Category: Campaign Furniture

Daniel Whitson, a furniture maker and carpenter in western North Carolina, recently finished building this Roorkee for a friend opening a retail store. The legs are made from rhododendron, which is plentiful where he lives.

I have been surprised how well the domesticated Roorkee can rusticated. Check out Brian Eve’s Roorkee on his blog Toolerable, which he made using Diamond Willow.

Plans for the Roorkee are from the book “Campaign Furniture.” If you think chairmaking is beyond your skill set, you haven’t built a Roorkee. They are surprisingly fast and easy to build.

— Christopher Schwarz

Norman Reid of Wood News Online just reviewed “Campaign Furniture” for the latest issue. Here is a short excerpt of the review:

“…(W)hile I was tempted to pass up this book, I’m very glad I didn’t. I came to like it a lot. It is, as we’ve come to expect from Schwarz, informative, clear and entertainingly written. The book is well-illustrated throughout with photos that convey the essence of critical construction steps. It is hard bound and printed on high quality paper, something that’s usual for books from Lost Art Press, which makes this one a definite keeper.”

You can read the full review here. The entire issue of Wood News Online can be read here.

— Christopher Schwarz

Several readers have reported difficulty laying out the leather seat for the folding stool in the book “Campaign Furniture.” My method for laying it out is unsophisticated. The recipe includes:

1. My butt
2. A stick
3. A nail
4. A can of mushroom soup.

The video shows how I did it. I hope it helps.

— Christopher Schwarz

Ghurka – the maker of fine leather goods – offers a couple of different Roorkee patterns for sale at its website: the officer’s lounger and the officer’s chair.

Both are made in the classic style in oak with nice leather details.

What caught my eye were a couple of construction details. One that I like, and one that makes me say “Hmmmm.”

The one I like is the way they attach the arm straps to the back of the legs. I assume there is a threaded insert in the leg. Then the strap is secured by a brass thumbscrew. Even better: the maker has punched holes in the arm strap so you can take up the slack. After studying a bunch of old Roorkees, the arms always go slack.

I’m sure I’ll try this method out on a future chair.

The other detail is the way the maker adjusts the straps on the reclining back of the chair. The adjustable straps use Sam Browne buttons and punched holes. It creates a clean look and requires less hardware than a buckle, but the straps cannot be adjusted as finely as a result. Perhaps it’s no big deal.

All in all, very nice examples.

— Christopher Schwarz

The leather “lips” for the seat on the stool in “Campaign Furniture” have stymied a few readers. Their exact shape isn’t critical, but I should have provided a gridded diagram to make things easier.

Reader Glenn Frazee has made it super-easy to cut out your leather lips. He generated the following full-size pattern in pdf format for you to download. Simply print it out (with no scaling) and use it to make a wooden template for your lips.

folding_camp_stool_lips_cutting_pattern

Thanks Glenn!

I also have some interesting hardware options for the stool to share with you in the coming weeks. Think: “blacksmith-made tri-bolt” and “hidden nuts.”

— Christopher Schwarz