Category: The Stick Chair Journal

My Grandma West spent a large part of her life observing my grandfather, Joe, and my uncle, Tom, at work – either on a house or in the shop. Both were skilled woodworkers, among other things, but each had a different way of looking at the craft.

“Joe could look at a staircase or some other project and knew exactly how everything should go together,” she told me once. “Tom could look at the same project and knew exactly how everything could go wrong.”

When the two worked together, it was a struggle at times.

Though my DNA doesn’t indicate it, I inherited exactly equal parts of Grandad and Uncle Tom. The Grandad chain of DNA is the “hell yes we can build this just let me get my toolbelt” polymer that puts my feet on the floor every morning at 6:30 a.m. The Uncle Tom part of the double helix is what makes me draw out every angled joint in full size to see how everything intersects before I’ll pick up a tool heavier than a pencil.

Most times, it’s a good combination of traits. Grandad offers the “go fever,” while Uncle Tom keeps me out of trouble.

But other days, I’m immobilized. I can see everything that might go wrong with an operation. But then I wonder: Can I really see *everything*? Could I be missing something obvious? And then I go back over all my drawings and the cutlist. Twice. Thanks, Uncle Tom.

Meanwhile, Grandad is tapping his foot. He would be done and onto the next task.

This week, both men are working in my shop. I had an oak seat to saddle, and it was a riddle. The seat is made up of two boards. On one of the boards, the grain is mild. On the other board, the grain has a wild grain reversal right at the seat’s pommel.

Is this a good thing? A bad thing? I draw it out and try to figure out how the scorp should move. But I don’t know what’s going on inside the glue joint between the two boards. So I set the seat aside to think about it some more. Perhaps I should cut the seat apart? Get a look at the grain inside? And then glue the boards back together?

Grandad rolls his eyes, and scrounges for a Pepperidge Farm Bordeaux cookie in the kitchen.

That’s when I know I need to listen to another deceased woodworker, Joseph Moxon.

“Therefore you muſt examine the Temper of your Stuff, by eaſy Trials, how the Plane will work upon it, and ſet your Iron accordingly,” Moxon wrote in his chapter on fore planes.

This is one of the most important sentences in Moxon. And I think about it every day: “Easy Trials.”

Of course. 

I step up to the chair’s seat with a scorp and take the lightest cuts possible across the grain of the seat at various angles. I remove about 1/64” of material with each pass, but I can clearly see a difference in how the wood cuts as I adjust the tool’s angle. 

It doesn’t look like I am accomplishing anything. But I am finding out everything that can go wrong. I adjust the tool and take off a 1/32” of material. Then I bear down harder and take 1/16”.

I find the rhythm that allows me to take heavier and heavier cuts. And I have a good roadmap of the work ahead thanks to my earlier “easy trials.”

And I am alone in the shop. With the work.

— Christopher Schwarz

Editor’s note: Here’s another essay I wrote in support of my new “Build a Stick Chair” video. My plan was to record these essays and set them to music with some images. I tried it, and it  looked like the most boring slideshow with a narrator on quaaludes. So I present my script here, which you can read in your most excited voice (in your head).

When I worked for a woodworking magazine, we had a formula for the sorts of projects we printed in its pages. We always had a certain number of Shaker pieces, a slightly smaller number of Arts & Crafts pieces, some “Country” pieces (whatever “country” is). Plus a handful of 18th-century pieces, mid-century modern pieces, workshop pieces, jigs and fixtures.

The formula was safe. It was based on the thousands of subscriber surveys we sent out year after year. And it worked.

But it was also boring.

Every inspiring Shaker piece has been published to death by every woodworking magazine on the continent. Ditto with Arts & Crafts. Yes, there is a lot of amazing material you could mine from the 18th-century. But a magazine can publish only so many 18th-century pieces before readers revolt (most of those pieces are challenging to build; magazine readers tend to be beginners).

I love these classic furniture styles. If you like the decorative arts, I am sure you do as well. But there’s not much left to explore.* And I have little interest in walking the same path that has been trodden for the last 50 years.

So – and I know you’re shocked to hear me say it – this is one of the great things about stick chairs, and vernacular furniture in general.

It is a field that is largely unexplored. There is no book on stools – one of the most common pieces of furniture on the planet. There are only a handful of books on vernacular chairs, chests, beds, tables and shelving. It’s like there’s a whole planet filled with furniture that has been almost completely ignored.

For the last 18 years, I have specialized in researching and building stick chairs, and I still feel like I’ve only scratched the surface of what’s out there. You can do it, too. How? Look at lots of old paintings. When I look at old paintings – a great source of information on early rural life – I ignore the people and focus on the furniture. 

When you do this, you will wonder why there has never been a book on settles. Gate-leg tables. Pig benches. Plus all the convertible furniture that was necessary for regular people to live in a small space – benches that converted into beds. Chests of drawers that also held chickens. Dry sinks that stored all manner of kitchen necessities.

The reason there are few books on this vernacular stuff is, of course, money.

Rich people don’t care about this stuff. That’s because your rich friends aren’t going to be impressed that you have a beat-up bacon settle in your boudoir. All the money for research, coffee-table books and museums goes to the high-style stuff because it was the stuff owned by the rich people in the past. 

Rich people loved it and desired it. So it must be important.

I’m not rich. And I’m guessing you aren’t either. So why don’t we explore *our* furniture past? The stuff that was made by the person who needed it. The stuff that wasn’t designed to impress the neighbors. The stuff that looks better the more it gets used.

It might be our furniture past. But with a little work it also might be our furniture present and our furniture future. 

— Christopher Schwarz

* There is some new ground to be explored. But alas, we have to twist Megan’s arm to make it happen.

Templates are the foundation of my design process. While I occasionally make a full-size mock-up of a new design using cheap wood, it’s my templates that guide the process. 

And when I teach a class, I encourage students to trace whatever templates they like onto the huge sheets of butcher paper we keep here. My first chair teacher – Dave Fleming – offered me the same courtesy in 2003, and I still have those templates today (stored in my basement).

Other teachers were not as forthcoming. They either said “no” or insisted on selling the information. Woodworking is a tough business, so I can’t blame them. But I’d rather lose a few dollars and see more people make their own chairs.

If you are just getting started, I encourage you to make a set of templates. If you’d like to experiment with one of my sets (drawn by Josh Cook), download the file below and print it out at your local office supply store. The plans are drawn at full-size – 100 percent.

I like to make my templates using 1/8” hardboard. It is inexpensive, doesn’t warp as much as plywood does and its edges stay crisper than those of MDF. I affix the paper drawings to the hardboard with spray adhesive (available anywhere). Then I cut out the templates on the band saw and refine the shapes with hand tools.

Hardboard is simply wood pulp and linseed oil, so it cuts cleanly and doesn’t wreck your tools’ edges unnecessarily. 

I write a lot of information on my finished templates – resultant angles, notes from previous builds and details on angles and joints.

But the most important thing I write on the template is the date that I made it. That helps me figure out if I am moving forward or backward in time with my designs (either direction is OK).

The templates above are from my latest video “Build a Stick Chair,” which is available in our store.

— Christopher Schwarz