Today I’m going to tell you a nice story. Later in the week I’ll tell you a shocking one.
For the last couple weeks I’ve been unusually chipper, despite all the crap I’ve been managing with my father’s estate. In fact, the other day, my spouse, Lucy, looked at me a bit odd as I was making coffee at 6 a.m. with a s&*t-eating grin on my face.
“You OK?” she asked.
Being somewhat self-aware I answered. “Yes. This coming week is the closest I’ll ever get to taking a class with John Brown.”
Welshman John Brown died 10 years ago after changing the lives of thousands of woodworkers with his book “Welsh Stick Chairs” and his columns in Good Woodworking magazine. The chair he showed in his magazine articles inspired me to seek out chairmaking classes and to dive deep into the historical record of vernacular furniture.
At some point, Chris Williams sent me an email about his work with John Brown, which began in the mid 1990s and ended with John Brown’s death in 2008. After hundreds of emails across the Atlantic, I resolved to bring Chris here to teach Americans how Chris builds a Welsh stick chair. It’s different than John Brown’s, and that’s part of the shocking story coming later this week.
We’re calling this chair the Williams Welsh Chair (#williamswelshchair), and it’s unlike anything most American eyes have seen.
Today we glued up the arm bow and saddled the seat for this chair. I’ve worked with a lot of chairmakers in the last 25 years, and I can honestly say that the way Chris approaches his chairs is unique and definitely worth listening to.
And that’s the point of Chris’s upcoming book, tentatively titled “The Life & Work of John Brown.” While today was overwhelming (and the next four days will only get worse), I managed to snap these photos of the construction process. I hope you enjoy them.
The two closest Shaker communities to Cincinnati are also the most difficult to see.
The White Water Shaker Village isn’t open to the public on a regular basis, though there is a dedicated group of people trying to change that. And Union Village – the largest Western Shaker community – has all but been erased.
The only structure that remains (that I know of) is now the marketing office for the Otterbein Senior Life retirement home (see photo at right).
Union Village, about 30 miles northeast of Cincinnati, was once a bustling area of commerce. The Shakers there sold seeds and brooms and were an important part of the abolitionist activity in the area before the Civil War.
While the village is gone, some of its furniture was saved.
On Saturday, I took Welsh chairmaker Chris Williams and Megan Fitzpatrick to Harmon Museum in Lebanon, Ohio. This charming and tidy museum doesn’t attract lots of tourists, but it has an impressive collection of Shaker furniture and objects that were rescued from Union Village.
Many of the pieces display the characteristics of typical Ohio-made pieces, including the table legs that are turned and taper at the floor. Some of the chairs and rockers in the collection were downright astonishing, and I wonder where they were made. And there were some impressive casework pieces, including secretaries and built-ins.
If you find yourself in the area, I recommend a stop. It’s a few minutes off Interstate 71. In the meantime, here are some photos of a few of the pieces that caught my eye.
I have spoken to scores of people regarding the methods of making profiles with hollows and rounds that I have covered thus far. While most new users find the techniques extremely simple and thorough, some more experienced woodworkers find it too calculated. In many ways I agree with this sentiment, particularly as you improve in your skills. In this chapter I will address a few of the techniques that many other woodworkers employ.
Many users much more accomplished than myself start the hollow on the single arris of a single rabbet rather than on the dual arrises of a chamfer. Similarly, for concave curves they start a round on a chamfer rather than the arrises defining a rabbet.
With these techniques, it is recommended that the user start the profile toward the end of the board, near where a pass with the plane is generally ended, and work his way back in abbreviated steps. The first pass with the round, using your fingers as a fence (I use my fingers on both sides here), will start the profile in the last 6″ of the board. With the second pass, back the plane up another 6″ and take another pass all the way to the end of the board. Proceeding in this way will create a profile that is ramped toward the end of the piece. To correct this, once the plane is tracking properly the user should beginto take passes abbreviated in the opposite direction – feathering the plane off the profile before the end – thereby evening the profile across its length. The toe of the plane will ultimately guide the cutting edge and the heel.
Fig. 13-2. Less work? If you start a round on a chamfer there is less material to remove, but also more steering of the tool.
The advantage of working in this manner, from end to beginning, is that the plane creates its own chutes in which to fall. The firstpass may be imperfect. The second pass, using the plane’s length and the chute that was started with the previous pass, will be slightly more accurate and uniform, especially toward the end. With each subsequent pass the profile will develop further and more uniformly. Accuracy here depends upon skill with steering the hollow and round, not on a square rabbet.
The advantage of this method in using a round is that there is less stock to remove in profiles of 60° as shown in Fig. 13-2.
There is, of course, much more stock to remove with a hollow using this method as shown in Fig. 13-3. There is, I guess, also one less step.
Fig. 13-3. More wear on the tool. Using a hollow on an arris will wear the sole and iron more in the middle of the tool.
The disadvantage of this traditional method of using hollows and rounds is in its inaccuracy for beginners. It is much easier for the new moulding plane user to achieve consistency when the plane has two points upon which to ride. However, I have introduced this technique here because there are times in which it is useful, even necessary.
For example, I use this method exclusively when working with No. 2 planes. You will notice that I never illustrate knocking the corners off the square facet before creating a bead, as shown in Fig. 13-4. Working a rabbet plane into that tight area is dangerous in regard to the surrounding profiles, especially given that the adjoining surfaces are complete at that stage.
Fig. 13-4. Useful with small planes. Working right on an arris is the way to go when dealing with the very small hollows and rounds.
The rabbet necessary to guide a No. 2 round is absurdly small; the two points upon which the plane sits are so close that they are somewhat irrelevant. I create a chamfer here and use the above method as shown in Fig. 13-5.
Fig. 13-5. Another place for steering. When making very small coves, a rabbet plane is impractical.
I also use these methods at times when working with larger planes, but their use is much more sporadic. Again, the further one progresses in his skills, the more individual preferences develop. You may try this method and prefer it – there is no question that many use it quite successfully. I will not argue with success.
I recently completed building the Enzo Mari table shown above for an upcoming article in Popular Woodworking Magazine. Typically when I have a piece such as this left over from an article I sell it to an established furniture customer at a slight discount.
But this table is different.
Mari gave his plans for this table (and dozens of others) for free to people. His ideas and hard work were a gift as part of an experiment to see if non-woodworkers could learn something about furniture production.
So I’m going to give away my labor on this project as well.
If you’d like to buy this table, it will cost you only the price of materials ($80). Here are the details.
I cannot ship this table. It is 55’ x 55” x 29”. You need to come get it from our shop in Covington, Ky.
If you do buy it, I’d like for you to report back how well it ages in a few years. I am curious about some aspects of Mari’s design choices.
The table is made from Southern yellow pine. The finish is shou sugi ban (a charred wood finish), which is then topcoated with a beeswax/linseed oil concoction. (No your hands won’t turn black when you use it.)
The joinery is screws and square-shanked nails. Mari designed the base like a bridge truss – it’s clever.
If you want it, send me a message through my personal site here. The first one to say “I’ll take it” gets it. Heck, if you pick it up next week, you’ll get to meet Chris Williams as he’s teaching the Welsh Stick Chair class.
Our chore coats have arrived from the factory (except for nine medium-sized coats). John is packaging them up personally and they will ship out next week.
Just in time for summer!
They look fantastic and are extremely well-made. I think you will find them worth the wait. I plan to crank up the air conditioner in the shop and wear mine for a bit.
If your are one of the final nine people to order a size medium, we’ll be in touch to update you on the shipping delay. We hope it won’t be long.
‘Cut & Dried’ is Almost Here Speaking of delays, our printing plant was swamped with work in April and May, so “Cut & Dried: A Woodworker’s Guide to Timber Technology” by Richard Jones was delayed at the plant. It is supposed to ship to us next week.
As a result of this delay, there is still time or order the book and receive the pdf of the book for free. As soon as we receive the shipment of books in our warehouse, then the pdf will cost about $15 more.
The only structure that remains (that I know of) is now the marketing office for the 
Speaking of delays, our printing plant was swamped with work in April and May, so “