Category: Make a Joint Stool from a Tree

Last July, I took a class from Peter Follansbee on making a joint stool. It was at Roy Underhill’s The Woodwright’s School in Pittsboro, N.C., where the sun beat down all week and the mercury crossed the 100° mark every day. My people are from peat bogs; I would rather it be 50° and raining than hot and sunny  – and our first two days were spent outside splitting stock from freshly felled red oak logs. But despite the constant threat of heat stroke, I had a marvelous time.

Peter has an arid sense of humor (which I adore) and he is unfailingly generous in sharing his years of woodworking experience, and his deep knowledge of 16th- and 17th-century furniture – not to mention his tools. And working with wet oak was a wholly new experience for me, and a great deal of fun. It seemed revolutionary to me – even though the technique is centuries old – to be able to split off a perfect (or perfect enough) tenon rather than saw it. (And I’m sad you can’t do that with cherry.)

In just one week, most of the 10 students in the class managed to go from a log to a finished drawbored joint stool, complete with shaped legs (some of them turned the legs on Roy’s pole lathe) and a seat with a profiled edge.

I’m chagrined to admit that I was in the minority (as you can no doubt tell from the photo at the top). On the last day, as we were doing a final dry-fit on the tenons in preparation for drawboring, I cut the angle on one of my side stretcher tenons at such a wrong angle that I removed too much material to be able to drawbore it in place. Peter calmly assessed the situation, made me laugh about my mistake, then hewed another stretcher for me from some leftover stock in less than a half-hour, while also helping the other students complete their work. (I’m a horrid hewer; I need a lot more practice and a much stronger wrist.)

By the end of the day, I managed to get the show surface planed and the angles cut on the shoulders of the new stretcher, but the tenons were still square and I didn’t have time to add a bead to match the other three. I think I was having too much fun playing with the gouge and mallet as I cut the simple design shown at right into the aprons – a technique that Peter had me doing with ease in but minutes.

With the class over, I packed all the parts into a tomato flat, tossed them in the back of my car, and drove home to Cincinnati. As soon as I got home, I borrowed from Chris Schwarz a beader to finish the last of the decoration, and I was gung-ho to get the joint stool assembled. I took it into my shop at work … then life got in the way.

As of two days ago, the pieces were languishing at work in the tomato flat, and covered with sawdust. Now, they’re dry-assembled on my bench at home, and I have a couple pins driven. I still have to fit those last two tenons, then drill the holes so I can complete the drawboring.

But I can’t for the life of me remember what Peter told us about pegging the top in place – particularly a two-board top, which is what mine will be.

So I’m delighted that “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is at the printer; I need it as soon as possible – because I’m not moving those joint stool pieces off my bench until the project is done.

– Megan Fitzpatrick

Editor’s note: Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee have been working on “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” for so long that it is hard to pin down the exact date when they commenced. Now that this book is in the works at the printer, I asked Peter if he would mind discussing how he and Jennie chose the joint stool as the focus of this book. Here’s the story along with some snapshots from the historical record.

If you have heard me talk or write about the joint stool book, then you know it was a work in progress for a long time. More than 20-years-long time. So long ago that I looked young. Jennie Alexander and I decided early on to focus some of our efforts on making joint stools for a couple of reasons.

One factor driving our decision was the one-week workshop format. When I first got hooked on the prospect of being a joiner in the 17th-century style, Alexander was pitching the idea of a class to Drew Langsner, director of Country Workshops. One scenario had the students building a joined chest together – one week, 10 students, one log, one chest. I was game; Drew waited. He wanted Alexander to build a chest before he would commit Country Workshops to the possible lunacy of it all. At that point, it was all conjecture and test joints on Alexander’s part.

While the joined chest is perhaps the most appealing example of joined furniture, the joint stool is an icon. It reeks of the 17th century. The size and scope of a joined chest would take longer to make in numbers than it would to make a few joint stools. Knowing that repetition was one of the keys to really getting to know how joinery works, the stool became the main project for us to pursue.

And so the joint stool project was born. We each built a couple, then got Drew to take the plunge. Our first class in this work was 1991, I think. We taught it together a couple of times at Country Workshops, also at Jennie’s workshop in Baltimore. Once I got the job at Plimoth Plantation in 1994, mostly Alexander taught it alone.

I went on to build all manner of joined works, but the stool is surely the most-attainable project in a reasonable time frame for beginners. We chose it as the ideal introduction because it requires only a small amount of timber, whether you start with the log or not. And at 16 mortise-and-tenon joints, it’s enough to get a lot of practice, but not the 26 to 40 joints – or more – that might happen in a joined chest.

Looking back through old slides while researching what we might need for the book was quite instructive. Early on we used modern workbenches, here I am mortising a stile with it caught between bench dogs in a vise, before I had any good holdfasts to secure the workpiece. In this shot, you’ll see things you’ve not seen me do before: plastic-handled chisel, rawhide mallet, maybe even pencil marks on the stock. All of these eventually got chucked as we fine-tuned the process as well as the product. It worked; it just works better now.

Using the same German bench, I am planing stock also held in the vise. Back at this point, we knew about Joseph Moxon’s bench, but hadn’t yet built something like it. Once we built period-style workbenches, things changed all for the better.

One thing did not change – the power of the drawbored joint. Here’s Alexander driving pins in a stool frame. Hasn’t move a bit in over 20 years. And it won’t over the next hundred or more…

— Peter Follansbee

If you order “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” before the press date of Feb. 27, 2012, you will receive free domestic shipping. For more details on the book, visit our store. The book is $43 and is produced and printed entirely in United States with 128 pages and more than 200 full-color photos.

Peter Follansbee was sitting next to me at some crazy high-end pizza restaurant I’d found for us in Saratoga Springs, N.Y., and we were waiting for planemaker Matt Bickford to arrive.

I had two goals for the night. No, three. One: Eat some good pizza. Two, seal the deal with Bickford to publish his forthcoming book on moulding planes (stay very tuned). And three, try to open the door with Follansbee so he might publish something with Lost Art Press some day.

My strategy: Get Follansbee totally high on beer and animal-flesh pizza.

Then Peter notified me in a kind way that he neither drinks nor eats animals.

Well, crap.

Somehow I was able to keep his attention during the meal and make my case for the way we publish books at Lost Art Press. It’s really quite bass-ackwards compared to the rest of the publishing industry, but that’s not the point of this story.

Within a month or so, we’d made a deal to publish the long-awaited follow-up to John Alexander’s “Make a Chair from a Tree.” This new book, “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” had been in the works for more than 20 years. Follansbee and Alexander (now Jennie Alexander) have been corresponding and visiting and traveling together for more than two decades to piece together how furniture was built in the 17th century.

When I entered the picture last year they had a preliminary manuscript and photos that spanned the years.

So the question at hand was: Could this be a book?

The answer: Holy cow. Absolutely.

“Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is like no other woodworking book ever published. It breaks new ground with every page. It shows you things you’ve never seen before. It will change the way you think about wood and woodworking.

Follansbee and Alexander are as unlikely a pair as you will ever find. Alexander is a retired attorney who has been working wood as an enthusiastic woodworking amateur for a lifetime. Alexander’s first book, “Make a Chair from a Tree,” is a certifiable cult classic. Long out of print for reasons too insane to go into here, the book has inspired generations of woodworkers, including people like Brian Boggs, to become woodworkers.

It is almost impossible to overstate the influence of that book.

Follansbee was Alexander’s student who sold all his power tools and became a professional hand-tool joiner at Plimoth Plantation. He was a terminally shy man who became one of the most engaging public speakers I’ve ever seen.

Their work together has produced a book that we hope will be in print forever. The first printing is in the works now and will be shipping at the end of February. It is a different kind of book for Lost Art Press. It is oversized (9” x 12”), in full color and with a heavy dust jacket.

It’s is being printed at a high-end publisher in Michigan as I type, and it is going to cost some serious coin for us to make when compared to the printers in Hong Kong.

But we figured: What the heck? We might have only one chance to do this right so we might as well go all the way.

You can read more about the book in our store by following this link. If you order the book before the release date of Feb. 27 we will pick up the shipping cost. Some people would call that “free shipping for pre-orders,” but not us. What’s a pre-order?

One last thing: I hate to sound like a tool, but you might want to order now. In the last 24 hours we have sold one-third of the first press run.

Order “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” for $43 with free domestic shipping.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Other retailers that will be carrying this book include Lee Valley Tools, Tools for Working Wood, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks and ShopWoodworking.com – the store of F+W Media. We’ll announce more outlets as they sign on.

What is all this about joint stools, you ask? English examples abound, but surviving New England ones are rare today. But in the period, they were so commonplace that it is hard to imagine a period house without them. Probate inventories filed at the time of a person’s death are a standard resource for material culture studies, and in these records we find numerous references to joint stools. Rarely itemized by themselves, they are usually lumped with a table or other seating furniture. In 1646, Michael Carthrick of Ipswich, Mass., had:

“one great cubberd  £1;  an old little table & 3 chaires 4s/6d; one bedsted in the
parlour £1/4s;  one chaire & 3 joyned stooles 10s;  2 chestes & 3 boxes £1”  [The values are pounds/shillings/pence. 12 pence to a shilling, 20 shillings to one pound (£). At that time in New England, a master tradesman might earn 2 to 2-1/2 shillings per day.]

A typical New England reference is this 1647 listing: “One longe table & frame, 4 joynt stooles & a bench £1-13.”  In this case, the “table” is what we would call the tabletop, and the frame is just that, the understructure of the table. We find the same sort of thing back in old England, the stools once again lumped with the table and usually also a “form” – a joint stool stretched out to bench-length. In Essex, England, in 1638 John Osbourne’s inventory recorded “in the hall:  One great joyned table, eight stooles and one forme, £1-10s.”

Poke around the English countryside enough and you can run into a table, joint stools and form that are all still in place, 350 to 400 years in one spot! The table is really just a joint stool made on a very large scale, same construction, same format. Easier, really. All 90° shoulders.

Randle Holme, the author of The “Academy of Armory & Blazon” had this to say about joint stools: “It is so called because all made and finished by the Joyner, haueing a wood couer: In most places in Cheshire it is termed a Buffit stool.”

Another interesting reference to them is a court case in London surrounding an infringement of trade issue, between the Turners of the City and the Joiners.

1633      We have called before us as well the Master & Warden of the Comp[an]y of Turners as also the M & W of the Compy of Joyners. It appeareth that the Compy of Turners be grieved that the Compy of Joyners assume unto themselves the art of turning to the wrong of the Turners. It appeareth to us that the arts of turning & joyning are two several & distinct trades and we conceive it very inconvenient that either of these trades should encroach upon the other and we find that the Turners have constantly for the most part turned bed posts & feet of joyned stools for the Joyners and of late some Joyners who never used to turn their own bedposts and stool feet have set on work in their houses some poor decayed Turners & of them have learned the feate & art of turning which they could not do before. And it appeareth unto us by custom that the turning of Bedposts Feet of tables joyned stools do properly belong to the trade of a Turner and not to the art of a Joyner and whatsoever is done with the foot as have treddle or wheele for turning of any wood we are of the opinion and do find that it properly belongs to the Turner’s and we find that the Turners ought not to use the gage or gages, grouffe plaine or plough plaine and mortising chisells or any of them for that the same do belong to the Joyners trade. [From Henry Laverock Phillips, Annals of the Worshipful Company of Joiners of the City of London, (London: privately printed, 1915) pp. 27, 28.]

Here in New England, there was no such restriction on a man’s trade. If you had the training and skills, you could work at both the bench and the lathe. The same was true in the countryside in England. In “Elizabethan Life: Home, Work & Land,” (1976) F. G. Emmison quotes a will from Essex England: “Thomas Quilter of Great Dunmow”, who combines the twin crafts of joiner and turner, divides his “working tools” equally between his two sons, giving each “a turning lathe and a grindstone unhanged.” The elder son is to have the larger grindstone if he will teach his brother “joining and turning in the best manner he can.””

For now, one last joint stool note, this from Roy Underhill who got it straight from Ben Franklin’s “The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin.”

This obscure family of ours was early in the Reformation, and continued Protestants through the reign of Queen Mary, when they were sometimes in danger of trouble on account of their zeal against popery. They had got an English Bible, and to conceal and secure it, it was fastened open with tapes under and within the cover of a joint-stool. When my great-great-grandfather read it to his family, he turned up the joint-stool upon his knees, turning over the leaves then under the tapes. One of the children stood at the door to give notice if he saw the apparitor coming, who was an officer of the spiritual court. In that case the stool was turned down again upon its feet, when the Bible remained concealed under it as before. This anecdote I had from my uncle Benjamin.

— Peter Follansbee, one of the authors of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” coming soon from Lost Art Press, Jennie Alexander and Follansbee. (Illustration at top: Eleanor Underhill; photos: Peter Follansbee.)