During my last day in the U.K. last week, we crammed in as much as possible. It was like a hot dog eating contest. But instead of cased meats, we were consuming culture. And instead of a stomach ache, I became consumed by ennui (just kidding, I got Covid).
One of the last stops before Paddington Station was at Robert Young Antiques in London. I’ll make any excuse to stop here. Everything in the store is wonderful. Of course, we were on the lookout for stick chairs. And we found three winners.
In the front room was this Welsh comb-back with unusual arms. Look how far forward the hands are to the seat. That is unusual. The seat is shallow – 12” at most. But you would be surprised how comfortable these shallow chairs can be.
Also of note: the oval side stretchers. These are a fairly Welsh characteristic as far as I can tell. And they are one that I have embraced with my chairs lately.
And, of course, the seat is not saddled.
The second chair was also Welsh and what we call a root-back chair, likely an 18th-century example.
These chairs have a wildness to them that I always love. This chair is twisted to the right – almost like a corner chair. It’s difficult to see it in the photos. Definitely not symmetrical (symmetry can be boring, darling).
As always, I love to see three-leggers out in the wild. And the little “heart” on the arm indicates it’s sold. Awww. Someone else loves it, too.
The third chair is wild. Look at the negative space between the front post and the back sticks. That is nuts. Also, check out the back sticks themselves. They are fanned out dramatically. That’s a bit unusual for a folk chair. But what is even wilder is that the sticks are hexagonal/octagonal. And they carry their shape above the arm.
The whole chair is fascinating. The legs are so diminutive compared to the massive seat. Even after a few days of sitting with this chair, I don’t quite have it figured out.
The following is an excerpt from “The Stick Chair Journal 2.” “The Stick Chair Journal” is also still available. While supplies last, you can purchase a bundle of issues Nos. 1 & 2 at a reduced price.
Your dining chairs can be more comfortable without being redesigned. The problem is that the tables won’t allow it.
Almost every modern dining table is 30″ tall. And almost every modern chair has a seat that is 18″ off the floor. That 12″ of difference allows space for the tabletop, the table’s aprons (if it has any) and the sitter’s legs.
Here’s the problem with those standards: An 18″ seat is too dang high for many sitters. My mother-in-law is about 5’2″, and every modern chair leaves her feet dangling over the floor like a schoolgirl in an adult chair.
After 10 minutes or so, the chair becomes incredibly uncomfortable as her blood supply to her legs is cut off by the seat, which is compressing her thighs. In the 1990s, I made her a small 4″-tall footstool for her dining set that would support her feet.
The solution to this problem, however, is not to build footstools for everyone whose shins are short.
Instead, the solution is to first lower the standard seat height of dining chairs by 2″ to 3″ or so. This will allow shorter people to rest their feet on the floor like regular human beings and sit comfortably for hours. What will a 15″ or 16″-high chair feel like for a tall person? Just fine. Their thighs will be above the seat, and if they want to lower them a bit, they can move their feet forward.
I’m 6’4″ and regularly sit in vernacular chairs that are 15″ and lower. I love them.
The only problem with this plan to cut all the chair legs down is the bog-standard, dyed-in-the-wool 30″-tall dining table. With shorter, more comfortable chairs, suddenly all the sitters’ elbows are below the tabletop, and everyone sitting around the table looks like a small child.
So, we also need to reduce the standard height of dining tables to 27″-28″ or so. That’s easy to do with a regular four-legged apron table – just cut down the four legs. Problem solved. But what if you own a pedestal table? Or a trestle table? There are solutions that involve trimming a little off the top and bottom of the trestle and pedestal. But some table designs won’t let you remove the full 3″ without making the table weak or weird-looking.
In 1933, Bengt Åkerblom asked a joiner in Sweden to build a chair to his specifications. The joiner refused to make thechair lower than the standard chair height. That’s how ingrained these standards are.
The only good solution is to start building dining tables that are 27″-28″ high. Then the chairs will come in line with lower seats. I don’t know why tables get to wag the dog, but that has been the case for more than 100 years.
Bengt Åkerblom wrote about this problem in his landmark “Standing and Sitting Posture” (1948). According to Åkerblom, here are the guidelines for a comfortable chair:
• The sitter should be able to shift position easily in the seat to use different resting positions.
• The height of the seat should not compress the thighs. He recommends a standard chair height between 15″ and 16″ .
• The seat should not be too deep. He recommends a seat should be no deeper than 15-3/4″. Seats can be as shallow as 8″, but this gets in the way of guideline No. 1 – the sitter needsroom on the seat to shift positions. A shallow seat does not allow this.
• The seat should slope backward by 3° to 5°.
• The seat should not be flat. It should be hollowed out a bit. Or it should have a thin cushion that is firm.
• Lumbar support is ideal. Having lumbar support and a backrest above can be very comfortable. The back can be inclined by as much as 25° to 30° off horizontal.
• Finally, and this is worth quoting Åkerblom directly: “In general, the height of the table must clearly conform to that of the chair and not vice versa.” He then goes on to recommend a table height of 27-1/2″.
At left, a sitter in an 18″-high chair at a table that is 30″ high. At right, the sitter in a 15″ chair. It is not the chair’s fault.
So today I opened my copy of “Human Dimension & Interior Space” (Watson-Guptill, 1979). This book is used by furniture designers and architects to construct interior spaces. I’ve used it for many years to figure out how tall a sideboard should be, or how long a table needed to be to seat eight people.
I turned to page 147-148, the section that deals with dining tables. It’s time to deal with “Line Item F,” which is the height of dining tables. I crossed out 29-30″ and wrote 27″.
Good news: Alexander Brothers is now selling a new stick chair kit for the Curved Back Armchair in “The Stick Chair Book.” The kit supplies all the parts you need in red elm (my favorite chair wood) for $295. The kit will also build the similar Irish armchair featured in Fine Woodworking magazine last year.
Alexander Brothers does a fantastic job of selecting straight grain for the sticks and legs. I trust them to pick wood for me. So if finding the wood for a stick chair has been holding you back from building one, this kit can fix that problem.
Alexander Brothers carries kits for many chairs and even Megan’s Dutch tool chest. Here’s a link to see the other kits.
Sharkskin or shagreen, in general, is used by all woodworkers. But the cabinetmakers do not use it except for the most fine parts, like shark fins that are called “dog-ear skin,” which have the finest nap of all skin and which, by consequence, scratch the work less. —André-Jacob Roubo “l’art du Menuisier”
The following is an excerpt from “The Stick Chair Journal.” “The Stick Chair Journal 2” is also now available. While supplies last, you can purchase a bundle of issues Nos. 1 & 2 at a reduced price.
James Krenov was the first woodworker I heard about who didn’t use sandpaper. That idea – no sandpaper – was so shocking that I can remember the moment it happened. My boss at the time handed me a copy of “A Cabinetmaker’s Notebook,” and mentioned that Krenov used only planes and scrapers to finish his furniture. I took the book with a somewhat skeptical look on my face. I was not impressed, but I was amazed.
Since that moment in the 1990s, I have met lots of woodworkers who eschew abrasives. They finish the work with edge tools only. Their sharp steel edges slice open the individual cells of the wood, allowing us to peer inside. The edge tools produce a shimmering glow in the wood that is almost unobtainable with sandpaper. And they do it all without producing the lung-destroying dust that comes with sanding.
Or that’s how the story goes.
FLAT & SMOOTH Egyptian woodworkers sanding a box, Fifth Dynasty. From “Egyptian Woodworking and Furniture” (Shire) by Geoffrey Killen.
Anyone who has embraced edge tools (myself included) goes through a phase where they finish projects using only sharpened steel edges. To be sure, this phase makes us better sharpeners. It makes us better users of planes and scrapers. But it doesn’t necessarily make our projects any better.
I invite you to conduct the following experiment. Plane one face of a board dead flat without any plane tracks. Then finish its other face with sandpaper, working up the grits with care to #220. Now finish both faces of the board with shellac, lacquer or varnish. Hand the board to another woodworker and ask them to figure out which is which.
I’ve done this. It’s a guessing game.
IT’S SANDED A stool in the British Museum that has been finished with sandstoning, according to Killen, author of “Egyptian Woodworking and Furniture.” Many pieces of Egyptian furniture show signs of being finished with scraping or rubbing with sandstone.
While there might be microscopic differences between surfaces that have been planed and those that have been sanded, they aren’t noticeable to the naked eye once a film finish has been applied. And people who say they can tell the difference are just guessing. (I have played this parlor game many times.)
So why learn to use a handplane? Easy! It’s usually faster than sanding. It produces little lung-clogging dust. And it’s frankly more enjoyable than sanding.
So why learn to sand? Because woodworkers have been doing it for at least 4,000 years (abrasive technology is older than the first handplane), and sanding can easily accomplish things that are difficult to do with edge tools.
In other words: You probably should learn to do both.
When I learned to finish surfaces, this was the routine: Plane the surfaces until you cannot improve them. Scrape any tear-out. Quickly sand the surfaces with a fine-grit paper to blend them and produce a consistent surface.
The above traditional technique (around since at least the 18th century) quickly produces nice surfaces. Using a combination of planes and abrasives is faster than using only planes or only abrasives (assuming we are all striving to get to the same destination).
If you don’t believe me, ask the ancient Egyptians. Or Grinling Gibbons. Or A.J. Roubo.
A FLEXIBLE RASP Chairmaker Chris Williams demonstrating how he and John Brown shaped the armbow using strips of abrasive, much like a shoeshiner.
BUT THERE’S MORE Sometimes I use abrasives to round over corners, produce fine chamfers or to fair curves. In other words, I use abrasives to shape the wood – not just prepare it for a finish. Unlike all the stuff above, this is not a known historical technique. Yet I gladly stand by it. Let’s talk about it.
I love my rasps. These steel tools allow me to shape wood without regard for grain direction or the shape of the wooden surface I’m working. I can just as easily shape a curved surface as I can a flat one. Rasps work by means of many tiny teeth that minutely scrape the wood. The fact that there are hundreds or thousands of teeth makes the work go quickly.
Each tooth of a rasp looks like a triangular pyramid. In fact, if you look closely enough, you will see that the teeth on a rasp look a lot like the teeth on a handsaw or backsaw. After drinking a couple beers, I would eagerly say that a rasp is only a little different than a saw. The primary difference is in the arrangement of the teeth. The teeth on a handmade rasp are scattered randomly on a steel blank. The teeth on a saw are arranged in a discreet line on one edge of the steel blank.
Also, the rasp and the saw make the same sound in use. They provide the same vibrational feedback to the user. And the teeth of the saw and the rasp both stop cutting when waste wood clogs up the teeth.
Sandpaper is not much different. Its teeth are randomly scattered over the substrate (paper, cloth, woven material). They also make tiny cuts. They also stop cutting when waste wood clogs up the teeth. And sandpaper makes the same “shushing” sound.
11 Reams and 6 Quire Paper Emery £10/3/0 1 Ream Sand Do (Paper) £0/10/0 — The 1800 inventory of ironmonger Christopher Gabriel of London. A ream is 500 sheets, and a quire is 24 sheets. So, Gabriel had 5,644 sheets of emery paper and 500 sheets of sandpaper on hand that day. From “Christopher Gabriel and the Tool Trade in 18th Century London” (Astragal Press) by Jane & Mark Rees.
Put another way, sandpaper is just a flexible rasp or saw. It uses the same cutting technology – tiny teeth. The only difference is that with sandpaper the teeth are bonded to a flexible backing.
So, if you don’t use sandpaper, is it because you are opposed to paper or cloth?
I’m not trying to be a jerk. I am happy for you to use the tools that please you. If you hate sandpaper, fine. Don’t use sandpaper. But don’t delude yourself into some historical reverie in the process. And don’t (as mentioned above) assert that a sanded surface is inferior.
Abrasives have been around for as long as human history has been recording its progress. They have been used in woodworking since (at least) ancient Egypt. They show up throughout history – even in the beloved Golden Age of Furniture in the 18th century. And like any tool, they are useful when used in the right place, in the right way and at the right time.
In other words, don’t make a chair seat using only #40-grit sandpaper (unless that’s the only tool you have). That’s just as peculiar as making the seat using only a scraper or a travisher. Or only an adze.
The world is filled with many good tools and questionable opinions. So, keep an open mind and pick the tools you like and that bring happiness (or, as in my case, buy groceries).
If access to wood (or lumberyard anxiety) is what’s holding you back from making a stick chair or Dutch tool chest, here’s an excellent solution: Alexander Brothers is now offering full kits for several types of stick chairs (in a selection of species), as well as blanks for legs, seat and more. Plus, there’s a new kit for the Dutch tool chest in pine, cherry or walnut (and the parts come ready .
We’ve ordered from Alexander Bros a number of times now, and are always impressed with how carefully Shea Alexander and his employees pick the chair stock for straightness of the grain and overall beauty. And I am impressed with how lovely the pine was for a recent Dutch tool chest class. In other words, you can trust that you’ll get good stuff.
NB: We do not receive any royalty or kickback on the sales of these kits – we’re just happy Shea is willing to do them. It’s a nice service for those who need help sourcing/choosing/milling wood. (Heck – I’m buying DTC kits from Shea for my February 2025 class, because I’m not going to have time to make them myself – one less worry for me. Thank you, Shea!)
