Category: Campaign Furniture

The following is excerpted from “Campaign Furniture,” by Christopher Schwarz.

For almost 200 years, simple and sturdy pieces of campaign furniture were used by people all over the globe, yet this remarkable furniture style is now almost unknown to most woodworkers and furniture designers.

“Campaign Furniture” seeks to restore this style to its proper place by introducing woodworkers to the simple lines, robust joinery and ingenious hardware that characterize campaign pieces. With more than 400 photos and drawings to explain the foundations of the style, the book provides plans for nine pieces of classic campaign furniture, from the classic stackable chests of drawers to folding Roorkee chairs and collapsible bookcases.

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Three-legged folding stools appear in many Western cultures, including the French, English and American. They have been popular with soldiers, sportsmen, campers and artists for at least two centuries.

This stool is a great introductory project to campaign furniture, especially if you are new to turning or working with leather. There are only three pieces of wood, four pieces of leather and some metal hardware. You can easily build one in a day.

Choosing Materials
I have seen some of these camp stools built using dowels, and they are strong enough to hold most people. However, I like to build them from mahogany, teak or ash that has dead-straight grain. I’ve had nightmares about getting a stick stuck in my backside from a stool disaster.

If you can build the stool with riven stock (oak or ash are good choices), it will be quite strong. Many original stools used 1″-diameter legs. However, my recommendation is to use stouter stock. I have built reproductions with 1″-diameter legs, and they felt too springy under my 185-pound frame.

You don’t need to make the legs baseball bats, but try for something between 1-1/8″ diameter to 1-1/4″ diameter. The leather can be almost anything 7 ounces (just shy of 1/8″ thick) or heavier. Vegetable-tanned leather that you dye yourself is a particularly strong choice.

You also will need rivets to join the leather pieces – unless you are skilled at hand-stitching. While hollow rivets (sometimes called rapid rivets) are inexpensive, easy to find and strong enough, I prefer the look and unerring permanence of solid copper rivets. I used No. 9 rivets with posts that are 1/2″ long.

To attach the leather to the wooden legs, you’ll need three No. 10 x 1-1/2″-long brass screws plus matching finishing washers.

Finally, you’ll need the hardware that allows the legs to open and shut. Traditionally, this was a three-headed bolt that once was easy to find. Now, that hardware is rare in North America. If you are a blacksmith or have access to a good welder, making a three-way bolt is straightforward. I have seen a couple of these bolts for sale in England, but the price with shipping to the United States was more than the cost of the bolt itself.

So I looked for a different way. Luckily, the Internet is good for something other than photos of cats playing keyboards. One maker of custom stools uses some off-the rack hardware to make an effective three-way bolt and shares that information freely on his web site.

Here’s what you need for legs that are up to 1-1/4″ in diameter:

A hex-headed bolt with a 5/16″ shank that is long enough to pass through two of the legs and protrude out the other side by 1/2″. A 3″-long hex-head bolt will work with 1-3/16″-diameter legs.

An eyebolt with a 1/4″ or 5/16″ shank that is long enough to pass through one of the legs and protrude out the other side by 1/4″. (Note: You can hacksaw any of this threaded hardware to length. An eyebolt that has a total length of 2-1/2″ should be sufficient.)

Two acorn-headed nuts.

Three washers.

15 No. 9 copper rivets.

Turn the Legs
The three legs are easy to turn, even if your favorite turning tool is #80-grit sandpaper. Turn the legs to round using a roughing gouge or carbide-tipped roughing tool. Create a smooth, clean cylinder of about 1-1/4″ in diameter with a skew or other finishing tool.

The feet shown are 1-3/16″ in diameter and 5/8″ tall. Make the feet by turning down the foot. Then turn the ankle to 7/8″ in diameter. Round the foot, then taper the rest of the leg down to the ankle. The taper should begin 6″ from the bottom of the leg.

I added four small grooves where the hardware holes will go – two above the hardware and two below. Little details such as these grooves and beads make the legs look like something fancier than three store-bought dowels.

Sand the legs to remove any rough tool marks. I finished the legs on the lathe. First I burnished the surface with a “polissoir” (a French polishing tool made from tightly bound broom corn). Then I applied beeswax to the legs with the workpiece spinning. I used the polissoir to drive the beeswax into the pores of the wood (again, while the lathe was spinning). Then I used a rough cotton cloth (I’d like to be fancy and say it was muslin, but it was an old bag that held corn grits) to buff the wax. Then I applied another coat of wax and buffed that.

If you want to add a little age to the wood, apply a coat of black wax and push it into the grooves and pores. Let the wax set up then buff it.

Wax is not a permanent finish, but it is easily renewed or repaired if your stool is for the drawing room instead of the campsite.

Bore Three Holes
All three holes are located in the same spot on each of the three legs and should be the same diameter – just big enough to allow the hardware to pass through. The holes are located 11-5/8″ down from the top of the legs.

The best way to bore these holes is with a drill press or hand-powered post drill. You want the hole to be dead straight and pass through the middle of the leg. If you are a whiz with a hand drill or cordless drill then go for it.

Install the Hardware
Strip the hardware of its zinc if you like – I use a citric acid solution for this. Here’s how the hardware goes together:

Put a washer on the bolt. Push the bolt through one leg.

Place the eyebolt on the post of the bolt. Put the other leg on the bolt.
Add a washer to the end of the bolt, then drive on the acorn nut.

Push the post of the eyebolt through the third leg. Add a washer and acorn nut.

Drill pilot holes that are deep enough to receive the No. 10 screws into the top ends of the legs.

Leather Seat
The seat is four pieces of material: a triangular seat and three pockets that look a bit like lips when you cut them out. When I cut out leather, I make patterns for my pieces from thin MDF or hardboard – usually 1/4″-thick material.

Put the patterns on the leather and cut out the seat and three lips using a sharp utility knife.
You can hand-stitch the lips to the seat. If you aren’t up for stitching, rivets work well and give the project a military flair.

Secure each lip to the seat first with one rivet at one of the tips of the seat. Punch a snug hole for the rivet through both pieces of leather, drive on the washer or “burr,” snip off the excess and peen the post over the burr.

Now bend one end of the lip up and rivet the end to the seat about 1/4″ from the end of the lip. Repeat for the other end of the lip. Finally, add two more rivets between the three existing rivets. Repeat the whole process for the other two corners.

One quick note on neatness: Be sure to put the burr so it faces the floor for all these joints.
After the pockets are riveted, use a sharp utility knife to trim any little bits of the pocket that aren’t flush to the seat.

If you purchased undyed leather, finish the leather with a dye, oil and wax. Burnish the edges with a piece of wood and a little spit (water will do nicely as well).

Attach the seat to the legs. Punch a clearance hole through each lip that will allow a No. 10 screw to pass. Screw the leather to the legs with a finishing washer under the head of each screw.

That’s all there is to it. You can make the tool easy to transport by making a belt that will go around the girth of the closed stool and screwing that belt to one leg. Or you could make a canvas bag embroidered with your football team’s logo. After all, when going into battle, it’s always best to fly your colors.

Make a Three-way Bolt

As I was finishing work on this book, woodworker Mike Siemsen sent me a clever three-way bolt he had made from off-the-rack hardware. According to Siemsen, here’s how to make it. Hardware needed:

• A 1/2″-13 heavy hex nut. (Regular nuts will not work well; get low carbon, not hardened.)
• Three 5/16″-18 x 2-1/4″ bolts (machine screws, get low carbon, not hardened.)
• One 5/16″-18 nut (for cutting off the bolts to length).
• Three 5/16″ washers.

You will also need a 5/16″-18 tap, a drill for the pilot hole (F-size bit which is .257″; 1/4″ will probably work) and a drill press.

Center punch the center of every other face on the 1/2″ heavy hex nut, put it in a drill press vise and bore the pilot holes for the tap. You can then either run the tap by hand or put the tap in the drill press and turn it by hand, no power! Keep things square to the face being drilled.

Next take the three 5/16″ bolts, screw the nut on them all the way up to the unthreaded portion and saw off the excess end. Remove the nut and file or grind the burr off. It is important that the unthreaded portion be around 1-1/4″ long.

You can blacken the hardware, or remove the hardware’s zinc coating using a citric acid solution and let it patinate naturally. The hole in the 1/2″ nut is a nice place to add a wooden cap or a small turned finial.

The following is excerpted from “Campaign Furniture,” by Christopher Schwarz.

For almost 200 years, simple and sturdy pieces of campaign furniture were used by people all over the globe, yet this remarkable furniture style is now almost unknown to most woodworkers and furniture designers.

“Campaign Furniture” seeks to restore this style to its proper place by introducing woodworkers to the simple lines, robust joinery and ingenious hardware that characterize campaign pieces. With more than 400 photos and drawings to explain the foundations of the style, the book provides plans for nine pieces of classic campaign furniture, from the classic stackable chests of drawers to folding Roorkee chairs and collapsible bookcases.

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Folding clamshell bookcases weren’t just for officers or bureaucrats of the British Empire. These tough pieces of cabinetwork were ideal for students or any bibliophile who had to be mobile.

Built like a chest or trunk, these bookcases were typically dovetailed at the corners for maximum strength. The interiors varied. They all had shelves – of course. Sometimes the shelves were adjustable; sometimes they were fixed. You might find cubbyholes or drawers near the base of the chest.

And sometimes each side of the bookcase was further protected by a hinged door that was solid wood, glass or a metal mesh.
All of the examples I’ve encountered were secured with a chest lock or a hasp. The bookcases also wore brass or iron corner guards to protect the books if the piece took a serious hit.

The example I’ve built for this book is pretty simple. It’s made from quartersawn oak and is dovetailed at the corners with half-blind dovetails. Each half of the clamshell case features two adjustable shelves that are suited to hold smaller books. At the base of the carcase are four dovetailed drawers that are fronted by flush drawer pulls.

The backs of the carcase are panels that float in grooves in the carcase pieces. In this piece, I’ve covered the interior with an embossed wallpaper. Then I painted and shellacked the paper to make it look vintage. The exterior is finished with garnet shellac.

Build the Carcase
The carcase of this bookcase is somewhat like a dovetailed drawer. All the corners are joined by half-blind dovetails. The backs float in grooves in the dovetailed shells. Begin construction by dovetailing the tops and bottoms to the sides of the carcase.

To match many bookcases of the period, I cut the tails on the tops and bottoms of the carcases. The pins are on the sides. Because these bookcases normally sit on top of another piece (such as a campaign chest), the orientation of the pins and tails isn’t much of an issue.

After cutting the tails and pins, plow the 1/4″ x 1/4″ grooves for the carcase backs. The grooves are 1/4″ from the outside edge of the carcase. Then lay out the locations of the 1/2″-wide x 1/4″-deep dados for the shelves. I gang the carcase parts together to make the layout (relatively) foolproof.

Saw out the walls of the dados, then chop up the waste with a 1/2″-wide chisel. Plow the waste out with the chisel. Try working both bevel-up and bevel-down. The bevel-up orientation will remove waste in a hurry – perhaps to the point where you will go below your desired depth. Chiseling bevel-down is slower, but you don’t take as big a bite. I usually remove most of the waste with the chisel bevel-up, then I finish up with it bevel-down.

After you have the bottom of your dado roughed out, clean it up to a consistent depth with a router plane. You also can use the side of the router plane’s iron to scrape the vertical walls of the dado, fairing and squaring them.

With the dados cut, knock the carcases together and measure the final dimensions of the back pieces. Cut the back panels to size, then rabbet all four edges so the panel floats in the grooves. Be sure to leave some space for expansion of the back. I used quartersawn oak, which doesn’t move much, so I allowed for only 1/8″ of movement in each panel.

Gluing up the carcases is an odd job. You want to glue each carcase so its joints are tight. But you also want to glue up each carcase so it is the same shape as its mate. Otherwise, you will end up (I promise) with two carcases that are different shapes.

So apply glue, then clamp up each carcase independently. Place the two assemblies on top of one another and clamp them together along the seam. Once those clamps are on, check the uber-assembly for squareness. After the glue is dry, plane up the carcases individually. Then clamp them together and fair the seam between the two shells.

Install the Lock
This is an excellent time to install the hinges and lock. While most woodworkers have installed butt hinges, many have not installed a chest lock. They are actually simple to install if you take the process one step at a time and don’t measure too much.

The key to installing a chest lock is to drill a hole where the pin will go. The pin is the most important part of the lock. The key is inserted onto the pin then rotates on it to unlock the bookcase. So all the layout is determined from the pin.

Measure (shudder) from the top of the lock to the center of the pin. Transfer that measurement to the carcase and make a dimple with an awl. You want to drill at this location a hole through the carcase that is slightly smaller than the diameter of the pin itself (1/64″ or 1/32″ undersized is about right).

Then, from the inside of the carcase, press the lock into the hole. It should stick there.

With the lock pressed into the hole you can trace around its inside case with a thick (or blunt) pencil. This pencil line represents the next recess you should saw and chop out. Then you can install the press-in escutcheon on the outside of the carcase.

Interior Structures
These bookcases can be divided up in a variety of ways. This one has two drawers at the bottom of each case. When I started on this case, my plan was to have only one shelf on each side. After assembling the carcase, I decided to add a couple more shelves and make them adjustable. This was an easy matter of sawing some more dados in the carcase walls.

At this point I also had to saw the 1/2″ x 1/8″ dados for the dividers between the drawers in each carcase. This was a simple matter of sawing, chiseling and routing the waste. You can then glue these pieces into the carcase.

Then I turned my attention to the drawers. Despite my best efforts, the holes for the drawers were all slightly different. So I fit individually the drawer parts for each drawer opening. When I do this sort of work, I fit the drawer front so it will just sneak into its opening all around. I cut the drawer back to that same length.

I fit the drawer sides so they slide in and out of the carcase like I want the finished drawer to slide. I wait to cut the drawer bottom until the drawer is assembled.

The drawers I make are typical for the 18th and 19th centuries. The sides join the drawer back with through-dovetails. The sides join the drawer front with half-blind (the British call them “lap”) dovetails. The bottom slides into the assembled drawer in a groove plowed into the sides and drawer front.

Once the joints are cut, glue up the drawers. Make sure the drawers are dead square – you can pull them into square with a tight and well-fit drawer bottom if necessary.

Once your drawers are assembled, clean up the joints with a plane and fit each drawer into its opening. The tighter the fit, the less likely the drawer will bind when you pull it out.

Then add the pulls. I used some vintage pulls that were made in the mid-20th century, which are surprisingly similar to ones made today. Just as when you installed the lock, installing the pulls is a multi-stage process. First you waste away the deepest and smallest recess for the pull. Then you fit the pull into that hole and trace around the backplate. Then mortise out the area for the backplate and you can screw the pull in place.

Don’t be afraid to file parts of the pull to make it fit or function.

Finish the Interior
Some of these bookcases were lined with felt, cloth or some sort of wallpaper. To give this bookcase a Victorian look, I lined the interior with an embossed wallpaper. Then I painted the wallpaper and coated it with shellac (like the rest of the carcase).

Adding wallpaper is easy. Cut the paper so it fits the opening (or is slightly bigger that the space required). Roll some wallpaper paste on the back of the wallpaper. Fold the pasted surfaces on themselves, closing them like a book. Wait 10 minutes.

Then you can unfold the wallpaper and apply it to the wood. Use a wallpaper brush to press the paper to the wood. Don’t use a squeegee tool if you are using embossed wallpaper – it will destroy the pattern.

If your paper is oversized, trim it into the corner with a utility knife. Then turn your attention to the next piece of wallpaper. Let the paste dry for 24 hours before trimming the bits that cover the dados.

Paint the wallpaper if you like; I used a green milk paint I had on hand. With embossed wallpaper you can create a nice two-tone effect with little effort. Brush on a coat of paint. Wait about five minutes for the paint to set up a bit. Then gently wipe the paper with a sponge. The sponge will remove the paint from the high spots.

You can use contrasting colors to paint the high spots and low spots. But remember: Books will cover the wallpaper most of the time. So don’t go too crazy.

After the paint dries, finish the entire case. I wanted the outside to look a bit aged, though not distressed. So I finished the entire case, inside and out, with two coats of garnet shellac. Then I wiped a black wax on to the exterior surfaces of the carcase. After the wax flashed, I wiped off the excess, leaving the black in the pores.

Then I coated the entire piece, inside and out, with one coat of a dull lacquer to cut back some of the shine from the shellac.

The final step was to add some corner hardware. As an experiment, I used applied corner guards that are secured with escutcheon pins. They don’t look as nice as inset corner guards, but they are better than nothing.