Chair Making

7/14/2011

I'm currently learning how to build a continuous arm Windsor chair. My teacher is Elia Bizzarri, a local chair maker who does one-on-one classes at his shop here in Chatham County, NC. He also teaches at The Woodwright's School in Pittsboro and various other places. He is a great guy & fantastic teacher, and I'm really enjoying learning some new skills.

This kind of woodworking is new to me. Starting with the tree, we are riving out parts from the green wood with a froe, and refining them using a series of tools (draw-knife, spokeshave, etc.) There is some turning involved with the legs and arm stumps, and the white pine seat will be shaped with another set of tools (scorp, travisher, etc.) I'm only a couple of days in, and my way of looking at trees, wood, and hand tools has really changed.

A couple of other highlights so far...

I bought a cheap draw-knife at some point a while back (I don't even remember where) that I have cleaned up, sharpened, and put to use
I built myself a shave horse

Below are pictures of the shave horse coming together. It's built of pine that we milled ourselves as well as scrap walnut from past projects. All in all I spent about $7.00 on the whole thing (for the carriage bolts, washers, etc.).

The first picture is Elia's shave horse which I used as a model. The last picture shows my rendition.