Category: Make a Joint Stool from a Tree

Question from a reader: “I have seen websites like Mr. Follansbee’s with instructions on making these [joint stools] using absolute period techniques and tools or offers to buy one. I’ve seen stools that look (in pictures) to be authentic but which are noted as being early 20th century. So – once it had acquired an old patina – how would you know how old it really was if someone used authentic tools and techniques? Could you tell from the oak itself? Just curious.”

Peter Follansbee, one of the authors of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” responds:

Hmmm. This is the stuff of legends. I remember reading about the Armand Lamontagne “Brewster” chair before I had ever made a chair myself.

Many years later I learned a lot about museum pieces, antiques, early reproductions and various other permutations of historic furniture (restorations, repairs, “marriages” etc). To be really comfortable making judgment calls takes a lot of exposure to period pieces – not just photographs, but hands-on time with numerous pieces. Even then, there are times when someone shows me a piece of joined furniture reportedly of the 17th century, and I am left with nothing to say. Sometimes, it just “feels wrong.”

As far as the stuff I make, how can one tell after years of use that it’s late 20th/early 21st-century work and not a 17th-century piece? I believe that dendrochronology (tree-ring dating) requires sapwood to be able to tell the approximate date that the timber was felled – and I remove most or all sapwood, because it’s not strong enough and sometimes prone to decay. A few of my joined chests have some sapwood in the panels – but you’d have to disassemble the piece to test these. If you were at all convinced the piece was a period piece, then you’d be reluctant to disassemble it to test it.

The piece’s surface finish could be tested and would probably be identified as modern linseed oil (hardware store’s boiled linseed oil with its additives, versus period linseed oil, made from flax seeds and little else). But again, you’d have to spend some money to have such tests done, and even then an argument could be made that the finish was added afterwards.

So when it comes down to tool marks, style (carving patterns, turnings, moulding shapes), wood selection and form, it takes a trained eye to evaluate a piece. My carved boxes, for instance, are easy to spot in most cases. I tend to carve the fronts and sides of the boxes, whereas most period ones I have seen are carved on the front only, with a few exceptions. I often use wooden pegs to join the box’s carcase, again only rarely encountered on period examples. These usually are nailed.

Joint stools are easier to sneak by because there’s little to go on. When we were working on our study of the joint stools that eventually became the book “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” Jennie Alexander concocted a method in which we could embed a coin in one of the mortises so that half of it was exposed and half was entrenched in such a way that it was clearly part of the construction process. I’m not sure she ever employed any of the proposed methods. I would need to consult our archived correspondence, and there’s no time to delve into those reams of papers. I’ll leave that to my kids.

Some of the stuff I have made for 19 years at Plimoth Plantation might cause a ruckus if it ever gets out in the antique market. There it’s used in such a manner that it shows wear and tear, develops a deep patina and even shows decay, repairs and other features common in 350-year old antiques. The pieces have accession numbers stamped on them, but so do most museum pieces. I have photographed most of my work over the years, and so one could match up my photos against a piece that might show up for sale as an antique, but that’s pretty extreme.

For an example of the kind of patina my pieces develop at Plimoth, click here.

The early 20th-century reproductions are usually easy to spot. They rarely use riven stock, and English ones would likewise not exhibit pitsawn stock…so the smooth interior surfaces of a joint stool, for example, are often a giveaway. I have seen other examples wherein the pins in the joints don’t exit inside the stiles… things like that are a dead giveaway.

For a further discussion, read this good article by Harold Sack.

— Peter Follansbee

Our relationship with wood is complicated. When I see a beautiful maple in my neighborhood, I want to kill it, tear it open and use its guts to make something.

But I also appreciate the beauty of its canopy.

When I try to rive locust, I want every locust tree to catch flame and its locust children to suffer a similar fate. (Locust, by the by, is a tough species.) But when I drive locust pegs into a drawbored joint, I laugh with joy.

Woodworker Geremy Coy recently attended a talk by Jennie Alexander, one of the authors of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” where Jennie said something interesting:

“People in the 18th century were trying to find the beauty in wood. People in the 17th century were trying to hide it.”

It inspired a blog entry that I think you should read. Check it out here.

— Christopher Schwarz 

“Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” is now available for sale at Classic Hand Tools Ltd. in the U.K. You can purchase the book (and other Lost Art Press books) using this link.

The price is £34.95.

In other foreign distribution news, Highland Hardware in Atlanta is also selling “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”

— Christopher Schwarz

The two most difficult things to photograph in woodworking are plow planes and joint stools.

With plow planes there is not a single good angle that shows everything about the tool: the fence, the tote, the skate and the cutting action. With 17th-century joint stools, the problem is of parallax.

The four legs (or stiles) are angled in one direction but not another. As a result, when you take a photograph of the stool, the laws of parallax and perspective conspire to make the joint stool look all kinds of wrong. Sometimes the front legs look straight and the rear legs look hopelessly angled. Other times the whole stool looks like it is going to fall off the edge of the earth.

With a standard camera, it takes a lot of fussing and fooling to turn this gorgeous three-dimensional object into an equally gorgeous two-dimensional object.

Today I received a joint stool that I had purchased from Peter Follansbee. Wait, let me restate that. I purchased the awesome joint stool that is on the cover of “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree” by Jennie Alexander and Follansbee. I bought the stool for two reasons. One, I really like to support craftsmen I admire. Two, I wanted to have a joint stool to show customers when we are out selling the new book “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.”

I’ve had a hard time explaining how cool joint stools are to customers when showing them the book. Having a joint stool makes that easy. This thing is awesome. If you are coming to the Lie-Nielsen show in Chicago on April 20-21 then you can experience this for yourself. I’m going to bring the joint stool so you can get your hands and eyes on it.

After I unwrapped the joint stool today, my daughter Katy was all over it. She’s actually sitting on it right now while playing Rock Band. While she was looking it over, I pulled out my camera and shot the following short video segment.

It’s hard to impress a 10-year-old girl. But Peter’s joint stool really did. And when you see this thing in person I have no doubt you’ll want to build one for yourself.

— Christopher Schwarz

In our joint stool projects, Jennie Alexander and I always struggled with the riven seat board.  It takes a VERY large diameter oak to get a quartered board almost 11” wide. When it came to writing “Make a Joint Stool from a Tree,” we were faced with the question: “What to tell the readers?” We settled on a few scenarios: some will have one-board seats from large logs; others will use two-board seats. We’ve done both. Then, I worked out a way to squeak a board out of stock that comes up just a tiny bit narrow.

This requires breaking a cardinal rule of riving — ALWAYS SPLIT IN HALF.

When we got to that part of the book last year, I had no large oaks even close to what I
wanted. The solution was for me to sketch my splitting technique and have Eleanor Underhill make one of her excellent diagrams for the book. But first I had to get it by Alexander, which meant numerous refinements on my explanation of this splitting. We had never done this particular method together.

Now, in making joined chests, you are faced with similar challenges; only it’s the need for wide panel stock, not seat boards. Today I split out some very straight-grained oak that came up to about 9” wide in the radial face. I wanted 10” of course. Having seen how flat these radial planes were, I knew I could break off a panel against the rules and get my wide stuff….

I didn’t have time for detail photos, but I did manage to shoot these two. Above you can see the froe driven into the end grain across the radial plane — it takes a good log to break this way successfully.

Here is a detail of the end grain of an off-cut from this log, showing the same sort of split. So refer to fig. 3-25 on page 43 and its related text. Then think of these photos. Sometimes 1/2” to 3/4” can make a difference.

— Peter Follansbee, Joiner’s Notes