New Happenings

Recently I got a counterbore from Morris Tools in Tennessee for my arm to stile joints. Boy does it make a difference.


I used to first drill a "shoulder" with a large forstner type bit and then finish it with a smaller bit for the actual mortise. It wasn't impossible to line them up, but it took some doing. Once I reground and sharpened the cutting spurs on the counterbore, it drilled a gorgeous joint and the alignment was a non issue. Below is the finished mortise.


Also on the tool front, I've been meaning to mention that while in Atlanta, I noticed that Highland Woodworking carries the diamond profile parting tools in the 1/8th inch size. Folks have contacted me looking for this elusive creature after I posted that it was my preferred size for turning but especially for the way it works with my caliper. The smaller cutting edge means less vibration and resistance but still cuts a wide enough kerf to easily measure.

I'm not sure what it says about me, but one of the most exciting and fun things to enter life here is our new ice cream maker. It's of the old wooden bucket variety (but with a motor, sorry galoots) and we've been putting it through its paces. It fits perfectly with our plan to have our goat milking in the spring. After vanilla, we decided to try mint chip, but no extract and green food coloring for us, I found a recipe and headed to the garden to pick the mint. Yes, Sue is still mad that I put mint in the garden, we'll never be rid of it!
Below is the mint steeping in the milk.

Here is the finished custard.

And into the freezer.

And the finished ice cream (actually, I probably stopped a bit short, but it froze in the freezer fine)


By the way, half of the sweetener in the mix is maple syrup from last spring, just one more reason to look forward to next years sugaring season.

Come to Life

It's always fun to see a project from drawing to completion, and this week with Alan Gensamer, we did just that. The drawing above is scaled so that 3/16" equals 1". Below is the finished piece.



Other than a mishap with drilling the arm (I foolishly veered from the drawing and paid the price of bending another arm!), the piece went very smoothly. Here's Alan getting it all together.


I haven't forgotten the curved stretchers, their drying in their forms. Below is a new (to me) bending method. I was getting some trouble with separation where the turnings narrow and expose endgrain, so I thought that I'd finally found a place to use a strap.



Not only did the strap work nicely controlling the separation (just a little in the center), but it pulled the piece to the form very evenly. My handy Irwin clamp (spreader) put so much force on the piece that the texture of the strap is embedded in the surface of the stretcher!

I've been asked about a million times about using straps in bending, and honestly, I've never found the need. I know that some very tight radii or thick bends could call for a strap, but the "normal" bends in my chairs have always bent just fine. I attribute this mostly to using straight grain white oak and hickory and shaving carefully along the fibers. I'll be knocking this piece together this week (hopefully), but today will be slow, Alan and I put in 7 days and I'm whipped!

Drawing in Steps

As I waited this morning for my student to arrive, I couldn't resist this photo.


















Alan asked if he could do his comb back rocker with a shield seat instead of the oval that I usually use and I thought the redesign required would be a good way to show the drawing process step by step.
I began by designing the seat pattern full scale. I used other chairs and just a basic sense of what I wanted to locate the legs and proportions.


















The first step in the drafting/design process is to block out the seat in the 3 views.






















Then I located the legs by measuring the pattern that I made.























Next the seat shape can be drawn from the pattern. The location of the coves cut into the side are very helpful.






















This is where I leave the pattern and start designing on the page. These are the leg angles. On a rocker, it's important that the locations of the front and rear legs will give a nice looking taper effect to the rockers as they exit the rear legs. Notice that because the seat is drawn parallel to the floor line that the rockers unnaturally pitch up at the back, I'll correct this later by redrawing the floor below the side view.























Below, the armposts and rail set in place. I used the same curve from my normal comb back to get a lot of these measurements but I did lengthen the arm 1 inch to account for the deeper shield seat.





















Next come the spindles and spindle spacing on the seat, arm and crest. Once again, each drawing informs the others.






















Finally, I add some details to help the overall feel and proportion. We'll have a chance to see the finished chair at the end of the week!

Fall Day

Here is a little birds nest that Sue spotted in the sugar maple that we planted near the goat barn.


















It's made out of my shaving pile. I can't tell you how many times folks have commented that I should find a use for my shavings (I do mulch and burn them), and I assure them that my market research has come down heavily on the side of chairs being the more valuable outcome of my labors. But leave it to this little bird to prove me wrong, as far as a housing material, what a jackpot.


Below is an orthographic projection of a chair that I am designing for a class next year. It's a more realistic view of the actual look and process that I follow.























I start with "stick" drawings, like the one that you see in the front view and then use the various views to inform my design. Once I like the basic skeleton, I'll add some thickness to some of the parts to get a better feel for the proportion, like in the side view. I didn't know how to draw orthographic projection until Dave Sawyer showed me how, so don't mind if I back up to explain it a bit, figuring that maybe you didn't arrive with this info either.

Basically, it's a means of taking information from one view and mapping it onto another. The creepy looking floating eyes show how the views relate.

For me, it becomes a game of give and take, playing what looks right in one view against how it affects another. On the given drawing, you'll notice a large square that connects the same point on each drawing. Notice that by "refracting" the side view at the 45 degree line, the information from the side view can flow correctly to the overhead view. This is a vital piece of info for the techniques that I am moving towards showing.

I generally begin with the seat shape, of course I draw it as a large block and then later create the actual seat shape. I really suggest giving the drawing board some time, it may not become your process, but it will definitely help cement the chairs elements in your head.

This is a pretty easy drawing because the only curve (the bow) is parallel to one of the sides. Later I'll go into what happens when a curve follows a sightline off the square axis.

For those of you who have been following the progess of my goats etc... here is the finished goat barn!


















Here is the milking room, which for now is where I am storing the hay for easy access to the built in manger.























The manger is in the wall that separates the milking room from their "loafing" area.
The hay that they love to pull out and then disregard forms a bed that they can enjoy while laying in the sun coming through the front door, we should all have it so good!























It looks like we've found a proper suitor for our Maggie and hope to get her in "the family way" in the next few weeks.

Back to the Drawing Board Part 2

During the class at Highland Woodworking, Curtis and I were chatting about the trig tables that we use and teach for figuring out the sighting lines and resultant angles. He mentioned that someone had shown him a means for arriving at the solutions by mapping them out, as opposed to going to Drew Langsners book "The Chairmakers Workshop" or some other math route for the charts. This really appealed to me, but Curtis couldn't recall how it was done. So, I set out to figure my own way.
The sight line angle wasn't so tough, it's really just the overhead view of the chair and I've been drawing those for years, but the resultant angle for drilling was a bit trickier. After a bit of thought and doodling, I had one of those lovely eureka moments.


Below is the first step, which picks up where we left off with the diagonal of the rectangle which gives us the sight line angle. Simply draw a line at a right angle to the diagonal and the same "common rise" as used on the front and side views.


















Then, complete the triangle to the other side of the diagonal line. And there it is, the resultant angle is opposite the diagonal line.


















Hopefully, the drawing below will help clarify what it is that you are seeing. It is the profile of the plane that the leg is in.

















Sorry for the crappy images, my scanner is down and photos are my only solution. Even more exciting and useful for me (it's still faster to use the trig tables) is that while doing this, I remembered a technique that I came up with years ago (and then forgot how it worked) for viewing a chair that I am designing from any angle. Once again, I know that computers can spin an object in space with no effort, but to see it emerge on the page still gets me going.

I know that I am not the first person to figure any of this out, but I see this kind of problem solving as skill building for working with the complex geometry in chairs. So with a little more primer on orthographic projection, we'll get to the real fun stuff.

Back to the Drawing Board

Over the past years, I've abandoned full drawings of my new chairs in favor of thumbnail sketches. The techniques that I developed for getting the chair together have gone a long way for me. Now curves of all sorts and in all places don't intimidate me, but as I honed the geometry of the pieces and wanted to set them "in stone" as it were, I heard the drawing board calling.


















Above are some of the tools that I use to draft my chairs. Before I go any further, I know that I should probably get this out of the way. Yes, I know about Sketch Up, Cad, Solidworks etc... and agree that they are amazing. If I didn't think so, I probably wouldn't be paying someone $150 an hour for drawings of the new Caliper parts! But I've been drawing since I was a kid and its one of my most pleasurable and productive habits, so for now, I'm sticking with it.

Below is the basic look of the three view drawings that I use to render the chairs. Of course this is a sketch to get the point across, the actual point to point drafting will come later along with a fourth view that is incredibly useful.























I'm going to cover a technique that I use for mapping the angles for drilling the legs. The most common way of referring to these angles is the rake and splay. Rake is the angle that the legs projects when viewing the chair from the side, splay is the angle that the legs project when viewed from the front.



















One important fact that will help out later is to note that both angles share a "Common Rise" which is the length of a line dropped straight to the floor from the top of the leg. The rake and splay are great information, but most chairmakers that I know prefer to distill this information into something a bit more manageable.


Below is the overhead or plan view of a sightline. The sightline shows the plane that is perpendicular to the seat bottom and travels through the center of the leg. When you look at this plane from the side, the leg cants at an angle that is neither the rake or splay, but when the chair is viewed from the front or side, the rake and splay will be correct.

















One simple way to "get" the sight line is to turn a chair in front of you until the leg looks perpendicular to the floor, now you are staring down the sight line.
























Now this may seem like an unnecessary complication, I mean, you know the two angles, why not just drill them with two bevel squares set parallel to the front and side of the seat?
The beauty of using the sightline and drilling the leg at what is called the "resultant angle" is that it reduces one of the angles to 90 degrees. Not only are we surrounded by lines that are vertical (think door jambs etc...) but we all have an innate sense of what is upright, otherwise standing, drinking, and walking would be quite problematic.

It's also helpful because it frees us from the front and side views and allows each element in the chair to be seen for the one deviation that it has along a vertical plane, which becomes even more important when we talk about curves later.

To translate the rake and splay angles from a drawing or known numbers, start by drawing the horizontal and vertical axis on the paper.



















Then, measure off a common distance for the "Common Rise" on the axis. The actual length doesn't matter so long as they are the same.

Also draw the rake angle below the horizontal axis and the splay to the right of the vertical. I included the sketches of the chair to help the significance of the lines make more sense.


















Then draw a rectangle that has the length and width of the rake and splay distances along the axis.


















And finally, draw a diagonal from across the rectangle, this is the sight line angle.


















This angle is used by connecting the two front legs (or rear) by a line on the seat blank (or pattern) and then using the sight line angle to mark the sight line.

Hopefully, the drawing below will help clarify what the line means in the chair.



















So this is one piece of information, next it's a short step to getting the resultant angle.

New Sharpening Tool

Anyone who has followed this blog probably knows that I am not one to recommend buying a lot of tools. I've seen too many tools marketed as bestowing or replacing a skill as opposed to enhancing one. While teaching with Curtis (another crusader) this summer, I sometimes thought that we should be teaching a soap box making course.

But sometimes you come across something that you have been needing and it's love at first sight.



















I was ambling around the showroom at Highland Woodworking and this one jumped out at me. It's a mandrel for the lathe that has the ability to run three different wheels at once. When coupled with a variable speed lathe, this becomes a sharpening tour de force. It even inspired me to get the defunct old lathe gathering dust in the corner back into working order. The mandrel needs a No. 2 morse taper and a live center on the tailstock. It runs about $50 and can be bought at Highland (you might need to call, I couldn't find it online) or from the maker Beall.

Any of the students that I've worked with around the country this year can describe the multiple grinding and buffing tools that I drag to class. I've found that no matter what the schools have to offer, they just don't add up for the special needs of chairmaking tools.

I set up my mandrel with a large grinding wheel for drawknives, next to a smaller one for drill bits and the fuzzy buffer to remove the burr from carving tools. I used the lathe tool rest to dress the wheels and a Veritas tool rest for grinding. Now I just need someone to manufacture an adjustable toolrest that fits in my lathe banjo and I'm in business.

Besides not having to drag my clunky old pillow block setup around the country, my favorite thing about this setup is that the height of the wheel on the lathe is perfect for freehand drawknife grinding. As a matter of fact, I've never had such an easy time achieving an even grind.


















I must say, this is not "essential" to most folks, but if you are looking for a way to get yourself more sharpening real estate in the shop (which is almost always the case in my shop) without bringing in more motors etc... this might just be for you.

Curves in Action

I realized that I haven't shown the final results of the curved stretchers. This is the chair that I brought along on my trip to show the class and to discuss with Brian.


















I learned a lot on this one and am looking forward to working more with the curved stretchers. Having the curve between the front legs offers a number of benefits, mainly that the sitter can slide their legs under the seat. In doing so, the center of gravity shift towards the rear which naturally reclines the chair. Also, sitting in this position puts the feet closer to the contact point of the rocker and floor, which allows the sitter to push the rocker with less motion. And finally, if the sitter is shorter, having their legs under the seat allows them to extent their toes to the floor to rock.

























When I make my next chair like this (very soon), I'll detail the measuring and drilling techniques that I use to get it together.

Is It Next Year Already?

I'm happy to be back from teaching a class with Curtis down at Highland Woodworking in Atlanta, and even happier to think that it's my last traveling for work until next spring!!

It was a great class and a fine trip. Beside spending time on the trip down visiting friends, I got a chance to have dinner with Greg Pennington (Greg will be assisting me next spring at Kelly Mehlers) and on the way home I stopped to hang out with Brent Skidmore in Asheville and spend some time talking shop with Brian Boggs at his new workshop. I also got to meet Hayley Davison, who is staying with Brent's family while she completes her move from Hawaii.

Next year, I'll be teaching at three schools, besides my one on one classes at the shop here in Bethel.

First I'll be at Kelly Mehler's School of Woodworking in Berea from March 1-6. We'll be making a continuous arm. The schedule will be on the web site this weekend.

Next I'll be back in Maine at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship teaching a balloon back youth chair from June 14-18.

And finally, sometime next fall, I'll be in Atlanta teaching again at Highland Woodworking. We're still hammering out the details on this one.

I'll list all the schools in the sidebar with links. Now I just have to unpack a shop worth of tools and try and find a couple of sharp ones to get to work with. I'd like to give thanks to Curtis and all of the students this year for making my travels so enjoyable.
And to my friends who've emailed to inquire about the lack of postings and my well being, I assure you, all is well and fall is a great time for writing!

Curved Stretchers Part 1

Humans are curvy things, and it only seems natural that the chairs that they rest in should reflect this. I've played a lot with curves in the chairs that I've made over the past few years, and they (the curves) are starting to migrate away from the expected places, where the flesh meets the wood, and into the undercarriage, where strength and aesthetics take precedent.

It began with my desire to have an uncluttered looking undercarraige. I've never been happy with the H stretcher on rockers (actually I've never made one!). The side stretcher seem to compete visually with the rockers and structurally, they are redundant, the rockers act as stretchers. Add to this that the center stretcher seems too far away to support the highly stressed back legs, and I'm firmly in the box stretcher camp. The only advantage that I see in the H stretcher is the ability of the sitter to put their legs comfortably under the chair, which is a nice feature.

So, as I've been focusing on my rockers lately, it dawned on me that the curved stretcher might satisfy all of my requirements, it's out of the way of the sitter, doesn't interfere with the rockers visually and provides plenty of strength right where it's needed.

Below is the basic layout that I used to make the stretchers on my latest rocking chair. I began with the basic idea that the tenons (the only straight part of the stretchers) would point directly at the opposite leg on the rear of the chair. So I began by running string from the front legs to the opposite rear leg at the height of the first large "node" in the bamboo turnings. Then by running a string across the two front legs, I was able to distill the triangle that would be the basis for the bend.


Here is the drawing that I made to make my bending form. You can see the triangle in place. In this instance, I simple drew a freehand curve that I found pleasing for the center axis of the bend. You can see that the tenons run right in line with the initial triange, the rest can diverge as desired.


Next, I drew the shape of the turning around the center axis, establishing the locations of the details that looked balanced to my eye.
Then, as you see below, I cut out the perimeter of the turning so that I'd be left with the pattern for the bending form.


Finally, I used a flexible rule to figure the length that the turning would have to be to match the desired bend. (yes this one is for a different curve, the rear stretcher, but you get the idea)

And here's the resulting bend. It worked out nicely, but took a few extra clamps to tame it!


I'll show how to go about drilling the mortises in part 2, but you'll have to forgive any delay, my goats need a winter shelter, so for now I'm a carpenter, which is not my strong suit, but I'm sure they'll let it slide.

The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship

Here is the campus at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship where I recently taught with Curtis and Nick Cook. It was a two week fan back side chair class. The location in Rockport, Maine and the campus was beautiful. I'd be hard pressed to name a better equipped and organized school. Happily, they've invited me back to teach a 5 day class next June, more info on that as it comes!



Here's Curtis demonstrating a technique that we developed for measuring the angles at which the center stretcher is drilled into the side stretchers. I was chatting with Curtis about not being satisfied with any method that I'd seen and off the cuff mentioned that we should just cut some dowels as stand ins for the stretchers and measure from them. The next thing I knew, he appeared with some dowels that he scrounged and we cut them up.
By using this with his method of placing a straight edge along the front legs (then the rear ones of course) and then setting a bevel square to the angle, we were able to get a stable easy read. Then we marked the angle on a board. Next we measured the back legs and marked it on the board as well. A quick visual averaging (right side with right and left side with left) of the marks and we've got our angle. No numbers! (If all went well with the reaming, the angles on either side should be relatively close anyway)
So, as usual, the cauldron of the classroom has yielded results that neither of us would have probably reached for, and now, combined with my drilling method with the angled boards for the leg mortises, we have a no number undercarriage!!



Here are a few shots of the guys in action (that's right, no ladies this time)


Below is Nick Cook giving some turning advice. We spend three days on turning and most of the students produced the turnings that went into their chair.


And here's the result. We had a hard working crew of folks, most in the shop by 7 am and many staying into the evening.

If you aren't already familiar with the school, I'd highly recommend checking it out, the tuition is incredibly reasonable and the level of focus and craftsmanship that I saw in the other programs was top notch.

The New Porch

Not too long ago, just moving out of my basement workshop was a fantasy. Well, now that I've been in my shop a few years, the finishing touch was obvious, the porch. Luckily for me, my brother Andrew and our friend Keith were looking for a summer getaway, and I had the perfect use for their carpentry skills.

We had some fun with the timber framing portion of the structure. Every time that I get to layout the cross supports, I get a charge knowing that if the math is right, everything fits just so. It's different than the "eyeball" work that I'm used to in chair work, and if the pieces weren't so heavy, I might just be lured into the trade.

After the tough work digging piers in Sullivan county soil ( 4 rocks for every dirt) and moving green timbers, the boys got their reward, christening the porch while shaving some spindles for a couple of balloon backs. Besides cooking them dinner every night, I had to throw something into the deal!

I've got some fun stuff in the works that I want to share, but my computer decided to die (I actually think that it heard Sue ordering the new one) and took my photos along with it. I'll get the photos reshot and start talking curved stretchers soon.

Shavehorse Plans

In response to a recent question, here are the plans for my favorite shavehorse. It's a fun project to build and mine has given me years of service. I highly recommend lining the jaws with leather, which dramatically increases the holding power for the effort you put in.

To see the images full size and hopefully to print out, just click on them.
Below is the chair that Jeff Lefkowitz made with me recently. Jeff has spent time with Curtis and Brian Boggs since he was last here so we pulled out all the stops. The class ended up being as much about chair design as actually getting the thing together.


It's vital to a chair design that it be appealing from all angles.



Here's Jeff in his finished chair.


Obviously from my lack of posting, this summer is very busy for me. Below is a teaser of what you'll be seeing in the next post, and I can say without reserve, it's beautiful.

Drilling on Target

I mentioned some techniques that we developed and used while at North Bennet Street, and this isn't one of them...but it should have been. Any one who has ever made a chair or even more so, taught chairmaking, can tell you that drilling the crest so that the mortises line up with the spindles can be a trying experience. I have a method for teaching the technique using a target on the floor. A student at North Bennet asked me "why don't we use the target technique in the actual drilling" and I rambled something about drill alignment and went about my way. When I returned home, I started thinking about resolving the drill end of things and came up with this.


This is nothing more than a small rod stuck in the back of a disk that I epoxied on the back of my drill. The critical factor here is that the rod and disk are perfectly aligned with the drill bit so that when you look down the rod, you are essentially sighting down the bit.

When looking down the rod, if you can see anything but black (meaning the side of the rod), you are not sighting correctly.
Below is the view of sighting down the rod correctly.


To align with the target (which would usually be set around a hole for the spindles into the seat), the body of the drill should be on center of the target and the back of the drill should read all black. Here is a misalignment. Yes, the drill is centered, but the rod isn't. (The notches in the target are to make room for the stiles on the outer holes)


Here, the you are looking directly down the rod, but the drill isn't on target.


Here is the view that shows the drill in correct alignment.


Perhaps the only tough part of using this technique is getting used to moving your head with the drill to keep the rod centered. I taught Jeff Lefkowitz the technique by asking him to split it into two steps. One, center the rod by moving your head, Two move the drill into the center of the target while moving your head as well to keep the rod centered. With this he was able to do a great job.

Jeff's chair had an added layer of complexity that also made the use of this method more essential. The curved spindles in his chair didn't aim directly at the holes in the seat, so his first step was to offset the target from the holes a certain amount and then drill away as usual. I'm pleased with the results and plan to keep working with the technique. I'll show Jeff's chair in the next posting.

The Cauldron

I returned recently from 2 weeks of teaching with Curtis at the North Bennet Street School, and now that I've had a few days to acclimate to the different atmospheric pressure, I'm ready to share some photos. The class went great, and as Curtis will agree, it's the hardest either of us works all year!
But there is something that happens in the group classes that rarely occurs in the more mellow and controlled environment of the one on one courses that we both host in our shops. Given the range of skills and scope of material to cover, new methods of teaching and chairmaking bubble to the surface. Techniques that work just fine for Curtis and I in our own shops can fall short when pulling along a large group and between us, we came up with some solutions that will continue on in both of our shops.

The means of achieving a chair can reflect the individuals preferences and prejudices. I enjoyed the interplay with Curtis of comparing our approaches and explaining and compromising on the techniques that best suited the class and the chair. I think that watching the conversation between us also gave the students a chance to see inside the process, not just of chairmaking, but decision making, and the idea that in the end, it's up to them to choose the means that best suit their temperament and goals.

Here is Peter Mich bending his arm bow (remember Peter from my shop last year?).
I brought along the white oak and it performed admirably (not a single break).


Unlike most classes, we decided to go to the lathe room and let the students turn their legs. To our surprise, it went smoothly and wrapped in about a day and a half, with a little help on the arm posts and stretchers. My mother can't say when that pencil appeared behind my ear, but I suspect it was around my late teens.



Here are Seth and Chris, the two students who followed Curtis down the rabbit hole and made their chairs almost entirely with the bit and brace. Curtis started chairmaking with very little, and the bit and brace served him exclusively for many years, I on the other hand had a cordless drill and some old bits that I could grind. We each made it work.


Here's Curtis inspecting the center of an armbow.


I was surprised that such a large steambox could hold enough heat to steam all ten arms at once.
The two wallpaper steamers, like the one I use now, really cranked it out.


Below, I'm showing the technique for drilling the blind holes in the arm. No one blew out the top of their arms while drilling it (whew!) although on one students arm, you could see light when you looked into the mortise!



Curtis and I took a trip up to Essex for some lobster and tool scrounging. Alas, we are both in the unenviable position of not needing any tools, that's right, it does happen.


The room we were in was small, but lent itself to easy communication and the whole class focussed beautifully in it. I've taught at shops that were so big that they had the intimacy of an airport terminal!


Here is Rob practicing drilling by eye. The tape on the floor represents the spindle deck. I've found that a few practice holes drilled, without the pressure of ploughing into an actual arm, can smooth the learning curve.


Here are father and son, Rob and Drew, with their finished chairs.


Here is Curtis talking to Anita. I like this photo, I think it captures Curtis' great rapport with the students.


Here is Jan sawing away on her armpost. I learned a great deal working with her. She is added to the list of school teachers that I am privileged to have worked with.


Thanks to Herb Harris for the extra photos.

Curtis and I are teaching again at The Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Maine in August, but I believe the class is full. However, there are openings for our class in September at Highland Woodworking in Atlanta.

On the short notice side, I'll be demonstrating turning techniques Wednesday July 1 at the Watergap Woodturners meeting at Peters Valley Craft School woodshop.