Good news – we’re adding Tuesday hours to the storefront. Starting on March 24, the Lost Art Press store (407 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky., 40411) will be open from 10 a.m.-2 pm. every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
Kara Gebhart Uhl, author of “Cadi & the Cursed Oak” and Lost Art Press copy editor (among other things), will be there on Tuesdays to help with all your LAP book-, apparel- and tool-related needs.
This four-piece dovetailed step stool is a weekend class I sometimes teach – but unlike for most of my classes, it’s not a project I, er, borrowed from Chris or wrote about myself for a magazine article or book. It’s an excellent beginner’s dovetailing project, and you end up with a nice little stool that’s perfect to help a kid reach the sink or a cat reach a window. So I give it to you here.
I usually make these in cherry. It’s a good-looking wood – especially with a soft wax finish and a few years on it. But most important to me, it grows near where I live, and it’s easy to get in wide widths for a decent price. We usually buy from C.R. Muterspaw Lumber, where 5/4 wide cherry is currently listed at $5.85 per board foot. One step stool takes about 3 board feet (bf). I do my best to get 12″-wide (or slightly wider) boards, because that makes the prep easy – though you can slightly adjust the thickness, width and length as needed to fit your available stock. And you can use just about any wood – but if these are your first dovetails, I’d go with something that has a decent “mash factor,” which is to say you can get away with forcing too-tight joints together. Sometimes. (Pine, poplar, basswood/linden are great choices, and cherry and walnut are good, too, if a little less forgiving).
First, surface the stock by hand or machine, then crosscut the parts to size. I typically start with 5/4 stock and plane it until it’s flat – whether that’s 1″ or 7/8″ – and call it done. Then I rip a ~2″ piece off one edge, and cut the parts to length.
For a stool that will get a clear finish, I sometimes get a little more persnickety with the prep so as to end up with a continuous grain pattern on the legs and top. Before ripping, I’ll crosscut the overall board to 32-1/4″, square on both ends, then rip ~2″ from an edge. I cut one leg off each end, and the remaining middle becomes the top. Cut the stretcher from the 2″-wide piece to perfectly match the length of the top.
Put marriage marks on the top and sides, ideally with the heart sides of the boards facing out, so your nice, tight dovetails will counteract any cupping.
The tails go on the legs; I like five per side, so I end up with a chunky look (to my eye, that seems right for a step stool). If you don’t know how to lay out dovetails, see this video for my preferred method.
Cut the tails, then lay out the curve at the bottom of each leg. Or lay out the curves, then cut the tails. You can also wait until the joints are fully cut on the legs and top to lay out the curve. Doesn’t matter. But I like to lay out that curve before laying out and cutting the sockets on the back of the legs for the stretcher. The closer that stretcher is to the floor, the more stable the finished stool. But I don’t like for the stretcher to be below the cutout – there’s too much chance of splitting off a foot as you chop out the waste. Plus, it would look weird. I typically align the stretcher’s lower edge with the top of the curve, which puts the dovetail’s socket at each end about 1/4″ above the top of the arc.
I like the feet to be about 1-1/2″ wide, so I measure in from each edge and mark that for each foot. Mark a centerline on both legs. Butt together the bottom ends, aligned to each other side to side. Then place the stabby end of the compass about 1-1/4″ to 1-1/2″ up the centerline of one leg, and set the tool to hit your 1-1/2″ mark as you swing the arc. If you don’t like the curve, move the stabby end up or down the centerline as you like, reset the compass, then try again. Make yourself happy. But you don’t want to remove too much material from the legs; that will weaken them. And look weird.
If you haven’t already, smooth plane the top and legs. The pin board has to be planed before you transfer the tails…but on this project, the top and legs are both pin boards, because the stretcher gets a tail at each end; the sockets get cut in the back edge of the legs. Go ahead and cut a tail on both stretcher ends.
Measure from the top of the legs to lay out the location for the stretcher – or do a full dry-fit on the top and legs, and you can simply set the stretcher across the back, lining up the baseline on the stretcher to the legs. Transfer the tails, mark the socket baseline on the legs, then cut the sockets. The only semi-tricky thing is to not tear out at the baseline, which is easy to do when cutting it with the grain as you must here. So scribe that socket baseline as deep as you can with your marking gauge; deepen it with a knife if needed. And use a sharp chisel and tiny bites as you remove the waste.
Now remove the waste on the bottom of the legs with a coping saw or band saw, and fair the curves with rasps and sandpaper, or a spindle sander if you have one. (You could instead of a curve lay out and cut a bootjack – a V-shape that’s easy to cut with a saw and a lot easier to clean up than curves.)
Put glue in the sockets on the top. (I use liquid hide glue for this project – it has a little more open time than PVA, but not as much as fish glue. You don’t need a lot of open time for four pieces, but I prefer to not use the plastic glue.) Fully assemble the legs and top, knocking the joints home. Put glue in the stretcher sockets on the back of the legs and knock the stretcher in place. Use clamps as needed to pull things together.
After the piece comes out the clamps (I prefer to leave things clamped overnight, no matter the glue), it’s time for “make pretty.” Then apply your finish of choice, put felt pads on the bottom of the feet to protect the floor, and you’re done.
p.s. If you need instruction on cutting through-dovetails, there’s lots of info online…but there’s also an exhaustive dovetails chapter in my book “Dutch Tool Chests” … and every book sold contributes to treats for my spoiled cats (they deserve it).
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 Dan Crow (danielpcrow.com). Thanks, Dan!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
I often find it easier to mark my octagons on the ends of my leg blanks using this little guy instead of measuring and marking from the outside in.
He’s 1″ tall and makes a 1″-interior-diameter octagon. Tracing the outer diameter makes an octagon that’s roughly 1-3/8″.
The octagon marker allows me to scribe the interior finished octagon size and the outer octagon shape to use as a guide, all while holding it in place at the end of the blank.
Sometimes my blanks don’t have equal sides or are perfectly straight-grained from end to end, so this also allows me to fudge my octagon a little either way to get a perfect shape.
I had it printed using an online service called JawsTec. They used nylon (the cheapest option they offered). As I understand it, most 3D printers can use a .stl file to print stuff (and save money).
You can download the .stl file here.
— Dan Crow
NOTE: This video is being offered at the introductory price of $30 for the first 30 days of its release. After that, it will be sold for the full price of $60.
In this nearly two-hour video, professional chairmaker Chris Williams shows you how he builds a beautiful Welsh lobsterpot chair using simple tools and bent branches from the forest.
Lobsterpot stick chairs are one of the most desirable and tricky-to-build forms. The tightly bent back sticks converge on the comb and give the chair its visual energy. But how were these chairs made? Were the sticks steambent? Bent while green?
Chris has spent a lifetime studying and building traditional stick chairs in the shop in the Welsh countryside. And he’s studied many lobsterpot chairs that have survived for more than 100 years, and those that have broken.
The difference between them, he says, is in the arm. By using a naturally-crooked branch, the arm has no short grain, so it can withstand the immense pressure exerted on the chair by the bent sticks. Chairs with short grain – either in the arms or the sticks – tend to break easily and are difficult or impossible to repair.
In this video, Chris visits antique dealer Tim Bowen (of Tim Bown Antiques) to examine an antique lobsterpot chair to understand how they work and survive. From there, Chris heads to the hedgerows to show you the bent timber that grows there that he harvests for his work.
In addition to the bent sections, Chris harvests some straight ash and splits it in the forest for the legs and sticks. And then he goes to work in the shop.
Dealing with naturally curved material is tricky to dry and cut, and Chris shows you how he manages the process using hand tools and his band saw.
During this process, Chris explains how the shape of the arm dictates the rest of the design of the chair. He works with the existing curves, joins the arm parts with traditional keyed scarf joints and then builds the rest of the chair based on the arm.
Chris learned to make stick chairs directly from John Brown and worked for him for about a decade. Many of Chris’s techniques, such as shaving the sticks, come from JB. Other techniques, such as making the armbow, are the results of Chris’s long research.
In the end, the lobsterpot comes together in the video without plans or patterns. Chris uses the shape of the wood at hand to determine the overall look of the comb and the pattern of the sticks.
The resulting chair is a gorgeous piece of sculptural work that is quite comfortable (we got to sit in it before it went to a customer).
For chairmakers, this video is a rare glimpse into the shop of someone who works at the top of their profession. And it’s encouraging to see how it’s not fancy tools that make the maker, it’s their skill and cunning.
Even if you have no intention of building a lobsterpot chair, it’s a fascinating project. And it is a delight to watch all the parts come together.
Today we offer two comfortable stick chairs for sale that Kale and I recently finished. As always, the price includes crating and shipping anywhere in the lower 48 states. Here are the details.
The Bebb Chair, a Welsh Comb-back in Olive Ash
This chair is my interpretation of one of my favorite Welsh stick chairs. I first saw the chair in Richard Bebb’s booklet “Welsh Country Furniture,” and the chair kicked off a personal design cycle that has yet to subside.
My version is as close to the original as possible in form, except for the seat. The original was unsaddled. My version has a saddle that looks good and adds some comfort.
The chair is compact and comfortable, with arms that are 10-1/4” above the seat and a low comb that supports the sitter’s shoulders. The seat height is 15-5/8”, with the chair’s overall height at 37-1/2”.
The entire chair is made from one board of extraordinary quartersawn olive ash. All the joints are assembled with animal glue, so the chair can be repaired in the far future. And the chair is finished in soft wax, a non-toxic finish that can easily be repaired by simply applying more soft wax. It is a low-lustre finish that allows the texture of the ash to radiate.
All the surfaces are finished with edge tools. The legs and sticks are shaved with planes and shaves, leaving a faceted surface that looks and feels nice.
This chair is ideal for lounging by the fire. The back isn’t tilted much, as per the original, but the seat’s tilt encourages the sitter to relax against the comb.
I’m selling this chair for $1,900, and that price includes crating and trucking. For details on purchasing the chair, see the end of the entry.
— Christopher Schwarz
Chapel Lane Irish Chair in Elm, Sycamore and Pigmented Oil
This chair was built alongside Rex Krueger, James Wright and Eoin Reardon a number of weeks ago when Lost Art Press hosted a chairmaking extravaganza. “Chapel Hill” refers to the name of the antique dealer who owned the original chair this form is inspired from.
With a significant tilt, this chair is destined for lounging. The seat sits 15-1/2″ above the ground, and the arms rest 10″ above the seat. At a 31-1/2″ total height and a seat width of just under 20″, this chair cradles your back just below the shoulder blade and can fit just about anywhere.
Made mostly from elm, except for its sycamore seat, this chair holds true to its vernacular roots. Through-tenons on the comb and arms are left proud and textured. The occasional plane, or scraper mark may be found due to this chair being finished with hand tools. And just like Chris’s, this chair was also assembled with animal glue – making future repairs easy peasy.
Most exciting, this chair was my first go at using the “dirt, soot, and oil” finish, featured in the latest “The Stick Chair Journal.” Made from two parts linseed oil, one part black pigment and one part red pigment, this finish provides a depth and well-worn look that allows the grain to sing.
The legs, seat and sticks are left faceted, while the arms and comb are slightly rounded for comfort. Grab a footstool and let yourself sink in to this form.
I’m selling this chair for $1,300, which includes both crating and shipping. For more information about how to purchase, keep reading.
— Kale Vogt
How to Purchase a Chair
If you wish to buy one of these chairs, simply send an email before 3 p.m. Eastern on Thursday, March 12, to [email protected]. If you want to buy the Welsh Bebb chair, please use the subject line “Bebb Chair.” If you wish to buy the Irish chair, please use the subject line “Chapel Lane Chair.” In your email, please include your:
If your name is randomly selected, we’ll send you an email. Sorry, but we cannot ship chairs overseas.
