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.

Happiness often sneaks in through a door you didn't know you'd left open

John Barrymore

Well the holidays are done and now the business of winter is in full swing.  But much solace can be be taken from these two beautiful happy faces. It is a period of change so Elsa and Anna were happy to have a joyous Christmas.

And now to chairs. I love dividers. There I said it.  These two beauts are from Starrett...a 6" and 12" respectively. One thing I love about chair making is you are always learning something new. Sometimes it's something big, sometimes its a small tweak to a method that makes a small but nonetheless significant difference. And know that when I say a significant difference I really mean it made something easier.

And so today I came up with a wizz-banger. I've always loathed leveling a rocker. A non rocker is easy. Wedges, trace the difference, cut, done.  But rockers have routed slots and therefore the slots have to be traced and chopped which is a major pain. The problem lies in the inconsistency of reaming. Some legs simply get reamed too much despite my best efforts.

SO today I thought why not check the length of the legs AFTER they are reamed and seated. So I checked them with my handy dandy 12" divider and viola they were off as you can see below. Now admittedly it's not much but try chopping out end grain hard maple and you'll fast appreciate this small difference.

I marked out the difference and I was a simple matter to turn to the new length. I turn the legs to length anyway so a different mark is no big deal.

The pics above and below show the small difference. The one above ( these are both back legs. Do not compare front to back...only front to front, back to back ) the shortest leg is the base line and the longer one, below, is turned shorter.  I have yet to install the rockers but this does make a difference in the final balancing of the chair.

Steamed Rockers

Beauty is whatever gives joy

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Maybe a little persnickety but the gaps when I let in rockers are driving me nuts.  I didn't photo the gap that was there but suffice to say it was unacceptable.  The problem was that that I must have mis-reamed the legs, leaving the routed slots for the rockers non co-planer.  What to do....

I thought long and hard and decided to steam the rockers and let them into their slots and see what happened. I usually deal with gaps with wedges but the gaps were pretty significant and honestly I wondered if steaming would work..

As you can see the results were spot on. Really good contact between the rocker and the routed slots.  All gaps eliminated and the rockers fit perfectly.

Anyway, I'm happy with the results.

New Blade

"God, how I ricochet between certainties and doubts"

Sylvia Plath

First off I have to apologize for my lack of substantive posts of late. Just life getting in the way I guess. Lots of personal stuff...waiting for sweet boredom. That'd be nice.

Anyway, enough about me. Above you see my three favorite spokeshaves. The one to the left is a Lee Valley round bottom, the middle one is a Lie-Nielsen, and the right one is a cherry one I built years ago before I even know how to build chairs. Its based on a kit from Daves Shaves as seen in American Woodworker years ago.  The Lie-Nielsen is a beautiful tool and I use it all the time. I'm not super crazy about the iron and will be replacing it come Christmas.
I love L-N tools, don't get me wrong and I have the credit card bills to prove it. I'm just not super crazy about the steel used for the irons. To me its just too hard. I like good old high carbon. Easy to sharpen and given it's small molecular structure it get wicked sharp. Or rather wicked shahhhp.

Which brings me to...my favorite spokeshave. Like I said I built this before I could build chairs. Back when I had a jobby job and all I did was build tools and jigs and such. Ahh the good old days. I don't build jigs or tools anymore. No time for that. Anyway, I built this spokeshave and despite all that is apparently wrong with it it works wonderfully.   The wear plate just ahead of the blade is maple and has a pretty significant groove worn in it from spindle work. If memory serves it had a brass plate but as the blade narrowed I switched it out for maple.

But all good things end. And the blade has been sharpened to the point of uselessness.  So I broke down and bought a new one from Ron Hock, making sure it was high carbon/. Above you can see the original (top) vs the new one. Quite a difference as you can see.

Here's a groove worn in the toe piece. While it opens the mouth, it hasn't proven to be a problem as it registers the spindle during the cut. 

New Old Digs

Time marches on. Don't waste it assuming you'll always have more.

Dr. Z

Some of you may have known but for the last 15 years I have been running dry kilns and a solid fuel low pressure boiler.  Above you can see the boiler house.

Here's one way to bend wood. This birch board fell out of a pack and was placed under the third pack.  As the wood dried it of course shrank and in doing so the board was bent.  Gives you an idea how much wood moves when it dries.

Above you can see the moisture meter I use to check the progress of the drying.  

Above you can see the control panel for one of the kilns.  Below is the write up of the schedule I run to dry birch and maple.  The air temp. is called the dry bulb and the humidity level is called the wet bulb.  These two values are relatively close initially and pull apart as the wood dries. Otherwise the wood would dry too quickly at first and the wood would split and develop stresses. 

Below a better look at the controller.  This one is a Partlow two pen ( top value is the dry bulb and the bottom one is the wet bulb) circle chart.  It tracks the progress of the wood as it dries.  While I never really wanted to run dry kilns per se, it has allowed me to learn how wood dries and how to use that  to my advantage when building chairs.