Lost Art Press

Category: The Stick Chair Book

New Chairs in (Very) Old Wood

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One day in the 1990s, a few of us at Popular Woodworking Magazine were talking to Troy Sexton – one of our contributors – about table saw blades. We asked Troy what blades he liked.

“Thin kerf,” he said. “Always thin kerf.”

One of the other editors scoffed a bit. “Why would you need a thin-kerf blade on your 5hp table saw?”

Troy said: “They save wood. The difference between a 1/8”-wide blade and a 3/32” blade makes all the difference at times.”

I couldn’t agree more. Today I was roughing out the parts for two new chairs from some precious material: bog oak that is between 2,000 and 4,000 years old. I would never buy this material for myself. It’s too rare and unpredictable. But local furniture maker Andy Brownell had some chair-sized scraps from a dining table commission. He generously let me pick through the scraps for pieces that had dead-straight grain and few splits.

I’ve worked with bog oak before. So I was skeptical that I could make a chair from it. But I also trust Andy’s judgment when it comes to wood. So I gathered up enough material to make a chair and headed home.

I started cutting into the oak on Friday and was absolutely amazed. The bog oak I had used years before was lightweight and brash (brittle). That oak was filled with tension, so pieces warped like crazy. And some chisel handles I turned from it broke in short order.

As long as I avoided all the small splits, the bog oak was incredibly robust.

This stuff from Andy is different. It is heavy, stable and incredibly strong. I made some 3/4” x 3/4” sticks and hit them with a sledgehammer (the “sledgehammer test” in “The Stick Chair Book”). The sticks just bounced, as I would expect from straight oak that was cut last year.

Why the difference between this bog oak and the brittle stuff from a decade ago? I can’t say exactly. I am sure that one difference is in how quickly the two oaks grew. The bog oak from 10 years ago was very slow-growth stuff. So there were tons of pores. This new bog oak grew incredibly fast. Some of the growth rings were 1/4” to 3/8” apart. Fast-growing oak is much stronger than slow-growing oak.

The difference might also have been how the material was dried, handled and processed. I have no idea how the bog oak from a decade ago had been dried. But the new stuff came from M. Bohlke Lumber north of Cincinnati. Bohlke specializes in cutting and drying incredible and difficult woods. The Bohlke facility is nothing short of astonishing.

Because of resawing, one shoe became two.

In any case, because of a thin-kerf table saw blade and lots of planning, I was able to squeeze parts for two chairs from the lumber I’d hoped to get one from. I did this by carefully resawing the curved parts from lumber that was 2-1/8” thick in the rough. Even with modern oak from a reputable kiln, resawing can be tricky. Tension in the wood can make the boards warp immediately when sawn through their thickness. And if the wood isn’t completely dry, the boards can curl later on.

This stuff was as stable as resawing MDF. 

Even though everything has been going well so far, I know that trouble lies ahead. All this bog oak is from one tree, which is great. But there is an amazing amount of color variance along the widths of the boards. The wood goes from a charcoal-amber to an almost pitch black. Juggling all those colors means I have to finish the parts before assembly to ensure my chairs don’t look like calico quilts.

Luckily, I have about three times as many sticks as I need for two chairs. Also, when building chairs you don’t need all the wood to match exactly. The wood in the horizontal plane (seat and arms) can be a little different than the stuff in the vertical plane (sticks). And the undercarriage (legs and stretchers) can be another shade without looking wrong. Light hits a chair differently than it hits a cabinet.

With all these variables with the material, I decided that the chairs’ designs shouldn’t be an additional one. The two chairs I am building are designs I have built many times, so there won’t be any surprises when it comes to angles or how the chairs’ forms will look. 

But I am sure there will be other difficulties ahead I can’t foresee.

— Christopher Schwarz

Chairmaking on the Cheap(er), Part 1

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Since the publication of “The Stick Chair Book,” I’ve received many complaints that some of the tools I use in the book are expensive or there is a wait list to receive them. Most notably, the Veritas Tapered Tenon Cutters, Veritas Tapered Reamers (Large) and Veritas Power Tenon Cutters. Also, people gripe about the expense of scorps and travishers.

My goal with “The Stick Chair Book” was to keep the tool kit as small as possible, without asking readers to make the whole chair using only a pocketknife.

So the criticism stung a bit because I thought my tool list was quite reasonable.

During the last six months, I have tried out a lot of new tools and methods to see if I could make the tool list even cheaper and more accessible. Many of these experiments were expensive failures. (Don’t buy the Lumberjack tenon cutters. Just don’t. Anyone want to buy a set of Lumberjack tenon cutters?)

But I have had a few “a-ha” moments, which I am going to share here. Here is the first of several ways to reduce your tool bill.

Rule-breaking Tenons

Aside from the legs, almost all of the rest of the joints in a stick chair can be 5/8” in diameter. I’ve used the Veritas Power Tenon Cutter (the 5/8” is $99.90) for many years and love it. There can be a wait to buy these, and some people consider them expensive.

As an alternative, I decided to investigate plug cutters, which are used to make wooden plugs and sometimes tenons using a drill press. Most plug cutters warn you to use the tool only in a drill press. But I thought there was a way to make them work in a brace or handheld electric drill.

I was right. All you have to do is taper the end of your stock so it fits inside the mouth of the plug cutter. Then you can easily shave the tenon with a plug cutter that’s powered by a drill or brace.

A cheap chamfer/deburring cutter prepares your stock for the plug/tenon cutter.

To get the tenons perfect, you need your stock to be held level in a vise. And you need the tool to also be level. Plug cutters don’t come with levels installed on them. But you can epoxy an inexpensive bubble level (they are less than $1 each) to your drill (or the chuck of your hand-powered brace) to do the job. 

The plug cutter makes a perfect tenon. You just have to taper the shoulder into the tenon to clean things up.

A premium 5/8” plug cutter is $26. You can get utility ones for a few dollars. If you want to make it easy to taper the end of the stock consistently before cutting the tenons, also buy a chamfer/deburring cutter ($10). These are normally used to chamfer the ends of steel bolts, so they do a fine job on wood.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Yes, I know you can make the 5/8” tenons with a block plane alone. I consider it a tedious technique when I have 16 sticks that have to be tenoned perfectly on both ends.

Good News on Spade Bits

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I don’t have to go into the spade bit business. 

After my Feb. 7, 2022, post about how awful the new Irwin Speedbor bits have become, a couple readers suggested I try the WoodOwl spades. I didn’t know that WoodOwl made spade bits and had never seen them for sale.

So I purchased some from Hardwick & Sons and tested them up against my NOS (new old stock) Speedbors that were fresh from the package. And I tested them against some of the new, frustrating Irwin Speedbors – the ones missing their rim spurs.

The 5/8” WoodOwls cut just as fast as my trusty old Speedbors. They are exactly the same size (.635” diameter at the rim spurs) and weigh one-third less. Though the WoodOwl bits are made in China (not Japan), the machining is excellent, both on the bit and bit’s shaft. 

So, problem solved. Don’t buy the Speedbor’s for chairmaking. Buy the WoodOwls. 

The only open question is how good the steel is in the WoodOwls. I’m building a chair right now and should have that answer soon enough.

This two-bit drama reminded me of a Crucible tool I had worked on for a while and then set aside. I was trying to come up with a bit extension that didn’t wobble and held bits firmly, especially when you pull out of the hole. The Bosch bit extender is the best in the market, but it still wobbles more than I like.

So I built a prototype of a bit extender that is promising. Now designer Josh Cook and I are chewing it over to see if we can make something accurate, useful and inexpensive.

— Christopher Schwarz

Better Buildings, Better Furniture

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Visiting John Hutchinson’s workshop outside Columbus, Ohio, was an unusual experience. And he wanted it that way.

To get to his shop, you left his home and set off down a path through the woods. Then you encountered a stream and had to jump over it. Eventually you arrived at a small cabin surrounded completely by woods.

The shop was cozy, well-lit and wonderfully equipped. And whenever you looked out the windows, all you saw were trees.

Hutchinson, a prominent Ohio architect, wanted it this way. He wanted the trip to his workshop to require you to encounter and deal with nature. And as you worked, nature was everywhere you looked.

I know a lot of woodworkers who would build the same sort of shop if they could. But I thought it was odd. Sure, I love trees and nature and birds and deer scat as much as the next woodworker. But I don’t look at trees and say: “Eureka – there is an idea for my next cabinet!”

Instead, I have always been inspired by good architecture. Good buildings. Thoughtful details. Window layouts. Overall proportions. These things are an endless diet of good design.

Yes, you can visit beautiful cities to get a taste of it before returning to your rural or suburban home. But it is another thing entirely to live surrounded by buildings and have them seep into your skin. Good architecture – like good furniture design – requires you to live with it for a while to really understand the patterns behind it. And to see the details that escape your first (or 10th) viewing.

The short film above is adapted from a piece I made a couple years ago for the furniture conference at Colonial Williamsburg. It offers a short architectural tour of Covington and shows how some buildings have directly influenced my designs.

This is why I live in an old (for America) city.

I am sure that other woodworkers can take inspiration directly from nature. And I think that’s great. But I have always relied on architecture. And here’s a look at how that works.

– Christopher Schwarz

American Citizenship for the Stick Chair

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One of my “American” stick chairs.

I get asked (a lot) why there are so few stick chairs in the furniture record of the United States.

To that question, I reply, “Just you wait.”

Ever since I built my first stick chair in 2003, my aim has not been to reproduce the chairs I adore from Wales, Scotland, Ireland and Sweden. Instead, my goal has been to do what Americans have long done with furniture forms and other cultural movements: Adapt them to this continent and its people.

Black Americans took an African call-and-response form of music and made the blues (then rock ‘n’ roll). Rural Americans – black and white – melded African and Spanish instruments (the banjo and guitar), with spirituals and traditional British songs to make “hillbilly music” and “race music” – what we now call country music and rhythm and blues.

All cultures adopt and adapt elements from “away,” but Americans seem particularly prone to it. We even export our adaptations back across the oceans. In Naples, Italy, anyone can buy pizza topped with hot dog chunks and french fries.

Now before you start calling me “Jingo” Schwarz, know that I don’t think everything Americans do is good. Not even close. We took the éclair and made Twinkies. The baguette became Wonder Bread. It’s a mixed bag of vanilla soft serve and Vanilla Ice.

English secretary, 1810.

Wait, Isn’t This a Woodworking Blog?

In the world of furniture, American designers and woodworkers tended to simplify forms brought over from Great Britain, the European continent and elsewhere. To be clear, there were American woodworkers who equaled the ornamentation and excess of their counterparts across the Atlantic. But in general, American interpretations removed ornament, simplified overall forms and relied more heavily on the solid timber that was the greatest resource of this continent.

English secretary, 1805.

A long day’s walk down King Street in Charleston, S.C., lays out this story that played out in the 18th and 19th centuries. King Street is awash in antiques stores that specialize in British and European antiques. And there are other stores that specialize in American antiques – plus all the house museums that are stuffed with American and imported furniture.

This long stroll (it will take you all day) also shows what the market has decided, whether you agree with it or not. My father would buy English chests of drawers on King Street in the 1990s for $1,200. The American ones were entirely out of his financial reach.

American chest of drawers, turn of the 19th century.
Virginia bookcase, late 18th century.

Finally, to Chair Stuff

British Forest Chairs (aka Windsors) also faced the same story. American forms are – in general – simpler. Simpler turnings. No backsplat. Fewer carved elements. (I must add, however, that my favorite Forest chair of all time is British.)

Yorkshire Windsors, early 19th century.
Massachusetts Windsors, early 19th century.

When it comes to stick chairs, my goal has always been to Americanize them. (I’ve built only a couple close copies of antique Welsh chairs – mostly to prove I could do it.) What does this Americanization entail? 

First, I have changed my designs to reflect the wood we have here. Unlike Wales, we have enormous stands of straight timber. The curved stuff – which the Welsh use for arms and combs – exists here, but it’s more difficult to find. During my two visits to Wales, a walk among the hedgerows revealed a dozens of bent armbows. So my arms are different. They’re built differently, and you will see further changes in future designs.

One of the hundreds of Welsh chairs that are among my “favorites” and influence my designs.

I also tend to favor crisp lines over curved ones. All beautiful and well-worn antiques suffer “erosion,” for lack of a better word. But I try to take that crispness or clarity a little further. I avoid rounded and pillowed profiles for the most part. I like facets. I don’t like turned, round or bulbous components.

I also tend to favor geometry that is more dramatic. Many Welsh chairs had dramatic rake and splay. But a lot of them had little rake or splay. Many had sticks that were dead-vertical. I try to take the dramatic bits and pieces from old chairs and combine them into something else. I won’t say it’s new, as there is no such thing.

I also like color and grain. I am happy to paint my chairs a vibrant color or use an oil and beeswax finish on them. I am dead certain that many old chairs got flashy paint jobs back in the day or a finish that was mostly soot and smoke from the hearth. So my finish choices stand in contrast to what the old chairs look like today.

Why am I telling you this? Well, in some small way, I know that the Welsh get irritated when someone builds one of my chair designs and calls it a “Welsh Stick Chair” on Instagram or Facebook. In truth, they are building an American Stick Chair designed by a guy who dreams of Welsh, Scottish and Irish chairs all the time. So if you want to avoid a Welsh invasion of Kentucky, I recommend you call your stuff what it is: American.

Also, I want to start a conversation about this form and what it could become. I hope that other American makers will look at 11,564 old chairs and see different details that could make up a vocabulary for American stick chairs. Because there isn’t an “American Stick Chair” yet, there is enormous opportunity to explore this idea and contribute to something that just might have some legs.

— Christopher Schwarz

Hands down, my favorite Forest Chair of all time. A lovely early example of the form.