My mentor was a genius when it came to finishing, so I know a lot more about the topic than I really have any business knowing. I'd spray more often if I had a dedicated, climate-controlled booth, but I don't and the weather doesn't exactly cooperate in the Northeast for much of the year. The problem is compounded by the fact that I spray primarily water-based finishes, which are more sensitive to cold temperatures.

So far, I am a big fan of the inflatable spray booth. The big benefit, aside from being enclosed to keep contaminants out, is the built-in ventilation system. The booth is inflated by a blower (the same kind that's used for bouncy houses), and the air exhausts into the booth, creating airflow and pushing overspray out through filters in the side wall. I was skeptical at first, but it works surprisingly well, and the blower isn’t nearly as loud as I feared. The only thing I can't attest to is longevity. It seems inevitable that I'll put a hole in it at some point but hopefully I can patch it.

My first use case was finishing an oak tabletop that I built to sit atop a storage cabinet in our kitchen. I wanted a durable film finish that would cure quickly so I could put it into service with minimal delay1. I went with Target Coatings EM8000cv, a water-based conversion varnish. The manufacturer claims it "matches the rich color tones and high durability associated with solvent and oil based coatings."

A common complaint with water-based finishes is that they don't "enhance" the wood in the same way that solvent based finishes do. I’m not going to compare one to the other, but the EM8000cv did add a yellow hue that helped the top blend in nicely with the rest of the oak in the house.

Before spraying, I filled the pores. While you don’t always have to2, I’m not a fan of using film finishes on open-pored woods without grain fill. This was my first time using Aqua Coat, which is a clear grain filler, and it worked exactly as described. I'll probably start using it a lot more going forward.

To spray the EM8000cv, I used my Fuji Spray Semi-PRO 2 with a 1.5mm air cap. It's not a particularly powerful turbine, but I've never had trouble achieving sufficient atomization with any of the water-based products I've used. EM8000cv is formulated for spraying, and I didn't have to thin it at all. Around the same time, I also sprayed General Finishes Milk Paint for the mini Lowback Stick Chair, using a 1.8mm air cap and thinning to the manufacturer's spec, with no issues.

One note of caution if you're new to water based finishes: you can only thin them minimally, and it's important to follow the manufacturer's instructions.

What you're looking for is a "wet" look off of the gun. The picture above is the best I have, but it doesn't really capture it. The surface may have a slight orange peal look at first, but it should flow out to a smooth finish. It takes about 40 minutes to an hour to dry, and I sanded lightly in between coats. I sprayed one coat of gloss and two of satin. If you're confident that you'll get a smooth finish off the gun you only need one coat at the final sheen. I've always been told not to apply more than two coats with flatteners, as it can cause the finish to look cloudy.

Yes that's an Ikea cabinet underneath. I actually have a somewhat favorable view of Ikea for a woodworker, but that's a topic for another day.

I gave the surface five days to cure, as recommended by the manufacturer, before lightly wet sanding with 1500-grit sandpaper. I use a grit that's a step above the final sheen, but if your final coats contain flatteners, you don't have to worry too much about altering the sheen. Wet sanding isn't necessary if your finish is already smooth, but I like to do it for flat surfaces that are going to get touched a lot, because it takes the feel from smooth to glass. Outside of a professional setting, I think that it's unlikely you'll get a totally contaminant-free finish. I find it easier to polish the surface after it's cured, rather than to chase perfection during application.

The finished product looks right at home. It was great to spray again, and hopefully the weekend weather cooperates this summer so I can do more of it. If you're from the Northeast, you know that hasn't been the case in recent years. Fingers crossed 🤞

I finished the first one for her first birthday. She doesn't know how to sit in it yet, but she does like to play with it.

The design was inspired by the Lowback Stick Chair in The Stick Chair Book. It may shock you to hear this, but my one-year-old wasn't super enthusiastic about my attempts to measure her for chair dimensions. I paired my rough measurements with some I found from other children's chairs online.

The seat is a half-scale of the plans in the book, making laying out the legs and spindles incredibly easy. Since children have long torsos relative to their legs, many children's chairs end up looking squat. On this chair, the seat is 7 inches from the floor and the armrest is 5 5/8 inches from the seat. These are bizarre proportions for a chair, so I'm happy that the Lowback design translated so well.

I also incorporated some "Windsor" elements through the turned legs and posts. There wasn't any particular inspiration behind this. Turning the legs was the easiest way to go, and I though the thicker post would add more stability to the upper assembly. I really like the look of the legs, although I'm not sure it would translate to a full-sized chair.

I painted the chair with General Finishes Basil Milk Paint. I've written about this paint in a prior post and I absolutely love it. This was my first time spraying it. I was very happy with the results, but I'll save that for another post.

Aside from this being a children's chair, I think painting it was appropriate for the same reason that many antique chairs were painted: it's made from a mishmash of woods. Three different species and four different trees. The seat is catalpa, the turned elements are maple, the spindles are from the oak log that I split, and the armbow is from an oak beam I got from my in-laws.

The build was fairly straightforward, but I did try a few techniques that were new to me and worked well.

The three-piece armbow is fairly typical. I cut the arms as carefully as I could, but I still needed to "joint" them afterward. The inside of the arms follows the seat's curve, so I traced the seat on a piece of plywood and used double-sided tape to hold the arms while I jointed them on the tablesaw.

Because of the small size, I didn't have a great way to apply clamping pressure while gluing. I used a combination of tape and clamps to hold the pieces in place while the glue dried. This isn't a very critical glue joint, it just needs to survive drilling the mortises. Most of the strength comes from gluing on the third piece of the armbow.

This was my first chair with an upper assembly. I used a jig from The Stick Chair Book to drill the mortises. I think that the chair's small size made this easier than it would be on a full-sized chair. I used a bevel gauge to help with the angle, but mostly eyeballed the mortises in the armbow. Once those were done, it was straightforward to drill the seat mortises using the holes in the armbow as a guide.

After all the mortises were drilled, I glued on the top piece onto the armbow. I used a scorp to shape the concave section. In the book, Chris uses a bandsaw to rough out the angle, but I thought tilting the table would be more work than just hogging off the material by hand. With the benefit of hindsight, tilting the bandsaw table probably would have been easier. I did get a good workout, though.

I'm happy with how the chair came together. It gives me some more confidence to tackle the upper assembly on the Irish Stick Chair. I had hoped to have that chair finished by now, but I've been busy with plant stands and some other finishing work. I should have a couple of posts put together on those topics in the coming weeks.

Before tapering the legs, I marked their centers. This is easiest to do when the stock is still square, and it's crucial to have the centers marked since I'm going to turn the tenons. To act as a guide while tapering, I scored the end of each leg with a 1" drill bit. This makes it easy to see my progress and know exactly when to stop.

I used the same simple jig to shape each leg into an octagon and add the taper. In the picture below, I have the leg propped up against the stop on the second level, which puts it at the right angle for tapering. Underneath the leg you can see a v-groove. When the stock was still square, I placed it in the v-groove and knocked the edges off to form an octagon.

Then it was off to the kiln to dry out the tenons. Currently, my kiln is just some foam boards duct taped together, with a reptile heat lamp inside. There's a thermostat, but it never quite reaches the setpoint. Someday, I'll convert a shelf in my utility closet into a more permanent kiln with an adequately sized heating element, but this setup works for now. You'll also notice that I have a few pieces of hickory off to the left. Those will be used for wedges.

While the legs were drying out, I moved on to the seat. The stock wasn't very thick, so I tried to remove as little material as possible while dressing it. You can see there's still a rough patch near the front of the seat. That area will be removed when I scoop out the seat, so there's no reason to make the seat any thinner to clean it up. Aside from pointing that out, this picture is mostly to show off my trammel points. I know it's easy to make your own, but I love this pair and highly recommend them.

I scooped the seat out before cutting it to its final shape so I could secure it with a holdfast and not worry about surface damage. I was able to get a nice surface with the scorp and a scraper, and I didn't end up using the travisher much. Since the seat was thin to begin with, I made the bowl fairly shallow—about 1/2". Once I was done shaping the seat, I sliced the excess off of the back and used the offcut to make a test mortise for the tenons.

When the legs come out of the kiln, you have to move fast and assemble the base immediately. The point of the kiln is to shrink the part before you cut the tenon, so that when it returns to equilibrium, the tenon will expand ever so slightly and lock itself in place.

I'm personally a fan of turned, cylindrical tenons. Using a bedan sizing tool makes it quick and easy to produce consistent tenons. I always do a test, but in my experience, setting the sizing tool with calipers to match the diameter of the mortise works really well. I also like the look of the cove to transition from the tapered octagon to the tenon.

After turning the mortises, I took a final swipe down each facet with a block plane to leave a finished surface.

Now it's time for assembly.

This time, I used hide glue. Which was an experience. I probably should have done a few tests before using it in a live glue up like this, but oh well. It set up extremely fast. I found it easier to dunk the tenon in the glue pot and quickly brush off the excess rather than trying to brush it on the tenon. Cleanup was much easier, though, so that's a plus.

The hickory wedges worked like a dream. I hammered away and none of them seemed remotely close to snapping. Unless I need to use another species for a decorative element, I'm not sure why I would use anything else.

It's been, more or less, smooth sailing so far. Aside from the shapes being a bit different, this isn't anything I haven't done before. With the base is complete, I'm moving into uncharted territory. I'm both excited and a bit apprehensive to add the armrests because one mistake could ruin the chair. But there's nowhere to go but forward.

Sharpening has never really been my forte. I have no problem getting a good edge on a straight blade, but I've generally avoided anything curved. When you watch or read tutorials online it all seems so easy. Just grab some 1000-grit sandpaper and a strop, and five minutes later, you're slicing through end grain on pine with ease. Unfortunately, it's never been that simple for me.

Adding to the difficulty, the scorp required a bit more work. To modify the knife-like cutting edge, I had to grind the edge back significantly and re-establish the bevel. The whole process took a lot of trial and error. The purpose of this post is to document that trial and error, and lay out the steps that worked for me. I'm far from an authority on the subject, so I would caution against taking this as gospel.

The first step was to grind down the edge to a flatter portion of the back (I'm going to call the inside portion the back). I had to do this multiple times, for various reasons, and I found that it was extremely helpful later on to make sure that the edge was all in the same plane. This was easy to do with a coarse diamond stone.

A few quick notes on diamond stones.

• I was always told that lubricant wasn't necessary for diamond stones. Then, to my surprise, the instructions for the Galbert Drawsharp, which uses a diamond abrasive, state: "Keeping the blade and abrasive lubricated during the honing process is vital to good honing." I used Lie-Nielsen's jojoba oil because that's what I had nearby, and it made a massive difference.
• I use waterstones for most of my sharpening, but when dealing with curved surfaces, I think diamond stones are indispensible. They come in a wide array of shapes and sizes and maintain their shape throughout their life. I've found the diamond files particularly useful because you can bring them to the cutting edge, making it easier to sharpen curved surfaces and otherwise unwieldy tools (like lathe tools).

Next I had to re-establish the bevel. At first, I set the angle a bit too shallow, and the edge kept folding over when I tried to hone it. Increasing the angle solved this issue. I didn't bother trying to figure out the exact angle. If I have to grind it again I'll just set the wheel back in the middle of the bevel.

One thing that I cannot overstate: DO NOT GRIND ALL THE WAY TO THE EDGE. If you do, you'll remove the temper on the steel. I made this mistake a few times, and it's absolutely worth moving slowly to avoid it.

This is a CBN wheel for those who don't know.

Once I got close to the edge, I switched to a coarse diamond file and refined the bevel further. When the hollow was gone or I felt like I wasn't making much progress, whichever came first, I went back to the grinder. As with sharpening any other tool, the hollow provides two points of contact to keep the stone flat on the bevel and reduces the surface you have to hone by hand. There's no downside for going back to the grinder often, just make sure you don't grind all the way to the edge.

Here's my setup for honing the bevel. As I mentioned earlier, for a curved surface its much easier to take the stone to the tool than the other way around. I tried a variety of stones, and thought that this set worked well. It's cheap, the size is perfect, and it comes with all the grits you need (240+400+800+1500). I don't know how they'll hold up over time, but I doubt I'll use them often. I also used a DMT Diamond Honing Cone, that I originally bought for turning tools, to hone the back in between grits.

Two pieces of advice here:

• If you're not 100% sure you feel a burr, don't move on to the next grit. Odds are, you're tricking yourself because sharpening isn't fun, and you just want to be done with it. Moving to higher grits too soon is wasted effort.
• The burr should get smaller and weaker with each successive grit. I found that the lower grits left a really large burr and I had to fold it over a few times, alternating between honing the back and the bevel, with each successively grit to shrink it.

Once I worked through all the grits and could easily knock the burr off, I moved on to polishing. To polish the bevel, I used a medium felt wheel charged with honing compound. This likely rounded over the edge of the bevel slightly, but that's okay at this point. To polish the back, I used a maple dowel charged with diamond paste. I alternated back and forth, between the felt wheel and the dowel, until the edge was cutting the way I wanted it to.

And there you have it. Hopefully, I won't have to sharpen either of my scorps anytime soon, but it's good to know that I can if needed. Like other curved carving tools, scorps are usually kept in working order by frequent honing with a strop. In the picture below, you can see the strop on the left, along with a dowel with honing compound on the right that I use for the back.

There may have been a better way to do this, but in the end, it worked and I learned a lot. If you have a tool you've struggled to sharpen, I definitely recommend finding a cheap version and just going for it. Sometimes, banging your head against a wall for a couple of weeks really is the best way to learn.

So far, the stock prep has been a comedy of errors. To refresh everyone's memory, here's where things stood in my first post four months ago:

I couldn’t contain my excitement, so I split up the log right when I got home. As I’ve since learned, this was a mistake. Freshly split lumber works beautifully with a drawknife, so I hear, but the wood doesn’t maintain that characteristic for long. I missed the window so my drawknife will have to remain on the wall for now.

Having missed the window to dress the stock with a drawknife, I went ahead and roughly dimensioned it on the bandsaw. Now, four months and one Galbert Drawsharp later, I've decided to take my much sharper drawknife off the wall anyway. The problem, other than the increased difficulty of working with dry wood, is that when I roughly dimensioned the parts on the bandsaw, I didn't pay much attention to the grain. Sigh...

Like most problems, this one can be solved but the cost is a lower yield on the stock that I have. I should still have plenty to complete one chair, but my dream of building a set has gone out the window. At the end of the day, this isn't a huge loss. I'll find a new log for the next chair and I'm sure the process will be much more fun than what I'm about to go through.

My goal was to re-establish two faces parallel to the grain, and then use the bandsaw to rip the parts to the final dimension. This isn't particularly easy work with the drawknife, so I'm fine with cheating a little. I found that it was much easier to work the radial plane (pictured) than the tangential plane. Thankfully, it was rather easy to see the orientation of the tangential plane so I could use the bandsaw to remove most of the excess stock.

Using a drawknife effectively requires some variant of a shave horse. I'm not ready to commit to a standalone shave horse yet and, even if I was, I'm not sure I have the room for one. Instead, I followed these plans for a benchtop "shave pony."

Yes, that's the perch. It was a little too high to use as a computer chair but it puts me at the perfect height for bench work.

It took about a half an hour to fashion out of scraps I had lying around and, so far, it works perfectly. Anchored to the bench with a dowel and a holdfast, they may as well be one.

Major League Woodworking, IYKYK

There's not much to show from the shaving process, but I hope the pictures below help illustrate what you're looking for on the tangential plane. In the picture on the left, about halfway up the stick, you can see an area that is slightly discolored. The discolored area is a different group of fibers. When I shave away that area in picture on the right, we're left with a consistent surface following along the same fiber line.

The radial plane is less straightforward to read so I'll save that for the future, when I have a little more experience. Now that the pieces are shaved to size, I'll rough out the profile before switching over to a spokeshave. This involves knocking off the corners to make an octagon and roughly defining any tapers. This is a very easy operation now that the grain's running in the right direction.

I currently have the four short sticks completed. I'm going to rough out the legs next before sacrificing any of the thicker stock for the long sticks. As I've said before, I rarely work on one project at a time. This is no exception, but currently the stick chair is front of mind. Hopefully I'll make some real progress before getting sidetracked on something else.

This version of the jig is still destined for the scrap pile, but it might serve as inspiration for a future, improved design. The current iteration was specifically made with the creepie in mind, and it was just by chance that it worked so well with the perch. I’m not sure how well it would work with a larger seat for a full-sized chair or one with four legs but, ideally, the arms would be adjustable to accommodate a wider variety of chairs. If I do end up refining the design, I’ll be sure to share the process in a future post.

Moving on to the finish, I decided to paint the seat and leave the legs natural. I liked the idea of the contrast between the two, and painting the legs seemed like it would be a pain. Catalpa is a ring-porous wood, so I needed to fill the grain before painting. I used Timbermate, which is a fantastic all-around wood filler. While the package didn’t include instructions for using it as a grain filler, I found them online here. The instructions are for a much larger application. All I did was put a little filler into a plastic cup and slowly mix in water with a pair of disposable chopsticks. Since I didn’t have a flexible putty knife on hand, I used an old credit card to apply it to the seat. The picture below on the left shows the seat after I had sanded off the excess.

To paint the seat I used General Finishes Milk Paint in Queenstown Gray. Despite the name, it’s not a true milk paint but a modern product designed to mimic traditional milk paint. I haven’t worked with traditional milk paint before, but I was really impressed with the General Finishes product. The coverage was excellent, it was ready to sand and re-coat in two hours, and the color is beautiful. Although I haven’t painted much furniture in the past, painting chairs is pretty common, so I expect to do it more going forward. General Finishes recommends spraying the Milk Paint for best results, and if I paint a whole chair in the future, I’ll definitely break out the spray gun and give that a try.

I went back and forth between using a water-based or oil-based topcoat. A water-based finish would have preserved the light, milky look of the maple legs, while the oil-based topcoat, which I ultimately chose, adds a yellow hue to the wood. The pictures below show the chair before and after applying the topcoat1. I'm still not 100% sure which look I prefer but I think I would have been happy with the result either way. The topcoat is three coats of General Finishes Arm-R-Seal. I let the final coat cure for a week before rubbing it out with a brown paper bag. This removes any minor imperfections in the finish without leaving scratches.

In the end, I’m really happy with how the perch turned out. It was a quick, enjoyable build, and it's very comfortable to sit on. Time will tell how well it works as a computer chair, but I'm optimistic. I'm feeling much more confident in my turning and seat-shaping skills, which was the main goal of this project. Once I find the motivation to sharpen the scorp and travisher, I think I’ll be ready to dive right into the Irish Stick Chair.

Turning the legs was relatively uneventful. I still have a ways to go before reliably achieving a clean, sand-free finish with the skew tool, but I felt more confident and improved with each leg. Cutting the v-grooves gave me trouble at first. After some frustration, I consulted The Chairmakers Notebook and it turns out my recollection of the technique was completely wrong. Once I corrected my technique, it was so simple that I'm mad I didn't stop to check sooner.

The real fun began when it came time to drill the mortises. Peter Galbert has methods to make this process foolproof, but instead I decided to wing it and see what happens. Working with wood offers us some degree of flexibility, and I prefer to keep things simple1 whenever I can.

For the rear leg mortises, I held the drill bit against the opposite leg as a reference and adjusted2 the leg I was drilling until it was square with the bit. The front leg was easier—I used a rubber band to find the center of the back legs and drilled from that reference point. I started the holes using a spade bit with a long spur, then switched to a WoodOwl OverDrive bit. The WoodOwl bits (both the OverDrive and the Tri-Cut3) are my go-to, but the short spur on the OverDrive bit made it hard to position in the v-groove. The spade bit worked better for reference, but I was worried the long spur would break through the other side of the leg on the 1-inch deep mortise.

I don’t usually get stressed out during glue-ups, but chairs might be the exception. Since the joints are round, you have to pay careful attention to make sure the orientation is correct before driving the tenon into the mortise. Once these joints are set, they’re not coming apart. In some cases you can't even adjust them. I did use yellow glue while most chair makers seem to prefer hide glue. After this glue-up I can see the appeal—longer open time and a bit more ‘slip’ in the joint before it sets would have been helpful. My yellow glue joints locked up instantly, making adjustments impossible.

This brings us to the tension in the undercarriage. The primary means of adding tension to a chair's undercarriage is by adding 1/16 - 1/8" to the stretchers to "push" the legs out a bit. There's great debate on whether or not this is actually desirable, but in my opinion the real question is whether or not it's avoidable. I added about 1/8" to my stretchers. Realistically, I can't guarantee that my mortises were exactly 1" deep. I'd rather have the stretcher push the legs out slightly, with the tension working to keep that joint tight, than have a stretcher that doesn't seat all the way in the mortise or a leg that is trying to pull the joint apart.

Of course, not all tension is good tension. I forgot to make a mark on the rear stretcher to ensure that the mortise was at the correct angle to receive the front stretcher so I had to eyeball it. The mortise ended up at too shallow of an angle which pushed the front leg too far forward (like the left side of the very rough sketch below). Although I managed to wrestle everything into place, this is a situation where tension could have worked in my favor. If I had erred in the other direction (like the right side of the sketch) then any tension would have worked to pull the chair assemble tighter. Next time I'll remember to make a mark for the correct angle, but I'll also seat the stretcher at a slightly higher angle to let the tension work in my favor. In theory this bad tension could cause a problem some day, but I'm not overly worried about it.

I don’t have any strong opinions on the wedges yet—I’m still experimenting with different angles and wood types. This time, I used oak, but I’d like to try hickory next. I had to open up the kerfs slightly with a chisel to get the wedges started, but after that, they went in smoothly. The assembled Perch is below. I'm excited with how it's coming together and looking forward to the finish.

Quite some time ago, Peter Galbert provided plans for and filmed a series of videos demonstrating the process for building a perch chair. A perch is an ergonomic chair designed to promote an active sitting posture. It has a higher seat with a slight forward tilt, putting you in a position somewhere between sitting and standing. This helps take the pressure off your spine and encourages better posture. This particular chair was designed by Peter, Galen Cranz and Curtis Buchanan.

The perch caught my eye for a couple of reasons. First, it has a small seat with simple turnings for the legs. This chair should be relatively easy to build and it will give me a chance to practice seat carving and spindle turning. Second, my sitting posture at work is awful. My office isn't conducive to a standing desk so I've been on the lookout for other ways to try to improve my posture while sitting all day.

I'm going to focus on the seat because that's the most interesting part to me. While you can glue boards together for the seat, I find that there's plenty of wide, generally air dried, stock available on Facebook marketplace at reasonable prices. Be careful, because there's a lot of junk too. The increased popularity of epoxy slabs has convinced everyone with a junky slab of wood that they have a gem on their hands. Elia Bizzarri wrote an evergreen blog post on American seat woods which can help direct your search. I visited a couple of sellers before I found something worth paying for—a nice slab of Catalpa for ~$6 a board foot.

Catalpa isn’t a common wood, but it fits the bill for this project. The perch seat is only 12 inches deep, so I started with a smaller slab as a test. The seller had much larger pieces, and I’ll probably head back for more if this chairmaking journey continues. It’s not a particularly attractive wood—I doubt anyone’s using it for a live-edge table—but it was easy to carve, and I didn’t have to worry about denting it like I would have with pine (which is commonly used for Windsor chair seats). The only downsides I've noticed so far are that it's ring-porous, so I'll have to fill the grain if I paint it, and that it did have a slight yeasty smell, which was a bit off-putting.

This was my first time using a scorp or a travisher—both of which were impulse buys that I probably should have researched a bit more. I won't link them here but feel free to reach out if you want the details. I’ll share more of my thoughts below, but in short, I am on the lookout for another scorp and I'm happy with the travisher.

I have two main issues with the scorp—one I can mitigate, and one I can’t. The first issue is the knife-like cutting edge. Upon further research, a knife edge on a scorp isn't very desirable. It’s difficult to hone without further rounding the edge, and the rounded shape creates a higher angle of attack, which seemed to make it harder to cut with. The second issue is the handle placement. For my use case I think they are too far from the cutting edge, which makes it uncomfortable to use at bench height. While I'm not particularly happy with the scorp, it seems like a high quality tool otherwise and the blame falls entirely on me. It was delivered as advertised but I jumped the gun and ended up with a tool that didn't fit my needs.

My comments on the travisher are much more limited because it did exactly what it needed to do right out of the box1. Since this is my first time using one, I don’t have much to compare it to. The cutting action takes a bit of getting used to—leaning the tool back for deeper cuts and forward for lighter ones. It feels a little unnatural at first, but there’s no harm in using it the ‘wrong’ way; it just won’t cut. Once I became a little more comfortable with the travisher, it was a joy to use.

This post is already longer than I planned, so I'll wrap it up. The legs are relatively simple, so I'm aiming for a finished surface right off of the lathe using the skew chisel. My next post should conclude the Perch build, but depending on how I decide to finish it, I might need two more to wrap things up.

In the Anarchist Design Book, Chris Schwartz comments on how difficult it is to capture the charm of these old vernacular stools. After a couple of attempts, I have to agree. Part of that charm is age, which will come with time, but I think the aspect that's the most difficult to replicate is the raw utility of the piece. There's a certain "vibe" that comes from construction of necessity. On the piece that I took my inspiration from below, whoever built it didn't bother to trim the tenons flush to the seat. That's not a feature I plan on emulating but it does add to the utilitarian look.

My first attempt wasn't really what I was going for. I don't think the parts have enough heft and I don't love the full round over on the seat. If something else looks a little off then you have very good eyes and you'd be right. I made a mistake when drilling the mortises for the legs.

I mistook one of the ambrosia holes for the mark that I made for the mortise. Whoops.

On my second attempt I set out to correct my perceived shortcomings and also had another source of inspiration. I showed my uncle the stool and he commented on how low to the ground it was. I responded that it wasn't that different from a five gallon bucket and that my dad sits on those all the time. That set off a lightbulb in my head and, in addition to using heftier parts, I modeled the dimensions of the second stool off of a five gallon bucket.

That's definitely closer to what I was looking for. The top is a full 2" thick and the legs taper from 1 3/4" to the 1 1/4" mortise. This is compared to a 1 1/2" thick top and legs tapering from 1 1/2" to 1". I think the additional heft looks better and the prefer the rounded edges. Thankfully, my wife prefers the first stool so everyone is happy.

A few other items of note before wrapping up:

• The taper for the legs starts about 3" up the leg and should be slightly curved towards the mortise. It's a subtle detail but adds more life to the leg.
• The resultant angle was 15 degrees and the sightline, obviously, runs through the center of the seat. This is overcomplicating things but I think it's useful to think in these terms.
• For the first stool I drilled the mortises from the bottom and on the second stool I drilled from the top. I found that the entry hole wasn't as clean as the exit hole and will probably drill non-tapered mortises exclusively from the bottom in the future.
• I tried to sand these as little as possible and use edge tools to produce the final finished surfaces, including the turnings. I am far from perfect so there are still visible tool marks but I think that in this case they add more than they subtract.
• The finish is a coat of General Finishes Seal-A-Cell, followed by a few coats of satin Arm-R-Seal. This is pretty much my go to for a generic piece of furniture.

I may be a poor conduit for this message given my relative lack of experience, but if you're on the fence I highly suggest taking the plunge. Even if you never build a chair, I believe the added perspective will make you a better woodworker. If you only have time for one thing, I would watch Peter Galbert's presentation to the Sterling Historical Society.

For those with a little more time who aren't willing to make a monetary commitment just yet, Peter Galbert's old Chair Notes blog is a treasure trove of information and Curtis Buchanan posted a series of videos on YouTube. If you have a little money to spare, Peter's current iteration of Chair Notes is partially paywalled and he's published a book, the Chairmaker's Notebook, through Lost Art Press. You also can't go wrong with Chris Schwartz's The Stick Chair Book, which is available for free in PDF form but I would suggest buying the physical book1.

The first step in any project is acquiring the materials and that first step is also where we veer off course from a normal project. While you can use sawn kiln dried lumber, there are a myriad of advantages to using air dried lumber and splitting the smaller parts from a log. This isn't an exhaustive list, but the main advantages are:

• greater strength of split parts
• the ability to control the relative moisture content of the pieces
• ease of working green lumber with hand tools
• easier to bend and less likely to snap while stream bending

I was able to find a local sawyer who sold me a few boards and a log from the same tree for a reasonable price. The log is obviously from the base of the tree, which is not ideal but shouldn't impact me too much2.

I couldn't contain my excitement, so I split up the log right when I got home. As I've since learned, this was a mistake. Freshly split lumber works beautifully with a drawknife, so I hear, but the wood doesn't maintain that characteristic for long. I missed the window so my drawknife will have to remain on the wall for now. Again, not ideal but not that big of a deal. The grain still runs straight through the split parts. They'll be harder to work to a finished shape but just as strong.

My plan is to build at least one of Chris Schwartz's Irish Stick Chairs. I'm confident that I have enough stock for one but if I don't make any major mistakes, I think I can squeeze out two. I'm also going to build a few stools to get the hang of the leg to seat joinery. I usually work on multiple projects at once (I can't help it) so I'll probably work on these chairs in fits and starts. Usually there is some overlap between the projects I'm working on so I'm interested to see how this foray into green woodworking will influence my other work.