Brian Holcombe Woodworker

Hello! My name is Brian Holcombe. Welcome to my woodworking blog. I design and build furniture, drawing my main influence from Japanese sashimono and carpentry as well as furniture of the Chinese Ming dynasty. My focus is on cabinetry and tables, as well as small boxes and framing.

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In this article I will cover the 2018 Kezurou-kai USA planing competition and event ceremony in Brooklyn and Peekskill, NY.  The event began on Friday the 14th of September ran until Sunday the 16th.   The author was in attendance on Saturday and sunday but I will cover all three days.

Kezurou-kai is a celebration of carpentry hand skills and building techniques, it is an opportunity for many who admire and participate in the craft to meet and enjoy the sharing of technique and experience.  Workshops and talks happen throughout the weekend both to encourage new participants and to continue the conversation and education of the accomplished.   The camaraderie of the craftsman is abound.

At the heart of Kezurou-kai is a Japanese planing contest in which participants compete by planing a wooden beam.  The thinnest shaving, full width and length of the beam, unbroken and complete, wins.  This challenge is a test of the participants ability to sharpen, setup a plane body and prepare the board for best results.

The photography is by Phil Ray Mahabeer of Ocular Photo.   The event was hosted by Mokuchi Studio on Friday and Dain’s Lumber on Saturday and Sunday.

Friday

The event started with a series of workshops, hosted at Mokuchi studio.  The workshops covered aspects of both Japanese carpentry and hand tool setup.  Jay van Arsdale kicked things off with a workshop on fundamental joinery and shoji.

Next, Jon Stollenmeyer held court on the chona (Japanese adze).  Jon detailed the process of setting up and using the adze.

Karl Bareis explained traditional scale modeling of Japanese temple craft to a crowd of eager onlookers.

Followed by Kohei Yamamoto who discussed the sumitsubo (ink pot) and made the sumisashi (bamboo pen).  The sumitsubo and sumisashi are traditional carpentry tools used for laying out and snapping ink lines.  After his presentation he guided many in making their own sumisashi.

Multiple stations were setup for consecutive demonstrations.  Dale Brotherton reviewed the process of dai cutting and blade sharpening.  Dale is shown here carefully cutting out the mouth of the kanna dai.

Andrew Hunter detailed the setup, fine tuning and use of the kanna.

Jan Speetjens demonstrated sharpening and use of the yariganna, or spear plane.

Saturday

Saturday’s program started in the early afternoon and featured a timber raising of the building frame that was completed the week prior in classes and three demonstrations; forging with Jim Blauvelt, log beam layout and hewing with Kohei Yamamoto and Jon Stollenmeyer.   Tool sellers began setting up shop to display their inventories; Mokuchi Studio, Suzuki Tool, Bluewater Forge, NanoHone and more were in attendance.

Jon and Kohei positioned a few beams, cut the ends then began layout utilizing the techniques shown the day prior.  With sumisashi and sashigane in hand, sumitsubo at arms length Jon shows the detailed layout required for making a round log into a squared beam with axe and adze.

Jon began cleaving material from the beam’s side to form the first flat.

Nearby Kohei demonstrated the processing of a beam which would retain a natural curve and be flat on two sides.

Jim Blauvelt of Bluewater Forge brought along anvil and forge to setup a black smithing station.   Jim showed the technique of forge welding steel to iron.  Jim used this technique in the creation of a plane blade.  Forge welding is one of many critical points in it’s production.

Meanwhile, those intending to compete the following day began to setup their sharpening stations and to tune their kanna.  It did not take long before an impressive showing of thin shavings began to appear.

Yann Giguere of Mokuchi Studio assembled a timber framed structure completed by his students the week prior.  This small building and the one from last year will be knocked down and reassembled again in it’s new location.

This building was built with Japanese joinery method in which the joints are demountable, the building can be completely knocked down and reassembled multiple times.

Jon Billings shown here having a swing of the ono to clean up the sides of a log under Kohei’s guidance.

Andrew Hunter shown taking a swing of the axe with Jon Stollenmeyer guiding his approach.

The day ended with a completed timber frame, a beautiful small structure, after which the group moved on to pizza and beer…a staple of the north east.  A great time was had by all as we shared story and opinion about Japanese tools, carpentry, life in the trade and philosophy.

Sunday

Sunday’s event featured presentations, demonstrations and tool stations with expert accompaniment.  Attendees found themselves engrossed in Japanese tools and wood craft within moments of entering Dain’s lumberyard.  Anyone interested was able to try their hand at using saws, chisels planes and axes.

Tool sellers and other vendors were posted near the entrance and enticed many of us into a shiny new something for the work bench.

Throughout the day the sounds of planing could be heard and the contestants were back and forth from the sharpening station to the test beams each setup on saw horses.  Each prepared carefully for the contest which would culminate the day’s events.

Karl Bareis presented on Japanese architecture.

Sayuri Suzuki, of Suzuki-Tool, presents a pair of pruners to a interested client.  Suzuki sells Japanese woodworking tools, gardening and bonsai tools, kitchen cutlery and grooming tools, pretty much anything with a sharp edge hand made in Japan.

Andrew Hunter prepares to take a shaving with a Ookanna, or giantic hand plane.

Yann shown here cutting into a sequoia log with the maebiki nokogiri, a traditional sawyer’s tool.

Kenichiro Kashida, who came from Japan for the event, shown chopping with the chona, or adze.  This tool is used to further refine the surface left by the broad axe.

Zoe Logan cuts along the log with the Maebiki.

Eric Hartunian participates in a tenon sawing demonstration.

Matt Connorton takes a moment from demonstrating chisel setup to shave a beam section with the yariganna, or spear plane.

Harrelson Stanley of NanoHone shows his unique sharpening and stone maintenance products to Greg Gulch.

Jon Stollenmeyer and Kohei Yamamoto present on Japanese carpentry techniques, they detailed construction method and practical aspects of timber raising.   A very detailed and educational talk.

Jude Noteboom studies his kanna in preparation for the competition.

Brian Holcombe adjusts the blade setting.

Competition

Yann Giguere drew the crowd together and announced the start of the competition.  Yann made mention the efforts taken by competitors and sponsors alike in bringing the competition together.   The contest grows annually and this year certainly provided a new spike in attendance.  Each year competition stiffens and shavings are made ever thinner.

Andrew Hunter makes the final touchup to the competition beam.

Jason Forster, Oakland CA, pulling a fine shaving. Great start!

Yann taking accurate measurements while Karl holds the shaving in slight tension.

Jay Christian, DC area, smooth going.

Hiroshi Awano, Charlottesville VA.

Phil Fuentes, Greensboro NC,

Jason Fox, Baltimore MD,

Yuko Yoshikawa, Japan,

Orion Womak, Carpinteria CA,

Jay Speetjens, Greensboro NC,

Toshihito Imai, Japan,

Jude Noteboom, Toronto Ontario Canada,

Jude awaits the measurements.

Brian Holcombe, New Jersey.

Wilbur Pan, New Jersey,

Yann and Karl, decisions, decisions. With every year passing, and people improving their planing, the process of judging is becoming harder and harder.  A micron scale digital indicator is used to measure in the center of the shaving at the start, mid point and near to the end to judge thinness.  Overall quality of the shaving is also taken into account, consistency, evenness, flatness, blemishes to determine a winner and each successive placement.

Phil Fuentes takes home a DVD on Handplanes by Jay Van Arsdale.

Jason Forster wins ‘The Soul of a Tree’ written by George Nakashima, sponsored by Kodansha, USA.

Toshihito Imai takes home an antique Japanese felling axe sponsored by Shibui/Dane Owen.

Yuko Yoshikawa, a very close 4th place, receiving a natural medium stone.

Brian Holcombe wins a tomae natural stone for third place.

Kenichiro Kashida took second place and won a suita natural stone.

Jude Noteboom taking home first place.  Jude won a handmade saw from Suzuki Tool.

Thank you for joining us, I hope that you have enjoyed following along with this recap of Kezurou-Kai USA’s annual planing competition.  We look forward to seeing you again next year.

Sayuri Suzuki Schreiber

Jay van Arsdale

Jim Blauvelt

Yann Giguere

Kohei Yamamoto

Jon Stollenmeyer

Andrew Hunter

Wilbur Pan

Brian Holcombe

Matt Connorton

Jan Speetjens

Jason Forster

Dale Brotherton

Harrelson Stanley

Jude Noteboom

Karl Bareis

  Photography:  www.OcularPhoto.com

Host: http://www.DainsLumber.com

  Kezurou-Kai USA 2018 in New York In this article I will cover the 2018 Kezurou-kai USA planing competition and event ceremony in Brooklyn and Peekskill, NY.  

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Hello and welcome to my blog!  This post details the build of a daybed in Honduran mahogany.  This daybed is planned for outdoor use under a covered patio.  The build was planned to be fairly quick by comparison to most of my builds to make an installation timeline.

This build is complete which allows me to illustrate detailed sections in their completed form prior to describing their processing.  Shown here is the finished daybed.

I picked up 12/4, 8/4, and 4/4 rough sawn mahogany to began the build and started with a focus on prepping material with great care.  I chose sections of mahogany which were mainly straight grained and flat sawn.  Working from flat sawn stock left me with plenty of rift material once it was broken down.  Flat sawn boards that are in alignment with the outside of the tree make for very straight rift sawn boards.   Very few sawyers cut sections like this with intention, so it is often left to the tree itself and where on the tree the boards are cut.  If they’re cut too close to the very bottom of the tree then the boards will feature a lot of run-out.  Further up and the taper is considerably less dramatic.

The first stop with rough material is the jointer.  Rather than starting with face jointing, I began with edge jointing to create a reference edge for my bandsaw.  Also wanting to leave the material as thick as possible as it went into its rough sawn shape, allowing me to create a pair of references after the material had been broken down.

From there it was broken down on the bandsaw then returned to the jointer for reference faces to be be applied.  At this point I let the material rest for a few days.   This material would make up the legs and sides.

When I returned to processing, I next resawed material for side panels.  I’m making use of some new toys in the machine shop; a set of Aigner tables.  They’ve made the processing work for long material considerably less strenuous.

Finally I processed all of the material through to a near finished surface.  The long sides required very careful processing, as rift sawn material is typically bowed along it’s length as received from the sawyer.  Often I work back and forth between the sides until one becomes flat.  This process of removing the strain from both sides of the board is to prevent the bow from reappearing during the thicknessing stage.  I don’t do this on every board, but the ones which feature a heavy bow, I will do so.

Working with long material and wanting it dead flat consumes a good deal of thickness, thus my reasoning for starting with rough sawn material rather than skip planed.  I needed every bit of thickness to arrive at 1.75″ while remaining flat and true, starting from material that was 2″ thick or more.

It’s been my experience that time spent carefully processing pays considerable dividends later on in the work and leads less often to second guessing or working out gaps in fit ups.

The resulting material is quite nicely sized, straight and flat.  Having processed material with hand planes for so many years, seeing a pile of lumber like this after a day’s hours brings me near to tears of joy.

This build features a top rail around the back two sides of the daybed, the top rail would be round and so I would need to prepare both rectangular and round section material for the work.

With the rectangular sections complete, I decided to rough prep the round sections having wanted to accomplish this section of the work early enough to plan the accompanying work and tooling requirements.  Luckily the material processed beautifully and my old Italian made lathe buzzed through the work without a hiccup.

Next I returned to the frame work and began by marking out the corner joinery.  I planned the corner joinery as blind mortise and tenon, with a near full length haunch.  The bed is planned for outdoor use, so I wanted to be able to accommodate wood movement without visible gapping around the joint or uneven surfaces, so for that reason I planned a shoulder around the entire joint, rather than just at the sides.

The tenons were cut along with a corresponding gauge block for each tenon.  The gauge block was used to aid in checking the fitup for squareness and accuracy, then utilized as a backup while the adjoining mortise was cut in.  There is a section where the two mortises cross and having a backup prevented chipping out the inside sections of the joint.

Finally the grooves were set in for the panel and haunches.  These were processed at the slot mortiser, then the ends chopped square.  The slot mortiser is handy for blind grooves.

Once the joinery in the outside four legs was completed, they were set aside and my attention was focused on a center support which would divide the back of the bed.  This joint became a bit complicated as it needed to accomplish many things.  The completed support is shown here.

My goal in designing this joint was to allow the side rail to join up with a lap joint at the center post.  The rail itself would not be fixed to the support, allowing it to float freely.  The reasoning behind this decision, to allow the post to free float, was to prevent the post’s change in dimension with relative humidity from changing the length of the back rail which would cause the joinery to separate in the winter or swell in the summer compressing the sides of the post.

The frame would receive another inner frame which would act as a support for the bed slats.  This frame would be continuous along the inside of the bed rail.

This post would need to act as a support for the rail, but it could not interfere with the dimension of the rail, it had to do so in a manner that would not reduce the strength of either component significantly.  This was a bit tricky.

I started by cutting the through mortises.

Next I cut a shallow mortise to accommodate a stub tenon.  The stub tenon would give additional fixturing capability to the assembly.   Finally I ran the grooves to receive the side panels.

I then carefully processed the tenons, which would overlap inside the joint.  I wanted the joint completely housed by the leg so that seasonal movement would not reveal a gap.

Both top and bottom rails were completed and joined into the upright.  The rails were then grooved to receive the slat support.

The slat support was made to join with simple open bridle joints and the support was laminated into the rail with waterproof glue.  The glue joint is helpful but not critical to the survival of the bed, since the internal support utilizes the groove for strength and support.

The assembly, consisting of simple joinery is beginning to feel slightly more complex now with so many joints coming together at the same time.  It also makes for a very assured feeling once the joints are seated.

  Once the assembly could be test fitted I used the opportunity to mark out for a center support along the depth of the bed.  This support joined in with a finger joint.  The joint is quite simple and yet very strong.  I made the center support to be offset by the same thickness as the slats so that it would act as the center slat.

    The center support consisted of two adjoining supports, which would cross at the center of the bed.  The lengthwise support would join at the center with a halving joint and at the ends with a dovetail joint.

  The dovetail was very easy to cutout, I simply marked then chopped and pared to form the sides.

These dovetails join into the short sides of the bed.  This is a neat joint and works to keep the sides from bowing over time but would be covered in the end.

These types of dovetail joints have very little strength against racking when they’re cut through (as opposed to blind).  However I planed to laminate the end slats which would act to cap the joint and prevent it from splitting out if the assembly racked as I joined it together.  This completed the inner structure.  Time to knock it apart and move onto the railing.

The railing consists of a square section rail running under a round section rail, the cutout would be quite straightforward as well.  For the square section rail I cutout using the Bridgeport mill, then square the corners and cut to the layout line by hand.

The round section was cut through from either side, also using the Bridgeport mill with a Forstner bit.  Accuracy was important here as any deflection would be clearly visible in the finished joint.

The mitered joint was cut in from either side with the forstner bit until they came nearly to a finished corner.  Not wanting to cut away too much I decided to leave the reminder and cut it away by hand.

I cut away the tops of the posts, then finished the joints each by hand with gouges.

The cutout now complete, I was able to begin the process of gluing up.  The long sides were glued individually.  I carefully checked with winding sticks to ensure the result was free of twist, the with an 8′ straight edge to check and ensure the finished assembly was straight.

The assembly could be again test fitted to ensure that it clamps up square and to allow for fitting of the top railing.

Once the top rail was planned out I began cutting a type of scarf joint called a tenoned scarf joint:

The others would be a double tenoned scarf joint.  I used these where additional supports could not be provided.

The cutout began on the Bridgeport milling machine.  I used it to created a reference surface at the center of each joint, then also to cut in the tenon.

The double tenon was chopped and sawed by hand, and the joints were each fitup by hand.  I use a quick and dirty method for zeroing the DRO on my milling machine, where I simply run the cutter up to the start of the cut, then zero the DRO.  This results in a minor inconsistency of a few thousands here and the.  That results in gaps, which then need to be attended to by hand.

The rail sections were glued together, then the completed section was planed to size allowing them to fit into the posts.

The completed form.

The last steps were to resemble the bed, for a final fitup, then to process and install the slats.  The slat installation was simple enough, cutting them to length, cutting a recessed hole for a screw to pass through and then marking their locations and putting them in place.

The finished result is still able to be disassembled again for transportation to the client’s location.  I hope that you have enjoyed this build and I very much look forward to your questions and comments.

    Mahogany Daybed Hello and welcome to my blog!  This post details the build of a daybed in Honduran mahogany.  

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Hello, and welcome to my blog!  In this post I will detail the completion of a recent kitchen project.  The final part of this project details a built-in storage surrounding the refrigerator and a set of shelves to complete the area above the counter.  The homeowner has completed the the demolition and finished renovating all aspects of the kitchen outside of the cabinetry.

This project has been planned to be completed in stages of work.  At the end of each stage the kitchen would be made presentable and usable to accommodate family parties and holidays parties.  For this reason the work has been stretched over a longer period of time than would typically be provided for a kitchen build and installation.

The shelving above the counter was the first section of this work completed.  The shelves are wall-mounted with an additional upright tie bar.   We were unsure if these would need to carry weight so I built them to be quite substantial.

I decided to work from some heavy white oak slabs that we had ear-marked for another stage of the build but decided against using previously.    These shelves present a grain pattern which I consider quite unique.  They are sawn with the grain running in near perfect alignment to the face.  This type of sawing presents as a marbled pattern on the face, rather than the cathedral of grain normally presented on flat sawn boards.

Once the prep work was complete, next step is to plane the shelves to a fine finish and detail the edges with a chamfer.  Some edges are chamfered before the joinery and some after.

Next the back of the shelves were grooved for the reception of poplar wall cleats.

The wall cleats are then mounted in place and the shelves marked out for joinery.  The joinery is a simple halving joint.  The joint fits into the face of the shelf and to account for the distance removed by the joinery I cut to measured marks.  The result is a joint that locks into position and must be installed at an angle.

To finish the tie bar I applied a deep chamfer to the ends of the bar, along with chamfers on the outside surfaces, the same treatment of chamfers was applied to the outer edges of the shelf.   I mocked up the assembly in the shop.

Now installed, along with major progress having been made in the other aspects of the project.  The stainless hood, for instance, really helps the kitchen come to life.

This kitchen design moves away from those utilizing upper cabinets.  My clients wanted a storage solution that would allow them to work at waist height wherever possible and they found it preferable to pick heavy objects from lower heights.

The earlier stages of this project aimed to make practical storage for the area below the counter top, utilizing drawers rather than open spaces and allowing them plenty of storage for heavy plates, cups, cutting boards and utensils all at easily accessible heights.

In the final stage of the project I needed to make space for heavy equipment such as food processors.  These heavy pieces are sometimes quite uncomfortable to lift from very low levels so I designed a solution around that problem.  I proposed a storage unit which would surround the refrigerator, building it in, and allow practical access to heavy pieces.

This project started with a 3d rendering.

I planned this aspect of the build to allow storage on the left of the refrigerator in the form of very deep drawers, and storage above the refrigerator which would be simple open cabinet space behind doors.  The cabinet would be built in two sections and with two supports.  The supporting sections to be made of poplar and faced in white oak.

I firmly believe in making a heavy plinth for cabinetry, the plinth allows me to have a near perfectly level foundation offering support and a sturdy mounting location.   That said, I managed to take exactly zero photos of said plinth, so it will have to exist as internet legend alone.

I began building the large cases in birch ply.  The upright case would be made from two sections joined top and bottom utilizing mortise and tenon joinery.

The tenons at the junction between the upper and lower sections of the upright cabinet were cut to make a half lap joint.   The joint sandwiches a mortised panel which functions as a support at the middle.

To make the cabinet rigid I utilized heavy supporting uprights and capped them in quarter sawn white oak.  The edges along the middle and bottom panels were also capped in QSWO (quarter sawn white oak) while the top panel would sit behind the molding of the upper cabinet.

Seen here are the QSWO faces after hand planing and chamfering detail.

The overhead cabinet, which joins into this upright cabinet, would be made very similarly to the upright.  A large top and bottom panel were mortised to receive tenoned uprights.  This structure was also made rigid with hardwood supports and capped in QSWO.

The support was made utilizing bridle joints with supporting crossmembers applied using halving joints.  The crossmembers would be utilized to secure the face panels making up the cabinet facade.  The back half of the cabinet would be supported by a wall-mounted batten.

1/4″ plywood spacers were needed between the sections of cabinet.  These allowed the total amount of plywood to equal that of the molding to minimize the overhang inside the upright cabinet.

Next step in the build was drawer-making.  I was able to make a few changes to this process to improve the result and speed.  The main time-sink in making drawers had been in smoothing veneers.  I had been shop sawing the veneers to exact thickness, applying them and smoothing the result.

This time around I decided to put a newly acquired machine to work; a Minimax FS41 Elite S jointer/planer.  I started by resawing veneers considerably over-thickness.  I then machined them to exact thickness.  Now I could lay up the veneers and all of the resulting panels would be exactly the same thickness at the glue-up stage.  The finished surface needed only a touch of hand planing to brighten the surface and remove planer scallops.

I planned the veneers for this side of the project to match the full way across the cabinet.  Working from one board heavy enough to supply the necessary veneers.  These veneers are applied to birch ply panels which are wrapped in QSWO hardwood edging.  The edging is made about 1/2″ thick.

The drawers for this cabinet are uniquely designed to accommodate side access of tall and bulky items.  They would also need to carry large drawer fronts and they would need to extend and retract without rubbing the cabinet sides or wobbling.

The top drawer would ride on four slides and utilize two decks.  The lower would be offset from the bottom of the cabinet and be made to carry the tallest piece of equipment in the kitchen; the mixer.  The bottom drawer would have the drawer structure raised from the cabinet bottom to accommodate the user.

To give the drawer leverage against the tall drawer face I decided to join the drawer sides into uprights, the remainder of the drawer would be dovetailed.  Shown here I’ve fitted the back of the drawers with dovetails.

The uprights are coming together here, the first mortise was squared after cutting and the second is soon to be squared.

The drawer parts for both drawers laid out here and assembly has begun.

The drawer, finished, installed and being tested here.

This completes the kitchen build, I hope that you have enjoyed following along with this project.  There was much delay in making this post, I decided to wait until I could take finished photography and that delayed my posting a bit more than expected.

Please enjoy a photo walk-through of the completed kitchen build.  Thank you for following along with this project and I look forward to beginning again with the projects I have coming up.  I also look forward to receiving your feedback.

The stools shown are copyright off BassamFellows and used with the written consent of BassamFellows.

The Kitchen Series – Complete Hello, and welcome to my blog!  In this post I will detail the completion of a recent kitchen project.  

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Alfa Tools FBM64010 1″ Bormax Forstner Bit

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Tea House Low Table

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Butler’s Desk

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Tea House – Low Chair

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Shinwa Sashigane Shinwa Sashigane - Standard measurement - inches.

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Gyokucho 372 Razor Saw Dozuki Gyokucho 372 Razor Saw Dozuki

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Naniwa Snow White 8000 Naniwa Snow White 8000 grit finishing stone.

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Naniwa Chosera 1000 Chosera 1000 Grit Stone with Base

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King Hyper 1000 Sharpening Stone

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Naniwa Chosera 800

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Naniwa Chosera 3000

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Dovetail Corner Bench

Low bench in curly cherry wood with butterfly detail in Macassar ebony.  This bench features setback style dovetailed corner joints reinforced with dowels and the stretcher features a wedged key through tenon.

  Height: 14.25″

Width:  30.5″

Depth:  11″

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Henry

Henry’s Chair is an original dining chair by Brian Holcombe.   This chair is designed with an eye for modern proportion and made using traditional tools such as planes, shaves and chisels.  Each chair is handmade providing a unique character.  

  Dimensions:

  Seating height: 18″

Seat depth:17″

Overall height: 28.25″

Arm height: 27″

Width: 21.25″

Depth: 21″

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Hello and welcome to my blog!  A happy new year to all of you and hope you are all quite well.  To start this new year I would like to present a my dining chair design.  I am calling this Henry’s Chair after my son.  I owe my inspiration to pursue a career as a furniture maker to my son, Henry.

This chair is the product of many late night hours, the hours after cabinetmaking (the kitchen series wraps up pretty soon for those curious).  Those evening hours and perhaps a few hundred cups of espresso.  This project began much unlike my cabinet work.  I start most projects by working out the details on a 3d CAD program.  On this project, however, I found myself designing from abstract sketches and drawing directly onto the material.  It seemed a better approach for organic shapes, such as this chair.

Prototype

With a rough sketch in hand, I set forth a few simple goals which would allow me to form a framework for my thought process.  I wanted a chair made entirely of wood that was comfortable to sit in for an extended period of time and I wanted to utilize traditional joinery.  With these parameters I began the prototyping work in white oak.

Once the legs were blanked out, I assembled a seat from quartered oak then drew an approximation of what I wanted.

Next I chopped the seat pan with an adze, known as a chona, and further refined the seat with a shi-ho-sori-ganna, or spoon bottom plane.  After which I sawed the seat to an approximate shape but left it square enough to remain able to be worked on.

I wanted the chair seat to be both visually and physically light.  I turned the chair seat over and began planing away material to form a curve on the bottom side of the seat.

The finished curve helped to create a light, coopered look to the seat.  The seat at this point is also becoming physically light.  Heft for dining chairs is something to be avoided, light and strong are more important than mass.

Putting the seat aside, I turned my attention to the legs and cut mortises which would receive a stretcher’s tenons.

I then created the corresponding stretchers and cut their tenons.

With legs and seat ready I could begin to form my thoughts on what I wanted for the seat’s angle and position of the back legs.  A dining chair should also have a slightly reclined angle to the seat, this helps put the user’s back against the backrest in a normal sitting position.

After determining the location and angle I cut out a dado to house the stretcher.  I wanted to support the stretchers in a way that would help them to resist racking in use.

I connected the stretchers to their supports with sliding dovetails, a joint I would later reconsider.  The dovetails simply did not provide enough resistance to racking.

Now that the seat was in position I could turn my attention once again to the legs and create their approximate shape.

Working from the shape of the Tea House chair arm to create a profile, I used this to connect the legs front to back, then joined the arms together with a backrest.  For this chair I knew I would need to trim down the arm profile to match the proportion of the base, I did this in progressive steps working from something quite oversized until I began to hone in on what I wanted.

I sculpted the backrest, alongside the arms, with shaves and gouges until arriving at a shape that I found appealing.  I found myself endlessly drawing new lines onto the back and recutting it and the arms again and again.  Once I found myself second guessing my edits I had a feeling I was getting close.

After shaping the back and arms I considered the prototype complete.  Deciding it was now time to photograph the design and ponder which changes needed to take place.  It is often a change of format which can provide additional insight.

    Product

Rather than continue to refine the original, I would put it aside and begin again.  Restarting would provide an opportunity to both refine the details left open on the original, further hone in on the shape, change structural details, and gain insight into efficient process.

Starting over, I cut mortised in turned legs, rather than shaved, as the finished product utilizes turned legs.  Once they were roughly shaped as I wanted, I set them aside and glued up quarter sawn white ash which would become the chair seat.

This chair seat would again arrive at its rough form by way of chona.  This seat, I felt, needed a higher level of refinement than the previous.  The coarse pattern left by the shi-ho-sori ganna provides a tactile experience that is enjoyable, however I could not reconcile with the tearout which resulted.  I began the process of improvement by building a sotomaru ganna, or rounding plane, to make an evenly curved area for the legs.  I used a small plane for the ramp and returned to the shi-ho-sori ganna for the seat bowl, which was finished with a scraper.

Shi-ho-sori ganna, newly freshened with dovetail key mouth insert.  The mouth had been wearing very rapidly due to how much pressure is applied to it.

Sotomaru ganna.

Next I revisited the structure beneath the seat, determining that I would replace the dovetails with through tenons.

Then the back would be cut and shaped.  The backrest joins to the arms with a bridle joint, now improved with a deliberate miter at the top of the joint to make the arm to backrest transition.

The next step was to join the legs into the backrest assembly.  The leg tenons join into the backrest assembly with perfect accuracy allowing very little room for error.  After measuring a dozen times or so, I was ready to make the cuts.

Luckily my marks were accurate, along with assumptions, and the chair assembled properly without fitment issues. The chair was now once again in rough form and ready for considerable shaping.

With this effort now realized, I feel I’ve put forth a design which is light, strong and comfortable.  I am very grateful to John Aniano, Prashun Patel and Liam Murphy for the help they kindly provided.  For the moment I have taken some photos using the photo booth area of my workshop.  I have some interesting plans, thanks to wonderful and generous friends, in regard to photography and settings of this chair coming up soon.

  I greatly appreciate the interest expressed toward my design and I’m producing these chairs completely in-house.  Those interested in purchasing, please contact me directly.  I currently building these chairs in ash and walnut.   If you have another material in mind please mention it in your message.  If you’d like to try out my chair, please schedule a visit to my studio.

  [contact-form] Henry’s Chair Hello and welcome to my blog!  A happy new year to all of you and hope you are all quite well.