Category: Campaign Furniture

A mechanic that is always in a hurry is incapable of doing good honest work. The excitable man who is always “flying around,” and whose tools are never at hand when wanted, does not amount to much; he may be busy all day, and apparently — in fact, does — work hard and seems to get over a great deal of ground, but what he does do is neither fine nor substantial. The cool, calm workman who allows himself neither to be driven nor persuaded to do more than a solid day’s work is the man who leaves his impress on each piece of work he turns out, and a hundred years hence it may be found as good and as solid as the day he completed it; but where! Oh, where! will be the work that was thrown together at the same date, by the man who was always “flying around?”

The Builder & WoodWorker – March, 1881, Fred T. Hodgson, editor.

Teaching a new class is always terrifying exciting. This year, the class I am most excited about teaching is the Campaign Chest class May 6-10 at the Marc Adams School of Woodworking in Franklin, Ind.

I am, as you know, quite nuts for furniture in the campaign style and am eager to vomit forth all the research I’ve been doing on the design and construction of these chests. Plus, I’m eager to teach a class that focuses on a fine piece of furniture using excellent wood and outstanding hardware.

Most of the classes I teach focus on skills – as they should be. So the projects for those classes are designed around the skills and giving students lots of practice.

This class offers a lot of opportunity to build skills – full-blind dovetails, planing highly figured woods, complex hardware installation, fitting fine drawers – and the result is one of my favorite furniture forms.

Plus, we’ll have the full arsenal of machines, assistants and benches at our disposal at the school.

The last time I talked to Marc Adams, he said there are still a handful of spots available in the class. If you are interested in the class, you can read more about it here.

I’ve received several inquires from people asking if this class would be appropriate for a beginning woodworker. Answer: Absolutely. This is a class covering basic carcase construction and a blend of hand- and power-tool techniques.

— Christopher Schwarz

When I tell people I’m working on a book about “campaign furniture,” the response is usually complete confusion.

Is this, perhaps, the furniture used by presidential candidates on their tour buses?

Once I explain that it was the furniture used by colonials, government workers and military officers during 1790 to 1920, the response is usually utter revulsion.

Is this, perhaps, the furniture of oppression?

And so I just stop telling people I’m working on a book on campaign furniture and just tell them I’m doing a thing on birdhouses for bondage lovers and people who drink human blood.

Sometimes, however, I run into woodworkers who follow my work and have also stumbled onto pieces in this furniture style. They see its honest construction, its simple lines and its durability. It is furniture that is understated and fits in well in a wide variety of settings – many woodworkers have sent me photos of campaign chests they have encountered in Victorian, Arts & Crafts, period and contemporary homes.

So does campaign furniture have political baggage? The answer is: Who cares?

Every furniture style can be associated with something unsavory. Any piece of American furniture before 1860 can be labeled “the furniture of slavers.” Furniture before the 19^th Amendment was passed? Furniture of the people who hate women. Shaker? Furniture of people who despise reproduction. You can twist and contort history however you like. (A true history of any style of furniture is more complex than a blog entry can capture.)

Instead, I tend to focus on furniture’s form, its construction and its beauty. If we carry those things forward – and discard the retrograde social baggage associated with some (or all) furniture styles – we might just … I don’t know… find something interesting to build?

—   Christopher Schwarz

P.S. I’m in Australia for the next few weeks, where I hope to see some campaign furniture. If you’d like to see what I’m doing in Melbourne, check out my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine here and here.

It’s not often that I’m thrilled to paw through another man’s garbage, but when that man is Frank David….

Teak is expensive stuff – upwards of $50/board foot at times. So every cut counts. And when it came time to buy stuff for the interior guts of this campaign chest, I was thinking of using walnut, pine or oak. But then I saw a magnificent pile of narrow teak offcuts while hunting through the stacks of lumber at Midwest Woodworking.

These pieces of 2-1/2”-wide, 4/4 rough stock were the leftovers from rip cuts made decades ago. Frank stashed them in the attic of his shop in Norwood, Ohio. Some of his employees asked if they could have these teak “rippers” to burn for firewood in their homes.

Frank merely raised an eyebrow at their request.

These rippers are perfect for web frames. So I purchased a few of these (at about $15/board foot) and built the two web frames for my latest campaign chest with them today.

Like all the other old pieces of teak from Midwest, this stuff is like a buttery dream (which is better than a wet dream but not as good as a lard dream) to work with. And I saved enough teak from my wide boards to scrounge just enough teak to make a copy of Napoleon’s desk for my book on campaign furniture.

Viva la refuse!

— Christopher Schwarz