More Hearth Benches

I've made a series of benches that have become my best sellers at the Wake Forest Farmer's market.  These are inspired by the bench that my wife's grandfather made, see my earlier post.  The first few had legs that are octagonal in cross section, shaped on the shaving horse with only the tenon turned on the lathe.  For my recent benches I've been turning the legs and being very careful with the angles for what I think is an elegant solution. I call these hearth benches because I have one in front of my fireplace.  They also make great coffee tables or just a place to sit down and put on your boots.

White oak bench with a scalloped seat.

Ambrosia maple bench with white oak legs.

Walnut bench with white oak legs and a maple dovetail key.

The tops are 2" - 3" thick, rough sawn sections of white oak, walnut, maple or cherry often with at least one "live" edge.  I cull through my lumber suppliers stash of unusual or cast off stock that can't be milled to 8/4 s4s standards.  I'm being a bit sarcastic.  As woodworkers, we pride ourselves on precision and accumulate expensive machinery to mill boards to be flat, square and regular.  Sometimes, following that process of refinement and regularity, we end up with products made of wood that eradicate all character except the rectilinear extrusion that we made it into.  I like to leave the wood for the bench top with vestiges of it's former life and be very precise about the form, rake and splay of the tapered tenon leg.

One of my early benches in use by my family, walnut  with white oak legs.

Faceted carving on the bench top ends.

Top of the tapered tenon in the bench top.

Splits and checks when encountered in otherwise suitable wood, are also left in place.  I stabilize the splits with dovetail keys recessed into the benchtop.  This detail was utilized to great effect by George Nakashima, a great Japanese American architect and furniture maker.  I encourage you to look him up and appreciate his designs which are still being made by his family.  His philosophy that trees are noble organisms and can be given a second life in furniture is one that I can appreciate.

Maple dovetail key in a walnut bench top, stabilizing a split.

Chair Devil

No, this post is not about furniture possessed by evil spirits.  It's about a rather mysterious tool.  Anyone making chairs and stools by hand accumulates a stock of tools specific to the tasks of shaping and refining chair parts.  Most woodworkers acquire tools that help them make square, flat stock to be made into rectilinear forms.  Not so with luthiers and chairmakers.  There's hardly a right angle anywhere on a chair that is made to accommodate the human form.  Rounded and curved parts are the norm.

 At left are some of the tools that I've made for myself.  The tool in the top left is a travisher, which is a specialized spoke shave for hollowing and sculpting seats.  One starts with the inshave or scorp in the top right and then refines or "fairs" the surfaces with the travisher.  The tool in the foreground is the chair devil.  I've seen manufactured travishers and inshaves but I think all the chair devils in existence are craftsman made, and that in itself contributes to the mystery of it's construction.  Chair devils are scrapers, the blade cuts by means of a burr raised on the tool steel edge with a burnisher.  You may be familiar with card scrapers or the venerable Stanley #80 cabinet scraper which is a most useful tool to tame tearout after hand planes have reached their limit.  A chair devil is a scraper for parts that are round in cross section, although I have seen examples that are simply flat scrapers held in a handle.  In the photo above you can see what it does. The stock is held in the shaving horse and when pulled like a spokeshave, this tool raises curly shavings and leaves the surface of the wood smooth and uniform.

Doesn't take long to generate a pile of shavings. This particular chair devil is made of osage orange, cocobola, brass hardware and a blade made from a card scraper.  Brass threaded inserts and counter sunk machine screws hold the blade in place. I've been known to over think the design process, but this is one time that a simple solution landed in my lap. The scraper blade needs to be at approximately 75 degrees relative to the work surface to cut wood fibers, and a chair devil can be made with a bed and throat at that angle, but the method described below is somewhat simpler.

I start with a squared piece of stock 1 1/4" square, 12" long and turn the handles on the lathe, leaving the center portion square.  Then cut the bed into the square center section the depth of the cocobola cap, about 3/8".  Note that it is important to make the bed dead flat, and the blade is recessed into the osage bed by the thickness of the blade, no more.  A throat is cut into the the cocobola cap for shavings to escape, but the throat should be narrower than the blade width, only as wide as the curved area so the blade is captured between the flat areas of the osage bed and cocobola cap.  If the blade isn't seated properly, or if there are any gaps between the cap and bed, shavings will clog the throat.  Some fine tuning will be necessary to refine the throat so that shavings feed smoothly through the opening.

At this point in the construction process the center portion is still square in cross section.  Remove the blade and with a block plane remove wood from the bottom until the desired 75 degree angle is reached, see photo below. The radius can be shaped relative to the bottom plane and then the blade can be marked and shaped.  This method eliminates the need to make a blade bed and cap at an acute angle, relying instead on square construction and forming the angle by stock removal after all the major parts are constructed.  The devil's in the details.

75 degree angle achieved by planing the bottom 

Windsor Chair Repair

I was recently entrusted with the repair of a windsor chair that has been in a family's possession for three generations. The chair is a Nichols and Stone sack back windsor made in Gardener Massachusetts.  The Nichols and Stone name goes back to the 18th century, but production really ramped up in the 1860's when they opened a furniture factory in Massachusetts.  They had a reputation for making sturdy all wood furniture and built a business that lasted into the 21st century.  It's difficult to date this particular chair but the family reports that it's over 100 years old.

The chair is made entirely of hard maple and the quality of the wood has contributed to its longevity.  Virtually every mortise and tenon joint was loose and some were totally disengaged.  Luckily, none of the tenons were damaged and all of the pieces were whole.  I suspected that the original glue was hide glue, and confirmed this once I got it into the shop.  The original finish was a stain applied to the whole chair followed by shellac.

The first rule of art conservation is to "do no harm" to the original work. The concept for the repair of furniture is similar, with the additional criteria that it must be returned to active use, to accept all the strain and abuse for which it was originally made.  This particular chair has a lovely patina acquired over it's more than a century of use. "Refinishing" the chair would strip it of its character, all the hints of it's history, the various nicks and scrapes from long past incidents, the wood burnished and blond showing through the darker layers where hands have grasped the arms and worn the surfaces. I took great pains to maintain the original finish.

Hide glue is reversible.  Modern glues are often stronger than the surrounding wood and when failure occurs, it's typically a wood failure.  Hide glue, even a hundred plus years old can be reconstituted which means that joints can be separated with steam or warm water.  Dust and loose debris was cleaned from the joints, but I didn't have to scrape back to bare wood because the new hide glue adheres to the old.  I had to disassemble the chair in order to refit the mortises and tenons.  The arm posts and back hoop are wedged tenons.  These had to be removed in order to separate the parts, and the top of the arm post has a finish nail inserted into the arm and tenon to pin it in place.   Each piece was numbered before disassembly so I could correctly put it back together. 

A new batch of hide glue was prepared, and I began the process of reassembly.  The legs and stretchers go together easily, but there were a total of fourteen spindles that had to glued and set into the arm and hoop.
This is a very comfortable chair.  Hopefully, with these repairs it will continue its service for another century.

Wooden Spoons

I've been making and using wooden spoons since I was a teenager.  My first attempts were thick, awkward serving spoons made of maple harvested from a packing crate.  Over the years my appreciation for wooden kitchen utensils has grown, and my understanding of the making process  has been informed by Scandinavian sloyd techniques.  There are many internet resources about sloyd, or handcraft traditions that are still taught in Sweden and Finland, so I won't go into that further, but it's worth a look if you are interested.

My favorite wood species for spoons is pear.  The common Bradford pear, Pyrus calleryana, is an underappreciated wood in my opinion.  These ubiquitous trees have been used extensively in landscaping and when mature often lose limbs to wind or hurricanes.  The wood is extremely dense and fine grained which makes it particularly good for carving or turning.  I suspect that the modulus of elasticity is quite high making the wood very stiff which is why even moderate wind loads can break off branches when the yield point is reached.  When this happens the trees are often cut down and mulched, usually overlooked as a source for woodworking material.  I look for these opportunities to harvest pear wood.

I start by splitting the log along it's axis and use a hatchet to debark and rough out the spoon blank.  Spoons can be made entirely with a hatchet and knife but I use my bandsaw for roughing out. I do not recommend this practice to anyone not familiar with a bandsaw.  Round stock can easily be grabbed by the blade if not braced, resulting in a broken blade or worse.   

 I then hollow out the bowl, first with gouges, then the "hook" knife and finally a scraper.  The rest of the utensil is shaped with knife and spokeshaves.  I use a shaving horse for my chair and stool work and also find this useful to hold spoons during carving.  Below are some of the tools that I use.

 

 It's an exercise in pure form to carve a spoon. I think architects and engineers should do this as an exercise in bringing an envisioned idea to reality.  Of course, function is the ultimate goal and I try to create utensils that feel good in the hand, are durable and perform their intended tasks well.  I've started carving a small flat area on the bottom of spoon bowls so that it can be set down on a flat surface without spilling contents, a handy feature to allow the cook to cool a sample for tasting.



Spoons made from green wood must be dried carefully.  The thin wood of the bowl can dry more rapidly than the thicker handle, so I slow down the process by storing partially completed spoons in paper bags.  The paper is still porous so drying occurs but at a measured pace.  It takes two to three weeks from green stock to dry them enough to continue working on the carving, scraping and sanding.  I like the interior of the bowls to be very smooth, which contrasts with the facets of toolmarks elsewhere.  My spoons are finished with a wax that I make from food grade mineral oil and beeswax.  They are intended to be used and over time develop a lovely patina.  Below are some from my own kitchen which have been in use for several years.  I stir everything from oatmeal to marina with these.  Always handwash your wooden utensils, never put them in the dishwasher.  If desired mineral oil can be reapplied periodically.  Thanks for your interest.





From the Forge

A native stubborn streak, a perennial lack of funds and an insatiable appetite for tools has led me to the craft of blacksmithing.  I'm certainly a novice at this but my skills and understanding are growing.  I've just finished a batch of knives made with O-1 tool steel, a high carbon alloy that is particularly good for edge tools.  

Shaping red hot metal at the forge and anvil is addictive.  It's a task that seems embedded in human consciousness, like a character trait handed down in DNA.  I felt that way about working in clay for the first time too, like I'd done it before and was remembering how.  However, the skill and knowledge to properly heat treat steel is not so easily come by.  Metallurgy is a fascinating field, and the molecular changes in steel at different temperatures becomes the critical variable in producing a blade that can hold an edge yet be resilient enough for hard use. 

 

 Here is a picture of the knives in their sheaths. I'm particularly drawn to Scandinavian knife models, like the Swedish sloyd or Finnish puukko knives.  Many of those are made with laminated steel, a hard sliver of tool steel forms the edge and is forge welded to a softer spine and tang.  This composite offers good edge retention of the tool steel with the shock absorption of the milder metal.  My knives are made with a similar idea, differential heat treating, where the knife is forged of one alloy, but the edge is treated to retain hardness and the spine is tempered to be softer. 

 

The smallest of these is a neck knife.  It is a partial tang blade with a pear handle.  The sheath is made with six rare earth magnets that retain the blade while hung around the neck.  This sheath can also be worn as a conventional belt knife.

 

This is a partial tang knife with a copper ferrule and a bubinga handle.

 

Lastly, a full tang knife with a bronze bolster and tang nut.  The handle is osage orange.  Thanks for your interest.

 



 

 

 

     

 

 

Rhonda's Rocker

Vintage furniture repairs offer a chance to examine joinery and building techniques up close and personal.  If a piece of furniture was originally well made, and survived hard use, chances are that the Owner has developed a real affinity for the piece and is heart broken when its accumulated issues render it unusable.  Rhonda's rocking chair was such an item.  We worked together at an Architecture firm and I had noticed the broken rocker while at a social gathering at her house.  Later, after I had left the firm and started the lunacy of career redirection, Rhonda encouraged my madness by allowing me to repair her chair.

I got it to my shop and looked it over.  It had been painted at some point in it's life.  Traces of light green paint remained in crevices.  Heavy stain and varnish had been added after the paint removal.  The binder cane weaving on the backrest was in good condition, but the seat was long gone.  Tenons on several of the stretchers had pulled out their mortises, and I found this condition on one of the curved rockers as well.

 

The main problem was a broken arm where the grain ran diagonally creating a weak spot at the tenon in the back post.  At this point I was not entirely sure what species of wood the chair was made from so I removed the broken arm and planed away the finish so I could see the wood grain.  The wood was light colored and extremely dense with a tight grain and some open pores.  I suspected hickory, and then confirmed it by comparison with some that I had in my wood stash.  Hickory is a fine chair making wood, strong and resilient, but matching the new light colored wood with the multi-layered patina of the finish was going to be a challenge.

Using the old arm as a guide, I made a new arm for the chair, taking care to keep the grain straight for the tenon into the back post.   The front post fits into a round mortise drilled into the new arm and is braced with a metal bracket.  I matched the stain and instead of wiping it off, allowed it to dry in a couple of heavy coats.  That was followed by varnish.

I then examined my options for fixing the loose stretcher tenons.  Someone had tried to repair some of these by driving nails through the front and rear posts into the tenons.  After removing all of the nails and dry fitting them back into their respective mortises I could tell that the fit was not tight enough for a good fix, no matter how much glue was applied.  Using an old trick that I read about somewhere, I used plane shavings from the construction of the hickory arm soaked in glue and wrapped around the tenons to increase their size. After glue up and clamping the chair structure was sound. 

Rhonda and I traded a few emails about the seat.  After some discussion we settled on a new woven shaker tape seat.  This is a 5/8" cotton tape woven with an internal cushion. 

 

The finished chair, hopefully with some life left in it.  Thanks for your interest.

 

 

 

Post and Rung Chairs Part 2

Post and Rung, or "ladderback" chairs are a familiar form, bringing to mind the elegant minimalism of the Shakers or seating at a rustic farmhouse table.  The history of post and rung chair making extends back to at least the 17th century in European examples, and the technology was brought to the New World, where it was widely used for home built seating because of it's simplicity and the longevity of it's joinery under heavy use.  This type of seating was particularly widespread in the  Appalachian and Ozark Mountain regions of the United States where English, Scotch and Irish immigrants settled.  In a previous blog post, Post and Rung Chairs Part 1, there are photographs of some examples from my own family which have endured long past their original owners.  Commercial examples of these chairs have largely ignored the principles that can contribute to an heirloom quality piece of furniture.  Most modern industrial furniture production relies on screws, braces and dowel joints in their fabrication and totally ignore wood grain direction.  I have long been fascinated with the longevity of these chairs. What follows are examples of my work in researching and fabricating post and rung chairs.

  



True post and rung technology makes the most of the natural properties of wood and starts with green wood which is split along the grain and shaped with these fibers aligned for maximum strength.  Care is taken to align the annual rings of the elements so that wood movement occurs as it did when the tree was a living thing.  Most of the round mortise and tenon joints overlap.  Additionally, differential moisture content of "bone dry" tenons inserted into ambient moisture mortises equalize and swell creating a locking joint.  All my chairs to date have been made of locally harvested white oak assembled with hide glue.

 

 

 

Everything from corn shucks, manilla rope, shaker tape, rawhide or hickory bast has been used to weave seats into ladder back chairs.  I've been using industrial hemp twine, typically used in upholstery to tie springs into place.  It's a strong natural fiber that develops a velvety texture over time.  

 

 

Many older chairs are not at all comfortable and seem purpose built to effect an upright posture.  Some elements of my chairs are steam bent to follow the curvature of the human form.

 

 

I am of course, still learning but the resulting chairs are light and resilient.  Thanks for your interest.