Don’t let an unfamiliarity with chairmaking keep you building a chair. This Irish-y armchair, with a curved back rest and lightly saddled seat, is a gateway chair into building a full-on Kentucky stick chair (or Welsh stick chair, or Scottish stick chair, or Insertplacenamehere stick chair). And the plan for this chair is free. Click here to download the chapter. No, you don’t have to register, or send us a gland. Click the link and the pdf will be downloaded to your machine.
This chair is among the simpler designs I make. The legs are straight – not tapered. There are no stretchers. There are only nine sticks, and they are made easily with handplanes (a jack and a block plane).
This chair is remarkably comfortable (no, the middle stick does not rub your spine). The curved backrest (cut from solid – not steambent), cradles your shoulders. And though its backward lean looks extreme (wait, am I at the dentist?) that’s an illusion. The chair is very comfortable for reading, watching TV or good conversation.
The only slightly tricky part of the chair is the saddle. You can skip it if you want (few Irish chairs were saddled). But it’s the simplest saddle possible. There’s no pommel. It’s just a flat dish – easy.
Katherine “Soft Wax” Schwarz has spent her free time during the last couple weeks making wax. An insane amount of wax. And she has just put it all up for sale in her etsy store.
As everyone knows, you can’t sell wax without a cute animal photo. Here you see Bean, our three-legged shop cat, who did not want to go along with the program. I hope that despite this, you will consider buying a jar of the wax.
Notes on the finish: This is the finish I use on my chairs. Katherine cooks it up here in the machine room using a waterless process. She then packages it in a tough glass jar with a metal screw-top lid. She applies her hand-designed label to each lid, boxes up the jars and ships them in a durable cardboard mailer. The money she makes from wax helps her make ends meet at college. Instructions for the wax are below.
Instructions for Soft Wax 2.0 Soft Wax 2.0 is a safe finish for bare wood that is incredibly easy to apply and imparts a beautiful low luster to the wood.
The finish is made by cooking raw, organic linseed oil (from the flax plant) and combining it with cosmetics-grade beeswax and a small amount of a citrus-based solvent. The result is that this finish can be applied without special safety equipment, such as a respirator. The only safety caution is to dry the rags out flat you used to apply before throwing them away. (All linseed oil generates heat as it cures, and there is a small but real chance of the rags catching fire if they are bunched up while wet.)
Soft Wax 2.0 is an ideal finish for pieces that will be touched a lot, such as chairs, turned objects and spoons. The finish does not build a film, so the wood feels like wood – not plastic. Because of this, the wax does not provide a strong barrier against water or alcohol. If you use it on countertops or a kitchen table, you will need to touch it up every once in a while. Simply add a little more Soft Wax to a deteriorated finish and the repair is done – no stripping or additional chemicals needed.
Soft Wax 2.0 is not intended to be used over a film finish (such as lacquer, shellac or varnish). It is best used on bare wood. However, you can apply it over a porous finish, such as milk paint.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS (VERY IMPORTANT): Applying Soft Wax 2.0 is so easy if you follow the simple instructions. On bare wood, apply a thin coat of soft wax using a rag, applicator pad, 3M gray pad or steel wool. Allow the finish to soak in about 15 minutes. Then, with a clean rag or towel, wipe the entire surface until it feels dry. Do not leave any excess finish on the surface. If you do leave some behind, the wood will get gummy and sticky.
The finish will be dry enough to use in a couple hours. After a couple weeks, the oil will be fully cured. After that, you can add a second coat (or not). A second coat will add more sheen and a little more protection to the wood.
Soft Wax 2.0 is made in small batches in Kentucky. Each glass jar contains 8 oz. of soft wax, enough for at least two chairs.
We will be open for visitors from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Saturday, March 26. We will be selling our full line of books and tools, of course, and we’ll be happy to answer your questions and talk about woodworking.
We have free Lost Art Press yardsticks and pencils (not the ones we sell) to give away – one to a visitor. And we also have some blemished books to sell at 50 percent off. Blemished books are cash only. Our storefront is at 837 Willard St., Covington, Ky. 41011
We ask that all visitors to our storefront be vaccinated as this building is also Chris’s home. We won’t ask if you’re vaccinated – it’s the honor system. (Please don’t troll us on this personal health decision.)
While you are visiting, you might grab lunch at The Standard on Main Street. On Saturdays they make some excellent barbecue (try the brisket). Also recommended: Crafts & Vines serves lunch on Saturdays – it’s always something tasty and usually smoked. Or if you want to be more adventurous, try Chako – a Japanese bakery and cafe. Or one of the other many fine restaurants within walking distance.
We’ve selected (by choosing random numbers and matching them up to the entrants in the order the emails came in) the winners of the Crucible Tool 5-year anniversary lump hammers engraved by Jen Bower, and the lucky 10 have been notified. Next week, these tools will be on the way to their new homes. (I’m awaiting shipping boxes and a plowed road to the post office.)
We’re also working on a new anniversary tool – one that is very dear to me – and hope to be able to say more about it shortly. Stay tuned!
Presentation drawing. Illustration by Richard Jones
In Chris’s blog post, “The 10 Worst Mistakes I Made as a Beginner,” one mistake he mentioned was “buying the hardware at the end.” I added a comment to his blog to say that when I was studying furniture design and making at college in the early 1980s, a visiting lecturer, and furniture designer and maker Rupert Williamson, cited the mantra, “Design from the handles back.” He added, “Nipping down to the hardware shop at the last moment to carelessly buy some pug ugly wooden knobs for the chest of drawers you’ve made is all wrong.”
I immediately thought, How obvious. Essentially, all Rupert was really saying was to consider carefully what the viewer first sees because that first look either draws the viewer in or repels them. Every other part of the design is important of course, including what’s not seen initially along with the technicalities of construction and the fulfillment of other design criteria whether they be aesthetic, practical, cost, material choices and so on. The first look evokes a reaction, e.g., “ooh nice,” “hmm?” or “eeyeuch!” leading to further examination, pausing and moving along.
Earlier in my career, an element of my production included designing furniture for display in galleries and furniture shows, and the cabinet used to illustrate this text is an example. Exhibition pieces project your design ability and style, generate commissions, and are themselves salable. The variation of the cabriole leg style used in this piece was the design motif that initiated the design development; this leg form had already featured in tables, chairs and beds but I wanted to see if it could be used successfully in a cabinet.
Designing for shows is both liberating and restricting; you can make anything you like, but will anyone else appreciate it? In this case, with just the leg form as a starting point, there were no pre-existing design constraints, apart from the piece potentially having appeal to categories such as homeowners, interior designers and so on. With speculative pieces, I find it helpful to invent a realistic end-use, perhaps a need of one’s own. Here I settled on “storage” as the vague generalised end function. This forced concentration on the storage role and discouraged flights of fancy which were filed in the “maybe for later” category.
General proportions, i.e., width, depth, plus incorporation of the cabriole leg profile were resolved first through a mixture of technical decisions and sketching. The early design development soon led to the decision that the cabinet would be a nest of drawers in a free-standing cabinet – drawers can always find a purpose. Technical decisions were required. How many drawers, and how should they move? Visible wooden drawer dividers between drawer fronts, or not? Proprietary drawer slides? Planted or integral drawer fronts? Exposed horizontal dividers visible between drawer fronts were ruled out to reduce the quantity of cluttered horizontal lines. Full-extension undermount metal drawer slides were chosen because they are quite inconspicuous and allow the drawer to fill most of the internal cabinet width; they also give full and clear access to the drawer box. There are always arguments for and against proprietary slides, but I concluded they were a good choice.
The cabriole leg form and the curves in it, long and sweeping below the shoulder, and above it short and tightly arced, informed other elements of the visual impact – for instance, the bottom 100mm or so of the leg’s inner face is also curved, as are the bottom edges of the lower front rail, and the bottom edge of the side panel. The top has a shallow bevel worked on the underside to show a slim edge, and the front edge is gently arced.
But what about the maxim to “design from the handles back?” This hadn’t been forgotten and I’d decided that proprietary pulls would be used rather than making wooden pulls. Several possibilities were considered with the eventual choice being a U-shaped bronzed pull that picks up the similar half U-shaped curve above the knee of the leg. The bronze colour worked well, in my judgement, with the chosen wood, i.e., the visible walnut and cherry. Alternative colours available for the pulls were black or bright chrome, which I rejected because the softer or mellow bronze worked subtly with the wood colours. As a side note, the drawer boxes were made of hard maple with maple veneered plywood drawer bottoms, primarily to present a clean and light interior.
View downwards of the cabinet drawer’s pulls.
Eventually, a presentation drawing was worked up, not drawn with meticulous care maybe, but good enough for me as the customer. This was followed by creating an orthographic projection, from which an estimate, a cutting list and hardware list were extracted. From there it was just a case of buying the materials and building the cabinet, which leads to another useful maxim: Never assume the hardware is available unless you have it in stock. I’ve known a few makers get into a bit of a pickle because they’ve built a piece thinking they’ll buy the chosen hardware at a later date, only to find, too late, that the selected item has been discontinued and no old stock is available.
Close-up of the top of the cabinet showing a drawer open.
Is all of the above the recipe for successful design development? I’d say not really, but it does highlight the usefulness of the “design from the handles back” maxim. As to what happened to the cabinet? Well, it was exhibited at shows and galleries for a few years but never found a buyer. It did, however, generate several orders because people spotted it, liked it, and commissioned me to make something either based on it or very different. So, it earned its money for me and eventually I retired it from its exhibiting role and found a place in my own home – its drawers are stuffed with all sorts of things, so yes, drawers do always find a use.
