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.
Publisher’s note: For the release our new video “Build a Stick Chair,” I’ve written this short essay that explains one of the many reasons these chairs are first in my heart. I apologize if it sounds like I’m on a soapbox. Or, worse, that I am trying to sell you a time-share condo in Monkey’s Eyebrow, Ky. For me, encountering these chairs in the 1990s changed the way I interpret furniture. And how I choose to sell my work and make a living. I can’t promise you that these chairs will change your life, but they will keep your butt dry.
— CS
For me, the history of seating furniture reads like a history of oppressors and the people they held down.
For most of human civilization, chairs have been a symbol of authority or dominance. I can go back further in time, but let’s start with the curule – the sella curulis – which was a folding chair that literally represented the seat of power in ancient Rome. Only certain powerful people were entitled to sit on a curule. This idea – that a perch represented power – spread quickly across Europe and all the way to China by the 2nd century CE.
Curule.
Even our language is embedded with the idea that chairs represent authority: chairman, seat of power, first chair/second chair, to get a seat at the table, to take a back seat to someone, the driver’s seat, and the catbird seat – to name a few.
Chairs weren’t just a symbol for the throne room and the royal rear ends. Before mass manufacturing made chairs cheap and plentiful, the head of the household in even the humblest home would sit in a chair, while the other members of the family sat on stools, rocks, stumps or dirt.
But we’re past that now, aren’t we?
An online story I encountered just this week….
Nope. If you have spent any time in the corporate world, you can tell exactly where someone sits in an organization by the chair in their office (cloth, leatherette or carbon fiber?).
So yes, in some ways, chairs have been democratized. Mass-manufacturing has made them available to almost everyone. But market forces have ensured that they still represent hierarchy. You might own a chair, but it’s not an Aeron 8Z Pellicle with elastomeric suspension.
That’s why I like stick chairs. These vernacular chairs aren’t found in catalogs or department stores. Your purchasing department cannot order a gross of them for the office in Dubuque. You might think, “Ha! I am rich and can buy one.” But it will be that – just one chair.
An old root-back Welsh stick chair at St Fagans.
Sticks chairs were usually built by the owner of the chair. Perhaps they were made for someone in the chairmaker’s family. Or for someone in the village. To obtain a new one, you had to know the chairmaker. And the chairmaker had to agree to the transaction because – and this is important – the chairmaker didn’t have a boss. That’s because stick chairmakers weren’t typically professional woodworkers working in a chair shop. Chairmaking was a side business or done out of necessity.
This (and sorry for the economics lesson) isn’t capitalism. This is the same arrangement that has been in place since at least Medieval times.
“Hello, you make something I need. And I have something to exchange for it. If you are willing.”
Aside from the way you obtain a stick chair, there are other odd aspects to them, such as the raw materials used to make them.
What are they made of? Whatever was on hand from the hedge, the forest or the firewood pile.
This tied the chair to the land. To the species of trees that were easily available to the chairmaker. Or to the bits of wood that could be swiped from the local kingswood.
Wales.
There wasn’t a choice of maple, walnut, wenge or snakewood. The chair was made from the best wood available (even if that was dodgy). If the chair looked weird because of all the different species used to build it, you were welcome to paint it. Or cover it in sheepskin. Or let it sit by the fire for a few years until the soot made it look a deep brown-black.
What about their overall design? Couldn’t you order a six-stick comb-back and get one that looked just like the chair the Davies family had?
Sorry, but no. Each chair comes out a little different because of the sticks on hand and the fact that these things are made one at a time. There are no duplicating machines or mechanical patterns for the chairmaker to follow.
This is not a romantic notion. It’s just how it is.
I’ve made stick chairs for sale – off and on – for 18 years. But I’ve probably made only 150 or so chairs. And no two have been alike. Each was made with the materials I had – sometimes wood left over from another job; sometimes home center lumber; occasionally green wood from a tree service. And each one reflected my interests at the moment and the tools I owned. Perhaps I was looking at a lot of Irish chairs or Scottish chairs. Or experimenting with spoon bits or rounding planes.
Sometimes I feel guilty that I sell my chairs. I suspect many makers of stick chairs feel this way. Some of my chairs go to wealthy people and occupy expensive homes. I don’t accept this fact lightly. But I atone for this by teaching anyone and everyone how to build these chairs.
One of my stick chairs in bog oak.
And so I remind myself: It’s a chair you can’t buy at a store for any price. A chair that will outlast all the plastic crap, or the chairs joined with cheap metallic fasteners. It is a chair that will look better and better the more you sit on it. The more you rub its arms. The more dents and abuse it suffers. And it’s likely the chair will be desirable long after you’re gone.
Few people in this world can ever afford to buy a chair with these properties. But you can make one. Ask, and I will gladly teach anyone the following: Join the sticks to the best of your ability. Carve your name on the underside of the seat. Rest your bones in it every night and think about music, religion, life, destiny and the trees that tie it all together.
Remember those lessons because that ability – the skill to make a chair – is the true seat of power. And if they take your chair away? Laugh, and build another one. You cannot be dethroned.
Editor’s note: Surprise! (we are also surprised). Our video “Build a Stick Chair” was completed early and is now available for purchase. The introductory price is $50 and includes a lot of extras (patterns, notes etc. – see below). After Aug. 31, the price will increase to $75.
Learn to build a stick chair using common woodworking tools and machines, plus kiln-dried wood from the lumberyard. This video, which clocks in at more than four hours long, has 18 chapters that cover all aspects of stick chair construction, from selecting the lumber to applying the finish.
Purchasers will also receive a digital file with full-size patterns for the chair shown in the video, which can be printed out at any reprographics firm or office supply store. Plus, notes on the sizes of the chair parts and sources for tools used in the video.
The videos can be streamed on any digital device connected to the internet. Alternately, you can download the video for offline viewing. The video is completely free of DRM (digital rights management) software and protections. That means it is portable among all your devices – laptop, tablet, phone etc.
Stick chairs are an ideal chair form for beginning chairmakers. Unlike with Windsor chairs, ladderbacks and other advanced forms, you don’t need green wood, a steambox, a shavehorse, a drawknife, a froe, a hatchet, a lathe or even a spokeshave. You can build stick chairs with kiln-dried lumber, a regular woodworking bench and mostly a drill, handplanes and a band saw. There are a few specialty tools (mostly inexpensive) that make the job easier, which are covered in the video.
We consider the “Build a Stick Chair” video as a companion to “The Stick Chair Book.” Not a substitute. The book took years of work to write and edit, and it goes into details that are impossible for a talking head to explain on a screen (plus it includes plans for five chairs). But the video shows bodily motion in a way that print never can. Some things about chairmaking are so simple if you can just see the process unfold before your eyes.
We’re not saying you should get both the book and the video. Instead, start with the one that appeals to you most. If you are a visual learner, the video is probably the correct choice. If you are first a reader, the book is what we would recommend.
Make a Stick Chair Video
Introduction
0:05:44
1. Select Wood for Chairs
0:09:19
2. Break Down the Stock
0:19:04
3. Make Octagons
0:08:50
4. Taper & Tenon the Legs
0:13:08
5. Glue the Seat & Drill the Mortises
0:35:50
6. Make the Stretchers
0:15:27
7. Make the Arms
0:21:18
8. Mortises in the Arm & Seat
0:18:27
9. Sticks
0:12:32
10. Saddle the Seat
0:22:09
11. Make Wedges
0:03:28
12. Prepare to Assemble the Undercarriage
0:02:38
13. Assemble the Undercarriage
0:13:03
14. Prepare the Arm & Sticks for Assembly
0:04:30
15. Assemble the Uppercarriage
0:10:42
16. Shape & Install the Comb
0:18:03
17. Level & Cut the Legs
0:09:22
18. Finishing Up
0:10:25
What’s Included with Your Purchase
• Streaming and full download access to all 18 chapters with no DRM (digital rights access)
• Download of the full-size patterns for the seat, arms, shoe and comb of the chair that can be printed out at any copy shop.
• Measured drawings of the two jigs shown in the video: the band saw jig for making octagons and the drilling jig for boring mortises in the arms and seat.
• A parts list, links for the tools shown in the video plus the recipe for the soft wax finished used on the chair.
This delightful 1935 film documents several aspects of the chairmaking trade in Great Britain with a knowledgeable narrator and some great shots of people at work in the forest and the workshop.
Titled “Chair Bodging and Chair Making in the Chiltern Hills,” the film begins in the woods as bodgers break down tree trunks into leg blanks that are then turned and dried in their camp. This aspect of chairmaking – as a form of romantic camping – is on full display here.
Though it’s obviously difficult work, the bodgers seem to be enjoying the process. Some of the best shots include them tapping a beech tree to get water for their grindstone. And making tea using the scraps from the work.
From there the film moves inside, first to a small shop that makes legs both by splitting the work and sawing the blanks out with a circular saw. Finally, the film shifts to a more mechanized factory setting that shows a giant reciprocating saw for making seat blanks. Plus some nice handwork at the bench and some assembly.
Don’t bother turning on the film’s automatic captioning (well do, if you have been drinking and want a laugh).
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. Hat tip to Andy Uhl for pointing me to this film, which I have somehow missed before.
Mid-July I had the pleasure of seeing “Cadi & the Cursed Oak” displayed at the Children’s Flower Shower at Birchard Public Library in Fremont, Ohio. Every summer members of Whispering Meadows Garden Club select a children’s book, create a floral design for the book and then donate the book to the library. The gardening club has been sponsoring the event for 10 years.
Donna Foss, a master gardener and member of Whispering Meadows for 22 years, chose “Cadi” and designed this beautiful display. (Thank you, Donna.)
“The story of ‘Cadi’ and the oak tree inspired me to use an old knot from a tree I had,” she says. “Along with oak leaves, hydrangea flowers, acorns and a small silver cup, it just seemed to support the story. Of course, a skeleton was hidden in the tree.”
Donna has been gardening for 50 years. She grew up on a farm and says both of her parents gardened – they had a large vegetable garden and many flower beds.
“Now it feels like I just have to get outside and play in the dirt,” she says.
That afternoon I picked up my twin sons who were visiting my aunt Ellen and uncle Skip. They had spent several days working – raising a Quonset hut, moving logs, filling in potholes in a gravel lane, clearing out a shed – and playing. They also came home with a generous gift. My uncle had spent the year prior collecting tools for them. And during the visit, he helped them each build a toolbox.
Cadi’s grandmother: “Our stories, they are roots do you see? Every story being told right now, every story waiting to be told, they are all connected to the roots of our past.”
Every Lost Art Press author I’ve interviewed for a profile talks about the people who have come before them, blood-related and not.
Cadi thought about her grandmother’s stories, passed from mothers to daughters who then became mothers. Over and again. She thought about her own mum and her many retellings of loved tales. She thought about the spirits’ stories, now inside her, and she thought about the stories yet to come.
Cadi leaned down and hollowed out a bit of earth. In it, she placed an acorn, and she gifted it a story.”
For every planted seed, every driven nail, every story told, someone is watching.
