Funky Winkerbean the cat likes what he smells! (I think. Hard to tell with him.)
This week, Katy has been crazy busy down in the workshop making soft wax. In fact, she mixed and packaged 77 tins in three days – a new record. I asked her today what kicked her into high gear.
“I need money for food and stuff and….”
And what?
“Maybe a potter’s wheel.”
Last week, Katy’s art class took a tour of a commercial pottery. And when the potters asked if any of the students had used a wheel, Katy raised her hand (she’s taken a couple classes on using the wheel). By the end of the tour they had offered her a summer job, and Katy remembered her love of throwing pots.
So she made a bunch of wax. And now she has her eye on a wheel.
I’m not going to dissuade her. If you would like some wax, now is a good time to buy it and stock up (I’m buying a couple tins myself). It’s a really excellent soft paste with a gorgeous smell – perfect for the interior surfaces of woodwork or for restoring wooden surfaces that have become dried out by time or weather.
It’s a good day when I find three new images of stick chairs. Researcher Suzanne Ellison sent me the September 2015 issue of Antique Collecting recently, and I devoured it this morning while juggling some technical publishing problems.
Inside the issue were three stick chairs – two likely Welsh and one labeled as Irish. All are notable for one reason or another. Let’s take a look.
The chair above was listed for sale by Suffolk House Antiques and has a burr ash seat that is 2-1/2” thick. There are several things I like about this chair. Its spindle layout and armbow are similar to the chairs I’ve been building recently, but the crest rail and back spindles are quite eye-catching. I like the way the crest rail is curved along its top edge – very graceful.
The three back spindles look delicate and fragile, though I doubt they are. I really like how the maker bent the two outside spindles outward. It’s a nice contrast with the density and verticality of the lower spindles and seat.
The second chair was featured in an article on auction results. Though it’s not specifically called out as Welsh, it looks it to me. This chair has a charming lightness to it, despite its 14 spindles. Also, take a look at the “hands” of the armbow. They end in a nice semi-circle. Finally, the ogee on the ends of the crest rail is a nice classical surprise on a folk chair. Who knows if this detail is original to this chair. But it works.
The third chair is listed as an Irish fruitwood chair from the 18th century. I’m charmed by the low seat and the overall boxiness of the thing. Also, if you look close at the seat you can see there is a hole that is plugged at the rear of the seat (it could be a knot but I think that’s unlikely). This chair might have started off as a 3- or 5-legged chair.
Finally, a fascinating pig bench from Suffolk House antiques that might be from the Middle Ages according to the magazine. This bench proves that sometimes warped wood can be your friend.
In the years since I wrote about and hosted a video on building the knockdown workbench from the collection at Old Salem, N.C., folks have sent me hundreds of photos of the benches they have built. I absolutely love getting these. I am always interested to see the different vise set-ups, materials and alterations different people have done with the design.
I few days ago, Luther Shealy sent some photos of a Moravian work bench he has nearly completed. Shealy is in the U.S. Army stationed in South Korea. He had to leave his Roubo bench behind when he was deployed overseas.
Fortunately the Army base has a morale and welfare shop the servicemen can use, and he decided to build a bench for use while in Korea. He was able to source the pine parts of the bench on location, but the oak part proved to be problem. Undeterred, Shealy had friends back home mail him enough white oak for the short stretchers. He brought the oak vise chop over in his luggage; that must have been interesting trip thru TSA!
I very much admire Shealy’s determination to make this happen in a less-than-ideal situation.
Yesterday Chris and I had a Q & A session about stick chairs, the Hall’s Croft chair, chair design and more. It was only towards the end of the evening portion of our chat, and after he had consumed two beers, that it was necessary to redact a line or two.
Suzanne: The last time we talked about chairs was in January 2015, your pre-condition was we had to be naked (although we were about 550 miles apart) and it was titled ‘Naked Necessity.’ What pre-condition do you have this time?
Chris: Let’s say hirsutus maximus.
Suzanne: Sorry, I’m rejecting your hairy pre-condition and going with a jolt of Tia Maria in my afternoon coffee. Let’s get started.
When you see a stick chair what do you find pleasing to your eye?
Chris: Well first it’s the angles. Peter Galbert, the bard of chairmakers, nailed it when he wrote this: “The angles of the legs, along with their design, help give the chair a ‘gesture.’ Whether the desired result is a visual lightness and sense of action or stability and weight, angles are important.”
I’m looking for a gesture that is somewhere in the neighborhood of “f-you world.” I like chairs that have an animalistic stance – like they would jump up and lick your face or tear you to shreds.
Most Windsor chairs have a stateliness that leaves me cold. In contrast, Welsh stick chairs are more like a crazy uncle.
Suzanne: For the woodworker in you what do you like about these chairs?
Chris: These chairs were not manufactured. And in many cases they were built by the same people who used them. So every chair is different and is connected to a person.
Plus, the makers didn’t follow the same rulebook as the Windsor makers of High Wycombe. They used angles that were more rakish and severe (and got away with it). They used construction methods that were simpler (and many of these chairs survived 200 or more years). And they used found materials. The armbow of many of these chairs is a curved branch they nicked from a coppice or from their own land.
You don’t have to be a professional chairmaker to make nice Welsh stick chairs. You just have to have some sticks, a plank for the seat and a few tools.
The Hall’s Croft chair.
Suzanne: When you and Roy Underhill stumbled upon the Hall’s Croft chair what were your first impressions?
Chris: Roy and I had spent the entire day crawling around the floors of the dwellings of Stratford-on-Avon, photographing all the stuff that was fascinating (I filled a 32gb SD card). There was a short bed, for example. Why is it so short? Was it because people were shorter back then? Or was it because beliefs at the time were that you should not sleep flat – you should sleep upright – so evil spirits didn’t get in through your mouth.
When we saw the Halls Croft chair we both just stopped for a minute. Unlike a lot of the stuff we’d seen that day, this chair was out of the norm (by the way, I really doubt it was contemporary to the house; many of these chairs are much younger than dealers suspect or advertise).
The first thing we did was set up a perimeter. I poked my head into the dining room to make sure the docent was facing the cafe. Then Roy started putting objects on the chair that were an identifiable dimension – such as a touristy pamphlet – so we could scale the chair’s parts when we got back to the States. We took dozens of photos each whilst I kept a lookout for the very helpful employees of the house museum.
We did it without upsetting anyone and without anyone (me) having to say: I’ll create a diversion!
I think Roy liked the odd crest rail. I really liked the birdcage-like structure of the spindles.
Suzanne: You encourage woodworkers to explore many furniture forms to develop their knowledge of joinery and their own designs and suggest carrying a sketchbook, camera, etc. What else do you do to get a good record of a piece of furniture?
Chris: I always carry a camera with me. It’s a habit I picked up as a newspaper reporter and has served me well as a furniture designer. I also carry a credit card – not to pay anyone off but to put it in photos so I can scale the object in Photoshop. And I try to take photos that resemble construction drawings: a straight-on elevation, a profile and (if possible) a plan. Then I take a “beauty shot” to remind me of how all these pieces add up together, and I take photos of the important details.
I rarely make replicas. But knowing what a maker did – exactly – with a beautiful piece is solid gold information.
Suzanne: As for measuring the chair I’m surprised you didn’t use body parts as measuring devises. And no, not that body part (this isn’t ancient Rome after all). I mean the width of your palm, elbow to wrist, etc.
Chris: Using body parts works in a pinch. I usually have a 6” rule in my man-purse when I travel – that’s the easiest gnomon to deal with because you can pick out 1/16”s easily. I know all this sounds a bit wacko, but a good image inventory of pieces you’ve encountered is a huge help when designing. It’s like a sketchbook of other people’s work that you love.
Suzanne: Would you say your experience as a chairmaker plus the image library you have built provides you with a “muscle memory” of seat proportions, back splay, etc.?
Chris: That’s a good way to put it. Once you see thousands of designs you quickly see any design as a collection of angles, segments of circles, boxes and other assorted shapes. It’s a bit like seeing the code in “The Matrix” or the magic point where you think in a foreign language.
Suzanne: To use Peter Galbert’s term “gesture” of the chair the features that caught my eye, besides the crest rail, are the roundness of the arms and the gap in the back. The arms curve around to embrace the sitter plus the surface of the arms are rounded. The gap in the back adds a lightness overall. You posted a photo of a similar chair. In your study of these chairs have you seen this feature very often?
Chris: Sitting in the chair is very much like receiving a hug. There is an amazing compactness to it. It’s so close to you that it feels like an exoskeleton or a carapace.
While the compactness of the chair isn’t common, having the arms threaded by the back spindles is fairly common. As I have been told by our John Brown team, Welsh chairmakers didn’t do much steam bending, so this technique allows them to cut the arms from solid material (no bending) and yet create a pleasing horseshoe shape.
To be honest I was skeptical of this style of armbow until I sat in one. They are amazingly rigid thanks to the spindles below.
Another “birdcage” example.
Suzanne: The original chair was made from elm. You chose sycamore. Why and what do you like and not like about sycamore for this chair?
Chris: Vernacular chairs were generally made from whatever materials were on hand. So that’s the philosophy I use when building chairs. Elm is difficult to get here – you have to find it and cut it yourself. And Dutch elm disease made finding elm a tricky business.
When you look at the materials available around the Midwest, sycamore is a logical choice. It’s a junk tree of no real commercial value. Its grain is interlocked (like that of elm), which makes it impossible to split. (That’s a good thing with seat material.) And it can be had if you ask around.
Like elm, sycamore is an enormous challenge to work. If your tools are not razor sharp, it will tear out horribly. Its density varies greatly depending on the color of the wood. But if you take the time to conquer it, the rewards are spectacular. The quartersawn figure is like a field of stars.
Suzanne: The Hall’s Croft chair has a unique crest rail which I have dubbed the Trinocular. You indicated the form might be an exercise in geometry. Explain, or do we need to bring in Jim Tolpin?
Chris: Well one of the themes underlying the geometry of woodworking tools is that if you set your dividers to the radius of any circle, then that distance can be stepped off exactly six times around that circle’s circumference. Hollows and rounds are one example of how this plays out in our tools. If you want to know what radii a certain plane cuts, you measure the cutter’s width. That width equals its radius. That makes layout predictable.
So the crest rail is three half circles. That means the length of the crest rail is exactly six times the radius of each circle. The radius also equaled the width of the area below the half-circles. So the maker laid out the entire crest rail with one setting of his or her dividers. I don’t know if they were lazy, in a hurry or winking at the person who stumbled on it 200 years later.
Suzanne: I just had a flashback to 8th grade Geometry class.
You made several different crest rails and finally put aside the Trinocular. You also made other design changes to the chair. Describe what you did and why. Did your changes include resizing the chair for the modern body?
Chris: I don’t make replicas unless a customer requests it specifically. I made replicas for many years to get inside the heads of early makers, but I’m at the point now where I sit in a chair and know exactly what needs to be changed to make it suit me and the modern frame.
For my first version of the chair I kept the seat dimensions and leg angles true to the original. I wanted to see how the chair sat because I didn’t get to sit in the original (promise!). But when it came to the crest rail, I had to make changes. The trinoc crest rail was too quirky, low and flat. I made a couple trinoc crests and just couldn’t fall in love. So I increased the length of the four back spindles and carved a curved crest out of solid beech.
I also made some minor changes to the seat profile and arms, but nothing major.
For the third version of the chair, which I’m building now, I’ve changed a whole host of things. The seat is slightly wider and deeper but retains the same overall feeling of getting a chair hug. The rake and splay of the leg angles are all new. I wanted to give it a slightly more aggressive stance and make it more stable in back.
I saddled the seat to add comfort (the original had a flat seat). And I’m working on a slightly different crest rail that will tuck under the sitter’s shoulder blades. Most people will see it as the same chair. But the third one is a different animal.
Suzanne: What did you learn from making this chair? Did making the Hall’s Croft chair help you with your design of the staked armchair that you didn’t get to include in the “The Anarchist’ Design Book”?
Chris: I really love the birdcage effect of this chair’s spindles and will use that a lot in my future work. This chair gave me some clues about how to deal with a staked armchair a la “The Anarchist’s Design Book,” but that chair is on hold right now. I pushed things a little too far with its design and ended up pinching the sitter’s side meat – not good. So I’m finishing up this other chair and am putzing around with the staked armchair. As of now, I’m detaching the arms from the back spindles and trying to see if the chair still feels durable.
Or it will go in the burn pile.
Suzanne: You are also planning a staked settle. Where are you in designing that piece? Have you made a settle before?
Chris: I have made a number of settles over the years. They’re kind of a weird form with their own sets of rules that aren’t exactly like chairs.
I’ve designed this staked settle a couple times, and I think I have it nailed. But I won’t know until I build it.
Suzanne: I am ever hopeful you will build one of those Welsh pub settles with the bacon compartment.
Chris: Anything with a bacon compartment is a good thing. One might call it the “meat pocket.”
Suzanne: What kind of finish did you use for the chair?
Chris: Organic linseed oil and beeswax.
Suzanne: I am slightly obsessed with the Trinocular crest rail. Do you see any other use for it? Door stop? Bookend? Trivet?
Chris: [Redacted – Heavily Redacted] OK, I’ve had two beers. Please excuse that.
I don’t know. They look like a pair of “wooden knuckles” to me. Maybe they could be used in a massage situation. The shape is utterly odd – like the face of a three-eyed frog. I like it, truth be told. But I can’t see it as a component in my furniture – yet.
Suzanne: Do you have any questions for me? I take that back. Chris, thank you! We will have to do this again in another two years.
Chris: Thanks for doing this little chat. It’s actually an interesting exercise to put some of this stuff into words that has been swimming around in my head.
Off to find beer No. 3.
Suzanne: While you enjoy your beer I’m going to update my woodworking dictionary with some meat-based terms: meat clamp, sitter’s side meat, meat bushing and meat pocket.
You can read our first chair Q & A, ‘Naked Necessity’ here.
You can read more about the Hall’s Croft chair here.
Chris did five posts on building a stick chair. Click on the titles listed below to go directly to the article.
The elongation of wood should also be put among the number of assemblages, its application being very useful, given the impossibility of always having wood of the necessary length, or supposing that it is, the defect being that they sometimes are
not of a perfect quality along the entire length, but being corrected by this method.
There are two ways to elongate wood: the first, by notching half of each piece with tongue and grooves at the ends of each piece of wood, which you hold together by means of glue and pegs, Figs. 1 & 4.
The second way to elongate the wood is with Jupiter’s thunderbolts (apparently named thus because the shape of the cuts is a bit similar to that which you give to the gap which you wish to represent). [This is a notched and pegged scarf joint, most likely named because the configuration of the joint looks somewhat like a lightning bolt.]
There are two types of Jupiter’s thunderbolts, one which you make by notching half of each piece and by forming a second notch to receive the [inserted tapered] key. One must note to make this second notch off-set toward the end of the piece, so that the key forced against it finds no resistance in the opposite side of the other notch, and consequently it better draws the joints together [so that it acts like a draw pin], Figs. 2 & 5.
The second way is to trace in the middle of the piece two parallel lines a–b, c–d, which give you the thickness of the notch. After having determined the length of the notch, and having traced the position of the key in the middle, you cut out all the wood from the front of the wood (assuming you are looking at the front of the notch) up to the first parallel line. From the position of the key up to distance e, you make a second notch a–e, such that in each piece, what there is more of takes the place of what there is less of in the depth of the notch, and makes space for the key. For the ends of these notches, they make tongue and grooves, or only an angle, but the little tongues are better, Figs. 3,6 & 7.
This second way is very strong, and is much better than the first because the key bears all the thickness, instead of the other way, which has only half as much. What’s more, a key bearing only half [the thickness] is subject to rolling, and consequently to open the joint. Even if the joint does not open up, the key can be eaten up [word down] and forced, bearing on the opposite side of the groove, which loses its desired effect, see the figures above.
This assembly is very useful and very strong, and is in use not only by Joiners, but also by carpenters, as much for buildings as for ships.
When the entire length of the wood which you wish to elongate is taken up by mouldings, and you cannot or do not wish to make Jupiter’s thunderbolts, for fear that the key and the grooves will not meet up in the mouldings, you use an assembly called a flute, or a scarf joint, which is made in this way.
After having divided the width of your piece into two equal parts, as indicated by line f–f–g, you make the length that you wish to give to your grooves by h–i–l–m. From this line to the end of your piece, you draw diagonals r–o–p–i, and f–q–m–n, some from one side of the line and the others from the other, such that these notches are made in two pieces with much precision, are at the same time a solid and very tight assembly. You must take care that these grooves be made going from right to left, so that when you wish to elaborate with mouldings, they will not be subject to splitting, Fig. 8.
Although I said that you must separate the piece into two pieces to make these types of notches, this rule is not however general.When you have many pieces of mouldings in the piece, you put the joint in the loosening of one from the other, if it is found in the middle, or in the middle of the groove, as you can see in Fig. 9.
When you elongate pieces ornamented with mouldings using Jupiter’s thunderbolts, you should take care to make notches according to the depth of the moulding, if there is not a groove, so that the key is not uncovered, Fig. 10.
You can also lengthen curved pieces, both on their face and on their edge, using Jupiter’s thunderbolts, as indicated in Figs. 11 & 12. For as many pieces as are curved on the face, and for as little as they are curved, you should never make any tenons, because they will become too sliced up, and consequently less solid. You should fit them together by making at the end of the piece a forking of little depth and of the thickness of the tenon. In this forking you make three or four holes for placing pegs or dowels from the tenon that you fit together. These types of tenons are called tenons a peignes [toothed tenons, doweled tenons], Fig. 12.
There you have it, all the different assemblies that are used for the construction of joinery. I have detailed them the best that was possible for me; this matter, lifeless by itself, not being able to be rendered with as much clarity as I would have wished. You will have recourse to the plates where I have illustrated all the different assemblies, either joined or separated, so that you can see their effect better. I have also indicated all those that are hidden by punctuated lines. I hope that for as little as you may wish to pay attention, the demonstration that I have made will supplement that which one could find obscure in this discussion.
