Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book

For chairmaking and other handwork, a small double-screw vise can be handy. Check out Peter Follansbee’s bench and you’ll see these appliances lurking – or in use in surprising ways. Jennie Alexander uses them for many aspects of constructing her iconic chair.

During the last six months, I’ve been working with Alexander and chairmaker Larry Barrett to completely revise Alexander’s “Make a Chair from a Tree.” I don’t have a timeline as to when the project will be done as Alexander and Barrett are rebuilding the book from the roots up.

One of the small things I’m doing to help the project is prototyping a double-screw vise for the book. While all of us would prefer an all-wood vise with wooden screws, the current sorry crop of hand-powered threadboxes has pushed us into introducing a little metal.

The vise above is not the one that is going to be in the book. It still needs work. But it does work well on the bench.

The jaws are 1-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 20″ oak, with the screws on 10” centers. The 1-3/4” x 1-3/4” x 6” mahogany handles drive 3/4” x 12” Acme-threaded rod. Inside the rear jaw is buried plain steel 3/4” x 5 nuts. The handles push against 3/4” steel washers (though these are likely unnecessary).

The threaded rod is simply epoxied into the handles – about 3-1/2” worth. For the final version I’m going to tap the handles and epoxy the rod in place. Nothing like overkill.

I’m sure there will be more design changes to come.

With this vise in the mail to Alexander, I can return to tapering legs for “The Furniture of Necessity.”

— Christopher Schwarz

“This is such a familiar form of construction that a vocabulary of terms has hardly been found to describe it, but some early inventories seem to refer to it as ‘staked,’ or ‘with stake feet.’ Added to this is the fact that it has been largely ignored by serious furniture historians, though its place in the development of furniture design is so important that it is hard to account for this neglect.”

— Victor Chinnery, “Oak Furniture: The British Tradition,” Antique Collectors Club, (1979) p. 75

The aumbry from the upcoming “Furniture of Necessity” book is featured on the cover of the February 2015 issue of Popular Woodworking Magazine, which will mail to subscribers later this month.

My article discusses the history of the aumbry and how to build it. The book version will be much expanded and more detailed, as I’ll have about 10 times the space. Still – I think it’s a good magazine article; even beginners will be able to tackle the project with the magazine article.

I have to thank Editor Megan Fitzpatrick personally for taking a gamble on this project. Few people have ever heard of an aumbry, and fewer people would tell you they love Gothic furniture. I think the stuff is the cat’s meow. It’s fun to build and uses simple geometry and basic tools to design and construct.

I was allowed to read over the entire February issue before it went to press and was quite impressed (perhaps a bit professionally jealous). There’s a fantastic myth-busting article on teak oil, an excellent piece on making your own copper hardware with simple tools and Peter Follansbee shows you how to build his cool Chinese firewood carrier.

If you don’t subscribe, or if you have let your subscription lapse, this is the time to rectify that. Megan is steering the magazine to explore areas outside the traditional Shaker, Arts & Crafts and Period styles (though those will always be part of the magazine’s fabric). Look for some Japanese, Mid-century Modern and Ruhlmann stuff in forthcoming issues.

OK, back to the shop. I’ve got another project to build for Popular Woodworking.

— Christopher Schwarz

The first project in my next book, “The Furniture of Necessity,” is a Windsor-style sawbench. While some might think it’s a complex exercise in geometry and joinery, it’s ridiculously easy once you understand a few principles that have nothing to do with trigonometry.

In my mind, this project is fundamental to understanding chairmaking and building early Western tables and other pieces of “staked” furniture, such as backstools and formes.

To explore this form a bit more, John and I threw a sawbench-making party in Indianapolis this weekend where eight of us built sawbenches using a variety of hand- and power-tool methods. We also consumed a ridiculous amount of food and alcohol.

(If you are interested in this form – not to mention food and booze – I am teaching a weekend class in building these sawbenches at Highland Woodworking next month. Details here.)

Some of the highlights of the weekend (for me):

Raney Nelson of Daed Toolworks demonstrated a technique for adding a gorgeous charred finish to wood that will be the subject of an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine by blacksmith Seth Gould.

John, my partner at Lost Art Press, built a sawbench using four different and messed-up legs that had been sent to the burn pile by the rest of us. John assembled that sawbench, and then almost made me pee my pants by polishing the legs of the thing like it was on the cover of a woodworking magazine.

Narayan Nayar, the photographer for many Lost Art Press projects, demonstrated an offset turning technique that resulted in some beautiful elliptical legs.

Dr. Tim Henrickson made his first leg on a lathe that looked like it should be in an alien porn movie.

Megan Fitzpatrick, the editor of Popular Woodworking Magazine, had a video chat this weekend with her 4-year-old niece. So we all took off our shirts and walked around in the background during the chat.

Dr. Koa, aka Sean Thomas, brought along some cask-strength bourbon and rye that triggered all of the above events.

This is the third party we’ve thrown to explore early techniques, and it was a bunch of fun. Not to mention useful. If you ever feel uninspired or stuck with your woodworking, consider throwing a quick build-fest to tackle a fun project like this.

But don’t be like us and go shirtless in December. Engorged man nipples are not pretty.

— Christopher Schwarz

Building a project in front of an audience is one thing. Designing it and building it on the fly is enough to drive me to drink.

Earlier this year I did a two-day seminar for the Alabama Woodworkers Guild where I designed and built a six-board chest. While I usually do a lot work beforehand for classes, I was in the final stages of editing “Campaign Furniture” and was a bit task-saturated. Here was my prep work for that class: I threw some boards and tools into my truck and drove south.

Luckily, I’ve built a lot of six-board chests, and the resulting piece turned out well. In fact, I like this particular chest so much that I’m using it in “Furniture of Necessity.” As a result, I had to create a SketchUp drawing and cutting list after building the project.

As I was drawing the chest yesterday, I was amused to see that I had fallen into using some typical ratios while designing the project, even though I didn’t use dividers or a tape measure. I just looked, marked and cut. It really was “By Hand & Eye.”

The elevation of the case is 3:5, one of my favorite ratios. And the ends of the carcase – minus the legs – are 1:1, which is what I almost always use for my tool chests.

While these ratios make the chest’s appearance simple, they complicate the cutting list. If you have ever developed a cutting list from an antique piece of furniture, you probably asked yourself: “Why did they use these odd measurements?” You can chalk up the weird measurements to wood movement or the metric system, or you can realize that perhaps they weren’t measuring as much as we measure.

Here, for example, is the cutting list for the chest as built:

Six-board Chest Cutting List, Furniture of Necessity

No.    Name        T  x  W  x  L
1    Lid        3/4  x  14-3/4  x  35-1/8
2    Battens    3/4  x  1-5/8  x  14-3/4
2    Front/back    3/4  x  14-1/4  x  33-3/8
2    Ends        3/4  x  14-1/4  x 19-1/4
1    Bottom        3/4  x  12-7/8  x  32-3/8
1    Moulding    5/8  x  1-1/4  x  33-3/8
4    Feet        5/8  x  5  x  7-3/8

Yeah, I know. This cutting list could be simplified to use some rounder numbers. Or you could make this mental leap: There is no difference between hitting 35-1/8” or 35” or 35-7/64”. They are all numbers that are available to us.

— Christopher Schwarz