Category: Campaign Furniture

When you start working in the world of furniture that folds and unfolds, it’s easy to get your frontal lobe into a blender. Even though you know that this contraption should work, you don’t actually believe it until you build it.

With this folding officer’s desk, I had six butt hinges all turning in different directions. So keeping inside and outside all straight as I screwed them in kept me flummoxed. And I kept wondering how much spacing I should leave between the folding aprons and the inside of the legs (my experiments with the mechanism told me the answer was “none”).

But still you worry.

So it was satisfying for the table base to snap open and shut perfectly on the first try.

Now I just need to build the folding desktop, which locks the base in the open position. I’d better get the jack plane sharpened up – the top is 24” wide, and I have only a 13” surface planer.

— Christopher Schwarz

You don’t see bareface tenons discussed much, but they can sometimes be the right joint when you need some extra strength.

For those of you new to joinery, a bareface tenon is a tenon that is missing a face cheek. Instead, the face of the workpiece acts as a tenon cheek.

The primary disadvantage is you give up the face shoulder that can conceal the rim of your mortise. And you might be giving up a little strength against lateral forces – sometimes called racking forces.

But you get some real advantages, too. You can use a thick tenon and still have a beefy mortise wall. This is helpful with workbenches and many table constructions in my experience. It makes a joint that is robust enough for drawboring with little risk of you cracking the tenon or the mortise wall.

Plus, you have one less shoulder to fit – there’s no chance that an inside shoulder can interfere with the fit of the shoulder on the outside. Oh, and the joint is less work to make.

I wouldn’t use a bareface tenon when you could easily see the inside surfaces, and a ragged mortise wall might be evident. But for apron tables and the like, it’s definitely a joint to consider.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you like campaign furniture but you don’t follow my blog at Popular Woodworking Magazine, you should click over there and check out the post about my visit to Christopher Clarke Antiques in Stow-on-Wold, England.

Lots of photos of beautiful pieces. And some words.

— Christopher Schwarz

Since Feb. 1 when I got in the car to drive down to Highland Woodworker, this has been a year of non-stop travel on three continents. It’s been a great year – I was nearly bit by a poisonous spider in Australia, I used Chris Vesper’s “toilet” and I built more tool chests than I care to remember.

But at 12:46 p.m. today, I officially ran out of urgent things to do. I finished building a project for Popular Woodworking Magazine (the nail cabinet above) that was a round-the-clock affair since last Monday. I paid my estimated taxes. I answered some urgent e-mail.

And it’s a good thing I had a moment of peace. Tonight John Hoffman and I get on a plane for a week in England. We’ll be doing research for my upcoming book on campaign furniture at sites both public and private. And we’re attending the European Woodworking Show at Cressing Temple Barns in Essex.

On Saturday we’ll be in the booth for Classic Hand Tools – Mike Hancock’s outfit. If you are at the show, please stop by and say hello. On Sunday, we’ll be walking the show as plain old woodworkers in an effort to catch up with a bunch of people we haven’t seen in a long time.

And on next Monday we return with fake British accents, pocket squares and ascots.

I have two projects to build for the campaign furniture book during the next four weeks. The leather is ordered. The mahogany is waiting. The drawings are complete.

So if I’m not answering your e-mails promptly during the next seven days, you know why.

— Christopher Schwarz