This three-legged comb-back chair is available for sale and immediate shipment. SOLD
The chair is based on several Welsh three-legged comb-back chairs I have inspected that have a distinctive square-shaped arm and seat. This particular iteration is set up for lounging, with back sticks that lean about 16° off vertical. The seat height is 17”, with the overall height of the chair at 39”. The seat is 16” deep x 20” wide and nicely saddled.
Three-legged chairs are common vernacular forms found all over the U.K. and Europe, but many moderns suspect they are unstable. After building and using many three-legged stick chairs, here’s the real deal: When you sit in them, they are stable. You can even tilt back on them on the rear leg (fun!).
The only time they are unstable is when you are not sitting in the chair and you try to lean on the ends of the comb, which are unsupported. That’s when the chair wants to tip.
Construction Details
The legs, sticks and comb are made from dead-straight red oak that was both rived and sawn to yield the straightest, strongest parts. The seat is poplar. And the four-piece armbow is made using slippery elm. The interlocked grain and strength of the elm is what allows the arms to curve 93° and still be strong.
The chair is $1,100 plus actual shipping via common carrier. This is a little less than usual because of the three legs. Shipping typically runs between $100 and $225 depending on where you live. Delivery within 100 miles of Cincinnati is free – or you can pick it up at our shop in Covington, Ky. If you are interested in the chair, send an email to fitz@lostartpress.com. Ask all the questions you like, but the first person to say “I’ll take it” gets it.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I have four more chairs in various stages on the bench. The next one is a 16-stick comb-back.
Two of our new sliding bevels, plus a early design prototype that Josh Cook printed out.
As a chairmaker, a small sliding bevel is essential to my work. The tool guides most of the joinery. It also is a companion when I explore historical chairs to understand how they work.
When we completed work on the Crucible Type 2 Dividers, designer Josh Cook and I wondered if we could adapt that tool’s ingenious tension/locking mechanism for a sliding bevel. The answer is yes. And thanks to tool designer and machinist Craig Jackson, we have a bevel in the works that exceeds any expectations I had for the tool.
The Crucible Sliding Bevel is unlike any other sliding bevel I know of. It locks the blade position so tightly that you have to be quite strong to get the blade to move off your desired setting. And if that’s all it did, I’d be happy. But it does something else, too.
Thanks to Craig, the Crucible sliding bevel has dual controls that allow you to do some helpful things. The screw up by the blade controls the rotation of the blade. It works like the adjustment mechanism on any sliding bevel. You can use it to lock the blade, loosen the blade or set the tool’s tension so the blade rotates but with some effort.
The second screw near the back of the tool is used to adjust how the tool’s blade slides in its slot. You can use these two screws to control separately the rotation and the sliding of the blade. That means you can:
Lock the rotation of the blade and then slide the blade to a different position in the body of the tool.
Lock the blade so it won’t slide, but it will rotate.
I know this might sound complicated, but it’s not. Much like the dual controls on the Tite-Mark, my favorite marking gauge, these become second nature within a couple minutes. Also good to know: You don’t have to use the dual controls. You can simply use the control at the pivot point to work the tool – bringing in the second control only when necessary.
Some of the many tool bodies that we experimented with. The colors in the backgrounds of the engravings is marker or metal dye – just experiments. The No. 11 is because this tool is our 11th tool.
Some Specifications
We are making the bevel in alloy steel with a 4″ blade, which is my favorite size. The blade is 3/32″ thick, so it is impossible to mangle. The body of the bevel is 11/16″ x 3/4″ x 4-3/8″ and weighs a nice 10 ounces. The bevels are being made in Kentucky. The control screws are the same size as the screw on our dividers (so perhaps we’ll make a screwdriver soon).
One of the other nice things about this tool is that it is extremely easy to assemble and disassemble. So we will offer a 7″ blade that fits in this tool’s body in early 2022.
So when will these begin selling? We are waiting on a large steel order. The production fixtures have all been constructed and the programming is complete. Depending on when the steel arrives, there is a chance we will offer the first batch right before Christmas.
And the price? This is the most complex tool we’ve made so far at Crucible, and there is a lot of milling to make the custom parts. The retail will be $200, and I think the tool is worth every penny. (As always, if you’re feeling salty about the price, I encourage you to give small-scale domestic toolmaking a go. I love it, but sheesh – making stuff is hard.)
I don’t know if we have enough margin in these tools to offer them through our foreign and domestic retailers. But a few months of production will give us that answer.
In the coming weeks I’ll make a video that shows how the bevel operates.
— Christopher Schwarz
In the end, we went with an understated logo, which matches the look on our other tools.
As promised, we created a full-color dust jacket for “The Stick Chair Book” that you can download and print out at your local copy shop.
The dust jacket measures 22.5” x 9.25”, so it can easily be printed out on 24”-wide poster stock (a common size). We recommend a coated heavy-weight paper (70# to 100#), though you can use anything, really.
After it prints out, you’ll find trim marks at the corners of the image that allow you to cut out the dust jacket with a straightedge and a knife.
The pdf of the dust jacket can be downloaded via this link.
We decided to offer the dust jacket as as option for a few reasons. First, the image on the dust jacket – a carving by Rudy Everts – is gorgeous and definitely cover-worthy. But dust jackets add considerable expense, and “The Stick Chair Book” is already expensive at $49. Finally, we hear from a lot of readers who immediately remove the dust jacket and prefer to see the cover cloth.
We hope that this approach satisfies those who love dust jackets and those who think they are wasteful. But I suspect we’ll hear some gripes.
There is one topic in woodworking where I have changed my mind completely – 180° – from when I began woodworking. And that is with finishing.
My first woodworking job was finishing doors in a factory where we used industrial (read: nasty) coatings. And when I signed on at Popular Woodworking in 1996, we used a Binks 2000 system to spray lacquer and all other sorts of solvent-based finishes.
And I loved it.
These finishes produced outstanding results in minutes instead of days. I could finish an entire bedroom suite in a few hours with a spray gun and fast-drying lacquer. Yes, I wore a face mask. And we had a fantastic spray booth. But that’s not enough. Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) are prevalent in many woodworking finishes. And though the home woodworker is probably OK if he or she uses them every couple months in a well-ventilated area, I have turned my back on finishes with unhealthy solvents.
Why? Perhaps it was one too many headaches after spraying lacquer, or cleaning something with acetone or xylene. Now, I try to use finishes where the solvent is water or something nearly as harmless.
When I did this, I was afraid I was doomed to use some difficult finishing processes. It turns out, however, that safe finishes can also be fast and easy. When it comes to paint, a good place to start is milk paint. The following is excerpted from the “back matter” – this is one of the appendices – of “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition,” by Christopher Schwarz.
— Christopher Schwarz
About Milk Paint
First thing, milk paint is essentially a myth… I have never seen anything called ‘milk paint’ advertised in period publications (of the nineteenth century), it doesn’t show up on probate inventories or other historical records and is apparently entirely a made up 20th century idea. — Stephen A. Shepherd, “Shellac, Linseed Oil, & Paint” (Full Chisel Press, 2011)
The milk paint used for in-door work dries in about an hour, and the oil which is employed in preparing it entirely loses its smell in the state to which it is reduced by its union with the lime. One coating will be sufficient for places that are already covered with any colour…. — Henry Carey Baird, “The painter, gilder, and varnisher’s manual …” (M. Taylor – London, 1836)
Milk-based paint has been around a long time – I’ve found dozens of sources that describe how to make it from the 1800s and earlier.
It was inexpensive, didn’t smell, dried fast and could be made with commonly available materials – milk and lime. Some recipes added linseed oil, pigment, egg yolks (to give the paint more sheen) or white pitch (to make it weather-resistant).
I’ve used it for almost 20 years now on furniture and can attest that milk paint looks good, wears well and is not going to expose you to nasty solvents. You can make your own – there are lots of recipes online – or you can buy a commercial powder that you mix with water. If you live in the United Kingdom, casein-based paints are available from stores that cater to the restoration trade.
Most beginners will opt to buy the commercial powder because it’s foolproof and comes in lots of nice colors.
If you go this route, here are my instructions for mixing the stuff:
Throw away the manufacturer’s instructions.
Mix the paint 2:1 – warm water to powder.
Mix your proto-paint for 10 minutes to ensure all the lumps get dissolved.
Let the paint sit for 30 minutes. It might thicken a bit.
Strain the paint through cheesecloth and into your paint tray or bucket.
After that, it’s just like using a very thin paint. It’s not like latex or oil paints that have a lot of body or oiliness. It’s like applying colored water.
It dries quickly, so I apply the paint with a small foam roller then use a natural-bristle brush to push the color into the details and corners. Then I “tip off” any flat surfaces.
After one coat, you will have a translucent colored surface. If you applied the paint with any skill, you can stop painting here if you like the look (I do).
If you want things more opaque, then sand the first coat with a #320-grit sanding sponge, dust off the project and apply the second coat.
This coat should obscure most of the wood grain, but not all. Repeat the sanding and painting if you want a third coat.
Cheap sandpaper. A folded paper bag is a great tool to smooth a milk-painted surface. And it won’t cut through the color.
Once the color is laid on, you have a choice: Do you add a topcoat of some other finish to it or not? The raw painted surface will be dead flat. If you like this (I do), you can smooth the painted surface with a folded brown paper bag and call it done. If you want some sheen or a deeper color, smooth the paint with the paper bag and add a coat of boiled linseed oil, wax or varnish. This will make the finish look less chalky.
As always, make a sample board if you are unsure of the look you want or if you are unfamiliar with a finishing product. I know you won’t do this, but I am obligated to beat my head against this particular wall.
Several readers have asked for a video that shows how I trim wedged through-tenons flush to a seat. So I guess I’m taking requests that aren’t “Piano Man” or “Free Bird.” Be sure to leave a tip in the jar….
Some notes: Usually I perform this operation as-shown in the video. I use my weight and my knee to hold the chair in place. This is safe. I have never cut myself (see also: using a drawknife). If it’s your first time, clamp the leg in your face vise, as shown in the image above.
After I trim the tenon and it is almost level with the seat, I finish the job with a scraper or sandpaper.
Another note: This is also how I make the faceted through-tenons. I simply stop about halfway through the process. Then I level the top of the tenon with some #220-sandpaper stuck on a flat stick.
Final note: I did not invent this technique, but I don’t remember where I learned it. It was a long time ago – maybe with Dave Fleming in Canada.
This, and other processes, are shown in “The Stick Chair Book.” Here endeth the commercial.
