“I was talking with Dave Sawyer last week and I asked him if you could go work with him.  He said ‘yes.'” I was standing in Curtis Buchanan’s garden, helping him pick vegetables. I had been apprenticing with Curtis for six years and he was worried that I was becoming his little clone.  Maybe my horizons would broaden if I worked with some other chairmakers. I’m so grateful he did. The following January I drove to Vermont (you can read a story about my trip here).  I spent three weeks living with Dave and Susan and their daughter Annie in their old farm house, working for Dave a ..read more

My blacksmith friend Peter Ross called last week.  “I bought a couple lathes in an auction.  Could you help me move them this afternoon?” This can be a fearsome request, for Peter has a habit of buying machinist lathes weighing in the thousands of pounds.  Fortunately, the lathes he bought were two old (probably 19th century) treadle lathes, complete with hand forged hardware. Not so heavy.  They are really cool and quite rare. They will require a little fiddling and a new treadle before they run well, but everything moves freely and should be easily fixed up. Email Peter i ..read more

Morgan and I got back from a west-coast vacation a couple weeks ago and I’ve been carving seats and gluing up chairs ever since.   I’ve got 18 undercarriages together and 22 to go.  I might switch to putting backs on for variety.  I’ve never had a opportunity to get in a rhythm carving seats, but it’s getting faster and better – I’ve got it down to around a half hour per seat, minus the scraping and sanding.  In my downtime I’ve been watching Youtube videos.  I re-discovered this rake making video last night – I  love making rakes and pitchforks and have sold them ..read more

I’ve been turning a lot lately.  Five weeks ago I got an order for 40 chairs (28 loop backs and 12 Continuous Arm chairs)  for a Michigan hunting camp’s dining hall. I’ve turned 250 legs, arm stumps and center stretchers on my 1800# pattermaker’s lathe, which works equally well. Seth has turned 80 side stretchers on his 200 pound Delta lathe, which works equally well, if not quite as solidly. I’ve whittled nearly 400 spindles and spent time writing on my book every day.  I’m having a ball.  I’ve always wanted an order this large, to see just how fast I could work.  I l ..read more

A few days ago I picked up the spikes for my new lathe from blacksmith Peter Ross. He seemed to enjoy making them: “People don’t want work this rough very often, but I was trained to make reproductions like this.” Peter thinks the hardware was make by the Dominys – it’s too funky for commercial work. Peter copied them to a tee. The tail center is fixed in place with an integral spike. I drilled a stepped hole, then drove it together. Oops! I forgot the spike was also a very powerful (i.e. low-angle) wedge. Going back through my photos, it looks like the Dominys had the same problem. The sh ..read more

Last fall I had the joy of spending a couple hours in the Dominy shop at Winturtur to measure their Springpole Lathe. I’ve finally started building a copy of it, for use in the book on early 19th Century chairmaking that I’m writing. A local sawmill gave me a pine beam that was in their firewood pile and I’m off to the races: The Dominys clearly had some issues with their bed design, which is contrary to most published designs of the era, and which has cracked. I’m going to copy their design anyways.   The wood had some beetle damage, and they could be still living in my lathe, so I ..read more

This is a story for John and his family. It’s also for Scott, who’s Comb Back Arm Chair and Windsor Table were delivered last month. I wrote the story in the middle of January, when it happened: John Braxton died a couple weeks ago. A Quaker gunsmith, he machined thousands of travisher blades and a variety of specialized gizmos for me over the years. I don’t know if we were friends, but maybe we were; we enjoyed talking about local history, the Industrial Revolution, eating habits and phase converters. As I was boring holes in the crest of a comb back arm chair this morning, the phone rang. I ..read more

As most of you know, I’m at Curtis Buchanan’s designing a Loop Back Arm chair. On the second day we had a visitor from NC, Reid Gamble who has been apprenticing with laddarback chairmaker Lyle Wheeler. First we bored for the bent stretcher. Curtis had to climb upstairs to find dry wood for the two short turned stretchers…. ….. which Eric cut to length so we could figure out where they would look best entering the curved stretcher. We bored the holes in the curved stretcher and then we assembled the undercarriage. Curtis told a story. The we stared playing with arm designs from sawn pine ..read more

I am spending the next few days visiting with Curtis and Marilyn Buchanan. Eric Cannizzaro is here too. During the day we’re working an a new loop back arm chair design for which Curtis hopes to publish a set of plans. At night, we are eating Marilyn’s good food and listen to Curtis’s stories (Marilyn may have heard a few of them before). I first came here to work with Curtis 20 years ago this April. Amazing. We all had our parts made before we came, so we started with assembly. This is the chair we’re working from, in Santore’s book. Eric spokeshaving spindles. He’s a great guy to be aro ..read more

The size of steam-generator you need is related to the size of your steam box, how well insulated it is and the temperature of the air around the box.  It is probably cheaper and easier to insulate your box thoroughly rather than increase the size of your steam generator. Curtis’s wallpaper steamer Wall paper steamer:  Curtis Buchanan uses two of these to heat a 4x4x70“  I.D steam box.  They are handy one-piece units that are readily available from a hardware store. My old propane burner, pot, with plywood lid and radiator hose feeding an uninstalled enormous box. This r ..read more