This comb-back stick chair is designed for dining and working at a desk. Leaned back just enough, this chair is comfortable to sit in for hours at a time.
I’m offering it for sale for $1,400 via a random drawing. The price includes crating and shipping to your door anywhere in the lower 48 states of the U.S. Details on the sale are at the bottom of this entry. First, here’s more about the chair.
This chair is made from soft maple (seat and arm bow) and red oak (legs, stretchers, sticks and comb.) The legs and stretchers begin octagonal in shape then round into the taper. The through-tenons on the stretchers are cut flush with the legs – as with the stick tenons on the arm; Giving this chair a sleek look.
All joints are assembled with animal glue and wedged with red oak wedges.
This chair sits 17” above the ground, a comfortable height for most sitters. However, the chair can be lowered if desired. The overall height of this chair is 39-1/4”.
Due to the difference in color of wood species, I decided to paint this chair. The chair is finished with two coats of “Linen” by General Finishes “Milk Paint.” The off-white color has a matte finish that I believe will age beautifully.
This chair was my fifth chair build overall and my first chair of 2025. Made mostly by hand tools, the occasional tool mark or imperfection may be noticeable. I made this chair to the best of my ability and am proud of the outcome.
How to Buy the Chair
The chair is being sold via a random drawing. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Friday, March 7. Please use the subject line: “White Chair.” In the email please include your:
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
If you are the “winner,” the chair will be shipped to your door. The price includes the crate and all shipping charges. Alternatively, the chair can be picked up at our storefront. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
The following is an excerpt from “Sharpen This” by Christopher Schwarz.
One of the most frequent (and unanswerable) questions I get about sharpening is: How often should I sharpen?
The correct but unsatisfactory answer is: Pretty much any time the question “Should I sharpen?” pops into your head.
When I ask myself that question, I stop and look at my tool’s edge. Can I see a glint of light at the tip of the bevel? If I can, it’s time to sharpen. I look at my work to see if the surface is clean or if it’s marred by fine white lines or scratches in the wood. If I can see those lines, the edge is likely damaged and needs to be reground. And I think about the last few minutes of work I’ve done. If the work took more effort than expected, it’s time to sharpen.
You also have to become sensitive to the peculiarities of your tools. There are times when the tool’s cutting edge is not causing the problem. That is, you sharpened the edge, and the problem persists. What do you do then?
Well the good news is that by taking a moment to sharpen the tool you have eliminated the most common ailment of a hand tool: the edge is dull. After that, you need to consider the other parts of the tool. If your handplane is leaving a rough surface in its wake, the problem could be that its sole has become dented somewhere around its rim. So you need to file away any roughness on the sole. If the plane is too hard to push, there’s a good chance that the tool’s chipbreaker is too close to the cutting edge, which can create some impressive resistance. And if the plane is both too hard to push and it is leaving a nasty surface on your wood, there’s a good chance that the chipbreaker has slipped forward of your cutting edge and so the chipbreaker is doing the cutting – instead of the tool’s cutting edge. This is a common problem.
If a sharpening session doesn’t fix a chisel, there’s a good chance that your sharpening efforts did not cut a new zero-radius intersection. This is also a common malady among beginning woodworkers.
But in all honesty, sharpness fixes almost everything.
As you become proficient at sharpening, you will find there is a pattern or rhythm to the process, and it is mostly circular, like the life cycle of a frog. It starts as a tadpole that grows into a frog and then creates the next generation of tadpoles. With tools it is hone, polish, hone, polish, hone, polish, grind – then repeat the cycle. The following flow chart will – I hope – show you how sharpening occurs in a workshop during the long haul. It might take a chisel a year to make it around the circle. Or a week. It really depends on how much you use your tools and how hard you are on them.
The flowchart (below) begins the moment you decide a tool is dull.
From 2-4 p.m. on March 9 (the Sunday after the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event at our Willard Street location), we’ll throw open the doors to the public (perhaps literally, if the weather allows!) to welcome you into our new warehouse, storefront and editorial offices at 407 Madison Ave., Covington Kentucky, 41011.
Join us for tours, book and tool sales (including blemished tools and books at reduced prices) and just to hang out with woodworking friends for a few hours.
Hope to see you there, and at the Lie-Nielsen event on the Friday and Saturday before!
These red flags attach to long lengths of lumber that extend out the back of your truck or car. The flags alert other drivers that they shouldn’t tailgate you (unless they want a mouthful of splinters). Also, a flag of some sort is required in many jurisdictions for loads that extend out the rear of a vehicle.
In the 20th century, these flags also developed as a marketing gimmick for your lumberyard, so you find many antique ones printed with a company’s name or logo.
Our warning flag is cotton – like the vintage ones – with a wire sewn into the top edge. The wire keeps the flag stiff, and a loop in the wire allows you to fasten the flag to your load with a bungee cord, twine or a staple. Our flag is made in the United States and is printed here in Covington, Kentucky. The flags are 17-1/2″ wide x 18-1/2″ tall and cost $21.
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).
