In between long sessions trying to get video of the heron striking chipmunks and even longer sessions working on the videos for the joined chest series, I’ve begun another Alpine chair/brettstuhl/stabelle/what-do-you-call-’em chairs. I found a couple more boards of butternut for the seat and back(s) and have some ash legs I roughed out a while ago.
The shape of these uprights & crest pieces is derived from a photo Chris Schwarz and his Chair-Chat friends Rudy & Klaus sent me. The carvings I made up – and it’s weird to have chip carving mixed with gouge-cut carvings. But I wanted to fill the spaces as quickly as I could. So that’s what I ended up with.
back assembly
This time the battens are dovetailed with a plane. My notebook tells me it was 7 months ago when I last did one this way. So some head-scratching coming up to cut the housings accurately. I guess the problem is laying them out accurately. Once that’s done cutting them shouldn’t be that big a deal.
using the Ulmia dovetail plane
I bore the waste out of these mortises for the back. First in the seat itself. Then once I’ve cut the housings, I’ll insert the battens and finish boring & cutting those mortises. Clunky approach but it helps me get cleaner results.
13/16″ auger bit & Spofford brace
Today I posted the next video in the chest series. Making the floor boards. 5/8″ white pine, tongue & grooved edges. It’s always a fun part of making the chest.
test-fitting the floor
The tongue & groove is a funny one. Not made with matched planes. Nor is it just a rabbet on the top & bottom face – for some reason they rabbeted the top and beveled the bottom to make the tongue. So that’s what I did.
tongue & groove
I didn’t bother with a trailer, I was tired of computer work & wanted to go work on the chair. There’s plenty of trailers for other episodes if you would like to see what the videos look like. You can find the trailers here https://www.youtube.com/user/MrFollansbee/featured
I went to the end of the shop for a tool & spooked the heron the other day. A relief for the chipmunks. Got a couple of flight shots, which I rarely get in focus.
the cupboard is done. Photographing it for real tomorrow, with the proverbial help from my friends.
joined cupboard
Last week I posted a video in the joined chest series. In it, I said I rarely true up the bottoms of my wooden planes. They just don’t wear as much as you might think… – words to that effect anyway. And then the next day I was planing up some leftover oak – and knocked a chip out behind the iron! I never saw that before.
chipped behind the iron
I scribed a spot that would envelope the whole chip and using a chisel and router plane cut out a recess to take a patch. The router plane is maybe my newest tool – I’ve never used one until recently.
using a chisel to remove the bulk
router plane
I had a piece of dry maple hanging around so used that to patch it. Because my plane’s soles get pretty damp planing so much green wood, I used yellow glue to set it in place. Used it a bit the next day. Seems alright so far.
new patch
I’ve seen planes patched in front of the mouth and even done a couple. But I don’t ever recall seeing one patched behind the iron. Something new every day…
Back to what I was doing. Part of my work over the past few days has been sorting some of the oak bolts in the yard. I planed up these boards – just random sizes, depending on what the log sections would yield. Some of this will be box parts or panels – 7″-8″ wide by 24″ long. Other bits will be framing parts; 3 1/2″-5″ wide. This & that lengths. This coming week includes a big shop clean-up, at which time this batch (& more to come) will get stacked & stickered.
replenishing oak stock
Later I got out a chair I began months ago. At that point, I had made all of one piece – one of the uprights. So I made the other and the crest. Chopped the mortise & tenon joints and test fit them. Today I added some chip-carving. Butternut.
chair back
I forgot that I’m going to drawbore & pin these joints – right through these pinwheels. I’ll carve the pegs after I trim them…they’re soft enough in butternut. This chair is not going to be a copy of a specific chair. It’s based on some photos given to me and a small publication about German examples. I just don’t know what to call it – it’s not a brettstuhl (board chair) – and they’re German, Swiss, Italian, Austrian, French and more besides. I just know I like making them.
raking light by the window this morning
I’ll finish trimming the juncture between the upright & crest after pegging it.
chip carved detail
Here’s one of the pictures Chris Schwarz and his chair-mad friends gave me – this chair is part of the inspiration for what I’m making now…
I’ve been making a few chairs & sticking them up in the loft. Now that space is full and I want to keep making chairs. Time to sell this batch off and start another. The way I tend to do this is I post them here and if you decide you’d like one, leave a comment claiming the chair. Then we can sort payment either through paypal or by check in the mail. Shipping in US included. If you’re near southeastern Massachusetts you can pick them up.
UPDATE –
UPDATE – well, the ladderback chairs sold right off the bat. You won’t see the comment claiming them because the buyer has asked that his name not be published there…
If you were hoping for one of those chairs and missed out I can always make you a chair. Just email me & I can put you on the list.
Ladderback chair, red oak with hickory rungs, hickory bark seat – SOLD
H: 33 1/4″ W: (across the front posts) 17 1/4″ D: 17 1/2″ (seat depth is 12 1/2″) SH (seat height): 17 1/2″ $1,200
This chair is one of the first in which I re-oriented the rear posts to show the radial face as the front of that post. A small change to the standard JA chair, for fanatics only. Means nothing otherwise. But I like the look of it. I also left these rungs generally octagonal, except where they enter the posts.
Below is the hickory bark seat on this chair – I had a mixed pile of bark, some from one tree, some from another. Over time the use will burnish the bark to a nice polished surface. Hickory bark makes the best seat I know.
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Ladderback chair, red oak with white oak slats, hickory bark seat – SOLD
Below you can see the more “normal” orientation of the rear posts – so a different pattern on the wood depending on how it’s oriented. I assemble the chair frames, then poke around to see what I have on hand to make slats from – that’s how this red oak chair got white oak slats.
and its hickory bark seat. This was thick bark that I split in half, and used the inner part of that split for the warp (front-to-back) and the outer part for the weft.
Something I used to make as a regular offering, but this is the first since my re-entry into chairmaking. (I made some in 2009 for my kids when they were small, but that’s it.) Ash with white oak slats, hickory bark seat.
Everything about it is the same as the full-size JA chair, but just scaled down. Harder to see in ash, but again these rear posts have the radial orientation. I’m leaning towards making that the way I do these now.
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Next up is something new. I was thinking this year I’d concentrate my chairmaking on the ladderbacks and the shaved windsor chairs. Then I got detoured into making some of these brettstuhls or board-chair or Alpine chair. I’m not sure what to call these. They’re fun chairs to build, simple but challenging. The two chairs here are close to what I’m after. I’m going to keep tinkering with these chairs for a little while anyway, I have walnut left to do three more.
The seat and the back are butternut, the battens underneath are white oak and the legs are riven ash. The legs tenon into the battens and the battens are captured by the back’s tenons – which are in turn wedged below. It’s a brilliant system. At the end of this post is a video showing how to assemble these.
Another view under there, showing how these parts connect.
After I used up the wide butternut I had on hand, I went out & got a 16″-18″ wide plank of black walnut. Air drying for years & years, it was perfect for what I wanted. This is the first chair from that plank. I’ve begun to change things a bit from Drew Langsner’s 1981 article that I started with – here I’ve trimmed the front corners off the seat, I’ve seen photos of historic examples with this pattern. Also a thumbnail molded edge instead of just a simple chamfer like the butternut chair above.
The carving:
In this view you can see the shape of this seat
On the backs, I’ve just echoed the scrolled shape with a V-tool on both of these chairs.
here’s the underneath of this one. Same as before, white oak battens and ash legs. The battens are 1 3/8″ thick, quartersawn.
The brettstuhls I’m planning to ship partially un-assembled – here is a video showing how to put one together (first how to take it apart…) – it’s really quite simple. You need to be able to tell right from left and count to 2. A mallet for most of the persuasion, some light taps from a hammer for the last bits.
Another piece about the brettstuhls – it seems as if their feet stick way out beyond the chair itself. I thought so at first until I stood one up beside a Windsor chair I made. There’s several factors at play here; the spacing of the seat mortises for the legs, the rake & splay of the legs and to some extent the length of the legs. Here’s the butternut chair beside the Windsor and they aren’t all that different in the footprint.
PETER FOLLANSBEE: JOINER’S NOTES 