Lost Art Press

The leather arms of Roorkee chairs will sag if you use only one layer of leather. Historical Roorkees tended to use only one layer, so I’ve seen a lot of low-slung arms.

If you don’t want your arms to sag, there are several solutions. A quick solution is to glue a strip of polyester to the underside of each arm, which will prevent the arms from stretching. This works, but the polyester can show and can be ugly.

I prefer to double up the thickness of the leather to prevent stretching. To do this, you need to glue and stitch the two layers together. While I’ve stitched some leather seats for folding stools, I haven’t been brave enough to do the arms of a Roorkee, especially one that will go to a client.

(I am almost over this timidity, however.)

This fall I made a matching pair of Roorkees for a client and also worked with Popular Woodworking Magazine to produce a DVD on the construction process I used for the chairs. You can pre-order the DVD here. Or buy the download here.

To get the arms of these chairs just right, I hired Jason Thigpen of Texas Heritage Woodworkers to glue and stitch the arms for me. He did a fantastic job. That shouldn’t be a surprise if you’ve seen his shop aprons or tool rolls. He does all the work in-house and is both a maker and a user – my kind of guy.

Today Jason posted a great blog entry on the tools and processes he used to stitch the Roorkee arms, with text, photos and a video. Check out the entry here. And if you need a tool roll, shop apron and/or leather-clad coffee mug, Jason is your guy.

— Christopher Schwarz

ShopWoodworking.com has begun taking pre-publication orders for the new video “Make a Campaign Chair,” which will be released about Jan. 28.

If you want to order the DVD, click on this link. If you want to order the download, click here.

The video is a three-hour exploration of constructing a Roorkee chair from scratch. We begin with the rough blanks and follow the process all the way through finishing and making the leather seat, arms and backrest.

Even if you have never turned a single stick of wood or cut a piece of leather, you’ll have plenty of guidance when building this chair. The Roorkee chair is one of those rare projects that is great for the first-time turner, the first-time chairmaker and the first-time leatherworker.

Plus, the resulting chair is remarkably portable and comfortable. I’ve built about 25 of them now, and they sell so quickly that I don’t own one myself.

— Christopher Schwarz