Porritt, who works from a small red barn in upstate New York, has been at his trade for many decades, and his eye for color and patina is outstanding. We’ve seen many examples of his work, and it is impressive because you cannot tell that any repair or restoration has been done.
His techniques are simple and use (mostly) everyday objects and chemicals – a pot scrubber, a deer antler, vinegar and tea. How you apply these tools – with a wee bit of belligerence – is what’s important.
The book is lavishly illustrated with color photos that clearly explain the process. With the help of this book, you’ll be able to fool at least some of the people some of the time with your own “aged” finishes.
I have always loved pieces of country furniture that have come out of the hills – objects that have been touched by time with all its nuances but have never been cleaned or worked over. To my eye some of these pieces can possess a beauty not yet attained in a new, unfinished piece or one left with a simple paint, oil or wax finish.
Living in America, feeling somewhat cut off in the midst of the 2020-2022 pandemic, I found myself remembering and missing some of the things from the borderland of England and Wales, where I had my home. The light on the hills, the glorious landscape, the characters at the Welshpool Friday market.
And then Ian Anderson’s antique shop: there I would see, touch and enjoy some of the pieces he had bought at auction or come across by invitation throughout Mid Wales. Form, color and surface – he found some delightful things. I missed the joy of the old oak dressers, the tables and chairs with their marvelous well-worn surfaces. That is why I started playing with my chair finishes, to get some of that feeling into my newly made chairs. You see, I have no interest in making fake antiques. Instead, with my finishing techniques I strive to create chairs that I want to see, chairs that I cannot find or even if they were about, chairs that I couldn’t begin to afford.
In addition to the finish, texture and toolmarks are important to creating a chair with a magical old quality.
This book will take you through the steps and techniques I have used in my work as a chairmaker, and furniture and tool restorer, to simulate the textures, colors and the mellow glow that is prized in old work. It requires simple tools, such as a deer antler I found on a walk, some stones I picked up from a beach walk in Rhode Island and a chainmail burnisher/pot scrubber. Plus, some chemicals – some relatively harmless (cement dust) and some that require great caution (nitric acid).
Multiple layers of finish and wear create a believable surface.
These finishes also require a bit of “belligerence.” And by that, I mean mostly perseverance. Creating these finishes requires you to apply finish, wipe it off, burnish it, heat it or even gently burn it off (I definitely do not mean char it). Then stop to take a look at your progress. You may have to do it all again (and again) until all the parts of your chair are to your liking, and you have created a believable surface.
Like restoring furniture surfaces, this process is about “play” – working and reworking a surface until you get the desired result.
Should you feel somewhat nervous piling in with these techniques on a new chair, practice on small boards, chair legs and spindles. Using different woods, take notes of the effects you have come across and build yourself a parts library to refer to.
I do think these finishes are worth the work. I find that they inspire me and lift my spirits.
Gibsons are quite unlike the other stick chairs Chris makes. And he has devised novel ways to use cheap lasers to make your life easier when building them (meaning you don’t have to build a lot of complicated jigs).
Chris and I spent a lot of May 2023 filming the process, condensing it into a video that:
Will not waste your time. Chris dislikes prattling on and on in a video (and in life). He tried to make this video 100 percent meat – no gristle.
Will show you how to build the chair and avoid common pitfalls. He has made a lot of mistakes while figuring out the Gibson. He is happy to show you his scars and detours.
Is somewhat enjoyable to watch. In our video there are cats, self-deprecating jokes, the breaking of the fourth wall and other small amusements that will, we hope, keep you awake.
Has the information you need. The video comes with all the patterns (hand-drawn by Chris) and cutting lists and sources so you will get up to speed quickly.
This chair is a good first chair. Yes, it’s a bit angular. But you can do it. You just have to commit.
This 3-hour video includes all the videos and all the drawings and patterns. All free of DRM (Digital Rights Management) so you can put the video on your laptop, iPad, phone and desktop with no restrictions.
You can read more about it here and order it if you like. After June 18, the price will be $75 forever.
Do you need a new workbench – perhaps one based on traditional forms? We probably have a resource to help. Below are just a few of our workbench offerings – in video and book form. Plus, a link to video tours of workbenches Chris and others have built in the last 25 years.
Video: “Roubo Workbench: By Hand & Power” Building a workbench using giant slabs of solid timber is easier than you think. Christopher Schwarz and Will Myers, who have built hundreds of workbenches in their careers, show you how to do it with simple tools and wet wood.
“Roubo Workbench: By Hand & Power” walks you through the construction of an 8′-long slab workbench starting with wet chunks of inexpensive red oak. Will and Chris show you how to tackle each operation using only hand tools, only electric tools or a clever combination of both.
The 4:19-long video also includes copious amounts of workbench design details – including how to scale the height, width and length of the bench for your work – so you can customize your bench for your body. There’s also an extensive discussion of basic workholding – where to put your holdfast holes and how you can work easily without a tail vise.
Video: “The Naked Woodworker” “The Naked Woodworker” video seeks to answer the simple question: How do you get started in woodworking when you have nothing? No tools. No bench. No skills. And no knowledge of where to begin.
Veteran woodworker and teacher Mike Siemsen helps you take your first steps into the craft without spending a lot of money or spending years setting up shop. In fact, Mike shows you how to acquire a decent set of tools and build a workbench and sawbench for about $600 or $700 – something you can accomplish during a few weekends of work.
Mike Siemsen, drilling dog holes in his “Naked Woodworker” bench.
“The Naked Woodworker” begins at a Mid-West Tool Collectors Association’s regional meeting with Mike sifting through, evaluating, haggling and buying the tools needed to begin building furniture. Then, at Mike’s Minnesota shop, he fixes up the tools he bought. He rehabs the planes, sharpens the saws and fixes up the braces – all on camera.
On the second video in the set, Mike builds a sawbench and a fully functional workbench using home-center materials. Both the sawbench and workbench are amazingly clever. You don’t need a single machine or power tool to make them. And they work incredibly well.
The bench is based on Peter Nicholson’s early 19th-century design. It is remarkably solid and is perfect for a life of woodworking with hand or power tools.
Book: “The Anarchist’s Workbench” “The Anarchist’s Workbench” is – on the one hand – a detailed plan for a simple workbench that can be built using construction lumber and basic woodworking tools. But it’s also the story of Christopher Schwarz’s 20-year journey researching, building and refining historical workbenches until there was nothing left to improve.
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” is the third and final book in the “anarchist” series, and it attempts to cut through the immense amount of misinformation about building a proper bench. It helps answer the questions that dog every woodworker: What sort of bench should I build? What wood should I use? What dimensions should it be? And what vises should I attach to it?
The AWB after 18 months of use.
“The Anarchist’s Workbench” also seeks to open your eyes to simpler workbench designs that eschew metal fasteners and instead rely only on the time-tested mortise-and-tenon joint that’s secured with a drawbored peg. The bench plan in the book is based on a European design that spread across the continent in the 1500s. It has only 12 joints, weighs more than 300 pounds and requires less than $300 in lumber. And while the bench is immensely simple, it is a versatile design that you can adapt and change as you grow as a woodworker.
Book: “The Workbench Book” First published in 1987, “The Workbench Book” by Scott Landis remains the most complete book on the most important tool in the woodworker’s shop.
My personal copy is a little beat up from life on my shop shelf.
“The Workbench Book” is a richly illustrated guided tour of the world’s best workbenches — from a traditional Shaker bench to the mass-produced Workmate. Author and workbench builder Scott Landis visited dozens of craftsmen, observing them at work and listening to what they had to say about their benches. The result is an intriguing and illuminating account of each bench’s strengths and weaknesses, within the context of a vibrant woodworking tradition.
This new 248-page hardbound edition from Lost Art Press ensures “The Workbench Book” will be available to future generations of woodworkers. Produced and printed in the United States, this classic text is printed on FSC-certified recycled paper and features a durable sewn binding designed to last generations. The 1987 text remains the same in this edition and includes a foreword by Christopher Schwarz.
Book: “Ingenious Mechanicks” Workbenches with screw-driven vises are a fairly modern invention. For more than 2,000 years, woodworkers built complex and beautiful pieces of furniture using simpler benches that relied on pegs, wedges and the human body to grip the work. While it’s easy to dismiss these ancient benches as obsolete, they are – at most – misunderstood.
Christopher Schwarz has been building these ancient workbenches and putting them to work in his shop to build all manner of furniture. Absent any surviving ancient instruction manuals for these benches, Schwarz relied on hundreds of historical paintings of these benches for clues as to how they worked. Then he replicated the devices and techniques shown in the paintings to see how (or if) they worked.
“Ingenious Mechanicks” is about this journey into the past and takes the reader from Pompeii, which features the oldest image of a Western bench, to a Roman fort in Germany to inspect the oldest surviving workbench and finally to his shop in Kentucky, where he recreated three historical workbenches and dozens of early jigs.
The Lost Art Press shop on May 30, 2023.
And here are links to video tours of workbench forms that are in the Lost Art Press shop (and three that used to be). (Most of them were built by Chris when he was at Popular Woodworking Magazine.)
The $175 Workbench – now our shipping station when it’s not in use for a class) The Power Tool Workbench – currently in the Horse Garage – meant to be used during a class by the person not teaching…but it’s almost always covered with wood and other supplies, so we use the low bench in the shop instead). English Joiner’s Bench – in the shop, behind Chris’ “Anarchist’s Workbench” – it’s a hair taller than the AWB, so it sometimes functions as a stop at the back of his bench. It is the most level spot in our shop – so whomever is working at it during a chair class gets kicked off when it’s time to level legs. The Cherry Roubo – now at our general contractor’s house. This one – while gorgeous – is just a bit too narrow for efficient and comfortable use during many of our classes, so we gave it to one of its biggest fans. (The size was limited by the width of slabs available at the time of building – had the wood allowed, it could have been wider.) The Holtzapffel Workbench – in the front window. It’s original twin-screw vise is in the basement; for most classes, the leg vise is more useful. And when I’m teaching a tool chest class, I prefer a Moxon vise atop the bench to raise the work to a comfortable sawing level for more students. Vintage Ulmia – now with a friend. A good bench – just not great for us. The Glulam Workbench (aka Gluebo) – now in my basement, for which I’m thankful. I built my other bench, a wee Roubo, to go on the second floor of my old house, and it’s too small for a lot of the house-scale work I’m now doing! Moravian Workbench – in the front window, back to back with the Holtzapffel. This one was built by our friend Will Myers. French Oak Roubo – this behemoth is back to bench with my bench. Lightweight Commercial Bench – Chris bought this one for a Fine Woodworking article on beefing up a wobbly bench. I believe it’s now at his daughter Katherine’s house.
Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams is teaching classes in our storefront this month and has brought over one of his truly remarkable Welsh stick chairs, made from Welsh woods in the old tradition by a 100-percent Welshman.
Chris is, quite simply, the best stick chair maker alive. He’s the one we all look up to, and he’s always pushing the design of the chair forward in terms of design and backward in terms of using armbows made from curved branches – the traditional way that the best chairs were made.
In fact, I would put up his work against any fine furniture maker in terms of fit and surface finish. Chris absolutely tortures himself to get it right. And it shows in the results.
Chris, the author of “Good Work,” was shown how to make Welsh stick chairs by John Brown, and Chris worked with JB for many years, making these chairs.
The hedges in Wales where Chris sources the wood for his chairs.
The chair is made from timber I source myself from around my home village of Llanybri in Wales. Small-diameter ash logs are split by hand and are used to construct the legs, stretchers and sticks. The three-piece ash arm bow is made from naturally curved ash from the hedgerows, which is cut in winter and seasoned for a few years before use. I follow the tradition that the armbow dictates the shape of the seat, which in turn makes Welsh chairs visually and uniquely distinctive from other chair forms. The two-piece elm seat is jointed with loose tenons and the oak pegs which are used in this construction technique form a pattern on the seat which is visible when a raking light casts across it. The chair is stained with a black dye and topcoated with a linseed oil finish. The open grain of the timbers is clearly visible through the matte/satin finish.
Typically, Chris has a buyer for the chairs he brings over. But for this one we decided to offer it up in a silent auction here on our blog. All the proceeds go to Chris. (We never take a cut when we sell other people’s work.)
Purchasing the Chair
This chair is being sold via silent auction. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.) If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, June 15. In the email please use the subject line “Welsh Chair Sale” and include your:
Your bid
First name and last name
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
This chair has a reserve. The sale price will include shipping to anywhere in the lower 48 states. Or you are welcome to pick it up in our storefront here in Covington, Ky.
I’m a big fan of the Taiwanese-made “carver’s vise” sold by many vendors with slightly different paint jobs. The vise is inexpensive and incredibly versatile, especially for chairmaking operations. Most students who take a chair class here seem to end up ordering one after using one of ours. The vise basically replaces a shaving horse.
Recently I decided to buy a few more of these vises so that every student could choose between one of the carver’s vises, or one of our also-excellent Hi Vises from Benchcrafted.
After writing about my love of the green Taiwanese vise, several readers told me I should try the version from StewMac. The company has upgraded the vise to improve its performance.
I ordered one and immediately put it to work on the comb-back stick chair on my bench. Here is the short version of the review: Don’t bother with the StewMac. The upgrades are unnoticeable.
Instead, buy the Grizzly version of the vise, which is on sale for $129 with free shipping until Aug. 14. This is not a paid advertorial. If someone asked me to do something like that I’d tell them to poop up their own butts. The Grizzly version is basically half the price of the StewMac version (after shipping and taxes). And they work the same.
Let’s take a closer look.
The StewMac version is supposed to have hardwood jaws. They aren’t hardwood. They are a softwood – just like the jaws on the green versions.
The StewMac version has roller bearings to make the vise operate more smoothly. There is no difference in the speed or ease that both vises close. Both are swift. Neither is smoother than the other.
The StewMac version has a round handwheel with a plastic handle. The cheaper green versions have a simple cast handle. I prefer the simple cast handle. I don’t like plastic, and there is literally nothing wrong with the all-cast-iron handle.
Nylon locknuts.
The StewMac version has nylon locknuts on the jaws. The green versions use common threaded bolts. This is the tiniest upgrade ever. Yes, the locknuts are smart and a bit better. They prevent the jaws from freezing up temporarily when you over-twist them, which is not a big deal. So yeah, good call. But it’s not worth the $74.75 extra for the StewMac.
Oh, and the StewMac is painted red instead of green. Whoever painted these vises – both the red ones and the green ones – had just failed an eye exam. The paint job is B- at best. But I don’t care about the paint job because it doesn’t hold the work.
Note the front jaw is ash instead of the softwood. After replacement, this jaw has yet to fail.
What I Would Upgrade
If I wanted to “upgrade” the green vise, here’s what I would do.
Improve the jaws. They are softwood covered in a tough urethane. But after a while the jaws and their screws fail. I have fixed this on some of my vises by using a tough hardwood for the jaws, such as ash.
Lengthen the wingnut that secures the vise to the bench. The cast wingnut is pretty perfect. But I would prefer a bigger one so that I could get some more leverage to tighten and loosen the wingnut. It is easy to overtighten the vise by rotating the vise’s body in use. A larger wingnut would fix this problem.
On all these vises, a bigger wingnut (longer shafts on the balls, please), would be an improvement.
But other than that, the green vise is cheap and perfect. Unless you just prefer red.
