We are in the final stages of producing our latest tool, a Crucible Planing Stop that is easy to install, looks similar to a traditional hand-forged stop and is reasonably priced (about $49).
I hope this tool will be out by the end of the year, but we are at the mercy of our supply chain, which loves to whip us almost every day.
Here’s why I think the world needs another planing stop.
I love blacksmith-made planing stops, which are embedded in the end of a block of wood that is about 2-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 12”. The block is friction-fit into a mortise in the benchtop and moves up and down with mallet taps.
For me, the planing stop is as important as the workbench’s face vise and has almost-endless uses.
My main problem with a blacksmith planing stop is that it can be tricky to install. You need to drill a stepped hole in the block of wood or heat up the shaft of the planing stop in a forge and burn it into the block. And there is always the risk of splitting the block during the process.
Also, some people think that blacksmith stops are too expensive (I disagree), which can cost $100 to $300.
The Crucible Planing Stop is made from ductile iron, so it can take a beating. Hit it with a metal sledge, and it will not shatter (unlike typical gray iron). The teeth and the angle of the head of the stop are based on A.J. Roubo’s planing stop from the 18th century.
And – this is important – it is easy to install. Here’s how you do it: Buy a 5/8” (or 16mm) spade bit (less than $10). Drill a full-depth hole in the block of wood and remove the sawdust and chips. Drop the shaft of the planing stop into the hole and it will stop about 1” from the bottom of the hole. Knock it with a hammer a few times and the stop will cut its way into the hole and bed itself in place. Done.
It’s a dirt-simple tool, but getting to this point took more than a year of experimenting with hand-forged stops, developing the casting patterns and (where we are now) developing the risering so the liquid metal goes where it needs to go.
RIght now we are trying to get on the foundry’s schedule as soon as possible. We will let you know when the wheels have started moving.
My wife loves to go to the family cabin in the summers.
Never mind it doesn’t have drinking water. And never mind that the stove is from 1957 and takes 120 minutes to boil an egg. And who cares that the property is surrounded by a particularly aggressive breed of cows and their particularly stinky manure? Not us! That’s after all just part of the off-grid charm that we urban Norwegians dream about.
What I did worry about was driving there and back again – 620 miles with our three kids in the back seat seemed like an evil experiment. So, I had to be convinced. And, as I explained in Part 1 of this series, that was elegantly done by my wife by promising that we could stop anywhere along the route to let me look for interesting chairs in the wild. And here are some of the ones I encountered:
546 Miles from Home: The Village of Hovin, Horg Museum of Cultural History
The first chair that caught my eye here was this freak of nature. In all its primitiveness, the construction is actually quite strong and clever. It’s also a prime example of so-called furniture of necessity.
Primitive commonplace furniture like this was often made by the farmer himself, a local wheelwright or the village carpenter. The chair was destined to fill a very specific need: Someone needed a place to sit. Tools and materials at hand dictated everything.
Thus, primitive chairs have real life carved into them. Common needs created honest and functional furniture. And while a modern and more engineered chair can be beautiful and impressive, I find it much easier to connect both intellectually and emotionally with the primitive ones.
As with many primitive stick chairs, a naturally bent branch or root is often used as the armbow or back. In this case however, a natural crook is used as a base for the seat. I haven’t seen this very often in chairs, but for Norwegian farm stools it’s a quite common technique. Even though the chair may look crude, the method of construction is well-thought through and the wood used is carefully selected.
620 Miles: Ytterøy Island.
After more driving and a 30-minute ferry ride we reached our destination, an island about halfway into the Trondheim fjord. My first site for chairspotting was at the beautiful farm of Erling and Gunhild, who kindly let me rummage around their barn loft.
Barn Find 1: Rush-seated Ladderback chair
The first chair I pulled out of the barn was this outstanding ladderback chair. There is a long tradition of making ladderbacks chairs in Norway, but mainly in the southern parts of the country. Which means that this particular one probably has traveled a bit to end up on this island in mid-Norway.
The similarity to a Shaker ladderback chair is of course striking. Ladderback chairs like this one have been produced commercially in Norway since 1850, mainly in two villages. No one really knows where this style of chairs came to Norway. However, considering that more than 800,000 half-starved Norwegians migrated to America between 1830 to and 1920, there’s a reasonable chance that some chairs also made trans-Atlantic travels one way or the other.
The rush seating is typical for these chairs. While hickory bark is common in American traditions, Norwegian chairmakers mostly used seaweed. Overall the construction here is typical for the genre. Notice the slight shape irregularities of the rungs, indicating that this chair is handmade and not a factory product. Painted and stained furniture is very common in Norway. Here, only the edges of each back slat are painted red, which is a nice detail.
Barn Find 2: The Åkerblom Chair
In a dim-lighted part of the barn loft, stowed away behind a large chest of drawers, another stick chair was begging for fresh air. Say hello to a Swedish classic – the Åkerblom Chair.
The Åkerblom Chair was produced about 1950 by the Swedish chair factory Nässjö Stolfabrik. This chair factory produced stick chairs from 1870 and all the way up to 1992! The Åkerblom Chair is considered a classic and was the result of two bright minds. These were the hospital surgeon Bengt Åkerblom and his friend Gunnar Eklöf, an architect and furniture designer. Their ingenious approach to designing a chair is a story worth telling on its own. Which I will hopefully do later. Short version: Medical science met chairmaking and they had a baby.
The chair is made from solid Swedish birch, with a lacquer finish. The back sticks are all steam-bent over the same form, each of them pivoted in their mortises toward each side. This is a key feature of this design. The bend provides a little push into the lumbar region of the sitter, while still letting the shoulders fall a bit back. In combination this increases comfort drastically compared to a straight back.
The rest of the construction is quite typical, but the so-called captured arms are worth noticing. This method of joining the arms to the back is commonly seen in Irish stick chairs. But not that often in Scandinavian chairs. Traditionally the arm mortise is wedged onto the tapered back stick. This is done by carefully shaving and adjusting. Obviously not a time-and-money-saving procedure for a factory. Instead, they invented their own little thingy that holds the arm in place.
Life on the road ain’t that bad after all. If you would like to see more of chair encounters, follow me on my Instagram @stick_chair_encounters. I’m also a chairmaker and you can see my personal chairs at @klaus_skrudland
I’ve just completed this comb-back stick chair with some old-school details in black cherry sourced from the Ohio River Valley.
This chair is definitely designed for lounging by a fire or window with a good book, a coffee or a beer. The back is pitched at 20° off the seat, and the seat is pitched to slide your body toward the armbow and the back sticks. If you like lumbar support, this chair has a good deal of it.
Yes, you could use this chair at the dining table. The chair that my wife, Lucy, uses is pitched similarly. She sits up straight while eating and then settles back into the chair as we mull over the day’s business.
The seat height is 17”, which is about as high as I’ll make a chair seat. (If you want it lower I’ll be happy to cut down the legs before shipment.) The chair is constructed with hide glue, so the joints can easily be repaired a few generations down the road. And the finish is an organic linseed oil/beeswax blend. This finish is designed to age and patinate. It doesn’t provide a lot of protection, but it is easy to repair and looks better and better each year.
Stylistically, this chair uses many details found on old stick chairs in Wales and Ireland. Both the comb and the hands of the chair have a shape that’s best described as a circle intersecting an arc. This shape is found over and again in old chairs and gives the chair an organic look.
I’ve also allowed the sticks through the arms to remain proud and have faceted them. They do not interfere with the comfort of the chair, but they are a delight to touch. All surfaces on the chair were shaped with rasps and scrapers, so you will find texture on all surfaces, from the hands to the faceted sticks.
Look for more old-school chairs from me in the coming weeks.
When I make chairs with an old-school feel, it’s nice to leave the through-tenons on both the arms and seat a little proud. Lots of old chairs have proud tenons, which is likely a result of things shrinking and getting worn.
For years, I shaped my proud tenons with a shallow gouge (or a chisel) and a mallet. It worked, but if I struck the mallet too hard there were times that the grain would get torn up and the tenon would be ugly-ish.
Years ago I changed my technique to what is shown here. I think it’s easier and produces better results, but I’m not the best woodworker in Covington.
Step 1: Seal the Surrounding Surface
When I use proud tenons on a chair with a clear finish, I first seal the surrounding surface with two coats of shellac to prevent glue from fouling the arm or seat. It’s a quick process. I rag two thin coats of shellac on the unassembled arm or seat.
After the shellac is dry, I assemble the chair as usual, wedge the tenons and remove any excess glue with hot water and a toothbrush.
Step 2: Saw the Tenons
After the chair is assembled, I saw the tenons so they are all 3/16” (about 5mm) proud of the arm or seat. On the seat, I just eyeball it with a saw. On the arms, I take a scrap of crap 5mm plywood and drill a 3/4” hole through the center. Place the scrap over the wedged tenon and saw it flush to the scrap.
Step 3: Shape the Tenons
Now the fun part. I tape around the tenon. The tape prevents the surface from getting dented. Then I chip away at the tenon with my scorp. I press the scorp’s cutting edge against the tenon and lever the handles up, removing a chip. I work all around the tenon until it looks like I want it to.
Then I pull up the mass of tape with care and place it over the next tenon.
When all the tenons are shaped, I decide if I need to remove the shellac. If I am adding a film finish (such as shellac or lacquer) then I leave the shellac as-is. If I am finishing the chair with an oil/wax blend, I need to remove the shellac. This is easily done by flooding the surface with alcohol and wiping it up with a rag. I do this a couple of times, then lightly sand around the tenons.
On this day in 79 AD, Vesuvius erupted and forever changed our understanding of the early life of Romans and Greeks. The eruption caused a staggering loss of life, but it also preserved a snapshot in time at sites surrounding the volcano.
We have learned a lot about early woodworking because of the eruption, and my book “Ingenious Mechanicks” explores the early workbenches preserved in paintings at Pompeii and Herculaneum.
But my favorite Roman workbench from this era was preserved by water – not fire. Far north of Pompeii, the Roman fort at Saalburg (now Germany) has what I think is the oldest extant workbench, which was found in a well. I got to examine and measure it. And I reproduced it for the book.
To commemorate this important day, I am giving away the chapter on how to build the Saalburg bench.
Many people have dismissed my love of the low workbenches, but I use mine all the time in the shop and find it practical for many operations (particularly in chairmaking).