Some Old Work Revisited

A customer of mine asked me to refinish a table that I had made for him a number of years ago, his granddaughter had worked it over pretty good.  It was a bit of an unusual project at the time to build it, and I had somewhat of a hard time approaching it with the usual degree of concentration.  He was using a Mahogany table that the carpenter who built his house made, and though the material was quite nice wood, it was too narrow and the base was rather heavy and ill proportioned to the top.  He asked me to do something with it, no specifics required, whatever I wanted.

I didn't have any Mahogany and it is hard to obtain.  I did have some Maple in the length required however, and it was handy and well seasoned,  so I just widened the top with it and changed the overall shape to something that I thought was pleasing, and also used some of the lighter wood for the base, mixed with Black Acacia and Walnut for the woven pattern.  I'm not so into racing stripes, and a lot of thought really didn't go into the project, I simply produced it rather quickly as a priority, and it pretty much came from nowhere but the time.  No study, pulling out old patterns, or sketching.  My customer is a casual guy, owns a great French restaurant, from which he has mostly retired now.  His lifestyle is relaxed and at his own pace.  He likes the more unique aspects of the table, I guess could be said, and it gets treated pretty rough, used for both dining and as a work surface.  The chairs were a later addition that he asked me to do.

It's enjoyable for me to see the table now and then, he lives close by my shop.  It does make me wonder what I had in mind when I produced it?  I do recall thinking in an intuitive way about what he would like, and also what I could do expediently.  I might want to try and develop the idea of the wood weaving during another time.  I was a little concerned regarding the durability of the strips, they are quite thin, but so far everything has held up without any problem at all.

Seat Shaping Thoughts

I've added a final short summation to the earlier videos on shaping a wooden seat.  I hope that in the series, there may be some useful information for people wishing to do similar work.  I am interested in learning if anyone finds what I have shown here to be helpful within their own approach to chair making, or what other methods that they may have found useful to produce seats.  A bit of a choppy edited vid, sorry!   Thanks for viewing.

Final Seat Shaping

The last in my three part video series on how I shape wooden seats. Thanks for watching, and I hope that there may be some useful practical aspect for someone, contained in the methods shown.

Travishing a Chair Seat

Step 2 in the process of shaping a wooden chair seat, following adzing. Using "travishing" irons here, a tool that evolved with the trade of Windsor chair making in Great Britain.  Produced by blacksmiths, the degree of curve in the irons varied, and the handles were likely accordingly made by the users.  The one I most use in the video has a handle that I shaped to fit an old iron that I found.  The other is complete as I discovered it, also at a second hand tool dealers in Buckinghamshire.  Quite efficient for cleaning up the adze effects, and for more refined shaping of the contours, used both across and parallel with the grain.  Great tools, albeit requiring a degree of physical effort to accomplish the task.  I have no thought as to what might work with better efficiency, without going to some electric grinding or sanding devices.  I do enjoy keeping certain traditions alive, and have used these tools for many hundreds of seats.

Still one step to go for the final shaping, using Japanese tools.

Adzing Again

The origins of my own chair making are much derived from the couple of years that I spent with two of the last companies in Great Britain still doing traditional work.   Both learning the methods and being immersed in the atmosphere of the old chair making town, it afforded me the great opportunity to drink deeply from the brilliant history of woodworking within that country.  The "bottomers" adze for roughing out seats is still the method that I use today.  Merely picking up my adze gives me a tingle of pleasure, it feels good in my hands, and it conveys a very practical use, albeit somewhat remote from the more mechanical devices in broader application today, designed for removing wood for a similar purpose, with the loud noise and dust that they also create, and possibly being powered by the nuclear juice.  This particular seat will be for a new rocking chair design, currently in the works for a customer.

With English all wooden chairs, particularly Windsors, having been made predominantly from hardwoods, the seats more often than not, Elm, having an initial tool for seat shaping, where a lot of physical power could be applied through, as well still enabling a degree of control, the adze with the longer handle and curved wide face became the tool of choice.  During the era of segregated tasks being done by specialists, working with the adze became a separate profession in itself within the chair shops.  I'm not sure that it was such an enviable one however, as the work with the tool can be hard on your back if done for extended hours, and there also is the degree of danger working with the sharp instrument.  Carelessness can creep in with fatigue.  I can only marvel at the fellow in the old photo, and the effort it took to adze out the many seats behind him.  Perhaps early 20th century?  Note his protective leather leggings.  It's a sweet looking adze shape that he is using there as well.  Reading about the history of chair making in Great Britain, injuries weren't so uncommon within the bottomer's trade.  "No toes Neville", is one bloke still remembered in the literature.  In the very least, I still need to get one of those caps.

The seat in the video is from a local species of Cherry found in my area.  Somewhat more difficult to adze compared to the more resilient Elm, going against the grain can blow out divots deeper than you want to go, or lift up sections beyond the edges of the desired outer profile within the seat blank.  A sharp adze and caution as you go with the right touch, will give the best results.  It took me a fair amount of practice initially to acquire the skill, my body learning to develop the control to lift up a shaving and follow it through to complete a pass.  With the random striking here and there without enabling the cleaner more even furrows, common amongst folks learning to do the work,  the result is far less productive in terms of  more even contours, and what does result in leading up to the next steps in shaping, also comes at a slower pace.  Experience makes for the better ability.  The adze is indeed a fine tool, one where once you have learned it's use and potential, keeping it in practice is something that seems to come along with it.  I wonder how many of us are still out there using it today?

I follow the adze work with both English and Japanese hand tools for completing the seat, which I hope to also show in a video.

Old Friends and Windsor Chairs Again!

I recently made contact with some old friends, a couple that I had met on the airplane when moving to England to do chair making within the wonderful traditions that exist there for the craft.  Mr and Mrs Sano were also moving to England to live for awhile,  Mr Sano is a professional photographer, and more often than not can be seen with his camera in his hand. It had been thirty-five years since I last had seen or spoken to these very kindly and otherwise enjoyable people.   They had asked me to make two dining chairs for them after we did get together again, and they visited my shop one day last year.

The Sano's current dining arrangement is a mix of an antique English table with chairs of different designs, all purchased after they had mover back to Japan and found in a shop here.  The chairs I would be building for them would be replacing two of the existing ones, that were to continue finding use in another part of the residence.

The specifics of the design were to come up with something similar to some early work that the couple saw and liked in my portfolio, and that the choice of wood be American Black Walnut.  They wanted a relatively simple chair without arms.  I took the liberty of adding some Japanese Cherry for the back laths.  I have always liked the combination of Walnut and Cherry, thinking the grain and colors of the two woods play off of each other well.  Also, to my eye, the Cherry tends to lighten up the visual heaviness of the dark Walnut. The two woods will age gracefully together.  The photos below are of one of the Sano's new chairs, a commission I immensely enjoyed thinking about and making, for some folks that I consider good friends.

The Sanos picked up the chairs on a beautiful weather day.  We went up to an airy soba noodle restaurant to have lunch, at the base of some mountains nearby. An old temple is also there to explore, with a waterfall directly behind it that sends out a chilly mist.  The mountain snow is melting now and the streams are running full.

Working away from the shop

As mentioned in some other posts, I have a side work activity doing tree removals.  I live in an area where a large portion of land is forested, mostly Pine woods.   Most of the removals are around homes in the wooded areas, but sometimes also at a city location, very diverse places really, one of the reasons that I enjoy it.  Seeing some areas that I normally wouldn't get the opportunity to visit and often speaking with the residents there, working with some pleasant and highly skilled people, the challenges of the heavy work, all things that add up to a nice sometimes change from being by myself in my workshop.  Still working with wood, with a totally different goal, makes for a good contrast from the rather finely detailed aspects of furniture making, and at the end of a work day, the amount of accomplishment is often determined by a pile of logs stacked up, requiring a diversity of physical actions to achieve it, both on the ground and above.  A lot of consideration is sometimes involved in the process as well, different situations come up and there are risks that require being confronted.  It can make for some very interesting and exciting work.

Most of the tree work is aided by a crane, a great device that often allows a safer and more practical approach to removing trees. The vid here, I made with my helmet camera, and it exemplifies a typical day, part of a job cutting about eighty trees on a property to be sold, and where a recent snow had caused some damage to an adjoining house when a few trees toppled.   It gets especially interesting when the wind picks up about 25 minutes into the vid.  The wind is a truly powerful force, and something to be very well considered and respected when working with trees.