Category: Campaign Furniture

With the stool’s hardware mechanism working fine, this morning I made a set of three stool legs from mahogany left over from a run of Roorkhee chairs in 2012.

My design for the legs was inspired by the foot of an original 1898 Roorkhee, which is essentially a slightly flattened bead. I also added four grooves that straddle the holes through the legs and turned a gradual taper from these holes down to the ankle.

The fun part of the job was finishing the legs on the lathe. With the lathe spinning, I rubbed on some beeswax from farmer beekeeper and woodworker Will Myers (thanks Will!). Then, with the lathe still spinning, I used Roubo’s polissoir to burnish the mahogany and drive the wax into the wood’s pores. A final polish with some rough cotton cloth (an empty bag of grits) produced the final sheen.

I don’t know if it’s a non-non to use a polissoir on a spinning lathe, but it sure made short work of the finishing process.

For the seat, Ty Black is cutting out some of my “oiled latigo” leather I bought for a Roorkhee chair for a customer. That leather is from Wicket & Craig and has the shop nickname of the “sex machine leather.” It’s impossibly buttery and beautiful.

On Friday, I hope we’ll get the second prototype assembled – after I age the hardware.

— Christopher Schwarz

Oh, One More Thing…
During the last 10 years, the most common question I’m asked (aside from, “What wood should I use for my workbench?” Answer here.) is, “How do you manage to write, edit, build and teach as much as you do?”

I know that most people are paying me a compliment with the question. With others, the implication is that I don’t build all the projects I show here. Or that I sub-contract out the construction or finishing. Or that I am just really skilled in making photo-realistic images.

Here’s the deal: I went to journalism school and cut my teeth at a newspaper where we wrote 400 to 500 original pieces a year. I can write a blog entry, such as this one, in about 15 to 30 minutes without much forethought. It just comes out – like water from a well or crap from a porta-potty, depending on how you like my work.

Also important: I don’t watch TV, don’t like sports, don’t have a lot of friends and don’t have any other hobbies besides woodworking and listening to music while woodworking. Considering how much time I devote to the craft, I actually should be a lot better and a lot faster.

Today my daughter Katy was home sick and asked to give me a hand in the shop building a prototype of the Andre Roubo campaign stool.

We made the prototype using 1-1/8”-diameter dowels made from some spongy wood from Southeast Asia. We’ll make the real campaign stools from mahogany spun on the lathe and leather scraps leftover from the Roorkhee chairs.

Today was all about getting the hardware working with the holes and the sticks. When everything is tuned correctly, the legs fold out without flopping out.

Today I taught Katy to use her first machine: the drill press. She drilled the holes in the legs. Her holes looked great because she drilled in from both ends and her holes met in the middle. My hole was so ragged that Katy was compelled to take a picture for you.

Note that we threw this one in the garbage and used her legs instead.

The hardware is the interesting thing. I’ve resisted making these stools in the past because the old books show making the hardware by soldering some round steel stock together and then threading it manually.

Instead, we’re using 5/16” all-thread rod that is bisected by an eye bolt to make a three-way joint. It works very well. The hardware is secured by washers and brass acorn nuts. Tonight my leather-loving shop assistant, Ty Black, is going to stitch up some different seats for us to try.

I hope (and also don’t hope) that Katy is sick tomorrow.

— Christopher Schwarz

The idea that Cuban mahogany was used in the best English eighteenth-century furniture is a myth, propagated by earth twentieth-century authors such as Percy Macquoid and Herbert Cescinsky, and since established as “fact” by constant iteration. The statistical and other evidence housed in the Public Record office shows that no Cuban mahogany was imported either directly or indirectly into England before the Seven Years’ War (1756-63). This is confirmed by the Letter Books (of Gillow furniture company), which show not only that Cuban mahogany was an introduction of the 1760s, but that its quality fell far short of its modern reputation.

— “Gillow and the Use of Mahogany in the Eighteenth Century,” Adam Bowett, Regional Furniture, Volume XII, 1998