Hardingfele

Last week, I shared a few memories from a wedding that we attended in Norway last summer. One of the most beautiful and memorable parts of the wedding was the music. As I mentioned in the last post, processionals are traditionally led by a fiddler, and in this particular part of Norway, the customary instrument is a local variant known as the hardingfele.

In typical Norwegian style, the hardingfele is sumptuously ornamented to an extent not seen on the common violin. The fingerboard, tailpiece, and purfling are inlaid with a geometric design of bone and mother-of-pearl. The soundboard features delicate florid kolrosing, and peg box is often topped with a dragon carving in lieu of the familiar scroll.

Though outwardly attractive, the soul of the hardingfele resides not in the baroque Scandinavian styling, but in the four understrings that run inconspicuously beneath the fingerboard. Due to the extra strings, the hardingfele can be recognized at a distance by its eight tuning pegs, rather than the conventional four. When played, these strings resonate under the influence of the primary strings and impart a richness to the music that seems perfectly suited to the simple melodies of Norwegian folk music.

Compare the vibrant self-harmonizing effect in the wedding processional (which was played on a hardingfele):

to the more formal and reserved melody of the recessional (which was played on a regular violin).

 

Both are beautiful, of course, but I’ve come to appreciate the simple regional traditions that add color and complexity to the tapestry of human culture. If there was a pervading theme to my trip to Norway, it was my continuous amazement at their dedication (and success) in weaving ancient tradition with modern culture. Their country may rank near the top of the list in modern infrastructure, internet access, wages, and quality of life, but they also cling dearly to their cultural inheritance. Old buildings are unquestioningly preserved and maintained, slöjd is still taught in elementary schools, traditional food and dress and folk music are alive and well.

During my visit, I constantly felt as though the past was a part of the present, rather than some harsh, distant era. I think as Americans, we have stronger reasons to keep our past at an arm’s length, because some of the uglier episodes of our history (segregation, slavery, and the near-annihilation of Native American culture, for example) have not been seasoned by the centuries as they have in Norway (e.g., Viking culture). My recent visit to the Aiken-Rhett House was impressive, but I could never fully escape the reality that the massive home was built and maintained on the backs of slaves. Nor would I want to forget. I suppose also that the simple lack of a cohesive national identity – we are a nation of immigrants, after all – contributes to a widespread indifference towards our past. After all, my past is very likely not at all similar to your past. Perhaps another thousand years of existence will give us the perspective that we need.

Okay, that was a rather long aside in a post that is ostensibly a discussion of a fiddle. Let’s get back on track, because there are a couple more notes I wanted to include: The fiddler at the wedding is Øystein Rød, who is not only a good friend of the bride; he has also been named the best fiddler in the country! He actually wrote the music for the processional. The song is called “Gledden” (“Joy”, in English). I’m including another version of him playing this song, since the sound quality is much better. The passion and precision of his music is breathtaking. I think it’ll be worth 3 minutes of your time to listen.

 

Norwegian Nuptials

Last summer, my wife and I took an all-too-short trip to Norway to attend the marriage of my wife’s high school friend Idun. Ten years prior, Idun spent a year in my wife’s hometown as an exchange student. The two became close friends during that year, remaining in touch ever since.

We had previously considered a trip to Norway to celebrate our own nuptials six years ago, but our meager finances at that time precluded such an extravagant excursion, and we happily booked week-long trip to Yosemite National Park instead. It turned out that delaying our trip was providential decision, because the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a traditional Norwegian wedding (as an invited guest, that is) was without a doubt the highlight of the trip.

The ceremony was held in the historic and imposing Fjære Church, just outside the city of Grimstad, where the bride and groom have lived their whole lives. The stone walls of the church date to ca. 1150. The church is impeccably maintained, as are most old Norwegian buildings, it seems.

Rear entry. I love the imbalance of the quoins.

Side entryway. Note the different patterns on the entablatures just below the arch.

Front view of the church.

Rear of the church. The red clay roof tiles were ubiquitous on homes around Grimstad, while the wooden shingles were more typical of the stavkirkes that dot the inland of Norway.

This stone wall appears to have been here for a while.

Fantastically pollarded trees dot the cemetery.

 

I was particularly awestruck by the woodwork within the church. The work was completed discontinuously over several centuries. The balcony is dated 1708. The pulpit may be as old as 1500. The church contains two clocks, which date from 1660 and 1855. I would have loved to spent an entire afternoon poking around the church, but of course, I was there to celebrate a marriage and not to ogle ancient woodwork. Propriety (and by “propriety”, I mean “my wife”) compelled me to restrain myself, so most of my pictures of the interior were snapped hastily and/or surreptitiously.

Looking into the sanctuary. Impressive Gothic arches at the rear.

Substantial stone walls: 5-6′ thick.

Underneath the balcony

The highly ornate pulpit is variously dated from 1500-1700

The joined pews should be very familiar to Peter Follansbee.

I liked the marbled paint on the upper column and the ogee treatment at the ends of the beams.

Attractive carving on this column. The attention to detail is impressive.

The balcony is helpfully dated 1708.

 

The couple has friends from all over the world, and the wedding was very much an international affair. Guests were encouraged to wear wedding garb that would be traditional to their nationality. We intermingled with Scotsmen in plaid kilts, Arabians in bisht, Portuguese in their finest livery, and I (being a Southerner) wore my blue seersucker suit. Most of the guests were, of course, Norwegian, dressed in their quaint bunader, and the bride herself donned the customary silver crown. According to the bride’s estimation, perhaps only one in five Norwegian couples get married in their traditional dress – the common Western white-gown-and-tuxedo weddings are presently far more popular. I was happy to see that our friends chose the traditional route. It certainly made for a richer experience for their many foreign guests.

Welcomed into the kirke by a well-dressed kvinne.

Daughter of the bride and groom in her diminutive bunad.

The wedding ceremony itself was simply beautiful. I can think of no better word to describe it. The bridal procession was led, as tradition dictates, by a fiddler playing the Hardingfele, a variant of the violin peculiar to the southwestern part of Norway. The Hardingele is unique in that it has eight or nine strings, rather than the four strings of the familiar violin, and thinner wood. Four of the strings are strung and played normally, while the other four or five are understrings that resonate under the influence of the primary strings. The result is a haunting and emotional tone that is quite distinct from a normal violin.

The fiddler leads the recessional with the bride and groom close behind.

I could go on with some prolixity about the wedding, and especially the reception, which was one of the most enjoyable that I’ve attended, but I suspect that it was a bit of a you-had-to-be-there event. Instead, I’ll leave you with this 60-year-old video of a rural Norwegian wedding that seemed familiar, though decidedly more stodgy than the convivial affair that we attended:

 

Some highlights from the video:

• 3:03: The fiddler begins playing his Hardingfele as he leads the wedding processional out of the farmhouse (I’m not so sure that the music that plays in the video is actually of a Hardingfele. The film appears to be silent, and the sound of the instrument seems far less rich and resonant than I would expect. Might be over-dubbing of a regular violin, or I might be full of it.)
• 4:40: Ale bowls! Three lovely traditional Norwegian ale bowls appear and are passed around the crowd, starting with the Master of Ceremonies and proceeding to the bride, the groom, and the fiddler. The first bowl is absolutely massive, far bigger than the ones that Jarrod Stone Dahl makes.
• 5:30 and 5:47: You get a better view of the lovely double horse-head ale bowl, a type that Dave Fisher recently wrote about and then carved. I will definitely have to try my hand at this style of ale bowl at some point.
• 6:30: “Ancient custom decrees that the fiddler must not play his instrument on holy ground, so as they approach the church, he puts it discreetly aside and stays behind, while the others enter the churchyard. In Medieval times, the fiddle was considered a Pagan instrument.” No such objection exists today; at the wedding we attended, the guests were already seated in the sanctuary while the fiddler led the procession right down the aisle.

 

 

Bodging in 1935

To brighten up your Monday, I though you might enjoy this wonderful film of English bodgers from just 80 years ago, making Windsor chairs in a manner that would be entirely familiar to chairmakers 300 years ago (and indeed, entirely familiar to me today!) One thing that strikes me about the film is the height of the lathes used by the turners. Having learned on a more conventionally-sized lathe, I’d have a difficult time working at shoulder height, though it would certainly lend a closer view of the work. Hope you enjoy the video as much as I did!

The Finished High Chair

I took a couple of evenings earlier this week to get the continuous-arm high chair finished up. I was pretty dissatisfied with the effect of the black milk paint on my chair from last fall, so I decided to go back to where I began. A couple of years ago, I bought a cheap, falling-apart factory-made Windsor chair from an “antique” store in Mississippi. I took it completely apart and re-shaped every one of the ill-conceived parts into a more pleasing and historically sympathetic form. Upon re-assembly and finishing, the chair immediately became one of my favorites and has graced our dining room table ever since.

On that chair, I used homemade red milk paint as the base coat using red iron oxide as the pigment. That paint turned out lovely. I then tried to concoct some black milk paint using powdered charcoal as pigment. I may as well have painted it with dirty dishwater. The milk paint didn’t have enough substance to provide the opacity required to achieve good coverage. Fortuitously, I found that a bit of finely powdered charcoal mixed with shellac created a lovely black paint, and the finish has held up well and aged beautifully over the past couple of years. Hence, I determined to re-create the same finish on the high chair.

With the red milk paint fully cured over the weekend, I gave it a good rubbing down with a crumpled brown paper bag to achieve a lovely low luster. I find that milk paint performs far better when allowed to cure a few days before rubbing it out. Too soon, and you’ll just wear through the finish. I don’t always have the time or the patience to wait, but three or four days is optimal.

With the milk paint readied, I proceeded to mix up my shellac paint as best as I could remember. The charcoal powder I procured some years earlier from a pyrotechnic supplier. It was dirt cheap – around $25 for 5 lbs worth – and should last me several lifetimes (if I live that long). It is not as finely ground as lampblack, a more common black pigment which can also be obtained from pyrotechnic suppliers. I sifted the charcoal through a reusable brass mesh coffee filter prior to mixing, to remove the coarser bits. A mortar and pestle would be welcome, but I don’t have one.

I found that a ratio of 1-2 tsp. of charcoal per 1 Tbsp. of shellac (orange, 3-lb cut) made a serviceable paint. A bit of experimentation is required to achieve the proper consistency, but if you get it right, it will go on quite smoothly with a synthetic bristle brush. I use a 1-1/2″ brush for the larger surfaces and a cheap artist’s brush for the nooks, crannies, and spindles.

The finish should not be applied too thickly or it will orange-peel, just like straight shellac. But you can apply multiple thin coats in fairly quick succession. I put two coats on in one evening, then allowed it to cure overnight. You do not want to begin rubbing the shellac until it is fully cured. A Scotch-Brite pad and some judicious use of 400-grit sandpaper on some stubborn rough patches yielded a lovely smooth satin sheen.

Finally, I topped off the shellac with a coat of tinted oil. The finish was nothing more than a bit of charcoal powder mixed with boiled linseed oil. To be truthful, I should have skipped the tinting altogether. The charcoal did not seem to add any coverage to the finish – rather, it only served to make the chair messy and annoying to handle until the oil was fully cured. Next time I’ll skip the tinting and just apply pure BLO or a thin wiping varnish.

I can’t say that the finish is perfect. There are some spots that are too thick, and some rough patches that I simply ran out of the will to smooth. But I can say with certainty that it is the best finish I have achieved yet on any of my chairs. The new owner is equally pleased and was rather excited to eat his bowl of cereal while seated upon his new perch this morning.

A Tour of the Aiken-Rhett House

Live oaks draped in Spanish moss. Sprawling mansions with double porches. Centuries-old masonry cloaked in creeping fig. Criminally deficient parking. All of this awaits you in beautiful and historic Charleston, South Carolina.

My wife and I (as well as our 4-month-old son) visited this weekend to attend the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event and to take part in a tour of the Aiken-Rhett House. Unfortunately, I misread the dates on the tour arranged by Lie-Nielsen, and realized too late that the tour actually took place on Thursday, April 7, not on Saturday, April 9. Oops. After spending about an hour at the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event (which was as much as I dared inflict upon my poor wife), we decided to take the house tour by ourselves. Though I was disappointed that the tour would not be led by a prominent local furniture conservator, the independent headphone tour proved well worth 12 bucks.

You can read a more comprehensive background of the house at the Historic Charleston website, but I’ll give you the short version here: The house was built ca. 1820 by wealthy Charleston merchant John Robinson. He fell on hard times and was forced to sell the house to William Aiken, Sr., who passed the home on to his son William Aiken, Jr. The younger Aiken would go on to become one of the governor of South Carolina and one of Charleston’s wealthiest residents. After he died in 1887 and his wife in 1892, the home passed on to their daughter, who passed it on to her sons, who lived in the home until the mid-1900s. In 1975, the home was sold to the Charleston Museum.

Remarkably, the home passed through the hands of only three generations of the same family between 1833 and 1975. Very few alterations have been made to the house since the mid-1800s. The current owner -the Historic Charleston Foundation – has taken a preservation, as opposed to a restoration, approach to the home’s maintenance. As a result, the tour gives you an incredible, time-weathered feel for the original grandeur of a historically significant Greek revival mansion. I have toured many old homes, and I can say that the only time I have walked away similarly impressed was after my visit to Longwood Plantation in Natchez, MS. In short, I highly recommend the tour if you ever happen to find yourself in the vicinity of Charleston.

The pictures of the home are probably more interesting than any more of my drivel, so I’ll just post a few of my photos with a brief description.

*Side note: if you’re viewing on a device larger than a smart phone, I must offer an apology for the quality of the pictures. In an attempt to economize my time, I tried some new bulk photo compression software, and it really made a mess of my photos. I didn’t notice how bad the quality was until after I had already deleted the originals. Mea culpa. I almost hesitated to even write this post, but the pictures look fine on a smartphone, and I figure that’s how half of you will be reading it, anyway…

Front facade – the iconic two-story wraparound porch, so familiar in Charleston.

A cute, simple child’s Windsor chair in the kitchen. Notice the awesome andirons in the background also.

A peak inside the joinery of a kitchen table. Double-pegged mortise and tenons, with a cut nail driven through the top and into the leg to secure the top.

Full view of the kitchen table.

This diminutive chest has seen better days. From the slaves’ quarters.

Detail of a cupboard from the slaves’ quarters. Heart pine, ship-lapped door boards, mitered cock-beading, and a nice cornice. The furniture of the kitchen and slaves quarters would find far more widespread appreciation today than anything in the main house. Funny how time changes things.

Carriage house and courtyard

The woodwork in the carriage house. The horses enjoyed a home with finer woodwork than people today.

I love the simple, functional beauty of a wagon wheel.

Gorgeous black finish on these finely-shaped balusters.

Fine plaster work on the parlor ceiling.

The parlor still retains much of its original early 1800s furniture.

Wide frames-and-panels surrounding the windows. One of the joys of a stone building.

Ghostly grandeur

Odd little baluster profile that is quite common in Charleston. Rather than the more conventional square section at the top (to match the bottom), the top of the baluster is turned down to a ~1″ tenon, which fits into a round mortise underneath the porch rail. Certainly more economical of labor, but I’m not a big fan of the look.

I have never been a huge fan of Greek Revival furniture, but seeing this dining table and its chairs at home in the mansion for which it was purchased provided a different perspective. They look quite at home in this room.

Fantastically detailed staircase. These are the servants’ stairs, believe it or not.

Detail of the balusters and newel post. 

Gorgeous vanity with crotch mahogany-veneered drawer fronts.

The American Myth of the Continuous-Arm Chair

The now-ubiquitous Windsor chair has its roots in the simple, ancient stick-chairs of Great Britain. The Windsor chair is differentiated from other styles of chairs in that the seat plank serves the foundation for the entire the chair. The legs terminate in mortises below the seat, as do the spindles above the seat. Other historical forms of seating rely on the wood to serve merely as a frame for the seat, which could receive upholstery or woven reeds, bark, or cane.

Welsh stick chair, proto-Windsor chair.

The stick chair evolved into what we would recognize today as a “Windsor” chair in England in the early 18th century, and the form was soon exported to colonial America, where the chair grew in popularity to become the dominant form of seating. From its humble beginnings, the Windsor chair evolved into a dizzying array of different forms throughout the 18th century – all of them originating in Great Britain before making their way across the Atlantic – with innovation continuing on into the early 19th century.

Though there is a fair amount of variation in the arrangement of legs and stretchers below the seat, chairs are typically classified according to what’s going on above the seat. For a solid primer on the different styles of Windsor chairs in the 18th century, I would suggest this article by Nancy Goyne Evans, the woman who wrote the book on American Windsor chairs (literally).

Low-back

Comb-back

Sack Back

Fan-back

Bow-back

Continuous-arm

One of the last styles to be developed during the 18th century is also one of my personal favorites – the continuous-arm. According to Evans, “Regarded today as a classic in Windsor design, the continuous-bow chair was developed in New York City about 1790. The sweeping profile of the bow is based on the French bergère chair, examples of which were produced at this date by local cabinetmakers. This is the only eighteenth-century Windsor pattern based on a non-English prototype, and it is the only Windsor design dating before 1810 introduced to the American market in a place other than Philadelphia.”

Given that Evans is such a widely respected authority on Windsor chairs, this statement has apparently carried some weight in the chairmaking community, because it is frequently repeated by chairmakers today. Witness Elia Bizarri’s remarks to Roy Underhill at around minute 1:20 in this video.

In fact, some have even taken it a step farther than simply stating the design originated in America; chairmaker Bob Dillon states on his website that the chair was “uniquely American, never appearing in Europe.”

And finally, some folks are frankly just somewhere out in left field with regard to this topic. Thomas Moser is undoubtedly a legend in the cabinetmaking community, but his website’s statement regarding the continuous-arm chair is more than a little suspect: “In about 1750, Rhode Island cabinetmakers came up with the idea of making the arm and the back of the chair from a single piece of hickory or ash, two types of wood that lend themselves to being steam bent and curved. While undoubtedly beautiful and comfortable, the Continuous Arm Chair took tremendous skill and patience to make, because of the need to form a compound curve with right angle bends.”

I don’t believe there’s a shred of documentary evidence that points to a Rhode Island origin for this style, and certainly not as early as 1750. But let’s return Goyne’s statement that the continuous-arm is a uniquely American form. Observe these two chairs originating from the tiny town of Yealmpton, England:

Looks very much like a continuous-arm to me.These chairs were recently sold at auction, being described as “Iconic Pair of ‘Yealmpton’ Continuous Arm Windsor Chairs”. I must thank the pseudonymous “Jack Plane” over at the fantastic blog Pegs and Tails for bringing this obscure style to my attention. He included a picture of the chairs in a post on English Windsors back on February 24 with the following description: “The chairs in figure 10 are of an egregious style peculiar to the town of Yealmpton in Devon which – whether for reasons of relative geographical isolation… or taste – thankfully didn’t pervade the country at large.”

Personally, I find the chairs quite charming, if a bit peculiar. I would assume that Jack’s objection to the pictured chairs stems primarily from the regressive style of the turnings and the somewhat overstated radial splay of the the over-sized spindles. They look almost like the spokes of a wheel compared to the more subtle splay of conventional Windsor chairs. I certainly find no fault with the design of the continuous-arm, which almost looks as though it could be plucked from these chairs and placed onto a New York continuous-arm and hardly a soul would notice.

A quick Google search will confirm that, indeed, this style of chair is well-associated with the history of Yealmpton, which begs the question: which came first? The styles are simply too similar to have evolved independently of one another. The earliest American continuous-arms date from around 1790. In the comments on his blog, Jack states that the “Yealmpton chairs were in production prior to 1780“. If true, it means that the continuous-arm Windsor chair, rather than being the invention of some ingenious American chairmaker, is just another style imported from England, like all the rest.

(For the curious: I tried to do a bit of research on the topic myself, but frankly I’m at a loss as to where to even begin. The history of English antiques is very much a foreign topic to me. So instead I asked Jack himself – a former antiques dealer – if he knew of any primary sources supported the pre-1780 origin of the style. He said that his reference books were packed away at the moment, but that he intends to follow up on the topic himself. So keep an eye on his blog if you’re interested in a firmer conclusion to this saga.)

Even if further evidence demonstrates that the style did originate in the Old Country, that doesn’t mean that American chairmakers should feel any less pride in our chairmaking heritage. After all, unlike the rather unsophisticated, stump-legged chairs from the southern coast of England, the New York continuous-arm is an enduring icon: a refined symbol of good taste, comfort, and durability.

Yealmpton Continuous-Arm

New York Continuous-Arm

Indulging My Masochistic Tendencies with More Milk Paint

One thing about my chair that caught some attention when I posted pictures on Instagram was the stumpy nubs on the feet. To answer any questions that may have popped into your head: no, I’m not planning on leaving the stumps. I just prefer to keep those on until after assembling the undercarriage. This allows me to pop them back on the lathe to turn the tapered tenons that pierce the seat after they’ve had a chance to super-dry in the kiln.

In this case, I was very glad I didn’t cut the stumps off prematurely. Elia Bizzarri had suggested 22″ legs for the high chair. I ended making them 23″ long (plus the ~1.5″ stumps) just to make sure they’d be long enough. Well, after assembling the chair, my wife wisely suggested that we put it in front of the table with my son in it, so I would know how much to cut off. Turns out, if I had cut the stumps off as I had planned, the chair would have been uncomfortably short for him. Dodged a bullet there, but now I had to turn the stumps flush with the feet, and it was a *bit* too late to put them onto the lathe again.

So, on to Plan B:

Split off as much as I dared…

Shave the remainder flush with a drawknife and spokeshave…

And sand to smooth them out.

Now I’m left with much more normal-looking feet.

And with that, the chair was ready for a finish. If you’ll recall, I got rather frustrated using milk paint on the Tavern Table and decided to experiment with some alternatives – namely, oil paint and tinted shellac – in the future. I still plan to do just that, but since I still have a hundred bucks’ worth of milk paint laying around the shop, I figured it would be prudent to press on and try to make peace with it.

I mixed up some Barn Red from Old-Fashioned Milk Paint, using 4 tbsp of powder to 8 tbsp warm water. I let the mixture sit for an hour or so and double-filtered it with cheese cloth. It started going on just beautifully – a smooth, thin coat, more like ink than like paint. But some some reason, after about 30 minutes (it takes me 45 minutes to an hour to paint a chair, by the way) the mixture started foaming up for no apparent reason. There were no bubbles in the mixture, yet as soon as I brushed it on, it would look like this:

Just a few small bubbles in the finish – nothing to worry about…

But as I brushed the coat to smooth it and spread it, it just worked itself up into a foamy, lathery mess, like this:

Yuck. This is one of the reasons I swore off milk paint in the first place.

There was nothing I could do. I tried adding some more water to the mix, but that didn’t help. No amount of stirring made a difference. It was annoying and disappointing. Luckily, after about 5 minutes of drying, I found that I could go back over the bubbly areas with a semi-dry brush and smooth them down. The most egregious spots were in the crevices around the turnings, where the bubbles seemed to accumulate the most.

In the end, I was able to smooth the finish to an acceptable degree, and I think it will look reasonably good after burnishing with a bit of brown paper. Still more effort than I think a good finish should require. If I’m not pleased with the appearance after burnishing, I’ll give the milk paint a coat of red oxide oil paint to even it out some more. My wife is liking the red color, so we may just leave it solid red rather than proceeding with a black topcoat, as I’ve done in the past.

 

It’s pretty, but it’s still 3 A.M.

I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: Steam-bending is one of the most satisfying processes in all of woodworking. There is something uniquely rewarding about taking a green log, splitting and shaving it to reveal a stiff, straight stave, then magically transforming it into a bendy, pliable thing that conforms to a sinuous shape upon your command – all within the span of a few hours. Amazing. (I wrote about my dirt-cheap steam-bending rig here, by the way.)

The stock that I chose for this chair’s continuous arm rail was apparently very good, because I didn’t experience so much as a single lifted fiber. After a week of air-drying and a couple of days in the kiln, the arm rail was set and I was ready to finish off the spindles.

Shaving spindles is meditative work for me. I quite enjoy the predictable nature of the way the riven oak works with the spokeshave. No reversing grain, no hidden knots. Just shave the bottom and the top tenons round and to the proper dimensions, then shape a symmetrical, gently arcing swell in the middle. Shave, test fit, shave some more, re-test, until you finally get a nice, tight fit into the mortises. It’s quite easy to overdo it and get the tenons just a hair too thin, so concentration is required. Fortunately, I had two trusty shop helpers who were making sure that I maintained focus at all times.

I may have shaved a couple of spindles too thin, but I still can’t figure out why…

Soon enough, I had 13 spindles plus the two turned arm stumps fitted nicely into the seat.Once that was accomplished, it was followed by a painstaking process of measuring and drilling the arm rail, then sawing and shaving the spindles some more so that they all fit properly into the arm rail.

Spindles dry-fitted to the seat.

Spindles wedged into the continuous-arm.

Many hours later, it was finally time for glue-up. This was my first continuous-arm, but I had done enough dry-fitting to predict that it would not be a pretty process. My prediction was, predictably, correct. There were 15 holes in the arm rail, with 15 corresponding spindles that all had to be seated simultaneously, and in the proper position. Then all 15 spindles needed to be split and wedged to clench them irreversibly tight. Everything came together as planned, but I was not masochistic enough to attempt to video-tape that process.

At some point that night, a bleary-eyed wife wandered into my shop and rather gruffly informed me that it was 3 AM. I had just finished shaving the spindle tips flush at this moment, so I proudly stepped aside to display my meticulously wrought creation. “It’s pretty,” she said flatly, “but it’s still 3 AM.”

Then I remembered that I had forgotten to consult my handy graph for the appropriate hours during which to present my work to my wife:

Oh well. I snapped one last picture and turned in for the night.

 

So, If You’re Going to Be in Charleston this Weekend…

…You should probably go ahead and book tickets to the special tour of the Aiken-Rhett house, arranged by Lie-Nielsen. I’ll be there! Think of how exciting it will be to finally meet a real, live blogger! And also, there will apparently be lots of decrepit furniture and a shabby old historically significant house and whatnot (if you’re into that sort of thing).

Chris Schwarz wrote about this event back in 2014, which you can read here. The details about the event (and the Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event which runs concurrently) can be found at the Lie-Nielsen website. And you can read more about the Aiken-Rhett house at their website, here.

Aiken-Rhett House Museum Tour

Date & Time: April 7th, 2016 (2:00pm to 3:00pm)

Location: 48 Elizabeth St. Charleston, SC 29414

Cost: $12 per person

Tour Details:

We’ve arranged a special tour of the Aiken-Rhett House Museum, a landmark historic home located at the corner of Judith and Elizabeth streets in Charleston.The Aiken-Rhett House was built in 1820, and remained in the hands of family and decedents for 142 years. Its rooms retain objects and decorations original to the home and its early occupants. Visitors will tour the home and its outbuildings, and experience the history contained therein.

We will meet at the Aiken-Rhett House Museum at 1:30pm on Thursday, April 7th. The tour starts at 2pm and lasts about one hour. If you are interested in joining, please call us at 1-800-327-2520 or email us at: toolworks@lie-nielsen.com to reserve your spot. Cost of admission to the museum is $12 per person. After the tour, at 4pm, we’ll head over to the American College of the Building Arts for a presentation by local furniture conservationist Russell Buskirk, followed by dinner and beers at the Craftsman Tap House at 6:30pm.

I know it’s a long shot, but if you’re planning to attend, let me know and I’ll be on the lookout for you. Living in the Deep South affords precious few opportunities to get a closeup perspective on early American furniture, so I plan to soak in as much of the experience as I can. Hope to see you there!

 

Georgia on My Mind

Over the Easter weekend, I ventured to Colbert, Georgia to visit my family and to find the rest of the wood that I’ll need for the high chair. My parent’s homeplace is a sanctuary for the wood-lover. A mature pine and oak forest occupies most of the property, and nested within it are barns filled woodworking equipment, chainsaws, a sawmill,and a tractor with a front-end loader. Fields on both sides of the barns accommodate meticulously-stacked lumber and logs of all types that are ready to meet the same fate. Besides my home, there is probably no place else where I feel more ‘at home’.

Lovely stacks of yellow-poplar and yellow pine.

Some friendly black racers guard the stacks against rodent invasions.

I built this little cabin on the property way back in 2006, when I was still in graduate school.

My goal on this visit was finding a nice white oak log to provide bending stock for the continuous-arm rail and the spindles. My Dad certainly has no shortage of nice white oak logs. These beauties are bound for Kentucky to become whiskey barrels:

Hard to believe they can pay for logs in Georgia, ship them to Kentucky, and still make a profit. Must be good money in whiskey barrels…or at least in whiskey.

No worries, though; there was still plenty of stock to choose from. Besides, these logs had rings that were a bit tighter than I would prefer for bending stock. It is often assumed that faster-grown trees will yield weaker wood, but as I’ve said before, most often that is not the case. With ring-porous species like oak, faster growth actually yields stronger wood, which makes for better bending stock since the wood is less likely to splinter during tight bends.

The whiskey-barrel logs had fairly tight growth rings: around 1/16-1/8″.

The wood I selected grew much faster: growth rings were from 1/4″-3/8″ or more.

The downside of faster-grown stock is that the sapwood band will be much wider. My log had a sapwood band 2-1/2″ wide, compared to about a 1″ band in the whiskey-barrel logs. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the sapwood, but it begins to decay in a matter of weeks, versus years for the heartwood. Luckily, my log is very fresh and the sapwood will be fine to use.

In addition to wide growth rings, there was one more compelling reason for choosing the log that I chose. It was already split in half! My Dad is an experienced feller, but he had a slight mishap as this tree fell. A large branch on this tree caught a neighboring tree as it was falling, causing this one to twist on the hinge and splitting it for twenty feet up the trunk.

I believe there may have been an impolite word uttered when the mishap occurred, but it was good news for me. I now had an entire log to choose my stock from, and it was already split in half! The first split is always the hardest, and it gets even harder as the log gets longer. Having a pre-split log not only reduces the work, but also allows me to place my cuts more strategically, since I can already see where the major defects are. It’s almost as good as X-ray goggles!

First things first: I needed a 40″ blank for the high chair’s arm rail. A full-size continuous-arm chair needs a 60″ blank, so I decided to go ahead and cut a 5′ section so I will have the wood I need on hand when I’m ready to build a full-size chair.

My dad has always been a stickler for safety equipment, as you can see…

Having an ample number of wedges on hand made quick work of splitting out my arm rails.

I also had plenty of nieces around to help out.

Favorite quote of the day: “This doesn’t look like a chair.”

Finally, I cut some shorter bolts for spindles. I truly don’t believe I’ve ever seen a nicer-splitting white oak log. At least in the Deep South, white oak tends to be far more difficult to split than red oak, with lots of tenacious interlocking fibers on the radial faces and infuriating runout when splitting the tangential faces. No such problems with this log. A single wedge easily split this large bolt without complaint.

In less than an hour, I had enough stock split out for at least five more chairs.

I brought my stock into the forested shade and went to work with the drawknife. I do believe I had the best seat in the house.