Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

One of my goals of the “Furniture of Necessity” is to encourage people to build things that look complex but are actually simple once you know the trick. Think: compound joinery without a single numeral or calculation. Or, in today’s case, make curved parts using raw materials from the grocery store.

Steam-bending wood is fun and easy. And I own a steambox, a steam generator and all the clamps and forms that make it a snap. But that’s a lot of money and effort if you want to make one steamed part, such as a simple crest rail for a chair or backstool.

When I first learned to make Shaker boxes from John Wilson more than a decade ago, we boiled the parts in a steel planter box that was heated by a hot plate. That works pretty well, though you have to monitor the temperature to keep it boiling.

Another way to bend wood without fussing over the temperature is to use my mother’s recipe for beef brisket.

She would seal the brisket in a roasting pan covered in foil and cook it in the oven until the meat fell apart on your fork.

So I went to the grocery on Friday and picked up a bundle of firewood ($3.99) and a roasting pan ($2). The firewood is all split stuff that is 14” to 16” long and air-dried. My bundle of wood had oak, ash, poplar and sappy walnut. All the stock was about 30 percent moisture content – plenty dry enough to use for this operation.

I managed to get three crest rails from a split of oak and planed them all four-square. I  preheated the oven to 450° F. Then I filled my aluminum roasting pan with hot water, put the oak in and sealed the pan with two layers of aluminum foil. I cut a small 1/2” slit in the top and roasted the oak in the oven for 75 minutes. Then I took it to my bending form.

My bending form is made from a stack of 3/4” MDF that’s glued together. The easiest way to bend a 3/4” crest rail is using the help of a bench vise. I clamped half the form to the jaw of my vise and the other half to the bench.

I dropped the oak between the two parts of the form and cranked the vise closed. Simple. I then put two bar clamps across the form and removed it from the vise. In two days I’ll take the clamps off and I’ll have another crest rail for my next chair.

— Christopher Schwarz

The following is not a petition for affirmation. It is merely a reminder to myself not to order so many books at press time.

Though I loved journalism school, it didn’t love me. During my first two years, both my academic adviser and news writing instructor recommended I transfer to a school that was better suited to my odd writing style.

“You are like a big puppy that pees on the rug all the time,” said David Nelson, my newswriting instructor. “I don’t know what to do with you.”

The vice principal at my high school would have agreed with Nelson.

“You have got to stop wearing that bathrobe to school,” he told me one spring day.

So today I am officially tempering my enthusiasm for my next book, “Furniture of Necessity.” I have about half the projects built for the book, and they are slowly being integrated into our daily lives on Greenbriar Avenue.

Three-legged backstools sit at the ends of our dining table, and I steer every guest in our house to sit on them (we’re up to about 20 pair of buttocks now). Some visitors are clearly fearful that it is a trick.

My first 14th-century trestle table has become a portable work table and has been out in the yard, in the sunroom and set up in the living room for a number of dinners. But a couple visitors have asked why the table is missing legs. Or why it has too many legs. Or they have just asked what the heck it is.

I love these pieces, perhaps more than any other pieces I’ve built in recent memory. But the outside world isn’t sure. The three-legged chairs and table trestles are particularly off-putting. As one woodworker recently told me: “It looks like you’re just trying to save a little wood by having one less leg.”

I seek out and appreciate this sort of honest response. It shapes the way I will explain these pieces in the book and, more importantly, tells me I need to show you more examples here on the blog. The problem is that in the last five years I have looked at hundreds of images of aumbries, trestle tables, backstools, medieval worktables and staked pieces of all sorts. They don’t look weird to me anymore.

But deep down, I know they’re difficult pieces. Just like I knew it was strange to write about stabbings at adult bookstores (suggested headline: “Ouch! Wrong Hole!”). Plus, terrycloth bathrobes are odd attire at high school pep rallies.

So write a birdhouse book, you idiot.

— Christopher Schwarz

Not everything should be as smooth as a nun’s stomach. While every surface of my work is finished with handplanes, that doesn’t mean it was a smoothing plane.

Cabinet backs and the undersides of everything are best finished with a jack plane, either across, diagonally or parallel to the grain. Not only does this speed you along and allow you to save your effort for the show surfaces, it is pleasant to touch.

The shallow scallops – even the woolly ones that plow across the grain – actually feel like something worth touching. Even a little bark down below is OK with me. On the interiors of cabinets and drawers that will get touched frequently, I finish with a jointer plane. This leaves wider and shallower scallops that almost anyone can feel if they look for them.

On the show surfaces, the even-shallower scallops left by my smoothing plane are almost imperceptible unless you catch the top in the right light or pass your hand lightly across the surface with the intent of finding them. They are mostly invisible to the touch, but they are there.

I’m fully capable of planing all surfaces to nearly dead-flat and then finish them with a sanding block. That’s a great surface for a highly reflective finish. And while a perfect and smooth finish would have been spectacular in 1769, it’s unavoidable, plastic and mundane now.

Today I finished my first 15th-century dining table for the “Furniture of Necessity,” and I figured that by leaving these toolmarks, I saved an entire day of labor. And I like the table better than if it were perfectly extruded from a wide-belt sander.

— Christopher Schwarz

If you are interested in some of the staked furniture I’ve been building, such as this three-legged backstool, or in making a Roorkee chair, here are the joinery tools I use.

I make no apologies for these tools. I need stuff that is durable, not only because I use it all the time but so do my students. So it has to be monkey-proof. Also, you’ll notice that I use reaming equipment with a 12° included angle. The world of chairmakers is split on what angle is best. I have found both work fine. So that’s my answer to the question: “What do you think about 6°?”

Wood Owl Auger Bits
About two years ago I switched to Wood Owl Ultra Smooth Augers after working for years with vintage augers. These Japanese-made bits are the best I’ve ever found. They cut fast and clean, and they clear chips with ease. Plus you can get them sized by 16ths. Yes, they are technically metric. No, it doesn’t technically matter.

I use the 5/8” Wood Owl in a brace to bore the initial hole for the mortise. It’s $15.95 from Traditional Woodworker.

Large Veritas Standard Tapered Reamer
This Canadian-made reamer works incredibly well in a brace, corded drill or drill press. That’s why I prefer it to Veritas’s professional reamer, which can be used only in a brace. I’ll get about a dozen chairs out of an edge before I need to stone the edge, which I do with a diamond paddle.

My only gripe about the tool is it doesn’t have to be this long – I plan to grind off the first 3/8” of the reamer for my work.

I usually drive this reamer with a heavy-duty corded drill. My second choice is using it in a brace.

Vesper Sliding Bevel
I have an incurable case of Chris Vesper Fever. He is one of the best two or three living toolmakers I’ve ever met. His stuff has the precision of Karl Holtey – and I can afford it on my salary. I use the small one for chairmaking and staked furniture because I can sneak it right up next to the auger bit or reamer. The blade of a large bevel can get in the way during these operations.

Warning: Once you buy one of his tools, you will likely buy more.

Veritas 5/8” Tapered Tenon Cutter
This is the matching tenon cutter to the reamer above. It works like a giant pencil sharpener. Simply shave (or turn) your tenon near to its finished size. Then take it for a spin in the tenon cutter and you will have a tenon that perfectly matches the tapered mortise.

The blade is easy to remove and sharpen – it’s about the size of a spokeshave blade.

These tools – or their equivalent – will get you started making almost anything with a tapered, back-wedged joint. As Master Kenobi said: “You’ve just taken the first steps into a larger world.”

— Christopher Schwarz