Monday, 4 July 2011
Making a Chair the Old Fashioned Way
Cleaving wood involves placing an axe point down on the end of a log, and smashing it with a sledge hammer. If you hit it right, and if you're lucky, you end up with a nice straight split down the length of your log. This is to produce the pieces of wood you are going to need to turn the legs of your hand made chair. Yes, it might be easier to used a table saw, or any other power cutting device, but this is chair making the traditional way – like they did it before the invention of electricity. Any way, you get a piece of wood where the grain runs straight from end to end, which gives you a lot of strength in the finished legs – useful for a chair.
On the other hand when something is hand made, people notice and it's nice to be able to say, with suitable modest disclaimers, 'Yes, well I did make that – a long time ago. (The bits that weren't done by the course instructor, that is.) But I'm writing this from the comforting situation of having made the chair. It felt a lot different when I and three other hopeful yet apprehensive guys watched the expert, Peter Wood, rapidly splitting logs, cutting the billets of wood into perfect cylinders with a draw knife, and then turning the result into a credible, decorative chair leg. This seemed to take about three minutes. We then proceeded to take two days, to produce four chair legs, and three of those bits that run between chair legs. (which it turns out are called stretchers. In fact it's going to be impossible to describe this activity without using some technical terms so you'll just have to live with it.)
The chair backs were going to be the type that loops over like a bow and has thin rods holding it up. We again began with a log, split off five foot lengths, and proceeded to whittle these down to something like one inch square with a draw knife. These pieces were then placed in a tube to have steam piped over them for a while, so they would be nice and flexible for bending. Pliable they may have been but it still took four of us to bend them round.
The seat is the next big task. A 2 inch thick slice is cut from the trunk of an ash tree, outlined with a saw, and then we got to hack at it for a while to try and make it seat shaped. As well as the hacking, and carving, there was a good bit of drilling holes at all kinds of odd angles for the legs, the back, and the spindles. These spindles are thin wooden rods that hold up the back. Unfortunately they are so thin that they don't go well in a pole lathe, so you have to carve them out with a draw knife, followed by a spoke shave. This is like trying to whittle a cylinder out of a square log. In fact there was a lot of that kind of thing – the bow back had to be reduced to a neat round cross-section from a very rough rectangle. To aid in the process you sit at a kind of foot operated clamp called a horse. It holds the wood while you torture it with whatever blade you have to hand.
After four and a half days we had accumulated fourteen pieces of shaped wood. Legs and stretchers turned on the pole lathe, bow backs and spindles carved with a draw knife and spoke shave. A seat scooped out with strange curved knives and shaves, and drilled at all kinds of complex angles. Each piece held its memories of difficulties, mistakes, minor triumphs, or tactful help from Peter to speed things up. As a pile of parts, not very inspiring. But then came the point where we began to assemble things together, and suddenly a new entity began to emerge.
Finally everything was glued together and the chair was right way up. The chair. It finally existed. After five days of aching muscles, unaccustomed activity, inexpert use of tools of many kinds, we each had what we had come to do. Peter had taken four men of varying dexterity, varying age, varying experience of wood working, and brought us to the finishing line together. Through an experience that moulded us into a team, drew out unsuspected skills, and forged a bond of mutual encouragement.
And you can sit on the chair.
This was my introduction to chair making the way it was done a hundred years ago. Beginning with logs, ending up with a Windsor style dining chair. You can tell it's hand made, which I suppose is inevitable. Part of me feels that it would be nice to be able to hand make a piece of furniture and no one be able to tell it doesn't come from Ikea.
On the other hand when something is hand made, people notice and it's nice to be able to say, with suitable modest disclaimers, 'Yes, well I did make that – a long time ago. (The bits that weren't done by the course instructor, that is.) But I'm writing this from the comforting situation of having made the chair. It felt a lot different when I and three other hopeful yet apprehensive guys watched the expert, Peter Wood, rapidly splitting logs, cutting the billets of wood into perfect cylinders with a draw knife, and then turning the result into a credible, decorative chair leg. This seemed to take about three minutes. We then proceeded to take two days, to produce four chair legs, and three of those bits that run between chair legs. (which it turns out are called stretchers. In fact it's going to be impossible to describe this activity without using some technical terms so you'll just have to live with it.)
The chair backs were going to be the type that loops over like a bow and has thin rods holding it up. We again began with a log, split off five foot lengths, and proceeded to whittle these down to something like one inch square with a draw knife. These pieces were then placed in a tube to have steam piped over them for a while, so they would be nice and flexible for bending. Pliable they may have been but it still took four of us to bend them round.
The seat is the next big task. A 2 inch thick slice is cut from the trunk of an ash tree, outlined with a saw, and then we got to hack at it for a while to try and make it seat shaped. As well as the hacking, and carving, there was a good bit of drilling holes at all kinds of odd angles for the legs, the back, and the spindles. These spindles are thin wooden rods that hold up the back. Unfortunately they are so thin that they don't go well in a pole lathe, so you have to carve them out with a draw knife, followed by a spoke shave. This is like trying to whittle a cylinder out of a square log. In fact there was a lot of that kind of thing – the bow back had to be reduced to a neat round cross-section from a very rough rectangle. To aid in the process you sit at a kind of foot operated clamp called a horse. It holds the wood while you torture it with whatever blade you have to hand.
After four and a half days we had accumulated fourteen pieces of shaped wood. Legs and stretchers turned on the pole lathe, bow backs and spindles carved with a draw knife and spoke shave. A seat scooped out with strange curved knives and shaves, and drilled at all kinds of complex angles. Each piece held its memories of difficulties, mistakes, minor triumphs, or tactful help from Peter to speed things up. As a pile of parts, not very inspiring. But then came the point where we began to assemble things together, and suddenly a new entity began to emerge.
Finally everything was glued together and the chair was right way up. The chair. It finally existed. After five days of aching muscles, unaccustomed activity, inexpert use of tools of many kinds, we each had what we had come to do. Peter had taken four men of varying dexterity, varying age, varying experience of wood working, and brought us to the finishing line together. Through an experience that moulded us into a team, drew out unsuspected skills, and forged a bond of mutual encouragement.
And you can sit on the chair.
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