Shop Progress

I painted my room a shade called haint blue. Blue kept unwanted spirits away; ghosts and demons could not cross over water, nor could they enter a room that was the color of the sea.

Alice Hoffman, The Marriage of Opposites 


( aside...the porch ceilings of porches in old houses were usually painted sky blue as the belief was that spirits and demons would look up and see the blue sky and think that it was still day time and thus they couldn't enter the house )

On the roof is Frank who has been beyond helpful in helping my build the shop. Beyond grateful. 

Some windows are in.

view of the loft 

sky light

So far. The shop is maybe a month away from being able to build chairs. Can't wait.

Ax

He hoped it would snow recklessly and bring to the island the impossible winter purity; so rare and precious, he remembered fondly from his youth.

David Guterson, Snow Falling On Cedars 

I don't use an ax everyday in my shop. I do use a small hatchet, actually it's a shingle hatchet. But I did want to have a decent ax so I bought this one.  It's has very good balance and heft.

Here you can see what I use to sharpen my axes. I don't use stones; instead I prefer using a Nicholson single cut bastard file. I don't use stones because lately I've become keenly aware that I spent a lot of time over sharpening things.  I also find that things like draw knives and axes can really wear out stones and thus I have to spend a lot of time flattening the stones.  

I also wanted a nice sheath for the ax so I got some leather and used some paper to make a pattern and then cut the leather and riveted it together. A small strap holds it on.  I also put some snow seal wax to deepen the color and protect it from the elements. 

  I also put some snow seal wax to deepen the color and protect it from the elements. 

Fall

I think the best thing I've written is a story called 'The Boxer and the Blonde.' It's a piece about Billy Conn, the white would-be heavyweight champion of the world, who lived in Pittsburgh. 

Frank Deford

I'm reading a book by Frank Deford, Everybody's All American and I can't recommend it enough. DeFord is a brilliant author, and while he is best known as a sportswriter, his fiction is amazing.

Just a few pictures of fall in mid coast Maine. 

Progress on the shop continues, as time allows. We did get one wall up today, hopefully the rest tomorrow. 

It's a post and beam construction so it should go up fairly quickly..

Seat

There are chapters in life that are never talked about, and certainly not aloud

Carol Shields, The Orange Fish




So long hiatus. Maybe someday I'll read that chapter aloud.  Just a few random pics of seat carving. It took me along time to learn how to turn, for some reason, then one day I realized I was. But for whatever reason carving seats came very quickly and easily. Some things in life come easily, some are hard. Usually the hard is worth it.

Spindles

He sat for a long time. When he climbed back up the ridge to the cedars to where he'd left the horses the captain was sitting on the ground and he looked badly used up. 
Let's go, he said
The captain looked up. I can go no further, he said.
Let's go, he said. Podemos descansar un poco mas adelente. Vamonos.


Cormac McCarthy, All the Pretty Horses

Making spindles. Lots and lots of spindles for a bench going to Alaska. The bench is is going to be a clear finish so I have to be extra careful about picking only sap wood ash and nice strait grain.  Luckily the ash log is absolutely beautiful (pics soon).

I did take a minute to replace the maple wear strip on my spoke shave. You can see how much wear it was gotten over the years ( this is number 6 I believe). I could use a brass plate easily enough but I actually like the groove that develops. I centers the spoke shave and allows for shallower cuts to the left or right.

Here you can see clearly the arrises of the octagonals that form the spindle. When I'm at this step I kill the overhead lights and use a single incandescent bulb in a stand. This casts a raking light that allows me to easily see the eight facets of the spindle. Only 28 more to go.

Measuring Stretchers

“I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.” 
― Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

I cannot be the first chairmaker to think of this. Simply can't. But anyway. Stretchers. 

Like I was taught, a couple rubber bands, measure the distance, add a 1/4" and there ya go. Assuming you measured right. Assuming the stretchers bulbs are 1 3/4". assuming you drilled exactly 1" etc.  Any addition of assumption leads to mistake.   So I use a two step process.

I first get a rough ( but really pretty accurate idea ) of the length using rubber bands.  Say the measure is 17 1/4". I then turn the stretcher say 17 3/4". Or 18". Really a ballpark shot.

Then I use two dowels placed in the already drilled holes and mark where they intersect.  A quick measure and vi-o-la. The exact length that the stretcher needs to be. Like I said I can not be the first to think of this, but it does work for me.  I then cut the stretcher to length, and assemble.

Time sinks

Deep sadness, overstruck by deeper strength

Union Officer describing Robt. E Lee at Appomattox Courthouse

After a rather disappointing last show, I decided that maybe I needed little more modern chair.  After all, not everyone lives in an old farmhouse.  So to that end I decided to come up with a modern chair that could be easily built in lots of 6 or 8.  I had designed a small side chair years ago for a potential client that never panned out so I decided to dust that off and make one up.  Above you can see the original quick and dirty prototype.  And below the side view.

I thought that a bent lamination would be the strongest way to make a bent back leg so I did that and broke the leg as I tried to glue it up. So I steamed more pieces and bent them, and then did up a bent lam.  Tick tock.

More views of the time consuming glue up.  I do have a vacuum bag that works great but still.  Its a messy time consuming process.

Below you can see exactly how far I got with this chair.  The seat and back are more bent laminations.   The back legs have to be fit with a plane because each back is different.  Each leg comes out a little different and has to be fitted. The seat pan has to be shaved to fit the rails.  Long process.

What I'm coming at with post is this.  As a professional chair maker I have to make every minute count.  I can't spend oodles of time on chairs or designs that I know will never pan out.  This chair will never look better than a $40 buck garage sale chair.  And I know that.  There comes a time in every design or build where you really have to think where is this going.  And where will it end?  What will the end product be?   Some designs are just dead ends. Time lost but lesson learned.

Some things you do are just dead ends...times sinks that will never go anywhere and you have to cut them loose or they will drag you down.

Continuous Arm, step by step..

"I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.”
― William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying



 

 I'm gonna do something a little different, or at least try.  I'm gonna have the next few posts cover the sequential building of a continuous arm.  This pic shows where I am headed eventually.   This chair actually started it's life green, then I painted it green, and it's final incarnation as black on red which to my eye was the best color.  It's a pain to repaint milk paint chair as you have to strip it to wood, then glue size, then paint up. 

Anyway, here goes.  I may have some gap posts but gonna try to do this one after another. 

The first thing to do on any chair, at least the way I do it, is to do the steam bending first off.  This allows the piece to dry and set while doing other things.  Below you can see a nice piece of white ash that will become the arm.  These arm pieces have to be especially straight grained as it's a compound bend and I can't use a strap.

I split this into two pieces, the heart becomes firewood but the other piece can make two arms.

 This is what you have to look out for..this whorl ended before the sapwood, so it wasn't a problem, but had this been all the way to the bark, I could not have used this piece for bending. 

 Here are the three pieces I got ready for one arm.  I always make extras and have them handy, and because I have two forms,  I can steam two at a time and bend.  Always have an extra or two on hand as this is a tricky bend and if you break one, you aren't dead in the water. 

My next post will show the actual bending and the mixed results. 

 Here is a look at my brake, a close copy of Pete Galbert's, only I scabbed a couple pieces of 2x6  to raise the effective fulcrum, and below a scan of the changes.  I've had a couple emails asking for the dimensions, so here it is. 

Light a Candle

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes.”

― Walt Whitman

Here is the indoor picture of my newest chair,  it is so comfortable, but hopefully it will be gone.  I will miss it but I can always make more.

Ok, this blog post is about change, changing the tools and the things that you have around you that you gripe about but live with.  Light a candle instead of cursing the darkness, all that.  Well, after much griping about this riving brake, I finally added about 6" to the top, as you can see.  I just scabbed on some scrap 2X's and drilled some holes for the pipes, and what a difference.  I found the other set up too low ( sorry Pete ) and this made a world of difference.

The above and below pics show changes I made to the handle of some tools.  The above pic shows a couple lathe gouges that I cut the handles off.  The problem was rolling from left to right, the handle (it used to be as long as the top one) hit my body, so chop and what a difference.  And in turning, I need all help I can get!
The below pic shows how I shortened the handles on my chisels.  Used to be, 100 years ago, chisel handles were graduated with the size of the chisel, small chisel, small handle.  That was then, this is now...now being one size fits all.  By cutting off about an inch and a quarter, it really improved the balance of the chisel.
 

And finally a pic of the darkness that started the flurry of change.  The scorp shown below ( I use this to shape the seats ) is pretty old, probably 10 years, and it came with the crudely shaped handles that I love!  All about function, no finish, perfect.  Then I bought Barr's drawknife and it came with these handles, which I hated but lived with for too long.  They are shaped all wrong and  the finish is slick, so finally I got a little upset, ok, mad, and made some new ones, just like the clunky old ones that work perfectly.  They work great, a lot more grip and to me they just look right.

  So, don't be afraid to change a handle here or a riving brake there, or whatever else you are cursing in the darkness.