One of the dimensions on page 161 of “Campaign Furniture” is incorrect. The height of the front stretcher of the Roorkee chair should be 12-1/2” from the floor, not 13-1/2”.
You can download a high-resolution pdf of the corrected page via this link. If you own the pdf of the book, you can make the correction in the text yourself (one of the beauties of having a file that is free of DRM).
Apologies for the error.
— Christopher Schwarz
It is curious amid the day’s duties and continual bustle of woodworker’s life to watch, note and compare the different degrees of skill manifested by the various hands engaged at their machines. I say “degrees of skill,” because no two men possess and are gifted with the same inborn ability.
Casually looking at the mortiser hand, I was led to observe that his work lacked smoothness of motion. He lifted the pieces up with a jerk, shoved them on the fence with a rush, and threw them down with an air of “d— this work, anyway.”
Stepping over to his elbow I asked him ”was anything the matter, or was he not feeling well?” Really he seemed to be venting some spite on the harmless material which was passing through his hands, and judging from the way it was getting bruised and broken, he was succeeding nicely.
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Having served three years at my trade as a carpenter, five years as a floor mill millwright and machine wood-worker, I made up my mind that I could do business on my own hook. I first started by doing small repair jobs, reshingling roofs, building porches, and small house additions. On this kind of work (which I did at the regular price charged by the local contractor for my own wage, and furnished a man at a profit of 25¢ per day and a small per cent on some materials furnished) I worked along for a year, and then took a contract to build an ordinary eight-room house, furnishing all the materials and labor.
I had always kept track of the cost of the labor and materials for making frames and placing materials, noting the time that it took me to do all these things. I based my estimate for the house contract on this knowledge; and on this contract I made wages for myself and a small profit. By keeping careful account of the cost of labor and material, and comparing the cost of each item with my estimate of same, I was able to tell where some were high and some low.
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The most gratifying class I teach has got to be the one on Roorkee chairs.
To be certain, there is the normal amount of “explaining how to make things out of wood” in the class. But in addition to that, we get to explore:
• Cutting and riveting leather.
• Stripping and installing steel hardware.
• Mixing shellac without a digital scale or math degree.
• HVLP spraying.
• Applying wax finishes.
• Make a three-legged stool.
• Dirty Irish songs.
Thanks to the simplicity – and genius – of these chairs, the pace of this class allows for crazy stuff. Sing a shanty. Demonstrate how to hand-stitch leather. Argue about wood species. Drink 3 liters of beer and talk about the state of woodworking.
Today we wrapped up a four-day class on building Roorkee chairs, and the students were able to complete building all of their chairs, including finishing them with shellac and wax. They completed all of the leatherwork. And they all built three-legged stools that were not on the lesson plan. (Thank you William Ng for allowing us to do all this crazy stuff and supplying us with tools, parts and awesome doughnuts.)
But the best moment (for me) came when one of the students sat in the chair he had just completed minutes ago and said the following words:
“This,” he said, “is going to get me some strange with the wife.”
Yup, I know that’s a little rude, but until someone says it about the class you just ran, shut up.
— Christopher Schwarz
I’ve expended quite a few electrons recently, demonstrating that the “one year per inch of thickness” drying rule-of-thumb doesn’t work with thick slabs, both in terms of actual experience and in theoretical models of how wood dries. But that begs the question: Why, then, does the rule even exist? I haven’t been able to dig up any real evidence, but I can think of a few possibilities:
It’s close enough: For relatively thin boards (up to about 2″ or a bit more), it could be that our predecessors just figured that the rule was close enough. After all, 8 months is sort of a year, and 30 months really isn’t that much longer than two years, right?
We’ve got really wet wood: Some woods contain a huge amount of water when green. Such a wood, especially if it’s fairly low density, contains so much free water that getting rid of the free water can have a significant impact on the drying times. An example of such a wood is American chestnut—a species favored by our predecessors—whose green moisture content is a whopping 120%. Free water removal can make the initial stages of drying look more linear:
However, as the graph shows, the rule still fails with thick slabs.
We’re asking the wrong question: What if the answer is correct, and it’s the question that’s wrong?
“Alex, I’ll take ‘Woodworking Maxims’ for $600.”
– Jen Kennings
What if rather than, “How long will it take my wood to dry?” the question to the answer were actually, “How long until my wood is dry enough to use?” Let’s say that you have a 6″-thick slab of white oak that’s been drying for six years. Is it dry enough to use?
So, context matters.
– Steve Schafer
