For the last seven weeks I’ve been building this folding campaign bookcase using sapele I purchased from the dearly departed Midwest Woodworking. My logbook says I have about 50 hours in the project. It took seven weeks because I was interrupted by travel, teaching and taxes (to name a few things).
Some details:
Overall dimensions (open): 37” long, 27” high, 10-1/4” deep. Hardware: Most of the hardware is from Lee Valley. The corner guards, brackets and campaign pulls were vintage stuff from eBay (though Londonderry Brasses carries the exact stuff I used). The lock is from eBay as well. See here for details. Finish: Garnet shellac and black wax. More details on construction: Coming this fall in Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The piece is away for photography and then to the customer. Now I can get started on making some birdhouses.
The principles behind the Roorkee chair can be easily adapted to other forms of furniture besides chairs. Its loose-tenon joinery has been used to make beds and even tables on occasion.
Today, however, I saw my first Roorkee footstool.
This weekend I visited the new Lee Valley store in Vaughan, Ontario, to deliver a couple talks on workbench design and campaign furniture. For my talk on campaign furniture, I brought along five campaign pieces (Me to border guard: “No, I am not invading your country”). But I didn’t have a Roorkee chair with me – my last one sold to a customer.
So I was happy when local woodworker Vincent brought along two Roorkee chairs he had made – plus a Roorkee footstool that was built using the same principles.
Made using purpleheart, the stool had a thigh strap and a slanted seat cover, just like a Roorkee chair. The rest of the attendees were gaga over it, taking photos and trying it out.
Vincent also made some nice modifications to the original Roorkee plan. Instead of turning round stretchers, he made his stretchers octagonal and terminated with a tapered tenon. They looked very nice – I’ll have to try that on a future chair.
Also, the “grip” turning at the top of the chair bowed out slightly in the middle instead of being straight. It looked nice and felt nice in the hand as well.
All in all, the new Lee Valley store is quite nice. The company is trying out some new things with this store. So if you are ever driving north of Toronto on the 400, be sure to stop and chck it out.
Tucked between my trips to both coasts and editing Peter Galbert’s in-fricking-credible book on chairmaking I’ve been building this folding campaign bookcase in sapele for an article in Popular Woodworking Magazine.
The bookcase looks so simple: two boxes that are hinged together. Truth is, this has been one of the most challenging pieces I’ve built in a long time. Most of the joinery is just dovetails, easy-peasy. But the backs of the cases attach to the carcase with a wack-a-doodle joint that has no name. I call the joint “banjo.” If you think that is a reference to the film “Deliverance,” you might be correct.
But what’s been even more mind-bending have been the mechanical aspects of the piece. For everything to work, the adjustable shelves and drawers have to clear the glass doors when pulled out. The hinge barrels of the glass doors have to be placed precisely to allow them to open fully without binding against the case and yet allow the two halves of the bookcase to close tightly.
And all the hardware (there’s a buttload) has to co-mingle, sometimes in unexpected ways. I destroyed the edge of a chisel while mortising the strikes for the door locks. I kept trying to lever out a little piece of waste that wouldn’t budge. Turns out the “waste” was a screw.
Like many campaign pieces, this one has more than 30 pieces of hardware that have to be mortised flush. After writing a book on campaign furniture, that’s easy. What was hard was what happened when I opened a new bag of brass screws that were decidedly soft. Within a few minutes I had four screws that were buried in the work with broken heads.
Good thing I have this screw extractor. I bought this in the 1990s from Woodworker’s Supply and it is the only one I’ve ever used that works (for me).
Today I’m dovetailing the two drawers and cleaning up the exterior for its finish (shellac and wax). I am sure I’d make my April 15 deadline if I didn’t have to go to Canada on Thursday.
Yup. I’ll be at the new Lee Valley store west of Toronto this weekend to conduct a couple of seminars and hang out with our northern neighbors. The address of the new store is: 167 Chrislea Road, Vaughan, ON L4L 8N6. Here is my schedule:
Friday, April 11, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
Everything You Need to Know About Workbench Design
Friday, April 11, 6 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Book Signing & Meet & Greet
Saturday, April 12, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.
An Introduction to Campaign Furniture
Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, will also be there conducting a seminar on her recent adventures in kitchen cabinetmaking. Reading her accounts of it on her blog make me want to move into an apartment where I never have to work on my kitchen.
So all this is the long way of saying: Sorry I haven’t answered your e-mail during the last few months. I do answer all e-mails. But I still have about 40 in the queue.
Free domestic shipping for “Campaign Furniture” ends at midnight tonight, April 5. After that, shipping and handling will be $8.
Eight dollars is a lot of money (though not as much as $300). That $8 could be a six pack of snooty beer. Or a 12 pack of stuff that has already been through the hobo once.
Several of my friends and colleagues have been surprised by how well our new book, “Campaign Furniture,” has been selling.
“That’s amazing,” they say, “for a style of furniture that is so ____________ .” Fill in the blank with any word that is a synonym for “obscure.”
The truth is that campaign furniture has been obscure only in the realm of furniture-makers. Everytime I go to an antique mall, I find at least one piece of campaign-style furniture (whether the seller actually realizes it or not). Plus, I can always find reproductions at used furniture stores. And 1stdibs.com is awash in the stuff.
The British campaign style is generally assumed to have been popular during 1740 to 1940, when the British Empire owned a huge chunk of the globe. That’s a huge run for any furniture style. American Arts & Crafts furniture, by way of comparison, had a much shorter run. About 50 years.
Shaker furniture has a similar timeline to that of campaign furniture. However, it is my educated guess that there are far more pieces of campaign furniture out there than Shaker furniture. This is not to say that the styles are “equal,” whatever that means. But that campaign-style stuff is anything but obscure.
In fact, many times campaign pieces are stealthily hiding as non-campaign pieces. Simon and Sean Clarke at Christopher Clarke Antiques Ltd. had many stories for us about how they encountered chairs, Davenports and tables that were knock-down campaign pieces, but the owners had no idea that their pieces could be taken to pieces.
Now, truth be told, I am also surprised by how well the “Campaign Furniture” book is selling. But not because the style is obscure, but because the book is about a style of furniture. All books about a furniture style are doomed to sell worse than books about birdhouses.
But I was heartened – nay, almost Unicorn-fartin’-a-rainbow ecstatic – by Joel Moskowitz’s assessment of the book: “(O)ne of the most important books on woodworking to appear in the last generation.” Joel is a tough customer.
