This is a short update on “The Stick Chair Book” and, if you stick with me, I’ll even throw in something useful at the end of the blog entry. No peeking, John Cashman.
When I started writing this book, my goal was a massive brain dump on everything I knew about stick chairs that was righteous and good. All the techniques that work. All the stuff about wood that would be helpful. All the little tricks, finishes, shapes, patterns, sharpening methods etc. etc.
I have concluded that instead there needs to be a “Chair-clopedia.” There should be one entire volume on processing wood. A second on legs. Separate volumes on steambending, arms, sticks, crests, saddling seats, tools, finishing, assembly, patterns and on and on. Written by a host of experts. All bound in hardbacks with the look and feel of hand-tooled leather.
I’m being serious. I’m also serious when I say a project like that could never happen.
As I began to drown in my own outline and circle around the toilet bowl of my own making, I found a bright string – something that could pull me out of the watery grave. It was a new outline for the book.
I’m now more than halfway finished with the book. Half the chapters are designed and are being edited by Megan Fitzpatrick, Narayan Nayar and the Chair Chat Twins (Klaus Skrudland and Rudy Everts). It’s going to be a monster of a book, likely more than 600 pages. But so far it’s a quick read thanks to my love of simple sentence structure and ample doodle space.
I am on track to get it to press by June. It should be released in August, just in time for chair season.
Two good brushes and two brushes that need a haircut.
And now for something completely useful. We use acid flux brushes to spread glue in mortises, which is pretty common. But we trim them to a certain size and shape that makes them far more effective.
When acid flux brushes are born, their bristles are 3/4” long and spread out about 1/2” to 5/8”. If you’ve ever used a stock acid flux brush, you know what happens. The bristles get sopping wet and flop around like a wet mop.
It’s almost impossible to get glue to go where you want it.
I like to trim the bristles so they are 3/8” long. Then trim the width of the bristles so they are 3/8” wide. If there are any errant bristles, snip them off.
A brush with this shape is ideal for grabbing a decent amount of glue and putting it exactly where you want it. The bristles will be stiff, but flexible enough so you can press glue into corners and crevices.
When the glue-up is over, clean the brush (I’ve had brushes last five years or more). When it’s time for another glue-up, first inspect the brush. If there are stray bristles, snip them off.
What’s your favorite useless trick from a woodworking magazine?
— Christopher Schwarz
Read other posts from the “Making Book” series here.
The below is excerpted from “The Intelligent Hand,” by David Savage (1948-2019), founder of Rowden Atelier School of Fine Woodworking in Devon, England.
The Bideford Workshop was a great time for me. Situated in Westcombe Lane opposite the refuse lorry park, I had 2,000 square feet of space that had been used as a metal refinishing factory. It was a horrible, stinky, dark, cheap mess. I spent weeks putting in roof lights and electrical wiring to make it as much like Alan Peter’s workshop as I could. I had little money and little paying work, but I could put my labour into making this place shine.
It’s easy for me to say now, but it’s important to work out what you will and will not do in the form of work. It’s less easy to do this with no work and little money. It’s that thing about knowing where you want to go. I said I would repair old furniture but would not do reproduction copies. I would not work in the antiques trade. I would not do fitted kitchens but I would do joinery work, doors and windows, though there seemed little chance of that. Next door were the professionals. Des and Ginger were proper joiners, not imposters like me. Ginger would strangle a 1/2″ router, cutting trenches in staircase stringers. You could hear it going from a scream to a low moan as Ginger dug it into the timber.
Des was, however, to remain a permanent reminder to us of the danger of woodworking machines. One Friday afternoon, rushing to get done, he took the top of two fingers off on the jointer. These machines are Very Patient Meat Eaters.
Two thousand square feet of space on two floors was way too big for me, I thought. I arranged to rent out the ground floor and put all my machines upstairs in what was becoming a nice, light-filled bench room with a lovely varnished solid-wood floor.
I found work soon enough making big Gothic solid-oak doors for a builder, and a regular task of assembling kitchen cabinets from flat-pack once a month. I made a small walnut bureau for a neighbour and a maple desk for a doctor in London. This was a good commission; the deal was I had made them a dining table for the cost of the timber whilst my pal was a medical student. When he qualified, I made him a desk for his office for real money. This was like being a real furniture maker.
There were disasters, as usual. (You are, I hope, beginning to expect that with me.) Des sent a local lady to me to who wanted a pair of beds. I did a lovely watercolour that sold the idea, but then couldn’t make the bed ends look like the watercolour. She wanted her money back. I learned that what you show the client in the watercolour should be pretty much what she gets. My “in laws” helped out by buying the unwanted beds from me, bless them.
Getting pieces photographed was harder than it is now. It involved a studio and a man with a huge wooden-plate camera to make 5″ x 4″ transparencies. “Dupe Trannies” (duplicated transparencies) were then sent to magazines with a 300-word “who, what, where, when” blurb. Images now are bouncing around the world in moments. Then it was different. If you had any new-looking piece, you could get it featured in a glossy magazine for nothing! And that brought more work. For several years this was my major form of marketing. Free PR was sent to magazines and published regularly. Almost no month went by without David Savage Furniture Makers being featured in one glossy magazine or another.
Do the job well enough and you will be working for a small group of clients for 40 years.
The most important arrivals at that time were Malcolm Vaughan and Jim Duthie. They came to me from a local maker who needed to take a break from teaching. The trouble was, this was right in the middle of the courses Jim and Malcolm were taking.
I hated the idea of students and said “no thank you” when first offered these two students. I then returned to my labours. I was assembling a pile of kitchen cabinets that a local builder wanted done by Friday. Well maybe it would be better than this….
This put me, only very recently part-baked, in the uncomfortable role of teacher. But I remembered an old saying: “In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king.” And I attempted manfully to stay one page ahead of my very clever students.
I had a precedent to follow. Edward Barnsley had apprentices and fee-paying students. Among them was Oliver Morel, who first paid Barnsley then took a job with him as a maker after a year’s training. Morel took the model and set up a teaching workshop, first in Wales then in Morton in the Marsh. It was this model of a commercial workshop with makers, apprentices and fee-paying students that I emulated. I didn’t plan it, but it seemed to work.
The future would see this as a part of non-existent business plan. I would have a half-dozen employed makers, one or two apprentices and maybe three or four fee-paying students. The aim was to never allow the students and apprentices to outnumber the skilled makers. The advantages were cash flow and potential skill. Like Barnsley with Morel, I could find good staff amongst my students. The thing I learnt about staff is that it’s not what they know that matters, it’s who they are. After a year, you have a pretty good handle on that.
On the other side were the apprentices. I trained a number of local guys in the Bideford workshop. Two of them, Neil Harris and Chris Hayward, have become exceptional makers. Neil was my first apprentice. He was straight out of school on a Youth Opportunities Programme. I was stunned by Neil’s abilities on one of the earliest jobs I gave him: Clean the greasy parts of a disassembled veneer press I had bought. Neil and I then set about assembling the beast. We had no instructions, just an A4 photocopy of what it looked like assembled. Whilst cleaning those parts, Neil had this thing assembled in his head.
“No, that goes over there, this fits in here.” Neil Harris has gone on to become one of the best furniture makers I know. Fast, clever, efficient, he also trains spaniels to do amazing things at Field Trial Championships.
Malcolm, who stayed on as staff after his course, was also brilliant but in a different way. After his time as an executive at a paper manufacturer, Malcolm wanted to leave behind his experience with a large corporation. He brought to the workshop a wonderful sense of humour and a keen eye for business. The pine assembly bench became the boardroom table, and we each acquired corporate parking places – rank and position beyond our years. Malcolm made doing this fun. But as Malcolm was putting the briefcase away, I was getting one out. Not yet totally liberated from stammering, I had furniture to sell. It was Malcolm’s experience in public relations and his marketing wisdom that helped the place to tick more than anything.
About this time, I learned a valuable lesson about wealthy people. It began with a walnut desk that had been commissioned by a London architect friend. This was a prestige job for a building conversion in London’s Covent Garden. It was right on the Piazza – a prime spot. My desk was to fit diagonally across the reception area. Malcolm and I worked and worked to get this spot on. Table delivered, everyone delighted, craftsmen paid.
A few weeks later I get a call: “The building has been sold. The new owners don’t want your table, so it has been taken by the managing director of the developing company for his Dorset house. We suggest you get in touch with Derek’s wife, Mary.”
Reception desk. The new owners don’t want your table, so it has been taken by the managing director of the developing company for his Dorset house. We suggest you get in touch with Derek’s wife, Mary.
WHAAAAT!!!!…. I hated this. Malcolm and I had made this table for a specific place in the centre of London. Now it was going into some rich dude’s country house – a disaster I sulked over for days. It turned into something unexpected.
Getting hold of Mary Parkes was not easy, and I didn’t really want to do it. Making the phone call took me ages. When I did talk to her it was, “Oh I love your table! We are restoring a house in Dorset and we have put it there. We need some special dining furniture. Can you help us?”
I remember feeling extremely scared before I met Mary. I went trembling to a very smart address just off the Kings Road in West London. I came with some draft ideas of chairs and tables. Derek arrived later; he was genial and friendly and very much the worse for a few drinks. We settled nothing but agreed to meet at their Dorset house sometime later.
When we met again, Derek was on great form. He spent a whole morning showing me around a wonderful old house. He proudly showed me some of the restoration work. It was incredibly expensive but almost invisible. Derek took great pride and pleasure in what he was able to do to restore that beautiful old house. He introduced me to the gardeners and household staff; he knew each by name and knew about their families and children. This man was operating socially on a completely different plane to the rest of us. To me, he was amazing; I was bowled over. He liked making things, and enabling things to be made.
Mary and I worked on her ideas. Derek wanted chairs in which he “could have a great dinner party, consume a bottle of claret and not damage himself falling out of the chair.” I remember Mary doing sketches of chair backs that I recognised from chairs in the Doge’s Palace in Venice. I picked that up and developed it.
A photo competition. The photo of a chair (based on one from the Doge Palace) that changed everything.
We made a table in solid English cherry and a set of chairs. It was the biggest job I had every done. I remember Malcolm and Neil sweating blood over it. Mary wanted holly and dyed blue veneer details to match her fabrics. “We can do that,” I said with complete conviction and total ignorance. We would find a way.
We delivered the pieces, the bill was paid and the client was happy. I brought over my photographer, John Gollop, to take a shot of the pieces in location. John did that, then did something that was to me extraordinary. He picked up a chair, carried it into the next room and put it in front of a full-length window. There was a huge potted plant behind it. The photo he took changed everything.
Derek and Mary were happy if I made versions of their chairs. I thought I might make two or three. John’s photo and versions of it were in every glossy magazine for what seemed like months – the 1980s equivalent of going viral. It was an early confirmation of what furniture maker Garry Knox Bennett much later told me: “Dave, we are all in a giant photographic competition.”
We were making these damn chairs in various timbers for clients all over the country for the next few years. But more important, it told me that I could do this: I could talk with people, nice people, such as Mary and Derek Parkes, and come back with ideas for furniture that would make their homes better places to live. I could listen to what they wanted and translate that into an image that fitted them like a good suit of clothes.
Thankfully, I was a good listener; the stammer had taught me that. The first quality of a designer is to be a good listener, to take the brief and hear what is not always said. Then take the idea back to the workshop and make it. The making would be done without compromise; we would make as well as we could. Mary and Derek hadn’t quibbled over price; they wanted something special – something like the house they were living in, something new but worthy of the place. IKEA wouldn’t quite work here. The idea of “designing for clients” came directly from this job.
When I met Derek again nearly 30 years later, he was still at Blackdown House. His life has become a tribute to a wonderful English country house. We made another piece for the same room. I love that – do the job well enough and you will be working for a small group of clients for 40 years. They will always want you to make another piece.
James Mursell at The Windsor Workshop has always made tools that work very well but look different than traditional tools. His travisher, for example, is a great worker, but it looks far more organic than a traditional travisher. Mursell’s travisher is all about rounded edges.
Mursell’s new Traviscraper, is in the same vein. Or is it? What the heck is a “traviscraper?”
Here in the States, most Windsor (aka Forest) chairs are made with seats in soft white pine and tulip poplar. Americans have little need to scrape their seats much at all. But in the U.K., seats are typically elm, ash or oak. So finishing a seat in these woods can be a lot of work with a travisher alone.
I build stick chairs, which have hardwood seats. So I struggle at times to finish them with only a travisher and a curved card scraper. The Traviscraper is the answer to a lot of my problems. It is like a scraper plane for concave hardwood seats. Like any scraping tool, it can work in almost any direction on the seat’s saddle. And the curved sole of the Traviscraper lets you make clean cuts in places that a travisher would struggle.
In fact, I wonder why this tool didn’t already exist. (Perhaps it did and I’ve never encountered it.)
In any case, the Traviscraper is a thoroughly modern tool. It’s made from Delrin and brass, so it has a real heft to it. Every surface of the tool is curved, except for two sharp corners of the blade (ease these over with a file or sander as they are sharp).
If you’ve used a travisher, you already know how to use the Traviscraper. You pinch it between your index fingers and thumbs and push it forward. I needed to use a bit more downward pressure with the Traviscraper than a travisher to keep it in the cut – you’ll figure it out. It’s pretty intuitive.
All in all, I really like the Traviscraper. It cleaned up the tear-out left by my travisher, but the tool’s sole continued to refine the seat’s saddle. After scraping my seat with the tool, it needed only some minor sanding to be ready for finish.
The tool is easy to set and resharpen – Mursell’s website has videos that demonstrate the process.
If you make chairs with hardwood seats, the Traviscraper will make your life much easier. If you make chairs with soft seats, I don’t think you’ll find it very useful.
We began production of our Type 2 Dividers this week, and we hope to begin selling them in June or July.
As long-time customers know, we struggled to produce the first version of these dividers. They were beautiful. They functioned very well. But they were difficult to manufacture in great volume. While we were charging $185 per pair, we probably should have charged $285 or more because of all the hand-fitting and hand-polishing.
So we took the dividers out of production and have been tinkering with them for some time.
OK, so the next part of this story is what you don’t ever get to read when it comes to tool production. Many toolmakers are loath to credit the designers and machinists who figure out the nitty-gritty stuff. I want to give them their due.
Last year, we began working with Josh Cook, a mechanical designer and woodworker who was really interested in our original dividers. He sent me a pair that he’d made based on photos from our website. And we went from there.
Enter machinist Craig Jackson of Machine Time. You might know Craig as the creator of the EasyWood turning tools, which I love. After the EasyWood business was sold to another party and things went south, Craig went back to high-tolerance part production. But he loves making woodworking tools. So he took pity on me and now works with Crucible on some of our tools.
Together the three of us worked through a bunch of variables to come up with a design for these dividers that is:
Functionally perfect from the user’s point of view
Easy to make with minimal setups on the mill
Relatively inexpensive
The Crucible Type 2 dividers are new from the ground up. I can promise you that they have the same feel in the hand – like a heavy and smooth stone you found on a riverbank. Ever since we finished the first pre-production versions, I have kept a pair at arm’s length.
The hinge is completely redesigned and astonishingly smooth in use. While the pointy legs of the dividers are the most visible aspect of the tool, the hinge might be the most difficult part to design and manufacture. After I-don’t-know-how-many iterations, the current hinge is (here’s a technical term) sweet. Its tension is adjusted with a No. 8 screwdriver – something every woodworker has. You can set the dividers to move stiffly and hold a setting. Or you can lock them down to rabidly maintain the position of the points.
We also wanted to make these as affordable as possible while still making them functionally and aesthetically great. And make them in the U.S. with U.S. materials. The goal was a $100 retail – a little less than you would pay for a Starrett compass.
On Tuesday, Craig called me to let me know that they were cranking out legs for the dividers. In a few weeks, hinges will begin production at another shop. If we have any luck, assembly will begin in June and we will start selling them shortly after.
Thank you for all your patience. It won’t be long now.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. I know that some of you are asking: Where is Raney Nelson in this? We parted ways amicably more than two years ago. Raney has evolved the design for the dividers to match his aesthetic. We have promoted his version many times on our blog this year and fully support his efforts at Daed Toolworks. If you are looking for ill will or grudges, you won’t find them here.
Since the most exotic woods are very expensive, and for the most part difficult to work, one rough cuts them with a saw, in both their thickness and width, in order to conserve the materials by making the least waste possible, and at the same time to diminish [dress] them most easily, given that much cannot be done except by the toothed plane, at least for making them the correct size, which one cannot do with the [jointing] plane, given that these woods are often very hard, or which is even worse, of a curly grain, the iron of the standard/jointing plane cuts very little into it, causing tear-out [splinters] such than one could not remove without doing wrong to the different pieces which would be found to be too thin or too narrow. What’s more, this type of joinery being made to be polished, it is necessary that no voids be found in the entire surface, either along the length or width, which, consequently, requires the use of toothing planes, at least for the wood of an extremely hard quality, or of a grain mixed with burls, as I just said before. The wood which is less hard and more straight-grained than those of which I just spoke, one removes the material [dresses them] with jointer planes and in the ordinary manner. However, one will do very well to finish them with toothing planes, in order to avoid all types of tear-outs on their surface.
When the pieces are too small, or of a wood too hard to be planed ordinarily, that is to say, with bench [jointing] planes and other planes, after having sawn them, one squares them with rasps and Files of different types, as I will explain later. But whichever method the woods are dressed, the cabinetmakers use, for squaring them, the square made of ordinary wood. However, it would be good for the squares to be of iron or of brass/copper, named squares a chaperons [a square that has an applied fence/guide on its edge; a try square], of which one section is turned completely flat, and the other is perpendicular, like that of Fig. 2, where one would cut off part a–b–c–d, so that when orienting the square in whatever manner, the upper section is always perpendicular to the piece that one is working, as one can see in Fig. 4, where the upper section of the square, supposed to be c–f, is perpendicular to the other section, g–h, viewed from on end, in this Figure. These same squares could also serve to change direction one above the other, that is to say, the upper section above point i, and the other g–h, positioned flat on the work (see Fig. 4).
This square can also serve as an angle for drawing [laying out] the work, however it is constructed as I have supposed, or as it is represented in Fig. 2.
Figure 1 represents another type of square appropriate for marking right angles on different parts, where ordinary squares are not convenient to use.
The squares of which I just spoke cannot be used except for projecting angles [outside corners] and flat surfaces. As it sometimes happens, when one has cavities of a right angle to cut into the wood, like mortises or other works of this type, one uses for squaring them (or at least for verifying that they are pierced squarely) a square named squared cross, which is composed of two iron bars A–B and C–D [Fig. 3] ,of which the latter is set perpendicular to the first, with which it is stopped [locked] by the means of a screw E, such that this square serves at the same time to verify that the sides of the chopped [cut] holes are perpendicular to the surface of the work, and assures the evenness of depth. One lowers section C–D of the square, from F to D, of a length equal to the depth of the part which one wishes to excavate, as one can see in this figure, which I have represented by punctuated lines, the same square as the other side of the mortise.
Although I have not represented here anything but squares and right-angle triangles, it is however good to have miter squares, and bevel squares also of iron, for the reasons that I said above. If I have not illustrated them here, it is only in a desire to avoid repetitions, and to not multiply uselessly the figures, and by consequent, the Plates.
Figure 5 represents a type of square, or better said, the caliper for verifying at the same time that a piece is perfectly square and an equal thickness in all its parts, which is necessary, especially for the pieces which one squares with a File. Marking gauges of iron are of a form a bit similar to that of Fig. 5, except that instead of the returning arm as in square G, their shank is terminated by a built-in point or by one added to the shank with a threaded screw, which is the same, as long as this point is made of hard steel and tempered, especially when one uses it for metals.
As I said above, page 810, Cabinetmakers use the same saws as other Joiners. However, for the works under question here, it is good that these saws, if they are the same, be made with a bit more care, and that their blades be tempered, so that they better withstand working hard woods. Since tempered saws require extreme stiffness, one would do well, instead of a cord/rope [to tighten the bow saw], to put there a rod of iron threaded at one end, to receive a winged nut by means of which on can tighten [tension] the saw blade to the degree that one judges appropriate. See Figs. 7, 11, 13 & 14.
It is necessary to take care that the bottom of this rod (whether of iron or of copper) be of a squared form, as well as the top section found immediately after the threading, so that it does not turn when tightening the winged nut. It is even good to fit the end of the arm of the saw, Fig. 11, with an iron plate which is pierced with a square hole through which passes the rod, as one can see in this figure.
Figure 6 represents a saw named the English Saw, of which the bow or frame is all iron. This saw is banded by means of a handle, which holds the end of the locking anvil H, which is held there by means of a screw I, a bit like the same manner as the marquetry saw of which is made the description on page 843. These sorts of saws work not only for all the little works, but also for cutting soft metals, like copper, tin, etc., as for the other materials that one uses in cabinetmaking. That is why it is always necessary that their blades be tempered.
Figure 8 represents a tool named a sawing Knife [keyhole saw], which differs from the hand saw (of which I spoke in the first part of my work, page 190) only by the size of the blade and the shape of its handle. This saw is very convenient for the small parts [and places] where one cannot use ordinary saws, and it is good that they are constructed like that represented in Fig. 8, so that one can change the blades when one judges appropriate.
Figures 9 & 15 represent another type of saw with a handle and a fence/shoulder, which cuts to only the depth that one judges appropriate [established by adjusting the fence/shoulder], and forms consequently, in many works, cuts of an equal depth. This saw is made of an ordinary blade, with a chassis or frame of iron, divided in two in its thickness, and where one of the parts enters in notches by its two ends in the part that is fixed and which, consequently, enters in the handle in a manner that they appear to be one part, the two parts are held together by means of three screws threaded in the fixed part of the frame, in the middle of which the saw is placed, being pierced itself by three corresponding slots and of a width equal to the diameter of the screw, in a way that one can lower or raise the blade as much as can be permitted by the length of the slots. Afterwards, one tightens the screw in order to hold the saw in place. See Fig. 9, where I removed the middle part of the frame, so that one can see the mortise of the blade, and consequently the results that can be had.
Figure 10 represents another type of saw with a guide/fence, where the frame is configured in a manner that one can adapt to it one or two saw blades, that is to say, one on each side. The frame of this saw enters into the first cut of the saw made previously in the work piece, and it can, as with the preceding one, serve not only to cut different pieces of the work, but also to make grooves of different depths or widths according to the thickness of the saws, in place of which one can use Floats, if one desires, especially for working hard woods, ivory, shell or other materials with which one wishes to make embellishments, by reason of which one will construct the tools you will need. Being content with the two examples that I just gave, which are, it seems to me, sufficient to help in composing the others, whether of a similar form, or laid out like tools with stock/body.
Figure 12 represents a Piercing tool. It is nothing but a point with a flattened shape, of which the exterior ridges are sharp and cutting [very similar to a die-maker’s scraper or a bird-cage awl]. This point serves to pierce little holes in pieces of thin wood, observing to position the widest part of the piercing tool perpendicular the grain line, so that these being cut present hardly any resistance to the point which is forced into the wood, which therefore diminishes the risk of splitting. The other small holes are pierced with an ordinary bit. When one fears that the pieces be too frail to tolerate the force of the latter, one pierces them with a Drill Bit, as I will explain here in speaking of the appropriate tools for piercing metals.
The tools that I just described (an abstraction made of those of Turning and Locksmithing of which I am going to speak later, and in general of all the tools of the Joiner of which I spoke in the course of this Work, which can work equally for the construction of cabinetry, which is the question here), are nearly always those which are the most useful. There are still many others that each worker makes for his own use, according to his talent and the different occasions which he has for using them with more or less success. Since most of these tools are little different from those of which I spoke in the description of the different types of Joiners, I believed to be able to dispense with entering into each detail on this subject, this information being otherwise inexhaustible.
As to the construction of solid cabinetry, it is the same thing as for the other types of joinery. The different parts which compose it are always tied one to the other by means of grooves and tongues, tenons, mortises and other assemblages [joinery]. The only difference is that of these different assemblages as well as all the rest of the construction of this joinery be made with all the perfection possible, that the fashioning of the wood, the joints and especially the assemblages, be made with the [best] precision, without being diminished in any manner so that when working on the joints they do not open/appear. I will not speak here of the quality of the wood, which should be perfect and dry as is possible; without which, whatever care one takes, one cannot do excellent work.