Lost Art Press

Category: The Stick Chair Book

Free Download: A Dust Jacket for ‘The Stick Chair Book’

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As promised, we created a full-color dust jacket for “The Stick Chair Book” that you can download and print out at your local copy shop. 

The dust jacket measures 22.5” x 9.25”, so it can easily be printed out on 24”-wide poster stock (a common size). We recommend a coated heavy-weight paper (70# to 100#), though you can use anything, really.

After it prints out, you’ll find trim marks at the corners of the image that allow you to cut out the dust jacket with a straightedge and a knife.

The pdf of the dust jacket can be downloaded via this link.

We decided to offer the dust jacket as as option for a few reasons. First, the image on the dust jacket – a carving by Rudy Everts – is gorgeous and definitely cover-worthy. But dust jackets add considerable expense, and “The Stick Chair Book” is already expensive at $49. Finally, we hear from a lot of readers who immediately remove the dust jacket and prefer to see the cover cloth.

We hope that this approach satisfies those who love dust jackets and those who think they are wasteful. But I suspect we’ll hear some gripes. 

— Christopher Schwarz

Movie: Trim Tenons with a Scorp

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Several readers have asked for a video that shows how I trim wedged through-tenons flush to a seat. So I guess I’m taking requests that aren’t “Piano Man” or “Free Bird.” Be sure to leave a tip in the jar….

Some notes: Usually I perform this operation as-shown in the video. I use my weight and my knee to hold the chair in place. This is safe. I have never cut myself (see also: using a drawknife). If it’s your first time, clamp the leg in your face vise, as shown in the image above.

After I trim the tenon and it is almost level with the seat, I finish the job with a scraper or sandpaper.

Another note: This is also how I make the faceted through-tenons. I simply stop about halfway through the process. Then I level the top of the tenon with some #220-sandpaper stuck on a flat stick.

Final note: I did not invent this technique, but I don’t remember where I learned it. It was a long time ago – maybe with Dave Fleming in Canada. 

This, and other processes, are shown in “The Stick Chair Book.” Here endeth the commercial.

— Christopher Schwarz

Now Shipping: ‘The Stick Chair Book’

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Editor’s note: “The Stick Chair Book” – $49 plus domestic postage – is now shipping from our Indiana warehouse. If you order it from Lost Art Press before Dec. 12, you will receive a free pdf of the book at checkout. 

Though I have written a lot about the delays with printing “The Stick Chair Book,” the truth is that the book is about 10 years early.

My plan was to begin writing the book in about 2030, which is when I’d have about 27 years of experience making these chairs. During the last three years, however, I’ve been through four cancer scares (my father died of an aggressive form of prostate cancer). So after a few rounds of biopsies, MRIs and (so much) blood work, I threw out my long-term calendar and grabbed my sketchbook.

“The Stick Chair Book” is a love letter to my favorite form of furniture: a simple wooden chair that is comfortable, durable and built with simple tools plus whatever wood is on hand. Anyone – and I mean anyone – can make these chairs, which were first built by farmers and part-time woodworkers for their own households.

Unlike high-style Windsor chairs or frame chairs, stick chairs weren’t built to impress neighbors or show off wealth. They are only supposed to hold your bones in front of the fire after a long day of work.

Also unlike high-style chairs, stick chairs are made with dirt-common woodworking tools – most of which are already in your shop. And you can build them with wood from the lumberyard, the home center or your backyard. 

So how do you get started? “The Stick Chair Book” is divided into three sections. The first section, “Thinking About Chairs,” introduces you to the world of common stick chairs, plus the tools and wood to build them.

The second section – “Chairmaking Techniques” – covers every process in making a chair, from cutting stout legs, to making curved arms with straight wood, to carving the seat. Plus, you’ll get a taste for the wide variety of shapes you can use. The chapter on seats shows you how to lay out 14 different seat shapes. The chapter on legs has 16 common forms that can be made with only a couple handplanes. Add those to the 11 different arm shapes, six arm-joinery options, 14 shapes for hands, seven stretcher shapes and 11 combs, and you could make stick chairs your entire life without ever making the same one twice.

The final section offers detailed plans for five stick chairs, from a basic Irish armchair to a dramatic Scottish comb-back. These five chair designs are a great jumping-off point for making stick chairs of your own design. 

Additional chapters in the book cover chair comfort, finishing, sharpening the tools and answering the most common questions asked by new chairmakers.

“The Stick Chair Book” is 632 pages and printed on a brilliant white 70# uncoated paper. The pages are sewn, glued and taped for durability. And the whole thing is wrapped with 98-point boards that are covered in cotton cloth. Like all Lost Art Press books, it was produced and printed in the United States.

And though this book is coming out 10 years earlier than planned, there are two reasons that I’m glad I didn’t wait until 2030. First, when I started writing, I discovered that I had accumulated so much information on making these chairs that there was no way I could get it all into one book. (That’s why I’m writing a series of smaller follow-up books on other forms of stick chairs.)

Second, during my career I’ve known five woodworkers who had a really good book in the works that – unfortunately – died with them. So even if “The Stick Chair Book” isn’t my best work, I sure as heck didn’t want it to end up as worm food.

— Christopher Schwarz

P.S. Health-wise I am doing fine, with no cancer detected at the moment. I have excellent and engaged caregivers, so you’ll probably get that book on campaign birdhouses that I’ve been promising – likely after 2030.

Making Book Part 22: In Pieces at the End

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I wrote my first book when I was 11 years old. It sprouted and took root like all the other books I’ve written during the last 42 years.

Step one: I become bizarrely interested in a topic. Back in 1979, it was how the U.S. military had moved so many people around during World War II. 

Step two: research. I went to the school library and paged through every book they had on World War II, drawing the troop transports, jeeps and motorcycles I spotted in the photos. But there wasn’t much there. Back then – way before cable television – my mom took me and my sisters to the city’s public library every Saturday. So I spent three or four weekends there poring over all the library’s illustrated books on the war – drawing, taking notes and writing.

Step three: I write the book. I drew all the illustrations for my guide to troop transport and folded my primitive four-up signatures at my workbench. I managed to staple and glue the thing together. And when the glue was dry, I presented it to my father, who was relaxing with a cigarette in the living room after dinner.

He slowly paged through the book. My father had been a captain in the U.S. Army, and he had served in Vietnam in 1972. So I was certain he’d be interested in my topic.

He handed the book to my mother, who was sitting next to him – also with a lit Kool.

“Why would you write a book that glorifies war?” he asked me. “This (and he nodded at the book in my mother’s hands) doesn’t help anything or anyone.”

It was the most devastating review I’ve ever received (yes, Nick, even worse than being compared to a rapist). And as I stood there with my legs all wobbly, I began to put together the pieces of a family puzzle I hadn’t thought much about.

Yes, my father had been a captain in the Army. But – more importantly – he had served as a front-line physician in a field hospital. Until that moment, I’d never really thought much about what he saw or did in 1972. He’d never talked about it much. 

After a few uncomfortable and silent seconds, I took my book upstairs to my room. And in that moment I lost all interest and taste for violence, guns, wars, conflict and hunting. It really was as simple as that.

(Please note that this – or my father’s reaction – was not an anti-military statement. My dad loved the military, and he missed the order and sense of purpose it provided. He didn’t, however, miss the blood.)

And that evening also nudged me onto the path I’m on today. It’s important to me that every article, blog entry and book I write should help something or someone. It’s part of the reason I became a newspaper journalist, and it’s a large part of the reason I started writing how-to articles.

I know what I do isn’t Upton Sinclair. I’ve never tried to fool myself into thinking it is anything more than “put tab A into slot B” with rodent jokes. 

But then I remembered a piece of mail I’d pitched this week. Today I went down to the workshop and dug it out from all the shavings and packing peanuts that had been piled upon it. It was a handwritten note. Short and to the point.

Today marks the first day away from my corporate desk job and as a full-time maker. It is also the first time I write fan mail.

Taking this leap to chase my passion could not be possible without the inspiration and guidance from you. “The Anarchist’s Workbench” spoke to me on so many levels, and although I am a bit terrified, I have the knowledge to put my hands to good use.

Thank you for sharing such detailed instructions and leading us all back to more inspired and quality work and items.

Thanks,

John

The letter made me think of my parents on that evening in 1979. They were about 10 years younger than I am today, but they still had the backbone and the wisdom to tell me what was in their hearts.

“…this doesn’t help anyone or anything.”

Today I opened up the unbound signatures of “The Stick Chair Book,” which arrived this week for our inspection. The book is now being bound and should be headed to our warehouse in the coming week. As I flipped through the pages, I realized that the last line of the book that I wrote is probably the first thing you’ll see on the dedication page:

“For mom and dad.”

I hope “The Stick Chair Book” helps someone or something. I know that would have made them happy.

— Christopher Schwarz

Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.

Next: A Small Book (But Not About a Snail)

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A boxy (presumably) Welsh three-legged comb-back.

When I sent “The Stick Chair Book” to press in June, my plan was to immediately launch into my next book project. But then I took a look at our family’s finances, and I knew that idea was unwise. 

When you don’t sell any furniture or teach any classes for 56 weeks in a row, you feel the pinch – even though Lucy and I have zero debt.

So I started making and selling spec chairs as fast as I could. And now, five months later, I am cooking meatloaf tonight for dinner – so our bank balance is definitely better. Tomorrow I will ship out the last of a run of Hobbit-y chairs and begin on my next book project. Here are the details.

As I was writing “The Stick Chair Book,” I wanted to cover everything – and I mean everything – that I’ve learned about making these chairs. But it simply wasn’t physically possible to shoehorn it all into one volume. So I decided instead to focus only on the core techniques, plus plans for five chair forms. (Despite my narrower focus, “The Stick Chair Book” is a whopping 632 pages.)

Then, my plan was to write a series of smaller books that covered additional chair forms and the techniques particular to that kind of chair. These books would be paperback and similar in size to John Brown’s “Welsh Stick Chairs” – 7.25” x 9.625” and 104 pages or so.

If the first book does well, then I’ll keep writing these smaller books until people get sick of them or I run out of chair forms to explore.

A fantastic boxy comb-back owned by John Porritt. It is very comfortable and well-made.

The first book in the series will be about a Welsh form of chair that I call the “boxy comb-back.” These handsome chairs have a rectangular seat and armbow, which gives them the squarish look of an old Volvo (I’ve owned three Volvo 240s and adore them, FYI.)

One of the delightful aspects of these chairs is that they sometimes have three legs. I’ve never built a comb-back with three legs, so that will be exciting. Plus, the chairs’ armbows offer the opportunity for some cool joinery, such as a long diagonal scarf.

I’ve purchased the wood for the first two chairs for the book and hope to start processing it tomorrow. 

If these two chairs come out OK, I’ll definitely put them up for sale here. I do not want to experience the heartbreak of another meatloaf deficiency.

— Christopher Schwarz