To make things easier for you, I’ve collected all of the supplemental information I’ve released for “The Anarchist’s Design Book” (so far) into a pdf with a short introduction and an appendix on making your own seat templates.
This is available as a free download to anyone who has purchased “The Anarchist’s Design Book” anywhere in the world. We’re on the “Honorable Tortoise” system here. Don’t download it if you haven’t bought the book.
I’ve arranged all these pages into a book that you take to any “print on demand” service to print and bind it as a book for you. You can also download the color cover for it. Here are the links:
You have my express permission to print out a personal copy or two for yourself. If you sell them, however, I will phone the tortoise.
Here’s what’s in the 70-page supplement:
A short introduction to the sometimes drug-addled world of chairmaking
A chapter on building a Staked High Stool
A chapter on building a Staked Armchair
An appendix on making your own seat patterns for the chair.
I hope you find this information easy to use and interesting.
The next project is a settle chair, which I have been sketching for months now. Like all good chairs, it has a secret code I need to crack that will make building it a cinch.
By the way, our next tool at Crucible Tool will be a Chairmaker’s Decoder Ring.
I am at work on adding five or six chapters to “The Anarchist’s Design Book” for an expanded edition that we will release in the future. Several customers have asked how this will work. Here are the answers.
Q: What will be in the expanded edition?
The core content of the expanded edition will be the same as the current edition. The additional content will be five projects that I wish I had included in the first edition: a staked high stool, a staked armchair, a boarded settle, a boarded settle chair and a boarded mule chest. These five projects use the same techniques – staked joinery and boarded construction – as in the current edition. In other words, I’m not adding a section on some new (or very old) joinery technique.
Q: When will the expanded edition be available?
We hope to release the new printed edition in late 2019 or early 2020.
Q: Will the five projects be available to people who own the current edition?
Absolutely. Anyone who owns the current edition will be able to download the five additional chapters for free. And they will be able to do this no matter if they bought the book from us or from another retailer. The additional chapters will be in pdf format, and designed in pages that are identical to the current edition. You will be able to print them out if you like or keep them on your computer.
Q: How will this download work?
Simple. We will have a link in our store for people with the current edition. Click the link and the download will begin. The link will be posted indefinitely.
Q: Will these additional projects feature copperplate etchings from Briony Morrow-Cribbs?
Yes. Briony has agreed to create new copperplate etchings for the expanded edition.
Q: Will the expanded edition cost more than the current edition?
Yes. Adding five more projects will increase the printing cost, so we will need to increase the price of the printed book when the new edition is released.
Q: Will I be able to trade in my old edition for a new one?
Sorry but no.
Q: You are releasing some of the chapters in advance as they are completed. Why?
Several reasons. They are going to be released for free, so why not do it now? Second, readers have been asking for them as photos of the projects have appeared on the blog and our Instagram feed. And third, readers might catch a mistake or two before we go to press.
You can now download a free pdf of my Staked Armchair project if you have purchased a copy of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” This download is given on the honor system. If you already own this book, no harm will come to you by clicking the link below.
If, however, you have not purchased “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” you will suffer a curse that involves an Aldabra tortoise with multiple felony convictions.
The design for this chair is regulated by the lumber industry. When I design a piece of furniture from scratch, such as this chair, I look carefully at the materials available to the workaday woodworker. For example, asking you to buy 12/4 spalted sapele for the crest is a bit silly. This chair can be built with one chunk of 8/4 red oak and some 5/8” dowels from the home center. Nothing fancy.
In short, I try to design my pieces around common lumber sizes so that the design can be built in both Los Angeles and Baltimore without too much fuss.
For many years, I wished that I didn’t impose restrictions like this on myself. What if I designed a project based on my desires alone, and I could use whatever crazy materials I wanted? I tried that approach for a while and it was uninspiring. For some reason, I prefer to work within strict limitations of what wood species are available, what lumber sizes are common and how few operations/tools are required.
This is my sport. And projects like this bring me a little satisfaction.
The wood for this chair is less than $50 – way less than $50 if you are frugal. You don’t need a drawknife, steambox, shavehorse, froe or hatchet to make this chair. Instead, you need mostly furniture-making tools plus a scorp and travisher to saddle the seat. The wood is from any lumberyard. You can build it with hand tools. But if you have a band saw you’ll find the work goes faster.
It sits remarkably well for an all-wood chair. I’ve had these chairs sitting around the shop for the last several months and lots of people have sat in them and offered feedback. The No. 1 comment: I didn’t expect this chair to be this comfortable.
The trick is the geometry, of course, plus knowing your way around the lumbar region of the human body. The armbow is designed to support the lumbar (a fact that surprises most sitters) with the crest rail hovering slightly above the curve of your shoulders.
The seat is lightly saddled to avoid casting your buttocks like a Jell-O salad. And the “hands” of the armbow are set back from where you would expect them on an armchair by a couple inches. This small change affects how your forearms interact with the chair – for the better in my opinion.
So if you’ve ever wanted to build a Welsh stick chair, this chair is an excellent introduction to the form. If you are into Windsors, this chair has a few lessons, but you are going to need some more estrogen to get the job done with the feminine baluster turnings (this is only my opinion; many people of sound mind love Windsor chairs).
So download the chapter – at the peril of the highly disturbed tortoise if you don’t own “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” And think it over. Chairs aren’t so hard. Even I can build them, and I’m just a journalist who grew up in Arkansas.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Anyone who complains about typos will also get a visit from the tortoise.
When I took my first class in making Welsh stick chairs in 2003, the instructor asked if we wanted to trace his seat and arm templates.
It would be fair to say that John (the other guy in the class) and I freaked. We quickly grabbed cardboard, paper and pencils and began tracing all the templates. I still have those templates down in the basement, but I’ve never used them.
When I returned home from the class, I took a good look at the templates and realized that almost everything about the templates could be described with rectangles, squares and simple arcs. The rest could be easily sketched in with French curves.
Since that realization, I’ve always made my own templates. And I would rather show you how to make your own templates instead of providing a silly gridded drawing or something that had to be blown up 478 percent on a photocopier and then printed on a plotter.
Here are the tools you need:
A big sheet of paper (I use cheap newsprint sheets). You also can draw these templates directly on thin MDF.
Trammel points with one end being a pencil.
A yardstick
Drafting triangle
Pencil
Draw the Seat Most of my chairs use a D-seat, which looks like a more complicated shape than it really is. It’s simply a rectangle with a half-circle attached to one edge. To make the seat, first draw a rectangle that is 20” wide and 6-1/2” high. Draw a centerline though the rectangle’s 20” width.
Set your trammel points to a 10” radius. Scribe the half-circle arc where the centerline intersects one edge of the rectangle. That’s it.
All of the other parts of the chair – the arms, doubler and the crest all evolve from the seat shape. So, I’ve shown the seat in the illustrations to make this clear.
Make the Arms The arms for my stick chair are 2” wide and start about 4-1/2” back from the front edge of the chair. Here’s how to lay them out. Start with the seat plan you just drew. The first arc is a half-circle with a 10” radius – just like the seat. Scribe that. Then adjust the trammels to describe a 12”-radius circle and scribe that on your paper.
Now add 2” x 2” squares to the front of your arms to make them longer and to match the shape of the seat. The illustration above shows this clearly.
Now you have the basic shape of the armbow. You can alter this shape to suit yourself. I decided to widen the arms at the front and add a curve to the front area of each arm. This part of the armbow is called the “hands.”
Create the Hands I made my hands 3” wide at the front. Then I wanted the additional 1” to flow into the original arm so the armbow ended up 2” wide at the back.
This is the only difficult part of the exercise. I used French curves to create this irregular curve. You also could draw an ellipse, but using French curves is faster (for me). Then draw the arc at the front of the hands. It can be a simple arc or an irregular curve. Your call.
The Doubler The “doubler” is a piece of wood that beefs up the armbow and helps strengthen any short grain. It has the same basic shape as the armbow but is only 12’ wide. Scribe two the arcs – one at a 10” radius with the second at 12”. Then use your yardstick to create endpoints that are 12” apart. Use these endpoints to connect your two arcs.
The Crest The crest begins just like the doubler – by scribing a 10” arc. Then set your trammels to draw an 11-1/4” arc. Use your yardstick to create endpoints that are 10-1/2” apart. Join the two arcs using the endpoints as a guide.
All the text above is much more difficult to follow than by simply studying the drawings. Everything flows out of the 10”-radius arc that is the back edge of the seat. Once you get that in your head, everything else is easy.
After you make your templates, you can transfer them to MDF or hardboard. Cut them out and smooth the edge with files and sandpaper. And put them in a safe place. While templates are easy to make, remaking lost ones is a grumpy affair.
Since June, I’ve been working on a book-publishing project that has ripped up my insides. I can’t talk about it yet – maybe in the next week or so – but the fallout has been odd. Each day, after 10 to 12 hours of editing, processing photos and designing book pages, I have been coming home to write like a madman until I fall asleep on the couch.
As a result, I’ve finished two chapters for the expansion of “The Anarchist’s Design Book” and have just three more to go. Today I finished designing the pages for the short chapter on the Staked High Stool and now offer it up for a free download for people who already own the “The Anarchist’s Design Book.”
At this stage, I’m operating on the honor system. If you own the book, please download the chapter. If you don’t own the book, know that I have instructed a hedgehog with Comic-Con breath to gnaw your danglies at some point in the future.
You can order the book via this link and save yourself an embarrassing trip to the ER.
Note that this chapter is not polished. There are typos. The construction drawing is not the crazy beautiful copperplate etching from Briony Morrow-Cribbs. It’s just my working drawing. But the information is there. I hope you like it.
I am at work on adding five or six chapters to “
Since June, I’ve been working on a book-publishing project that has ripped up my insides. I can’t talk about it yet – maybe in the next week or so – but the fallout has been odd. Each day, after 10 to 12 hours of editing, processing photos and designing book pages, I have been coming home to write like a madman until I fall asleep on the couch.