I have been invited back to Germany this summer to teach a four-day introduction to chairmaking course at Dictum’s classroom in Niederalteich, a gorgeous monastery in Bavaria.
The class is in English (my German is terrible), and the location is a fantastic place to stay and learn. You can rent a room at the monastery. And we all eat meals together in the monastery’s gasthaus.
The class runs from July 9-12. Beginning chairmakers are most welcome. In the class we will each build a simple backstool and focus on the fundamentals – the angles, the joinery and training your hands to be a chairmaker.
While the chair shown is unsaddled, we will also cover basic saddling.
You can read more about the area and the class here.
I hope to teach a Dutch tool chest class the following week in Munich. More details on that class soon.
A ladderback by Terry Ratliff, one of the speakers at the upcoming event.
Andy Glenn’s new book “Backwoods Chairmakers” has been a runaway hit – we’ve about blown through the first press run after only 3-1/2 months.
Recently, Andy had the great idea to gather the chairmakers from his book at Berea College so readers can meet these chairmakers, hear their stories, see their chairs and watch demonstrations of how they work.
We think it’s a great idea, so we are working with Berea College Student Craft to hold the event on Sunday, June 2, at the college’s campus in Berea, Kentucky. Tickets will be $33, and attendance is capped at 200 people.
The all-day event will feature 13 Appalachian chairmakers from Andy’s book. We’ve asked each demonstrator to bring some of their chairs so you can see the work in person. All the chairs will be assembled in a gallery for you to enjoy. We’ll also have four other “stages” going all day for you to visit.
The Storytime Stage: Where chairmakers will share their tales of how they got into the craft and manage to keep their business afloat in a world filled with mass-manufactured goods.
The Turning Stage: Several of the turners use lathes in their work and will demonstrate how they make parts using this machine.
The Shaping & Assembly Stage: Chairmakers will demonstrate the techniques they use to shape posts & rungs and assemble the chairs.
The Greenwood Stage: Splitting, hewing and hickory bark demonstrations will take place in this outdoor area.
Plus Andy will be there to sign books.
Ladderback chairs are finally getting their moment in the sun, and I hope you’ll make the drive to Berea this June to attend this remarkable event. There is lots to do and see in Central Kentucky, so it would be easy to make this part of a quick weekend vacation.
More details on the event and registration will come later this week.
Please note that this is not a money-making venture. Berea College Student Craft has donated the space for the event. The tickets cover the honorariums for the chairmakers.
— Christopher Schwarz
Places nearby Berea (or on the way) that woodworkers and their families would love:
Fig. 1.32 It’s a subtle curve, but here you see how the “corners” are lifted up. This keeps the hatchet from digging in as you hew with it.
The following is excerpted from Peter Follansbee’s “Joiner’s Work.”
Forget what you think about 17th-century New England furniture. It’s neither dark nor boring. Instead, it’s a riot of geometric carvings and bright colors – all built upon simple constructions that use rabbets, nails and mortise-and-tenon joints.
Peter Follansbee has spent his adult life researching this beguiling time period to understand the simple tools and straightforward processes used to build the historical pieces featured in this book. “Joiner’s Work” represents the culmination of decades of serious research and shop experimentation. But it’s no dry treatise. Follansbee’s wit – honed by 20 years of demonstrating at Plimoth Plantation – suffuses every page. It’s a fascinating trip to the early days of joinery on the North American continent that’s filled with lessons for woodworkers of all persuasions.
Don’t be put off by the scarcity of single-bevel hewing hatchets; you can perform this work with double-bevel hatchets, too. Larger hatchets take some getting used to, but in the end they are quite efficient at stock removal. I keep a large Swedish hatchet around for times when there’s a lot of stock to remove, then I switch to a finer hatchet for more accurate hewing. My largest hatchet has a double-bevel and weighs more than 4 lbs. Its cutting edge is more than 7″ long. Regardless of the head size, I use fairly short handles on my hatchets, about 14″.
While you can make either a single-bevel or double-bevel hatchet work in dressing stock for joinery, the single-bevel hatchet is ideally suited for hewing stock prior to planing it. Moxon’s “Mechanick Exercises” describes its use and shape to some degree:
“Its use is to Hew the Irregularities off such pieces of Stuff which maybe sooner Hewn than Sawn. When the Edge is downwards, and the Handle towards you, the right side of its Edge must be Ground to a Bevil…”
If you’re scouring old tools or want a smith to make one, here’s some of what I recommend you look for. My favorite hatchet is a single-bevel hewing hatchet made in Germany in the early 1930s by a firm called J. F. R. Fuchs. It weighs about 3-1/2 lbs., and has a cutting edge around 6-1/2″ long. In describing these hatchets, it’s easy to think of them as having a flat back, but that’s not exactly the case. The bevel is on the right-hand face for a right-handed joiner, as Moxon describes. But the “back” is not truly flat; it has a very shallow sweep to its cutting edge.
Fig. 1.33 A slight curve in this direction as well is another subtle detail found in the best hewing hatchets.
Think of it as a very large and shallow, incannel gouge. The benefit of this shape is readily apparent when you try to use one that is not shaped like this. A hatchet with a flat back digs into the wood; a proper one scoops the chips out. Additionally, there is a slight sweep from the eye socket toward the cutting edge. Some of this is the shape of the tool, some is exacerbated by honing.
I have another hatchet by the same maker, with an excellent refinement of its shape. The eye is cranked over, to keep your knuckles safe when hewing. This leans the handle away from the plane of action without having to make a bent handle. I use this hatchet particularly when hewing wide panels. These German hatchets are not readily found. One type of hatchet you will, however, find regularly in the U.K. and U.S. is the so-called Kent pattern hatchets.
Fig. 1.34 Here the back of the hatchet is sitting flat on the board, and the canted eye results in the handle being tilted upward.
There are several nice things about the Kent hatchets. Not only are they fairly common, they aren’t expensive. They can work, and – unlike many other hewing hatchets – they are reversible for lefties. Their symmetrically shaped head means you can knock the handle out and put one in from the other end. But often, the cutting edge is straight; I prefer a curve to the cutting edge. The shape of the back should be the same as those shown above.
Fig. 1.35 Some careful hunting around can often turn up a Kent-pattern hatchet in good condition.
House & Garden magazine in the U.K. has a nice feature on vernacular stick chairs and cricket tables in its current issue. You can read the article here.
Tim Bowen of Tim Bowen Antiques is quoted throughout. Tim and Betsan Bowen authored “The Welsh Stick Chair,” a lovely book that we stock. (It is the only non-Lost Art Press title in our store.) We are awaiting stock on this book from its third printing.
If you are interested in learning more about vernacular pieces, we have you covered. Check out:
“The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” the book that allowed me to quit my corporate job, is now available as a free pdf download, now and forever. To download it, you need only click on this link. You don’t have to register, give up your email or do any other smarmy marketing idiocy.
We will continue to sell the printed version for people who like nice books that are designed and assembled to last lifetimes. And we are planning a revised edition of the title for the 15th anniversary of its publication. But the information itself? Free to everyone.
This is the sixth book of mine that I have made free. The others are here:
