.
Dave Sawyer chairs (from an auction results webpage)
When I learned Windsor chairmaking from Curtis Buchanan in 1987, he shared as much as he knew freely – because he said that’s what Dave did for him. Curtis has tweaked a lot of chair designs over 40 years but the DNA of many of his chairs is pure- Dave Sawyer. Curtis always tells the story of Dave saying to him that his “questions were getting too good – you have to just come up here and I’ll show you what to do…”
Curtis Buchanan’s 1987 class at Country Workshops, photo by Drew Langsner
I learned something from 1976 Dave Sawyer just a few years ago – the notch for splicing hickory bark seating. JA struggled with bark at first and Dave tried to sort it out for Alexander. In one of Dave’s letters he cut out a sample joint in paper & pinned it to the letter. 45 years later, I adopted it on the spot – Alexander never did, continued to tie knots in the bark seats throughout her career. Stubborn.
sample for joined hickory bark strips
I’m still gathering material for this history of how this particular green woodworking branch formed and grew. It doesn’t begin with Dave, nor does it end with him. But he’s a critical part of the story. His impact was huge – back when it was really just a few dozen people exploring working this way. He retired many years ago but his son George took over making “Sawyer Made” chairs several years back. So Dave’s designs and legacy will carry on. My goal with my Craft Genealogy project is to put these people’s stories together, to make sure we don’t lose track of who the people were who got us here.
Dave Sawyer at Country Workshops c. 1997, photo by Drew Langsner
By request from readers, we are going to try to bring back some stickers. The original Sticker Queen, my daughter Maddy, is too swamped with getting her doctorate to take on the sticker business. But my youngest, Katy, has agreed to give it a try.
There will be three stickers in this set, and they will be for sale through Katy’s etsy store in about a week. Each set will cost $10 (sticker prices have gone way up). And there will be international shipping. Here’s what will be in the set.
Our roll of stickers.
The Return of Sharpen This
With the publication of my new book “Sharpen This,” several readers asked if the cover could have the naughty skeleton hand on it from an early set of stickers. We can’t publish a special version of the book with a different cover (it would double the manufacturing costs).
But we can make a sticker.
I designed this sticker to fit right over the diestamp on “Sharpen This” so you can transform your book into the Naughty Edition.
Build Instead of Buy sticker.
‘Build Instead of Buy’
The core philosophy of my work is “Build Instead of Buy,” a phrase that appears early on in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” Here I’ve combined it with a 12th- or 13th-century image from a Welsh book of laws. The image of this judge is regarded to be the earliest known depiction of a stick chair.
Rest for the Weary sticker.
Rest for the Weary
The third sticker is one I’ve done before. It features a silhouette of the chair that launched my obsession with making stick chairs back in the 1990s. And the chair is surrounded by a crest from the 19th century.
All the stickers are vinyl and 100 percent waterproof. These are premium stickers from Stickermule and not one bit flimsy.
Look for the stickers to go on sale in about a week.
