Last month, I went to Nashville where Travis Curtis taught a group of fellow woodworkers and me how to build a Jennie Chair and, for better or for worse, I decided it should be purple and have squirrels on it. The chair was built, woven and painted purple in five days. Mapping out and painting the squirrel design back at the Willard Street shop took a couple more days.
The chair is painted in plum from Real Milk Paint and finished with a coat of garnet shellac and Soft Wax on top. The details are painted with acrylic paint from Real Milk Paint. The chair’s overall height reaches 33-1/4″, and its width is 18-1/4″. The seat height is 17-1/4″, and the depth is 14-1/2″. The seat is woven with sturdy recycled paper.
The back slats hug the body nicely and slightly bend with the sitter. The woven seat has a gentle give to it – not stiff and not loose. The chair is lightweight at 6 pounds.
I chose squirrels as the star rodent for this chair. I wanted to replicate the layout of the hare and flowers on the Irish chair I made earlier this year while also allowing the chair to have its own personality.
This chair is ready to start its life journey with a special someone. I’m selling it via silent auction with the starting bid being $600. The highest bid is the price you will pay. The price includes crating and shipping anywhere to the lower 48 with no additional charges.
If you wish to buy this chair, send and email to [email protected] before 3 p.m. on Wednesday, August 19, 2026. Please use the subject line “Squirrel Chair.” In the email please include your:
Bid
Name
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. If you’re local to Covington, you can pick it up at our shop.
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books. To submit your own idea, email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is from David Farnum, in Greer, South Carolina.
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
One of the challenges I have when shaving long sticks is getting a good fit – one that’s not too skinny – where the stick fits into the armbow. For a long time, I drilled a mortise using the same bit as I did for the armbow in a piece of 2x scrap, but the simple slot gauge below makes it much quicker and easier to check the size. I already had the 8″-long piece of maple because that’s what I use to check the height of the armbow. Cutting the slots in that gives me one less thing to keep track of.
The gauge is just a series of notches cut a tiny bit wider than what’s labeled. Making the slots a little bigger keeps me from overshooting – when the stick fits the slot, I can carefully fine-tune the last little bit with a scraper or block plane. The stick doesn’t get jammed like it often did in the mortised 2x scrap and rotating it in the slot quickly shows where the high spots are.
Tomorrow (Aug. 8) is Open Wire day – a chance for you to ask any and all woodworking questions and get answers from Chris and me, as well as from your fellow woodworkers.
The Open Wire post will be live here on the blog at 8 a.m. tomorrow for you to post questions in the comment section, and we will start answering…as soon as we wake up and log on. I’m sure Chris will also be busy working on a chair tomorrow, and I’ll be working on junk removal from my backyard (my ex-kitchen is stacked up under the porch roof of my garage) and making shelves for the new kitchen. So please bear with us if we don’t get to your question right away. (And if you have an answer for someone else, please do chime in!)
I get to swing a sledgehammer tomorrow morning to flatten the cabinets. Fun! Then they and the rest of the detritus will be hauled away. Yay! (The cat shelters will stay, of course.)
Editor’s note: Our Mind Upon Mind series is a nod to a 1937 Chips from the Chisel column (also featured in “Honest Labour: The Charles H. Hayward Years”), in which Hayward wrote, “The influence of mind upon mind is extraordinary.” The idea being there’s often room for improvement.To that end, we’ve asked you what else you have thought of, tried out and improved upon after building projects from our books.
Send us your own ideas! Email [email protected]. You can read more about the submission process here.
Today’s pick is courtesy of Adam Chevalier. Thanks, Adam!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
I believe Chris has moved from his planing cradle to his carver’s vise for holding legs and sticks [while planing them] because it can be tricky to keep the work from sliding around in a planing cradle.
I tried this, but it raised the work too high for me to keep good pressure on my plane. Instead, I fastened the planing cradle to the bench as if it was a wide board with a stop and doe’s foot.
To keep the work from sliding, I just put some painter’s tape on the inside of the cradle and attached a block with CA (cyanoacrylate) glue to keep the work stationary.
The following is excerpted from “Doormaking & Window-Making,” and refers to frames for exterior doors. (The book instructs that interior “doors are usually hung in “jamb linings,” instead of door frames, these being fixed in the walls after the house is built.”)
A handbook on doors would hardly be complete without some reference to door frames, and in this chapter we propose to give a short description of the various kinds of frames in general use, and to show how to set out and make them.
Fig. 102 is the elevation of an ordinary frame, consisting of two posts or jambs, sill and head: a rebate is formed in the posts and head; to correspond with the thickness of the door, and the other edge is usually chamfered or beaded in some way, as shown in Figs. 103 to 105. The standard size for the scantlings used for door frames is 4-1/2 ins. by 3 ins., although in special cases these are varied as circumstances demand. The rebate should always be made so that the widest way of the stuff takes the thrust of the door, as shown in the above-mentioned drawings. Fig. 106 shows the rebate made the opposite way, as usual in some parts of the country, but this is a very faulty style, the posts yielding every time the door is slammed.
In facing up the timber, the face (or rebate) edge, should be the outside of the tree as it was grown : this can be ascertained by the grain at the end, the correct form being as in Fig. 107, incorrect as Fig. 108. Attention to this apparently unimportant matter makes all the difference to the springing of the posts, as, if formed as in Fig. 107, the wall keeps them straight and the door will not require easing; whereas if made as Fig. 108, the posts will spring into the doorway, and the door will require frequent easing to make it work freely.
Fig. 109 shows the setting out of the posts : at the sill end the two shoulders are straight across as on the right; but at the head the shoulders at the face side must be 1/2 in. longer, to fit up into the rebate, as at A, this shoulder being made to the height of the door. The above setting out applies to the section of frame as Fig. 103, where the chamfers are made on the posts only, and the head left square, as in Fig. no, or to any other section where the ornamentation is on the posts only. If the section as Fig. 104 is used, the bead is usually taken round the head, as in Fig. 111, and then both shoulders will be of an equal length, the bead being mitred at the intersection.
This also applies to Fig. 105, where an extra length must be allowed beyond the height of the door, to allow for the bead on the edge of the rebate; both this and the large chamfer running round the head, as in Fig. 112. This latter should not be mitred at the angles, but the posts should be scribed to fit the head, as in section Fig. 113. Should it be preferred to stop the chamfers, as Fig. 114, the first setting out will be the correct one.
The setting out of the head and sill is shown in Fig. 115. The mortise lines are not affected in any way by the section of the frame, provided that the tenons are kept to the square portion, the rebate coming to one side, as in the section (dotted lines), Figs. 103 to 105. Sufficient length must be left on the head and sill to allow them to project at least 1-1/2 ins. beyond the jambs, when the frame is together, and slot mortises should always be used. The projecting horns of the head and sill are cut as Fig. 116, A or B, according to the thickness of the wall they stand in, and also according to the position they occupy in the wall ; the bricks, being cut to fit the horns, hold the frame tightly.
Fig. 117 shows the upper end of a door jamb after the tenon is cut, section as Fig. 103. In some parts of the country the sills of outside door frames – that is , the frames which are fixed in the outer walls of house or building of any kind-are made wider than the jambs, and are bevelled, as Fig. 118, the bevel starting at the rebate line. This is a very good idea, the wet having a better chance of getting away; but in these days of cheapness it is too often considered that the extra work of bevelling the sill and cutting the shoulders to fit takes too long; it is, however, the proper thing to do.
