One of the gratifying things about teaching others to build stick chairs are the woodworkers who embrace the craft and grow to work at the same level (or even higher) than the teacher.
One of those woodworkers is Claire Butler, who lives outside Seattle, Wash. Claire has assisted me in teaching two chair classes during the last year and is now making stuff for sale while working a day job.
Earlier this year, Claire built this chair using some gorgeous red elm while assisting me with a class. The chair came out beautifully, it’s as good as my work. And so I offered to sell it on her behalf to help nudge her into the world of full-time furniture making.
Detail of the hand.
The chair is gently raked back 14° for lounging, reading or sitting by the fire. The chair features heavily shaped arms, tapered octagonal stretchers and slightly proud and burnished tenons throughout.
The chair is made from red elm with hickory wedges, a perfect combination for chairmaking. The wood is strong, lightweight and has a difficult interlocked grain that prevents the parts from splitting. The chair’s sticks are shaved and left octagonal. All the tenons are cut slightly proud and burnished. All the chair’s joints are assembled with animal glue, which is reversible, and wedged.
The seat is tilted 5.8°. The seat is 16-3/4” off the floor, making it comfortable for most sitters. The chair is 37-3/4” tall overall.
The chair is finished with a soft wax. It offers a low lustre and looks better the more you use the chair. The finish isn’t terribly durable, but it is easily repaired (just add more soft wax).
How to Buy the Chair
The chair is $1,300. That price includes shipping and crating to anywhere in the lower 48. If you wish to buy the chair, send an email to lapdrawing@lostartpress.com before 3 p.m. (Eastern) on Thursday, May 8. Please use the subject line: “Claire’s Chair.” In the email please include your:
U.S. shipping address
Daytime phone number (this is for the trucking quote only)
If you are the “winner,” the chair will be shipped to your door in a crate built by me and Kale. The price includes the crate and all shipping charges. Alternatively, the chair can be picked up at our storefront. (I’m sorry but the chair cannot be shipped outside the U.S.)
This is an excellent chance to buy a beautiful and comfortable chair made by an up-and-coming woodworker you are going to hear more from, I’m sure.
Chapter 1 contains information on resawing the plane blank into the two cheeks and the midsection. It also shows how to determine which would become the front, back, top, and bottom of the blank, and how to mark these parts out with a cabinetmaker’s triangle.
Following are the remaining techniques for making hand planes. Also included is a list of the tools needed for these procedures.
Tools and Supplies Needed • Six-inch combination square • Protractor • Pencil • Block plane • Practice stock: straight-grained hardwood, about 18 inches long, 3/4 inch thick, and 3 inches wide • Dowels (5/16 x 2 inches) • Brad-point drill bit (5/16 inch) • Drill press or power hand drill • Dovetail saw or razor saw • Chisel (1/2 inch) • Clamping cauls: two pieces of 3/4-inch particleboard or plywood about 12 inches long and 3 inches wide • Router with a 1/2-inch guide bushing and 3/8-inch bit
Optional Tools and Materials • Double sticky tape—thin type for carpet • Plug cutter (5/16 inch) • Sanding drum (3-inch diameter)
Preparing the Glue Surfaces The plane blank has been resawn into the two cheeks and the midsection, and the front, back, top, and bottom have been marked. The next step is to smooth and flatten the adjacent surfaces of the cheeks and the midsection that eventually will be glued back together. With experience, hand tools quickly do the job: a plane can be used to smooth the surfaces or a scraper can be used to remove defects like raised lines left by a chips in the planer knives. Avoid hand-sanding because the outer margins tend to get rounded, which only accentuates the glue lines. Another option is to leave the surfaces as they are off the machine; the glue lines may be apparent once the plane is assembled, but it should hold together securely.
Laying Out and Sawing the Front and Back Blocks
Determine the position of the throat opening on the midsection and lay out the angles that when sawn will create the front and back blocks. A strong word of caution: The layout and cuts occur on the midsection; be sure to separate it from the cheeks before proceeding. The plane blank is ruined if the cheeks are sawn mistakenly.
The throat opening will be slightly more than halfway along the bottom of the mid-section, closer to the front end than the back. (If you feel stranded without precise measurements, a throat opening located five-ninths of the total length will do. To determine this, multiply the length of the blank times five, divide this number by nine, and measure that result from the back end of the blank.)The exact location is not critical, but why should the throat plate be in this area? One of the most demanding planing tasks is preparing boards for edge-joining. It requires precise control of the plane. The planing stroke begins at a stand still and ends with the plane in motion. With the throat opening forward of center, less of the sole of the plane is resting on the board when the blade begins its cut, but the plane is easy to control because it is motionless. Because of the throat opening placement, when the blade finishes its cut more of the sole will be in contact with the board, which helps you balance the plane while it is in motion.
4–2. A plane blank with front-and-back-block layout on the midsection.
From the point of the throat opening, lay out a 45-degree line angled back toward the rear of the plane. This defines the back block and the ramp that the plane iron will eventually rest upon. From the point of the throat opening, move forward about 1/16 inch and draw a line angling to the front of the plane at 62 degrees. The center block is now divided into three sections: the back block, the triangular center section, which becomes scrap, and the front block, forming both the front of the throat opening and the front portion of the plane (4–2).
4–3. Finger clearance between the cross-pin and front block must be wide enough to conveniently extract jammed shavings.
The front block is angled at 62 degrees for several reasons. It’s about the steepest slope that gives sufficient clearance for shavings to exit between the front block and the cross-pin while allowing enough space for most people’s fingers to remove an occasional jammed shaving (4–3). If it were much steeper, the space between the cross-pin and front block would be so tight that if shavings collected and jammed there, removal would be an irritating task requiring a pencil point or needle-nose pliers.
4–4. An enlarged view of the throat opening. It widens as the bottom wears. The steeper the angle at the tip of the front block, the slower the process.
The angle can be made lower, but that may interfere with the shaping of shorter planes. Also, as the bottom of the plane wears, the throat opening widens; the lower the angle of the front block, the faster the widening occurs. One of our goals and one of the advantages of making your own plane is that the plane can have a very narrow throat opening (4–4); it pays to maintain this narrow opening as long as possible. Alternatively, the front block can be cut with a curve, keeping the angle steep at the throat opening and sweeping away in the vicinity of the cross-pin (4–5). This is a good solution. Still, I prefer a straight cut for the first plane because you can practice truing that cut before advancing to the critical job of truing the ramp of the back block, using the same techniques.
4–5. The curved front block increases finger clearance between it and the cross-pin.
Prepare the band saw for making the cuts along the angled lines by precisely squaring the blade to the table. The band saw may not seem the natural choice for this task over the table saw, but in actuality neither machine will make the cuts accurately enough. Making these angled cuts on short, thick stock feels dangerous with a table saw, and requires some setup time. I prefer to use the more benign band saw, carefully making the cuts freehand, and cleaning up the sawn surface to perfection with a block plane. Saw to the waste side of the lines—within the triangular area. Make the 45-degree cut first and don’t be concerned if the saw kerf nicks a bit of the 62-degree line (4–6). Save the triangular scrap.
4–6. The sawn-out front and back blocks.
Now clean up the cuts to produce smooth, square, and straight surfaces on both the front and back blocks. Use the block plane to do this. In experienced hands the task is completed in one or two minutes for each block. A complete novice may require half an hour for the first block and five or ten minutes for the second. This is time very well spent, for in the process you will have touched on almost all the skills needed for just about every other type of planing task. It is a challenging way to start off—trial by fire, if you will—but persevere and there will be great rewards.
4–7. Bottom view of a block plane. Set the cutting edge precisely parallel to the bottom of the plane.
Cleaning Up the Cuts – Adjusting the Block Plane The block plane must be tuned up and effectively sharpened for the work to proceed smoothly (see Chapters 2 and 3). Set the blade for a very fine cut with the blade protruding evenly across its width. Back off the blade until it does not protrude through the bottom. View the cutting edge from the back of the plane with the plane turned upside down. As you slowly bring the blade forward, see if the cutting edge is skewed in relation to the bottom of the plane; it should appear parallel (4–7). To make adjustments, pivot the blade, bringing one corner up and the other down, using the plane’s lateral adjuster. For some inexpensive block planes that lack adjusting mechanisms, the blade is brought forward and adjusted laterally by gently tapping the back of it with a two- to three-ounce hammer, and it is backed up by tapping the back edge of the plane itself (see Making an Adjusting Hammer on pages 102 and 103). The plane must be properly tensioned for this to work well (see Chapter 2). You will probably find it more precise to adjust the plane with a hammer even if it has a mechanical lateral adjuster.
4–8. The thumb is used to feel for the protruding cutting edge.
When the blade is nearly protruding, let your sense of touch guide the adjustments. Gently caress both sides of the throat opening with the pad of the thumb while bringing the blade forward (4–8). Both corners of the blade should simultaneously become barely discernible. If not, make lateral adjustments until the same amount of slight drag is felt on the thumb at both corners. If the throat opening is very fine, you will be very close to the final setting. If the throat is wide, the blade will most likely need to come out a bit further yet. That is because the pad of the thumb dips into the larger opening and can feel the blade before it actually extends beyond the bottom of the plane.
Final Adjustments Begin a stroke on the practice stock. If the blade thunks against the wood and you feel yourself tensing to shove it through, stop: the blade is out too far. Though it is difficult to suppress the urge, there is no need to continue; the only likely result is damage to the planed surface, be it a serious dig or planing it out of true. Back the blade up and try again.
Ideally, the first stroke should either produce no shavings or take the smallest bit, requiring little if any effort to slide the plane across the wood. The shaving should be so thin that it falls apart and is almost dusty. This is because the jointed surface of the wood is not smooth, but slightly scalloped by the action of the jointer cutters; the blade hits the high points of each scallop and misses the low. Always adjust the depth of cut in this fashion, progressing from no shaving to a very thin shaving to the final setting. In this way, you will eliminate accidental digs and the frustrations of dealing with them.
To produce a shaving of equal thickness across its width requires setting the lateral adjustment of the blade exactly. The blade edge must be perfectly parallel to the bottom of the plane. This is crucial; if not done properly, it is very difficult to adequately true or polish a surface. When the blade takes a deeper bite from one side of a surface, either each subsequent pass dips it lower and lower or that corner of the blade may leave a prominent dig.
4–9. Planing with the left edge of the blade.
To check the lateral blade setting, take two shavings, first utilizing only the left side of the blade, and then only the right. The plane is held flat on the practice stock but offset to the left, and then the right, rather than planing right down the middle of the stock (4–9 and 4–10). Compare the thickness of the two shavings and be sensitive to the amount of resistance you feel; it takes more effort to produce a thicker shaving. You may find that one side takes a small bite and the other side produces nothing. Adjust the blade in the direction of the lesser cut and try again, until the resistance feels identical when planing with either corner of the blade. It may also be necessary to readjust the depth of cut.
4–10. Planing with the right edge of the blade.
The shavings are of the proper thickness when they lose their “woodiness” or stiffness; instead they feel fluffy and soft when bunched together, like a cotton ball (4–11). Practice your stroke (see below) until continuous shavings can be consistently made from one end of the practice stock to the other. If the board gets out of true from the initial efforts, true it with the jointer; otherwise, it’s difficult to produce a continuous, thin shaving.
4–11. “Cottony” shavings on the left; “woody” shavings on the right.
With only a little experience, peeking at the throat opening and stroking your thumb across it will reveal almost all that is needed to know to set the blade properly. Practice stock becomes unnecessary. It takes just a few minor adjustments as you begin planing to set the blade; this is done without a second thought and with no time lost.
Our new storefront is fully up and running these days – and one of the benefits of visiting us in Covington is the opportunity to shop our Seconds Shelf (which is the Boarded Bookcase from “The Anarchist‘s Design Book“).
On it go all of the books and tools that aren’t quite perfect – items we can’t sell at full price. Maybe we spilled coffee on the pages. Maybe a cover was put on upside down at the bindery, or a few pages got folded incorrectly at assembly. Or the post service damaged the book in shipping. Or we dinged a hammer head while seating the wedge. This is all good stuff – readable and usable…just a wee bit blemished.
As a result of this less-than-perfection, these books, tools and accouterments are priced well below their usual retail price…and you have to visit us to get them. We can’t ship them. We’d lose money if we did…and not only because of the packing and shipping cost, but the human cost in keeping on top of online listings and the like. There is usually no more than one or two of any given title/item, and it would be prohibitively person expensive/time consuming to deal with listing them online.
So I’m afraid you’ll have to come to 407 Madison Ave., Covington, Ky., 41011 to partake. Bonus: You get to see us, and hang out for a while in our beautiful river city!
Store hours are currently Monday-Wednesday-Friday from 10 a.m.-2 p.m.
– Fitz
p.s. About those store hours: I regularly receive emails with special requests to come in early/late or on an unscheduled day. I beg you to please stop sending those. While we might change the hours in the future, for now, these are the hours. In our other hours, we are writing/editing books, building something in the shop, making tools, spending time with friends and family, communing with our cats….
The following is excerpted from Nancy R. Hiller’s “Making Things Work: Tales from A Cabinetmaker’s Life.” Hiller’s funny and occasionally delightfully crass stories tell of her years as a professional cabinetmaker who relished both the highs and the lows of the job.
“How much time do you spend in the shop, and how much in writing?” asked a friend of a friend who’d waved me over to sit with him at a holiday party. He’d noticed my bio in the list of contributors to an area magazine and knew I’d written a couple of books.
“I pretty much write in my spare time,” I said. “Mainly on weekends, if work in the shop doesn’t require my presence there. The books in effect pay nothing. The magazines at least pay something, but it’s not enough to cover my overhead and operating expenses, let alone live on.”
When I really cranked out articles for the local magazine where this acquaintance had seen my bio, I could make about $15 an hour. But this calculus relates to net income, not the gross revenue required to maintain a business – and certainly not my cabinetmaking business. It doesn’t matter whether I’m writing, sleeping, or working billable hours; a host of fixed and related expenses still have to be paid.
“Oh, please,” he said dismissively. “What kind of overhead and operating expenses do you have? You work from home and have no employees.”
I was taken aback. Why did he think he knew anything about my business? We scarcely knew each other. Did he think I was posturing as a professional while secretly just “crafting” in my garage?
“You know,” he added, rolling his eyes. “I used to do what you do.” He’d mentioned once that he had worked briefly as a carpenter during what he called his hippie youth; as part of this personal exploration he’d tried his hand at cabinetmaking before concluding that, while he loved the work itself, doing it for a living involved more tedium and less creative freedom than he could bear. Some years later he got a job as assistant art director at a major magazine and worked his way up to a well-paid position, from which he had recently retired. He pushed his chair back from the table and walked away without giving me a chance to respond.“
“Tosser,” I said under my breath as he sought out someone else to use as sounding board for his oversized ego. Then again, I realized, I had no idea how I would have responded had he stayed. If he really was that ignorant of the costs involved in operating a microenterprise – aboveboard, mind you, not under the table – a meaningful, non-defensive response would take some time for me to articulate, not to mention a willingness on his part to listen.
I grabbed his unused napkin and pulled a pen out of my bag. The numbers were fresh in my head; I’d spent the previous weekend going through the year’s accounts to get a jump on tax preparation.
“Overhead and operating expenses, 2014,” I wrote at the top of the napkin. That pompous jerk was not going to get away so easily. Between bites of salad Ilisted the categories I could remember, adding a few explanatory notes:
• “Business insurance (coverage of shop building and contents, liability, goods in transit, etc.) • Equipment rental (e.g., trailers for delivering large jobs) • Health insurance. (Many people whose health insurance premiums are subsidized by their employer have NO CLUE what it costs. Mine is $506 a month for so-called “wellness coverage,” i.e. I have to pay for almost everything out of pocket, and with a $6,000 deductible. My husband and I are both self-employed, so we each pay through the nose.) • Permits (e.g., for parking in our highly regulated city) • Accountant’s fees • Mileage
At this point I realized I had lapsed into completely irrational behavior. He would never read such a list, not to mention the parenthetical notes, which were likely to grow in length now that I was getting warmed up. But perhaps the sheer number of items listed would at least impress on him that I run a business with real-world operating expenses. So I continued writing.
• Packing & shipping • Website-related expenses • Office supplies & printing • Subscriptions to trade publications • Disposal of non-recyclable, non-compostable shop & jobsite waste • Phone & internet at shop • Dues to professional organizations • Shop utilities (electricity & water; the insurance industry now pretty much refuses to cover woodworking shops that are heated by means of a woodstove, and there is no way I’m going to run a business like this one without insurance) • Repair & maintenance of equipment; replacement blades, cutters, etc. • Bank charges (e.g., the cost of checks) for business account • Business travel expenses; I do sometimes teach, speak, & deliver furniture out of state. (These are not vacations, like those publishing-world boondoggles you brag about at cocktail parties.They are bona fide working trips.) • Business tangible property tax • Professional photography for the portfolio, when I can afford it • Taxes related to payroll: state unemployment tax, Medicare & Social Security matching taxes, etc. Years ago, my accountant advised me to organize my business as a Subchapter-S corporation instead of continuing as a self-employed proprietor.”
My hand was cramping, so I put down the pen and took a sip of cabernet. The cheese board at this bash was always a vision of abundance. I added a wedge of crumbly aged cheddar and some crackers to my plate – along with the wine, a perfect combination. By this time I had completely covered the napkin on both sides, but I sensed that I was far from finished. Grabbing a couple more napkins from the buffet, I got back to work.
“All of the above (and more) must be covered before I pay myself a penny. And this is not including investment in new tools, machinery, etc., which amounts to thousands of dollars. In 2014 the above expenses came to just over $20,000. I don’t know…maybe that’s chump change to you. Not to me.”
“And yes, my shop is behind my house. But I no longer live in the house. I had to move out during the recession, which absolutely gutted my business. During the worst year, my gross sales (i.e.,including materials) were $17,000. I slashed the overhead and everything else to the bone. I relied on my credit card to pay lots of bills, a debt that took the following two years to pay off. I’m incredibly lucky that my boyfriend at the time – now my husband – invited me to move in with him; at least that way I no longer had to pay for all my living expenses on one decimated income.”
“That year from hell, I obviously could not even pay myself minimum wageafter covering the overheads. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just go out and get a couple of jobs – you know, bagging groceries, cleaning toilets at the office supply store. (BTW, there were none of those jobs available. Because recession.) Believe me, I thought about it. One friend, a nationally recognized furniture artisan, confided that he was seriously contemplating a job flipping burgers because he wasn’t getting orders. Another put his business in a holding pattern and relied on his wife to support him (he was lucky she could). But I calculated that doing spec pieces and writing would be a worthwhile investment in future business opportunities, even if I had to rely on my credit card to make that investment. Thank God my bet paid off.”
“I have been renting my house out to cover the mortgage & property taxes. You probably think this means I have Even. More. Income. But no. Renting the house increased the monthly payment because I no longer qualified for the homestead tax exemption. Also, insurance rates for a rented property are quite a bit higher than for one that’s owner-occupied. So the income from rent just barely covers the monthly payment. But at least I still have my shop, for which I am profoundly grateful.”
“Don’t get me wrong. I could, in fact, make more money if I only worked in the shop seven days a week and didn’t do the writing. But going back and forth between these kinds of work is critical to my sanity.”
“All of which is to say that yes, I do have overheads and operating expenses.”
I folded the napkins in half, put them in my pocket, and made my way through the crowded room over to the dessert table. I was balancing a slice of chocolate hazelnut torte on a cake knife when I spotted him spooning tiramisu seductively into the mouth of a woman who looked young enough to be his daughter. I stood there holding the torte on the knife while she closed her lips around the spoon and shut her eyes with an expression of orgasmic delight. Once she had recovered I walked over and tapped him on the shoulder. “Rafi,”I said, pulling the napkins out of my pocket, “I have something for you.” I unfolded them and laid them on the table in front of him.
“OK,” he said distractedly as he scooped up another spoonful for his friend, who seemed to be incapable of feeding herself even though she was old enough to drink wine. “Thanks.”
I happened to pass their table on my way out a half-hour later. The napkins were just where I’d placed them, but crumpled now, the ink smudged into a dark blue blur. Seeing me roll my eyes, a man at the next table said, “I don’t know what was written on those napkins, but it sure must have been funny. The guy sitting there was reading it to his daughter – or was she his girlfriend? – and at one point she laughed so hard she spat out a mouthful of pudding. Geez, what a sticky mess.”
Comments are now closed. We’ll get to any unanswered questions…soonish!
It’s time for our bi-montly Open Wire, where you can pose your woodworking questions in the comments section below and we’ll do our best to answer them. Comments will close at around 5 p.m.
Note that there may be a lag between your asking and our answering. Chris is probably working on a chair, and I’m working on…healing. And editing the revised edition of “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” (photos for which are happening above).
