Studley I ain't

Yep, I was one of the lucky ones who got to get up close and personal with the toolchest of H.O. Studley in Iowa a couple of weeks ago.

Yes, it verges on woodworker porn, but as a composition and tribute to a lifes work, it is spectacular. Of course you can get the new book "Virtuoso" from my friends at Lost Art Press if you want more.

Here is my current version.

Not quite the tribute that I'd want to be remembered by! I'm in the process of moving my shop to my new home in Roslindale which is just on the southern end of Boston proper. I've been weeding out possessions and categorizing them by which are most used and which can be stored.

I just returned from a month on the road where I taught a class at Caleb James' shop and also in Rio Grande, Ohio. Both classes went swimmingly. I especially loved getting to watch Caleb at work making planes. Below is a detail of the seat that I carved during class at Calebs.

Here is an especially cool shavehorse that a student brought into class in Ohio.

The horses that I brought (built from the plans in the book) performed great and stacked nicely for transportation, but I must admit that they can't hold a candle to their ancestor in the beauty department.

Here is a shot of the finished seat. I have always wanted to carve a seat like this. I made the mistake of leaving the top dry fit when I went to humid Ohio and the parts locked tight. I figured that I could wait til winter and try to get it apart, but instead I just wedged it and painted it.

New Year, Old Project

It's been so quiet here at Chairnotes that you can hear the snowfalling. But it's not that I'm not writing, it's what I'm writing. I am in a push to get the drawings for my book done and am happy to say that I'm making good progress. As to the actual release date, it can't be pinned down just yet, but I will hopefully be handing everything to the book designer, and Chris Schwarz for the next phase. I thought that I'd share a couple of images to give a little preview of what I'm compiling.

 There are literally hundreds of illustrations and it's taken me a while to establish a style that is clear and fast to create.

I like communicating by drawing (as any former student will tell) because you can go straight to the concept without any confusion and you can show views and relationships that would be tough to show any other way.

Fine Seats

 It's as busy as ever around here. I had two students in this week kicking off a bunch of fall classes that I have scheduled. Rick from Philly and Dave from Olympia made some really lovely chairs. I like the two person format, it's intimate enough that there is no lacking for attention and having multiple projects in play keeps the energy up.

Above is Ricks sack back seat. I always try to have folks do their seat clean up at the end of the day so that they can scrape to their hearts content. In this case, they really put in the time to get refined results.

Daves balloon back is one of the project chairs that I am including in my book, and the changes that I made to the design have made it more attractive and very comfortable. I don't have a photo of the finished piece because he already dismantled it for shipping. Take a moment to click on the image to see the fine job he did.
Winter is bearing down on us, as you can see it was already dark at 6 when Rick was driving his wedges.

Speaking of Winter, I took the time to get my ladies out of their summer home and into a shed for the coming cold. They free ranged the property for the summer, tearing up the gardens and entertaining the passers by.

They seem to be enjoying it, plus, I don't have to look all around the yard for my eggs!

And as with us all, they seem to appreciate a room with a view.

For the Sake of Clarity

I've been turning my thoughts towards the class that I'll be teaching at Kelly Mehlers School in a few weeks. I thought it might be worth highlighting some recent thoughts and plans for the class.

Let's face it, there are enough chairs in the out there. I don't rush to the shop concerned that someone is lacking a place to sit. I go for the joy and challenge of making. For the most part, the chairs that I make leave my shop  and I am left pondering the next chair, my tools and my process. As I assume it is with most folks, it's about exploring the limits of my tools and my ability.
And as do most folks, I've looked for help. The magazines and books guided and inspired me, but in the end, I was left guessing whether my results were hitting the mark. The funny thing is, even after all these years, the desire to get more from my tools and process has only deepened.

A case in point just pulled up as I was writing this. My friend Scott came over last week and I helped him reshape his turning tools. This time he came over for a couple of chunks of maple to try them out on. He was remarking how excited he was to get back to the lathe now that his tools were better shaped. I know well the frustration he must have felt turning before.

In a broad sense, this is what the class at Kelly's is about. We will investigate the geometry and function of tools we have and ones that we are making to get the most out of our woodworking experience.Whether it's the holding power of our shave horse or the angle of the handles of our drawknives, we'll be  addressing our expectations head on.

One project that I am excited about is making adzes.
Tim Manney and I have turned our attention to designing a new adze.
Tim had great experience in Peru watching the folks use adzes and I've always made my own adzes, first for financial reasons and lately because I haven't been impressed by the ones available. And, oh yeah, did I mention financial reasons?

Grinding the Blade

We've been asking the basic question "What is a proper chairmakers adze and how does it work?" I've come up with a good prototype and Tim and I made up some variations hoping to advance the design and better understand its use. As expected, our initial efforts raised more questions than answers, but we have gotten some great results and are looking forward to the next versions. Greg is bringing along his forge and anvil to Kelly's so we can make some tools, including adzes and start at the beginning of our craft, the steel.

A Rough Prototype

On the process of chairmaking, we'll start with my basic goal as a chairmaker.
I don't want to make a chair, I want to make any chair. That means that I am not satisfied to have a single design, instead, I want a process that functions to bring to life whatever I can imagine. The Windsor technology is a perfect framework for this, as the limitations that it offers have led me to come up with some simple landmarks and techniques for connecting the dots.
Chairs can be mysterious, even to experienced makers, but I think that with a little focus on design and process, you can understand the variables and their meaning.

A Chair Near Completion

I won't ramble on any more, suffice it to say, this is going to be an exciting week and I hope to see you there.

The Fine Line

I haven't been getting enough time lately to horse around with my chair designs, so for the last week or so, I finished up a walnut occasional chair that I started a while back. I wanted to bring it along to the meeting of the Rochester Woodworkers Society that I am speaking at this weekend.

I've learned a lot about walnut lately. It can hold a crisp visual edge just about anywhere, and I have a nasty reaction to it (sinus infection). So I donned my full face respirator and plugged in the air filter and had some fun. I can't count the number of times that I've intended to create a seat like this, but for some reason, I just couldn't let it go this time.

The walnut has all the right properties for this kind of fine detail.

It requires near perfect shaping of the facets as they flow around the seat and interact. It was tough at first until I focused on making one facet geometry fluid and then "cut" the other one up to it. The key is not to fuss about with scrapers too much, but to get the fine edge with handtools and get out fast!

The detail at the top of the back posts also seamed ripe for change, so I played around until this detail emerged, with a heavy nod to Mr. Maloof.

Here you can see that the facet on the corner is a bit concave, and full of gouge marks.

I think that the line on the seat interacts nicely with the arms, plus it lets you know where your rear is supposed to go, very inviting.

And the obligatory rear view.

I had quite a full shop recently. There is Dan working on a walnut chair for himself and in the back is Tim working on turning a reamer body and Claire making a travisher. After years of working in a solitary shop, I love the hustle and bustle of having so much going on, even though space is a bit tight.

Sharp!

I've been working on a continuous arm settee and as I've been reaching for tools, I've been using my "sanding flap" wheel on the backs to help hollow them out for sharpening.  Today, I was finishing the cutout on the side of the seat, shown above, and figured it was a good time to take one of my favorite knives off the wall and give it a once over.

This cut is tricky on a regular seat, and even more so on a settee because the cove is all endgrain. Nothing but the sharpest knife will do.

So I got out my angle grinder (you have bought one, right!?) and went to work on the back of the drawknife. The knife that I use for this is very special. It doesn't have much steel left on it and I don't grind a bevel on it. Instead, I round the front (which rides in the cut) and flatten the back. Of course, a rounded front is very hard to sharpen because of the difficulty honing it. So the back is where the action is.

By flattening the back and honing it until a burr turns to the front, I get a great edge. I run through all of the stones on the back and only touch the front to the final stone and strop it lightly. I don't strop the back because I want it perfectly flat. With the hollowing help of the grinder, I got the thing sharper than I've ever had it and the cove on the seat was a breeze!

Click on the image for a closer look

Since I've been reforming my tools, I've picked up a new habit that I'm ashamed to say I didn't years ago. I've started oiling all of my edge tools with camelia oil before stowing them. It may seem like a little thing, but rust never sleeps and a sharp edge is a tiny place, easily affected.

Now I take the tool off the rack and give it a quick rub with a paper towel and let it sing.

Here is the settee, all legged up.

Since spring has sprung, I have been enjoying all the work that the previous owners of our house put into their gardens. Here is a rhododendron outside my shop window.

Great stuff, but poison to goats, so watch out.

New Scraper Saves the Day

For years, I've used a convex scraper on the "bowl" of my seats. It simply makes sense that the curved edge makes more contact and forms an even concave surface more quickly.

But on the convex front edge of the seat, I would reach for my flat scraper and work diligently to get a clean shape. The small contact area tends to leave "stripes" and makes a tough job even harder.

So recently I ground a flat blade with a concave edge and have been thrilled with the results.

You can see that it makes contact more fully and by slicing across the grain, I get a clean, even shape.

I actually look forward to working this area. To make the blade, I simply set my toolrest on the grind 90 degrees to the tangent of the wheel and slowly cut the shape. I'll be showing a great tip for filing and honing the edge next.

Breaking the rules, but not the edges

In finishing up the walnut rocker this week, I figured it might be worth sharing some of the techniques that I use to get fluid shapes and crisp edges. Walnut has such a clarity in grain and texture, that it calls for extra attention when treating the surfaces. While many of the parts are shaved with a spokeshave to their final state, such as the legs, others, where I want to stress the shape and wood grain are scraped and sanded.





There is a rule of thumb when it comes to shaving, scraping and sanding. You don't follow sandpaper with an edge tool. The sandpaper leaves grit embedded in the surface that can dull or cause minute chipping of the blade, and generally, I adhere to this principle. But in this case, I bend or even break the rules to get the desired result.

After my initial scraping, it sand the carved area with 220 grit sandpaper and a felt block. I try to be very thorough in producing and even scratch pattern. After I've done this though, invariably, I notice the unevenness that I missed in the scraping. So I pull out the scraper again and lightly scrape the surface, and the low spots remain dull while the highs get cut. It's always surprising how much this helps the overall shape become fluid.

I figure that the scraper is an intermediate tool anyway, and easy to sharpen, so I don't mind following the sandpaper. Then I sand again through to 320 grit and feel the surface with my hand flat on the seat, quickly running it in all directions to feel for more subtle discrepancies.

I don't carve a gutter in seats that are left natural, preferring to leave a simple, clean transition from the carved area to the flat. This can be tough to  do, and makes me realize that the gutter isn't just decorative, but serves as a sort of trim, to help cover the sins of less than perfect transitions!

To get the sharp edge that I want, requires first that the carved shape be even and fluid. I do this as normal, with a travisher, scraper and then sandpaper. But sanding a perfect edge into the transition can be tough because it's actually quite an obtuse angle.

But I still try my best. Now here is where I really break the rules. I reach for my handplane to surface the flat. Before I do this, I brush the surface and use a microfiber cloth to remove as much of the embedded grit as I can. Then I plane down a few shavings and the crisp edge appears.

As I said, this only works if the carved shape and surface is even and fluid. But it solves the transition issue in a wood that shows every detail.

Here is the seat after the whole deck has been planed.

Here is the latest spoon available for purchase! So please email me if you want your name put in the hat.

This is apple wood and has some striking figuring in the bowl. It's $45 plus $5 shipping.

It is a good shape for all around kitchen use. Good luck!

Seat Glue Ups Revisited

When I am looking for seat material, there are a few factors that come into play. First of all, it should be uneventful wood, from a straight tree that has been sawn straight along the fibers, or as close as possible. I know that in flat work, highly figured wood is prized, but I'll be carving into this wood, and the more settled the grain, the more the grain will highlight the contours.

My other concern is width. Most of my seats are just below 20" across, so I look for two basic widths to conserve material. Full 20" wide seats are great, but they are tough to come by, expensive and because they tend to come from the area nearest the pith, they tend to warp more than I like, leaving me some delicate planing to get the final thickness.

My second choice is a 10" plank, and I'll show here how I crosscut, split and assemble it to match the grain. Here is the plank, crosscut for the length that I need into two pieces. Then I split one piece and roll the halves outward as you can see the arrows directing.

Here is the position after I roll them out.

Then I slide the other piece up between the halved piece and that is the orientation of my glue up.
If the board is relatively straightgrained, you'll see that the angle that the growth rings leave the center piece will be complimented by the way that they move into the outer pieces. Below is the piece glued up.

This method moves the boards around in such a way that I often find that I can't plane them all the same direction on the face. But I find this to be the case with most one piece seats anyway. This is caused by sawing a straight board out of a slightly twisted tree. But whatever the issue, it almost always subsides when the carving starts, because the angle of the side of the seat bowl cuts across the fibers anyway, regardless of whether they are subtly ascending or descending.

Here is the planed seat.

My goal in this is not to completely erase the joint, but at least to make the viewer have to look twice to see it. It's just one more spot where a little care and craftsmanship can enhance the whole impact.