If I had to guess, I’d say my wife’s favorite projects of mine are the coffins I built for “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” One coffin ended up at Raney Nelson’s place (it’s where he sleeps, I think). One ended up on the wall in our TV room and holds my vinyl records. And the third is in the basement and is trotted out for Halloween.
Lucy, my wife, adores Halloween.
Building a coffin is great fun, whether you are making it for yourself and your final remains (as I did), to use as a liquor cabinet/vinyl record cabinet or yard decoration.
For fun, here’s the chapter on building a kerf-bent coffin from “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” It’s in pdf format. No DRM or any garbage. Just something fun to read and try.
Many woodworkers avoid chairmaking for the joinery, the angles, the special tools required or the materials (green, rived stock?). And when it comes to designing a chair, even experienced woodworkers are hesitant to give it a shot because they are afraid they will produce a buttocks-torture device instead of a comfortable chair.
Producing a comfortable chair is the combination of many factors, but all of them are easily controllable. In my short 13 years as an amateur chairmaker and designer, here are some of the design details that I think are overlooked.
The Saddle Many first-time chairmakers carve the seat so deep you could bake a Bundt cake in it. I’ve seen saddles that are 1” deep and so dramatically shaped that they would look at home on a Klingon battle cruiser.
A little saddling (3/8” or so) is nice and it makes the seat appear to flow. But you can get away with little or no saddling and make a perfectly comfortable chair.
The trick – in my experience – is to design the chair so the front edge of the seat doesn’t bite into the sitter’s thighs. You can do this several ways.
No. 1: Shorten the legs a bit so the sitter’s feet rest flat on the floor and their thighs are just slightly above the front edge of the seat. Many shorter people hate factory chairs because the front edge of the seat restricts the blood flow after a few minutes.
Just like with a table, it’s easy to make it too high. But making it a little lower than typical has zero downsides.
No. 2: Take a jack plane and round off the front edge of the seat. You can also do this with a spokeshave – hollowing out two areas for the thighs. This five-minute operation creates the illusion of a saddle and increases the comfort.
The Back Legs The least comfortable chairs I’ve sat in had a seat that was parallel to the floor. It makes the sitter feel like she is being pitched forward.
I like to have the seat drop 1” (at least) from the front edge of the seat to the back edge. I achieve this by cutting the back legs shorter. Cutting the back legs also has the benefit of angling the back of the chair backward, increasing the comfort.
Don’t over-do it. After removing 1-1/2”, it will start to feel weird. A good way to experiment with this is to prop up the front legs on a 1”-thick scrap and sit in the chair.
The Angle & Height of the Back The backrest doesn’t have to be bored at a reclining angle. You can bore the backrest at 90° and use the fact that the back legs are shorter to make the chair comfortable. However, I do like to recline the back a few degrees back (once you get into chairmaking you’ll find that all the angles are as easy as 90°).
What I have found to be quite critical is the height of the crest rail or backrest. In general, lower seems to be better. Once you put something above the shoulder blades, the lumbar seems to suffer.
You can design a chair that has a high backrest, but I think it’s best to also have something below as well for the lumbar (think Jennie Alexander’s chair).
About the Chair Above Roy Underhill made the chair in the photo at the top of this entry. It’s a reproduction of a chair we both saw at Stratford-upon-Avon last summer. To the eye, it looks uncomfortable. The seat is flat. The arms and seat height are lower than a typical modern chair. And the area created by the arms seems like a tight fit (it is for large people).
But the chair is remarkably comfortable. And, if you watch the current season of “The Woodwright’s Shop,” you’ll see how it’s dirt simple to build.
All of the pieces in this book were designed using dirt-simple techniques that rely on photos of old furniture, a pencil, scraps of wood and wire clothes hangers.
The method allows you to stand on the shoulders of successful designs and alter them to fit a particular space in your home, to remove ornament or to even change the purpose of the piece (you can turn a stool into a desk).
It begins with finding a piece of furniture with an attractive form or, as I like to say, “good bones.” It doesn’t matter in what style or period the piece was built. What matters is that the piece’s proportions and lines hit you in the gut.
The chair and backstool in this book both began with a piece from Victor Chinnery’s classic “Oak Furniture: Fine British Tradition.” I liked the rake of the legs, the four evenly spaced spindles and the smallish crest rail.
But there’s a problem when starting with a photograph. As a photographer friend says, “Photos are lying bitches.” Well-designed furniture looks good from almost every angle, and a photo shows only one view-point. The solution is to make a quick digital model or small mock-up.
To do this, you need some dimensions. I use a pair of dividers and a ruler to work these out. For example, I knew that the seat of the back-stool in Chinnery was about 14″ from the floor. That allowed me to figure out the width of the seat and the other relevant dimensions. Some dimensions, such as the depth of the seat, I guessed at using ranges from “Human Dimension & Interior Space.”
If I’m building a case piece, I then make a quick 3D model in a computer-aided design (CAD) program. No joinery. No details. Just boxes that reflect the mass and major components of the piece. Then I rotate the piece and look at it from all angles to see if the photo was lying.
‘Modeling’ Projects in ‘Wireframe’ Modeling chairs or any staked piece in CAD, however, is stupid. OK, “stupid” is a strong word. It’s much faster to make a half-scale model using scraps and wire.
Nice backside. When I began designing the chair in this book, I started with rear legs that were angled 30° off the sightline. This angle gave the chair a wide stance that looked great from the rear.
Bambi? Is that you? But when I viewed the model from the front, the chair began to resemble a newborn fawn that was struggling to stand.
Fix you. Just like in nature, the answer was to help the model stand up a little more straight. In a chair, I usually make changes in 3° increments or so. But because this chair looked splayed like a squashed spider, I changed the angle by 5°.
I epoxy the wire legs into the plank seat and bend them into position with pliers. As you’ll see in the next section on staked furniture, this modeling process will also solve the geometry problems for you when building the piece.
Then I put the model on a table and walk all around it. I bend and snip the wire legs until the piece hits me in the gut the same way the original photograph did.
At this point I’ll do one of two things: If I have the time, I build a quick full-size prototype from junk wood. This allows me to work out some of the joinery and construction problems that I might not have anticipated.
If I’m in a hurry, I take a picture of my wire model, print it out and draw on the printout. I might add bulk to the legs, scalpel bulk from the seat, add spindles and other details.
Then I head to the shop and build what I pretty much know is something that will work.
Run Forrest. The 5° alteration changed the stance significantly. Viewed from the rear and the front, the chair looks more like a bird dog in the field.
If this process sounds arduous, you might not be ready to design your own pieces of furniture. Stick to plans – there’s no shame in that.
Design, like anything in woodwork, takes a little effort. I’ve never met anyone who can design a piece using pure inspiration and nail it on the first try. The process outlined above, however, is the shortest distance I’ve found between desire and satisfaction.
I’ve gotten some questions (and derision) about a photo we posted on Instagram from “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” that shows assembling a six-board chest with rosehead nails.
In the photo I have the clamps oriented to prevent splits. And that’s where the questioning begins.
Question: Why aren’t the clamps oriented across the width of the top board? That would seem to prevent splits.
Answer: I’m not trying to prevent the top board from a splitting. A properly sized pilot hole will do that. I’m trying to prevent the bottom board from splitting.
When you use cut or wrought nails, the depth of the pilot hole should be only half or two-thirds the length of the nail. This makes the nail do some of the work and is what gives these nails their excellent holding power.
However, in soft woods (such as this white pine) you can sometimes rupture the fibers because – and this is important – the fibers can do one of two things: They can compress or they can split.
If I apply a clamp across the bottom part of this joint, the fibers will compress when I drive the nail in. If I don’t, they are likely to rupture.
After I remove the clamps, the fibers remain intact. The fibers around the nails are compressed and the bonds between the fibers remain.
Compression is your friend, not only in nailing, but in dovetailing, drawboring and in making joints for stick chairs.
Good Morning and Happy Monday! It’s that time of the week for a forum update. Remember, if you have a question about our products, procedures in our books or anything related to Lost Art Press, the fastest way to get an answer is our forum. Check it out here.
Making a Wider Bookshelf
Thomas needed a bookshelf to fit a 6 foot space in his home, so he modified the bookshelf from “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” (shown above) Now he is trying to decide on a paint color. See his modifications and put in your vote for a paint color here.
1770 French Bench Doe’s Foot
Ever wonder how one would plane the edge of a board that was too short to reach the hold fast holes on the right hand leg on the vise-less French benches? Or wonder why the doe’s feet shown on most plates are so wide and short? Chris had. And then he saw the recent posts on the Lost Art Press blog. See his thought process here.
The Campaign Worktable of Necessity
How do you guarantee yourself a great workspace if your job moves you around to different offices on a regular basis with no promise of a decent desk at the next location? Build yourself a campaign worktable of course. And not just any table, one with style. Above it is shown disassembled and ready to be moved. See the table assembled here.
Why do cut nails rotate when driven?
John has noticed a rotation when driving cut nails and was wondering if there is a way to avoid it. A few suggestions have been provided to him as to how to prevent this. Have your own solution or the same problem? Here is the place to comment.
A Boarded Campaign Chest Joshua’s Campaign Chest that he was looking for some feedback on a couple weeks ago is coming along really well. (shown at right) The hardware is a great touch. Now for some feet and it will be set to go!
Parallel Guides
Jeremy has been working on a split top Ruobo and has a couple questions on parallel guides. Check out the specifics of his build and see if you can offer some advice here.
