Designing My Workshop, Part 2: Other People’s Workshops

In Part 1, I shared a brief description and some lessons learned from each of my past workshops. Today, we’ll explore a few of the exceptional workshops of fellow woodworkers that inspired and informed my own design. (Be sure to click the links for a more in-depth look than I offer here). One thing you might notice if you’re familiar with these folks: They’re all Windsor chairmakers. Though it wasn’t a conscious decision to focus on the shops of Windsor chairmakers, it will come as no surprise if you’ve followed my interests on this blog. These guys use the tools that I like to use, and they work in ways in which I like to work. They designed their shops to be efficient with hand tools (and they know a thing or two about aesthetics to boot).

Greg Pennington’s workshop:

Dimensions: 18′ x 36′ (648 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus a loft and porch)

Construction: Timber frame, asphalt shingle roof, clapboard siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: Okay, let’s be honest. Greg’s shop is freaking gorgeous. Exposed post and beam construction, endless expanses of wood from floor to ceiling, windows on every wall. If I had unlimited time, this is the kind of shop that I would prefer to build. It’s a big, it’s inviting, and it’s finished out to a tremendous degree.

But… Greg uses the space to teach chairmaking workshops for several students at a time. It’s quite a bit more space than I can justify for the work that I do and the equipment that I use. And though the idea of a timber frame is appealing, I lack the tools and experience required to do an efficient job of timber framing. I’m completely on board with the wooden paneling and big windows, though.

Curtis Buchanan’s workshop:

Dimensions: 16′ x 20′ (320 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus a loft and porch)

Construction: Timber frame, metal roof, board-and-batten siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: At less than half the size of Greg’s shop, this workshop is an appropriate size for a single woodworker – after all, it’s been the birthplace of Curtis’ phenomenal chairs for more than 20 years. It features wood floors and paneling and windows throughout. I especially like the well-used porch that wraps around two sides. A porch is the natural place to use a shavehorse, and it provides a lot of extra workspace for minimal effort. The unpainted exterior is attractive, unpretentious, and it saves time and money.

But… Curtis’ only power tools are a lathe and a bandsaw. I will be looking to house a few more electron hogs than he does, so a bit more space might be handy.

Elia Bizzarri’s workshop:

Dimensions: 18′ x 28′ (504 sq.ft. on the ground floor, plus upstairs)

Construction: Stick frame, metal roof, clapboard siding, wooden floors and wall paneling.

What I Like About It: Killer paint scheme. I would totally copy it, if it didn’t utterly clash with my green-and-tan house paint. Besides that, I love the big double doors for moving equipment in and out with ease and the triplet of north-facing windows above a massive workbench. Like the other two shops, the wall paneling and flooring is wood, and it has a loft for storage. The size is just about perfect. An under-appreciated design element that I really like is the generous roof overhang. In the balmy Deep South, where wood rots if you sneeze on it, adequate protection from the weather is critical if you intend to use wood siding.

But… I really want a porch on my shop. Besides that, this approaches my Platonic ideal.

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So there you have it. Those are the three workshops that were agitating my gray matter as I sat down to make plans for my workshop. From these shops, and from my own experiences, I made a list of, let’s call them “first principles” for my workshop design. I’ll cover them in the next installment.

Designing My Workshop, Part 1

So, your new home is near-perfect, but devoid of a workshop. What’s a woodworker to do? If you’re like me, you are probably already skilled at gravely underestimating the time and scope required of even the most mundane projects. Naturally, you’ll convince yourself that building your own workshop will take less than a year of your free time, most of which has been long-affianced to raising three children, a dog, and ten chickens, maintaining a home, a large garden, and a small forest, and the occasional leisurely outing to appease your patient wife. Naturally.

All kidding aside, I have a number of good reasons for choosing to build my own workshop. 1) It’s cheaper.

Okay, one. I have one good reason to build my own workshop. But I have budgetary constraints and a high tolerance for self-inflicted stress. My dad lives ten miles away. He has a fully hydraulic Wood-Mizer sawmill and a surplus of logs. So lumber is pretty close to free. My labor is free as well (Note: If my boss is reading, don’t get any ideas). Aside from the lumber and labor, the major expenses in a workshop are sheathing, roofing, nails, screws, wiring, and insulation. Back-of-the-napkin math suggests that I can build my shop for at least 80% less than than I could pay someone to build it.

So I’m building my own workshop. Now the hard part is settling on a design. Blank slate. Endless possibilities. Where to begin? In the words of George Santayana, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” I have worked from multitudinous shops in the past. They all have something to teach:

2005-2007: 30′ x 30′ insulated metal building. Shared with my dad and younger brother, along with their mechanic tools, welding equipment, etc. Ample room in theory, but in practice, the shop was a cluttered mess due to and abundance of users and equipment and a lack of storage. Honestly, a great deal of the cluttered mess was attributable to yours truly – but over the years, I’ve found that a shop space that is too large is simply an invitation for clutter, because it always seems as though yesterday’s mess can be moved aside…until it can’t. And then you’ve got your work cut out for you just to get organized again.

2008-2010: 10′ x 20′ plywood shed. It was rotting from the ground up when I bought it, so I jacked it up, layed an extra layer of cement block, and re-built the floor. I wired it, insulated it, and paneled it with 1×12 pine. I spent far more time working on the shop than working in the shop. Even so, I quickly learned that 10′ is too dang narrow for a workshop. This was not the smallest shop that I’ve worked in, but due to the awkward dimensions, it was the least user-friendly (even after all of the cosmetic and structural improvements).

2010-2011: 20′ x 20′ cinderblock garage with dirt floor. No windows, bare lightbulbs, and sparse outlets. In spite of the austere surroundings, I build some rather nice stuff in this shop, including my first ladderback chairs. However, nothing short of starvation could convince me to work in a windowless, dirt-floor shop again. Aesthetics aren’t everything, but they are something.

2011-2014: 24′ x 40′ garage. 9′ ceilings, ample windows. The back of the shop was partitioned into two smaller rooms, one of which I kept for storage, the other I maintained as my hand tool shop. This could have been an ideal workspace, except for the inconvenient fact there was no door on the front of the shop. And money was too tight to actually add a garage door. I made peace with the constant maintenance required to keep the rust gremlins at bay, and I did some of my proudest work in that shop.

2014-2015: No workshop for nine months. I sold my tablesaw, planer, and drill press put the bandsaw and lathe in storage.

2015-2016: 12′ x 16′ plywood shack, slowly being devoured by an adjacent sand dune. Only enough room for a workbench and a lathe. Despite the crowded quarters and minimal equipment, I re-discovered the joy of woodworking in this shop. With no fancy equipment that I could rely on as a substitute for actual ability, I focused on projects that were suited to hand tool woodworking, and my skills improved markedly. I found it necessary to maintain an exceptionally neat workspace, and to work on only one project at a time, because there was simply no room for clutter.

2017: No workshop again. My tools are stored in the basement, waiting to be awakened in their new home. The drafting table awaits.

Because I am also a nerd in addition to being a woodworker, I decided to plot out my shop size over the past dozen years. Of note is the fact that the quality of my work has steadily increased even as the size of my shop has varied wildly during that time. The lesson here is that the size of my shop might have an effect on the efficiency and enjoyability of my woodworking experience, but not the quality. Honestly, this should come as no surprise to anyone who has actually put steel to wood.

In the next few posts, I’ll highlight a few workshops that I haven’t worked in, but that served as inspirational/aspirational starting points for my design; cover the basic principles that guided my design; and finally, I’ll finish up with the blueprints that evolved from those principles.

Stop Being So Clingy.

This is may be a mundane blog topic, but I hope some find it useful as well. On the rare occasions when I’ve used full-size patterns to cut out my furniture parts, I’ve typically relied on good ol’ spray adhesive to stick the patterns to the wood. It works, but it also sucks, for many reasons:

1. You only get one chance to orient the pattern properly. Don’t you dare try to slide it around or remove a wrinkle after it’s stuck.
2. It’s expensive.
3. Removing the pattern is a messy process that usually involves soaking the paper with mineral spirits and waiting a few minutes to peel it off. Then you have the pleasure of wiping off the adhesive gunk.
4. Do we really need another disposable aerosol canister in our lives? No, we do not.

Fortunately, there is a better way, and it’s already in your kitchen cabinet:

That’s right, all-purpose flour. Dump a handful into a bowl, mix it with water until you have a soupy consistency (it should be thinner than white glue), and brush a generous quantity onto the pattern with a paint brush.

Apply the pattern to the wood, remove any wrinkles, and re-position it if need be. It’s very forgiving, and you have a few minutes to work with it. I found that applying a coat of water to the pattern after it’s in place helps it adhere completely. Now just wait a half hour until the pattern is completely dry, and it’s ready to cut. To remove the pattern, brush it with water and it comes off easily after a minute or two, and the flour paste wipes off with a wet cloth.

Cheap, simple, effective, non-toxic, and you already have the materials in your home. Seriously, what’s not to love?

One final tip: I bought a huge roll of kraft paper from the hardware store a few years ago. I use it for everything: the kids color on it, it makes a snazzy heavy-duty gift wrapping, you can roll out a layer as a drop cloth for painting, and it of course it is excellent for making full-size furniture drawings and patterns. And I still have another five years to go before it’s all used up.

Inspiration Doesn’t Strike…

You have to work for it.

At least, that’s my experience. Maybe that means I’m not very creative. Actually, I’m quite certain that I’m not very creative. I am analytical to a fault, and indeed, many of my blog series (The Name of the Grain and Woody Wednesday, for example) as well as my job title (Forest Resource Analyst) reflect that. Perhaps that’s why I naturally gravitate towards historical furniture forms. There is something comforting about building furniture in a tradition that incorporates the evidence of a thousand years of failures and successes. Why re-invent the wheel when it’s already been refined by countless generations of craftsmen more competent in their trade than I can ever dream of being?

More often than not, when I find myself departing from tradition, it’s to accommodate a special piece of wood that simply doesn’t fit into the classical canon of furniture forms. Such is the case with my current project. My dad asked me to build an end table. He already had the wood picked out for the top – a slab of white oak 15″ wide, 40″ long and 1-5/8″ thick. It’s a lovely piece of wood, cut from a crotch with plenty of flame figure – but it also has plenty of defect.

The wood was cut in a manner that is opposite from the way that a crotch would normally be sawed. Woods like walnut, cherry, and birch normally display the best figure when the crotch is sawed, as my old friend Tom would say, “like a pair of britches lying flat on the floor” – with each fork representing a leg. Oak, on the other hand, usually presents the best figure when the wood is sawed perpendicular to the customary orientation.

Typical method for sawing oak crotch. Note that this is the opposite from the usual method.

The problem with this method is that it includes the pith in every flitch. Anyone who has ever sawed their own hardwood lumber is well aware of the problems with the pith. The juvenile wood immediately adjacent to the pith often has a life of its own, bending and twisting as it dries. And the nature of wood shrinkage means that the odds are good that you’ll have cracks in any board that includes the pith. My dad’s slab was no exception.

The slab of wood at issue.

Fortunately, the slab was large enough to salvage a sizable chuck of wood while completely discarding the pith. The result was an elliptical tabletop, 13″ wide and 24″ long.

Keep the best, chuck the rest.

The problem, at this point, was that I had very little historical precedent to work with for designing the base. Oval end tables – especially tables that utilize a piece this thick – are scarce. Now, this isn’t the first time I have found myself in “modern furniture” territory. I detailed my design process for my tripod kitchen table in the early annals of this blog. Basically, it involved typing some descriptive keywords into a Google image search, plucking out a few designs that I really liked, and modifying them to suit my preferences. In this case, however, Google was of no help, and I found myself starting from an empty slate.

So, I did the only thing a non-creative person can do in this situation: I sharpened my pencil and got to work. I started sketching stream-of-consciousness until I stumbled upon an idea worth pursuing. I’ll warn you, the process (or maybe just my sketching ability) isn’t pretty:

Most of the sketches belong exactly where they are: on the cutting room floor. But I thought that the sketch at the bottom right of the first page had potential, so I explored it further on a second page, playing around with the dimensions of the members as well as the horizontal and vertical proportions of the whole structure. I really liked the way the curves flowed through the joinery and the arch at the bottom reflected the ellipse of the top. I decided this design was the winner.

I’m too lazy for prototyping, but a full-size drawing is time well spent.

It was time to make full-size drawings – a step that I rarely take, but I felt that it was necessary to get a realistic idea of the proportions. My first iteration, with 3″-wide members, was a bit to heavy, so I revised the drawing to 2″ members. That looked right to my eye, and I was satisfied enough with this drawing to begin the painstaking process of animating the idea in ligneous flesh.

But as always, the ultimate question is not “Does it look good on paper?”

In Defense of “Quick and Dirty”

If you follow this blog, then chances are good that you follow Chris Schwarz’s remarkably prolific blog as well. If not, then perhaps this post deserves a bit of background. For the last couple of years, Chris has been deep down in the rabbit hole of “staked” furniture. I’ve followed it with curious interest, but along with his foray into campaign furniture, it’s not exactly my style, so I haven’t really been tempted to play along. “Staked” is a term used in early estate inventories used to describe furniture that consists of a wide slab top, with simple legs mortised through the top. The joints can rely on a cylindrical or cone-shaped tenon, but either way, it’s basically the same joint that affixes the legs to the seat on a Windsor chair.

The joint was prolific in Europe for hundreds of years, being used in everything from stools and benches to tables and chairs. As joinery became more complex and tastes in furniture more discerning, its use fell out of favor for all but cruder furniture and a few other specialized contexts.

Windsor chairs avoid the crude look engendered by staked joinery by virtue of elegant turned legs and a comfortably shaped seat. A flat-topped table has more trouble shaking of the humble look of the joinery. Yet the technique does have one distinct advantage: it’s fast.

My wife wanted me to build a play table for my two-year-old son. She wanted it soon. “I don’t care if you nail it together, I just want it done.” She had been asking for weeks, so her impatience was justified. However, I tend to put things off until I can find the time to build a true object of beauty. She quickly objected that children’s play table needn’t be a thing of beauty. Counterproductive, really. A play table is something that should be used and abused without fear of rebuke. Paint, crayons, markers, Play-Doh, glitter-glue. These humble playthings are instruments of doom to a fine piece of furniture.

A staked table was just the answer. So, two nights ago, I walked into my shop at 8:30 PM after the rest of my household was asleep. At 10:45 PM I walked out with a finished table in my arms – hand tools only, except the lathe. The tavern table that has been featured in my last two posts required 40 hours of shop time to build (you’ll get to see the finished object soon, I promise). The play table is about the same size, and I knocked this sucker out in 2 hours, 15 minutes. Now I know why this style hung around for a few hundred (thousand?) years. Economy of labor is a beautiful thing.

Here it is, in all of it’s humble glory. 23.5″ tall, 17″ wide, and maybe 30″ long? I didn’t measure, I just cut.

The battens are nailed to the underside with cut nails, and the legs are bored straight through both batten and top. Three legs are beech, and the fourth is poplar (as is the rest of the table) The tenons are conical, so I used my tapered reamer to shape the mortises.

Tables like this have cross-grain issues with the battens cross-grain to the top. Usually they develop cracks after a number of years. I preempted the issue by using a cracked board. The tenons are glued and wedged in place.

I made no attempt to remove the gouge marks from the lathe. I could have used the skew to get a smoother surface, but what would be the point?

 

Despite not measuring a damn thing on this table (except the height), the angle of the legs turned out pretty close. I really don’t think I could have done better if I was measuring instead of eyeballing.

 

And the best part about a quick and dirty table? I was happy to let my 4-year-old daughter help me with the paint job. And she was excited to help.

How long will this table last? 10 years? 25? 100? I have no idea, but I have no doubt that it will serve its purpose for as long as we need it.

The Best Spoon I’ve Ever Seen.

I’ve mentioned a time or two the greenwoodworking group on Facebook. It took a few days to get adjusted to the barrage of spoons and other woodcrafts on my newsfeed, but my brain quickly started making connections between certain craftspeople and the work that they produced. One name that kept popping up repeatedly alongside gorgeously sculpted eating spoons was Derek Sanderson. I soon found myself looking at my own spoons, and I realized that they seemed quite dull and lifeless in comparison to his.

No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get the same movement in the side profile that Derek has so clearly perfected. One can only learn so much from a picture, so I decided to order one of his spoons to see where the magic was. It arrived a couple of weeks later, and I was not disappointed. This little cherry spoon is a miniature sculpture, every little detail well-conceived and well-executed. It is, without question, The Best Spoon I’ve Ever Seen.

Let me lay out my argument. First, consider the top profile – very fluid and shapely, though it’s also the easiest part to get right. What’s not as easy to get right is the depth and shape of the bowl, but he nails this as well. It’s quite shallow but very comfortable, like a lollipop. I like how the heartwood/sapwood contrast splits the spoon in half – a very nicely chosen material.

The side profile is really what makes this spoon stand out. It is so active and organic – almost as if the neck is under tension. The lower curve nicely mimics the upper curve, though less dramatically. And look how cleanly the neck was shaved – since the grain reverses direction here, this is the toughest part of a spoon to cut cleanly. There isn’t a single raised fiber here, and this is completely knife-cut. No scraping or sanding.

The curve of the back is lovely and lightly faceted. The curve of the handle mimics the curve of the bowl, which makes it very comfortable to hold. It also makes the opposite ends of the spoon seem cohesive. I’m not sure how to say what I’m thinking, other than both ends “match” one another – they are variations on one shape. I’ve always used strong facets and straight lines on the back of my handles, but I realize now that it is just not as comfortable. I’m going to start trying some curved backs now.

There is even a little bit of flourish at the tip of the spoon – a bit of chip-carving just adds some individuality. Also notice the very subtle chamfers on the sides. Those flow uninterrupted around the whole spoon.

One final parting shot: compare Derek’s spoon, at top, to one of my spoons, below. I was very happy with my spoon until I looked at it alongside a superior example!

If I had but one criticism about this spoon, I would say that the bowl is just a tad wide. It’s fine for me, but I have a big mouth. I doubt the spoon would be as comfortable for my wife. That hasn’t been a problem, because I’m greedy and I’ve been keeping the spoon at my office to eat my oatmeal every morning. My family is stuck with my good-but-just-not-as-good eating spoons, I’m afraid.

I’m not connected with Derek in any way, other than as a satisfied customer. If you’d like to own one of these, you’ll have to get in touch with him on Facebook or on Instagram – I don’t believe he has a website (at least not that I could find).

 

Kitchen Table: Nearly Finished.

Last night I resolved to get the kitchen table out of my shop as soon as possible. I forget how unwieldy a 4′ x 4′ panel can be in a small shop like mine. Glad I don’t work with plywood in there. The last of the glue joints still needed to be leveled, and there isn’t a single surface anywhere in my shop (or home, for that matter) large enough to support a panel this size aside from the floor. So the floor is where I ended up – on my hands and knees with a jack plane and my smoother. It reminded me of the first furniture project I ever tackled – a cherry and maple coffee table. I sanded the fool out of that tabletop for hours on the floor of the side porch at my parents’ house. My knees regretted it for a week, so the second piece of furniture I built was my workbench (which now resides in my Dad’s shop).

Working on the floor. Just like old times.

This time it wasn’t so bad, though. It only took 5 minutes of work and the planing was done. If you’ve never used a well-tuned plane, it’s hard to imagine how much more efficient it is at leveling glue joints than a sander.

Next task was to lay out the circle. I didn’t have a paint can big enough so I grabbed an offcut from the scrap pile and rigged up a trammel with a nail, a pencil, and a small wedge. It took two minutes and worked perfectly, so I still feel no need to own a proper trammel.

Not every tool has to be built to last.

I cut out the circle with my jigsaw. Hope you didn’t think I was a complete Neanderthal. I have nothing against power tools – most of them have their proper place. I only get annoyed when I see power tools being inefficiently or as a substitute for basic skills. I do prefer to use hand tools when possible – they’re quieter and less dusty and they require actual exercise – so when a process can be done equally well with hand tools, that will always be my first choice. In this case, a jigsaw is the right tool for the job.

Notice the offcut is supported only by the 1/4″ glue joint at the top of the photo. That’s a good glue joint. Just sayin’.

I smoothed the edges with a spokeshave and some 180-grit sandpaper and propped it up on the legs to see how she looked. Not bad!

One of the shortcomings of the design for the base is that, unlike vertical legs, these legs will always be under tensile stress. Wood is far stronger under compression than tension. To help alleviate some of the stress, I decided it would be wise to affix the legs to the underside of the top to prevent them from bending.

I did this by boring a 1/2″ hole in the top of each leg and 3 matching holes in the underside of the top. I turned some 1/2″ dowel from Osage-orange and popped a short length into each leg. Now the base is fixed when the top is in place and can’t just keep squatting towards the floor as weight is applied.

All that’s left to do now is screw a couple of battens to the underside to hold the top flat, and put a finish on it. This grain is going to pop when I put the first coat of oil on – I can’t wait!

We Interrupt Our Regularly Scheduled Poetic Waxing…

…to bring you a quick update on a project from the honey-do list.

My wife knows that I’m chomping at the bit to get started on Windsor chair, but she had a few requests before I get started. Numero Uno was to build a replacement for our kitchen table.

We like our kitchen table. It’s a big, beefy trestle table made from thick white pine. My grandmother bought it new in the 1960’s. It was well-built, but when I inherited it, the dark finish was gummy and depressing. I was too busy renovating a house to worry with fixing it. When my wife and I were married, one of her first requests (demands?) was to re-finish the table. We sanded it down to bare wood, painted the base with barn red milk paint, and oiled the top with linseed oil. We’ve shared many meals around this table over the last 5 years.

But, we now live in a small ranch house with a small kitchen, and the trestle table is 3′ wide and 6′ long. It’s just too big. A round table was requested, which should fit the space much better.

A table is a simple object. It can be built as quickly as you like, or you can dress it up with as much fancy joinery, carvings, or veneer as your imagination allows and it can take a year. For this project, my aim was workmanlike efficiency, but with a tolerable aesthetic appeal.

I began with a search of Google images, using a number of keywords. “Round Dining Table”. “Round Shaker Pedestal Table”. “Round Modern Dining Table”. “Round Tripod Dining Table”. “Round Modern Tripod Table”. Something like that, you get the idea. Each iteration was inspired by something that caught my eye in the previous search. I quickly latched on to one theme: a modern approach to a tripod base with the legs intersecting along X, Y, & Z axes.

This was the first table that really caught my eye. The interlocking “puzzle-joint” makes a minimalist, but visually interesting, joint. It’s just three intersecting planks, but the mind immediately wonders how it was made.

I liked this one as well. The maker chose a more interesting wood (looks like zebrawood to me) with a strong, straight grain pattern that echos the simplicity of the design. The glass top is appropriate for the alluring base, but I would like the table more if the legs actually intersected, instead of just criss-crossing alongside one another.

Finally, I found another glass-topped table, but this time with a base that includes some interesting joinery.

The execution is a bit loose, but I like how each beam seems to be embracing another. The wood appears to be beech.

I love geometric puzzles, and the final photo had me imagining how the joint fit together. A few minutes in Sketchup confirmed my suspicion that the basic joint was just a simple half-lap. I quickly settled on this design for the base of my table. Even though I don’t find it as visually striking as the first joint, I like the elegant simplicity  of its engineering. Unlike the first joint, this one can be assembled from whole timbers, rather than cutting and gluing up at least one leg (but if anyone thinks they can demonstrate a way to create the first table’s base using whole timbers, well, good luck…)

One thing that became apparent from my work in Sketchup was that the height of the table directly impacts the diameter of the top. If you want your tabletop at 29″ high (a usual height for a dining table), then you’re going to have trouble making it  much less than 48″ in diameter (and even this requires truncating the legs, such that they have squared-off ends, rather than ends that follow the plane of the floor and tabletop. Hopefully the Sketchup drawings make it clear what I mean by this).

So, I’ve settled on 48″ for the diameter of the table, but if I find that this is still too big for the space, then I can probably shave another inch off the radius without too much trouble. A bit of work in Sketchup yielded this model:

With a simple, 44″ half-lapped 3×3 as the basic component:

I can’t say that this is the prettiest or the most exciting thing I’ve ever built, but it meets the criteria that I had in mind when I originally set out to build this table: It’s visually interesting, expedient to build, and I already have the necessary materials on hand.

Tool Procurement: It’s Going to Cost Me How Much to Build a Windsor Chair!?

As I’ve mentioned previously on this series about my relationship with Windsor chairs (Part I & Part II), I didn’t immediately like them, but I did slowly begin to foster a sincere, but hesitant respect for them. I believe it was Peter Galbert’s magnificent blog that finally pushed me over the edge, head over heels in love. His clear and inspiring writing style sucked me in, and after seeing picture after picture of the wonderful little details that he adds to the chairs – the faceted surfaces from the drawknife and spokeshave, the thoughtful steam-bent curves that add comfort to the back and elegance to the undercarriage, as well as the painstaking finishing work – well, suffice it to say that after following his blog for a year, there was no longer any mistaking Peter’s works of art from the creaky kitchen chairs of my youth.

Not a factory-made piece of rubbish. Credit: Peter Galbert

Moreover, Peter’s blog introduced me to Curtis Buchanan’s work, whose superlative derivation of more traditional Windsors simply blew me away. Seriously, if you can’t see the brilliance of his comb back arm chair, then you’re probably at the wrong blog. (Or maybe you just need to study up on design some more. You can start here.)

Also not rubbish. Credit: Curtis Buchanan

So, what’s the point of all this drivel and gushing? Well, I’m a woodworker. I finally love Windsor chairs. Now, of course, I want to build one. I’ve been buying tools for over a decade, surely I have everything I need. After all, I’ve already built four ladderback chairs with the tools I already own, so I’m ready to hit the ground running, right?

Well, actually, just for shaping the seat, you’re going to need a curved adze, an inshave, and a travisher. Oh, and don’t forget the tapered reamer for the leg holes. And a rounder plane to shape the legs to match the reamed holes. Also, didn’t you re-grind your skew chisel into a scraper about 8 years ago, because you always sucked at it? You’re going to need one of those, too, and you’re going to have to man up and learn how to use it. And that rickety shavehorse you built 9 years ago? That thing was fine for an occasional axe handle, but it’s going to frustrate you to no end when you start working on a dozen oak spindles or a 5′ rail for a balloon-back.

Fine, dammit. How much is all of this going to set me back?

I thought you’d never ask. Kestrel Tools makes a great adze. You want the “Sitka Gutter Adze” at $190. Barr Tools makes an inshave that’s just right for Windsor chairs: $140. Claire Minihan makes the best travishers around for $245. You can’t beat Tim Manney’s 6 degree tapered reamer: $110. Elia Bizzarri makes the rounder plane to match it for $65. A Henry Taylor 3/4″ skew chisel will set you back $51. Don’t forget about shipping for all of that. But, don’t worry about the shave horse, you can make that yourself!

Um…That’s almost $1000. Can’t I just buy a handmade Windsor chair for that much?

Sure you can! But then you won’t get the pleasure of forsaking your long-suffering wife while you piddle in the shop for weeks on end. After all, you’ll probably be sleeping in the shop for a few weeks after draining your checking account for a bunch of tools.

Geez, dude. That hardly seems like a reasonable argument. Surely there’s another way, right? Right?

Ok, the sarcasm has gotten thick in here, so let’s step out of the fog and be serious for a moment. All of the toolmakers listed above are, by all accounts, at the top of their game. I sincerely wish that I could afford to support each of them. But, being the sole source of income in a family four – soon to be five – means that I have to make compromises when it comes to spending money, and that unfortunately includes tool purchases. The point of this post was to highlight just how different the Windsor chairmaker’s tool kit is from a joiner’s toolkit. I’m used to having to buy one or possibly two new tools for an ambitious project (or better yet, asking for them for Christmas!) But buying six new tools? That’s a bit harder to swallow. In my next post, I hope to discuss what I’m doing to bring the starting costs down to something a bit more manageable.

My Dysfunctional Relationship with the Windsor Chair, Part II

Part I

It was September 2005. I had just earned my Bachelor’s Degree in forestry from the University of Georgia a few months earlier, and I was jumping right in to my graduate classes. I don’t remember much from that semester, honestly, but one class that stuck with me was my Advanced Wood Properties and Identification class. It was one of the best classes I ever took, and it was taught by my major professor.

On the first day, the professor gave a fascinating lecture on the history of pernambuco wood, or pau do brasil (Caesalpinia echinata). The tree is native to Brazil, and once flourished along the coast in great abundance. Portuguese navigators realized soon after visiting the that the tree’s heartwood could be extracted to retrieve a highly prized red dye, and the race was on. Trees were harvested and logs exported to Europe by the millions. Excessive exploitation resulted in a precipitous decline of the valuable trees by the 18th century, but not before luthiers realized that the dense wood was ideal for making bows for stringed instruments.

A serendipitous combination of density and stiffness, plus the proper cocktail of natural extractives (the chemicals in wood that give heartwood their color, odor, and rot-resistance) make the wood unrivaled in its suitability for violins bows. Though the tree is now listed internationally as an endangered species, pernambuco bows still command a hefty premium to bows of lesser quality woods. The wood can only be harvested from trees that die naturally, which amplifies its scarcity and preciousness.

The lecture struck a chord in my mind – specifically, the idea of selecting a species of wood that is most perfectly suited to the task for which it’s used suddenly seemed quite shrewd and elegant. In the woodworking that I did at that time (mostly bowl-turning, and the occasional dovetailed box), there was really not much need to consider the properties of wood, aside from its appearance. I selected bowl blanks for their attractive coloration and grain patterns. It didn’t matter if the wood was light and soft (like boxelder) or hard and dense (like cocobolo). As long as it was pretty, I would turn it into a bowl. No big deal.

The lecture created, in my mind, fertile ground for a more thorough appreciation of the dignified simplicity of the Windsor chair. I believe I learned from Curtis Buchanan the rationale behind the diparate collection of woods found in the traditional American Windsor:

• Sugar maple for the legs and turnings: Strong and dense, sugar maple can be turned to delicate proportions, yet still maintain the rigidity needed to support a sitter daily for a couple of centuries. Unlike similarly strong woods, it has small pores, which means that turnings can hold crisp details without chipping. Plus, it splits well, so getting straight-grained, riven wood, with simple tools, is easy.

  

  The delicate details of a hard maple leg. Credit: Elia Bizzarri

• White pine or poplar from the seats: Sure, we could use elm like the masochistic Brits, but American chairmakers chose a soft, easily carved wood to make their shapely, comfortable seats. The wood has just enough give to lock the harder woods of the legs and spindles into place.

  

  A shapely shield seat in white pine. Credit: Curtis Buchanan

• Oak, hickory, or ash for the rails and spindles: These ring-porous hardwoods split easily – perfect for creating long, impeccably straight-grained sections for the upper pieces of the chair. Splitting, rather than sawing, preserves the stregth of the wood, and makes for successful steam-bending, which allows the wood to be shaped to better match the countours of the sitter’s body. Additionally, all of these woods are strong enough to be whittled thinly, allowing the parts to flex for comfort, yet still retaining sufficient strength.

  

  Graceful spindles and crest rail in oak. Credit: CartersWhittling

  Equipped with this new understanding, I began to see Windsor chairs in a different light: no, the wood wasn’t selected for the boldness of its color, nor the flashiness of its grain. Each wood was carefully selected to create a strong, light, and architecturally refined structure, that also happens to be comfortable as hell to sit in!