Category: The Stick Chair Book

One of the frustrating aspects of editing a woodworking magazine was how little unplowed ground was left to explore. Well, let me put it another way: there was little ground that we were permitted to explore. 

Most woodworking magazines stick to a steady diet of the following furniture styles: Vaguely Shaker, Somewhat Arts & Crafts, Kinda Colonial, Maybe Modern and If It’s Got Nails it Must be Country. Why do magazines stick to those styles? Because every survey of magazine readers indicates those are the styles that readers love. Put another way: Why do readers love these styles? Because they are the ones shown in the woodworking press.

Several of us beat our heads against the wall every month at editorial meetings to get people to try something different. From day one I advocated for campaign furniture. David Thiel pushed for Mid-Century Modern, and John the Intern was always on about “Some Kind of Chair.”

Sometimes the overlords threw us a bone, but mostly it was: “Come up with some kind of Shaker case piece for the next issue. And not too intimidating.”

The problem was, of course, that the Shaker style has been explored by every woodworking magazine, book publisher and online personality. The best Shaker pieces have been published a thousand times. The good ones have been published several hundred times. And now we are down to Shaker Toothpicks, Birdcalls and Corn Scrapers, a Comparative Study.

My secret love was (surprise) Welsh stick chairs, but I didn’t dare suggest we explore that topic in the magazine. I did manage to get a couple articles about chairmaking published in the early 2000s, but those seemed like strokes of luck or sheer will.

Today I get to write about what I want, and if no one buys it then it’s my financial problem. So lately I’ve been writing a lot about stick chairs. Why? It’s not like my enthusiasm for them has increased lately. I’ve been stupid in love with the form for more than 20 years. Instead, the reason I have put them front and center in my work is because this is an opportunity for all of us. 

Stick chairs from many cultures are waiting to be discovered. I have been building these chairs for two decades and have barely scratched the surface of what is out there. Honestly, there are hundreds of stick chair forms yet to be explored. I threw out a few dozen examples in the “Sticktionary” chapter of “The Stick Chair Book,” but there are many more that are waiting for you to study and build.

There are pieces out there that absolutely pause my heart for a couple beats because they are so beautiful. Why aren’t those examples published here or in my book? Dealers and museums are stingy with photos of these chairs. I have collected hundreds (maybe thousands) of photos during the last 20 years, but I don’t have the rights to publish them. I have signed Non-disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in order to gain access to collections of these chairs. I have swapped private photos (hush hush, chair porn) with chairmakers and collectors around the world.

I want to invite you into this world. Here’s how it works. Haunt the websites of antique dealers who specialize in vernacular furniture. Collect their images and descriptions because sometimes these photos aren’t public for long. Then observe who follows these dealers (it’s easy to do this on social media). Follow them. And so on. It’s no different than looking at the bibliography in a book then investigating the bibliographies of those books.

It might sound like hard work, but it’s not. And here’s why: These chairs are everywhere once you start looking. Literally everywhere. They turn up at auction nearly every day, but they don’t merit academic study or an exhibit at a museum. (Because they aren’t Shaker, Stickley or commissioned by some industrialist.)

You can quickly become an expert. Find a form that you love. Explore the hell out of it, breaking new ground with every new piece that you build. You can easily surpass me.

Stick chairs aren’t the only undiscovered country in furniture. But they are the one I love. Find your own favorite furniture form and make other people love the crap out of it.

That’s how we change the world.

— Christopher Schwarz

This six-stick comb-back chair with a narrow comb is probably my favorite design to make. It’s both a challenge to build and a delight to sit in.

This chair is built using bog oak excavated from Poland that’s between 2,000-4,000 years old. The wood was leftover from a stunning dining table commission built by local furniture maker Andy Brownell at Brownell Furniture.

All the wood came from one boule, yet the bog oak varies in color, which made things a challenge. The wood is also dense and difficult to bring to a high level of finish. As a result, there are a couple small bits of grain tear-out on this chair that were impossible for me to tame. As best I can tell, this ancient oak is as strong as contemporary oak. This particular tree grew very fast, so it has lots of tough earlywood. 

This chair is set up for dining or relaxing. The back leans 15° off the seat, and the seat is tilted 5°, so the back is a generous 20° off the floor. The seat is 16-1/2” above the floor, which is a good height for most sitters. Overall, the chair is 39” tall, 28” wide, 23” deep and weighs 16-1/2 pounds. 

Like all my chairs, the joints are assembled with hide glue and oak wedges, so the joints are strong but can be easily repaired by future generations. The shoe and arm of the chair are also secured with two blacksmith-made rosehead nails.

The finish is a home-cooked linseed oil/wax finish that has no dangerous solvents. The finish offers low protection, but it is easy to repair by the owner with no special skills or tools.

Purchasing the Chair

This chair is being sold via silent auction. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Friday, March 18. In the email please use the subject line “Chair Sale” and include your:

• First name and last name
• U.S. shipping address
• Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)

Shipping options: You are welcome to pick up the chair here in Covington, Ky., and also get a free yardstick. I am happy to deliver the chair personally for free within 100 miles of Cincinnati, Ohio. Or we can ship it to you via LTL. The cost varies (especially these days), but it is usually between $200 and $300. 

A note on silent auctions: Several people have asked how much previous chairs have sold for via silent auction. Sorry, but that is the “silent” part. I have no desire to run up the price unnecessarily. So bid what you think is fair; that’s all we ask. It’s fair to say that the prices for the chairs sold at silent auction go for far more (two times or three times) the typical $1,400 price when we sell chairs via a random drawing. So for the guy who keeps bidding $100 – we love your confidence.

I apologize if this is frustrating for people who want a chair. I want you to have one, too. I love these chairs and would love to see them in many more homes.

— Christopher Schwarz

One of my favorite magazine articles by Adam Cherubini was titled: “How to Saw Faster than a Table Saw.” His solution was: Don’t saw. Instead of ripping a board to a particular width, try to work with the boards you have on hand and their existing widths.

This blog entry is somewhat in that vein.

When fitting the comb onto a chair’s back sticks, you have a few choices about how to do it.

1. Shave the sticks until you have a perfect 1”-long x 1/2”-diameter tenon on each stick
2. Use a tenon cutter (or plug cutter) to size each tenon
3. Do nothing to the sticks or their tenons.

I’m talking about No. 3 in this entry. Once while teaching a stick chair class, I realized I had left my 1/2” tenon cutter at home. It was the last day of class, and everyone was behind schedule. There was no time for students to shave their sticks.

Then it hit me: The chair’s combs are secured on the sticks with pegs. So the fit between the mortises and the tenons doesn’t have to be airtight. 

Then I knew exactly what to do. 

I drilled the 1/2” mortises in the comb then “wallered” them out by rotating the bit around the rim of the mortise while the bit was turning. This created a tapered mortise.

On a chair’s back sticks, the tip is almost always tapered because of the way we shave sticky things. 

This little trick worked brilliantly. After a little “wallering,” the combs dropped onto the students’ back sticks with a few mallet taps. A little glue and some pegs secured the comb. 

And we all got done in time to go get a beer.

This is how I now fit most of my combs. It’s faster, and it usually looks better, too.

More tips to come.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. If you own soft-jaw pliers, you can also compress the tenons a bit and waller the mortise a little less. Your call.

Nearly all vernacular chairs use straight (not tapered) cylindrical tenons throughout.

Before I owned a tapered tenon cutter and reamer, I used a 1”-diameter auger to make the mortise in the seat, and I shaved the tenons on the legs to size with planes. This requires great care.

You can greatly speed the process by using a plug cutter in a drill or a brace to cut the tenons. These inexpensive tools ($16 to $38) are widely available. They are supposed to be used “only in a drill press,” but you can use them safely in a handheld drill or brace as long as you first taper the tip of your tenon.

I make this taper with a jack plane. First I drill a shallow 1”-diameter hole in the center of the end of the leg to act as a target to work toward. Then I use a coarse-set jack plane to waste away the top of the leg until the tenon cutter just barely fits over the tip of the leg.

Next I level the leg in my vise, and I level the tenon cutter (I use a bubble level I epoxied to my drill’s body). Then I drill. It makes a nearly perfect 1”-diameter tenon (0.995”). The tenon has a shoulder, which I like for mechanical reasons. I like to lock the shoulder against the underside of the seat and lock the tenon in the top of the seat with a wedge. But you can plane away the shoulder if you like. Here’s a short movie that shows the tenon-cutting process.

More tips to come.

— Christopher Schwarz