Silkroad traveler Suzanne Ellison spent some time on the Dark Web yesterday, digging up images of famous people sitting in Roorkee chairs. Even I was surprised at what she found.
— Christopher Schwarz
A Prototype Double-screw Vise
For chairmaking and other handwork, a small double-screw vise can be handy. Check out Peter Follansbee’s bench and you’ll see these appliances lurking – or in use in surprising ways. Jennie Alexander uses them for many aspects of constructing her iconic chair.
During the last six months, I’ve been working with Alexander and chairmaker Larry Barrett to completely revise Alexander’s “Make a Chair from a Tree.” I don’t have a timeline as to when the project will be done as Alexander and Barrett are rebuilding the book from the roots up.
One of the small things I’m doing to help the project is prototyping a double-screw vise for the book. While all of us would prefer an all-wood vise with wooden screws, the current sorry crop of hand-powered threadboxes has pushed us into introducing a little metal.
The vise above is not the one that is going to be in the book. It still needs work. But it does work well on the bench.
The jaws are 1-1/2” x 2-1/2” x 20″ oak, with the screws on 10” centers. The 1-3/4” x 1-3/4” x 6” mahogany handles drive 3/4” x 12” Acme-threaded rod. Inside the rear jaw is buried plain steel 3/4” x 5 nuts. The handles push against 3/4” steel washers (though these are likely unnecessary).
The threaded rod is simply epoxied into the handles – about 3-1/2” worth. For the final version I’m going to tap the handles and epoxy the rod in place. Nothing like overkill.
I’m sure there will be more design changes to come.
With this vise in the mail to Alexander, I can return to tapering legs for “The Furniture of Necessity.”
— Christopher Schwarz
Preview of ‘Build a Campaign Chair’
You can watch this. I can’t. I honestly have to be half in the bag to watch myself on video. Then I hurl slurred insults at myself.
This, I have found, is cheaper than therapy.
The “Build a Campaign Chair” DVD will be released later this month and will be available through ShopWoodworking.com and Shopclass on Demand.
If you want to get a head start on collecting the tools and supplies for this project, check out this entry on tools and this entry on supplies.
— Christopher Schwarz
Oh, and I wrote a book about this topic. “Campaign Furniture” is available in our store. We are down to our last pallet of books from the first press run. More will be on the way shortly.
The History of Wood, Part 36
Coming Soon: Build a Campaign Chair DVD
One of the most influential chairs of the 20th century was built and designed by an anonymous craftsman in Roorkee, India.
Whoever built the first “Roorkee” chair in the late 1890s was trying to supply the military forces of the British Empire with a lightweight camp chair that could be taken to pieces in a few minutes and could adapt to any terrain, no matter how rugged.
The simple Roorkee chair was a huge military success. But what is even more incredible is how this chair with no fixed joinery influenced modern designers all over the world for the next 60-plus years.
Kaare Klint, the founder of the Danish Modern furniture style, made slight changes to the Roorkee to create the famous Safari chair – a form that is still in production today. Le Corbusier saw the Roorkee and reimagined it in chrome and black leather to create the Basculant chair. Marcel Breuer created the Wassily chair. Wilhelm Bofinger made the Farmer’s Chair. And Vico Magistretti developed the Armchair 905 in 1964. All are direct descendents of the simple Roorkee.
After building more than 25 of these Roorkee chairs for customers and teaching this class to woodworkers all over the world, I’ve teamed up with Popular Woodworking Magazine and ShopWoodworking.com to produce a three-and-a-half hour DVD on all aspects of making this historic-but-almost-forgotten chair.
The Roorkee is one of the most comfortable chairs you’ll ever make – the loose conical mortise-and-tenon joints adapt to your body, creating a solid exoskeleton of thick leather and dark wood. The tilting back curves to cradle your shoulders and pushes against your lumbar to make it easy to sit in for hours. And the simple construction will make you wonder why you ever feared chairmaking.
In this DVD we take you through all aspects of construction. We start with rough sapele and create the legs, stretchers and back using a lathe and a few simple hand tools. (Note: This is a great project for beginning turners and the DVD assumes you have never turned anything.) We make the conical joinery using simple and inexpensive tools. And we introduce you to leatherwork, starting from the cow and ending up with a nice place to sit.
Even if you’ve never built a chair, you’ll breeze through this project. Most of my students have never built any seating. Advanced woodworkers will broaden their skill set with tips on hardware installation, leatherworking and even finishing.
The DVD will be released on Jan. 23, 2015, through ShopWoodworking.com. The DVD will be $29.99, or you can download the video for $24.99. It also will be available through Shopclass on Demand.
I’ll post more details on the DVD when it’s available. In the meantime, check out all these blog entries I’ve written about this great chair during the last few years.
— Christopher Schwarz