WIP: a Smoker's bow

[Sheffield Tony]

I think we could do with some more chairmaking in here !

When some of us were gathered at MAC Timbers last year, Mike demonstrated his sawmill by slicing up a big lump of walnut. I was struck by how lovely it looked. I resisted temptation then and there, but when I got home I mulled for a while on what I could do with a bit. I have a copy of Jack Hill's Country Chair Making, and took an instant liking to the Smoker's bow in there. I suspect, perhaps, that this is because it fits perfectly my mental picture of Enid Blyton's Wishing Chair, a childhood favourite ! The one in Jack Hill's book is particularly beautiful, with yew spindles and an elm seat. I decided to have a go at one with a walnut seat and arm rest, contrasting with ash for the turned parts. Went back to see Mike and bought a 2" walnut board, wide enough to make the seat from a single piece. I had half an ash log, left over from making a greenwood chair but now a bit dry, that would do for the turnery.

For the last few days, I've been turning legs. All the turned parts are made by froe, axe, drawknife and pole lathe. The finish is straight from the skew, burnished with shavings. I would not be winning any log to leg race here though - it took me 2-3 hours per leg !

The finished kit of turned parts (minus 2 to be completed) looks like so:

There's some spare at the ends of some of the pieces that will need trimming off, but I don't want to lose the centres until I'm sure that the tenons are the right size. The wood was fairly dry by now, about a year from felling, but may still shrink a little more - I've left a guestimated allowance.

More later, but don't hold your breath, got a lot on at the moment and this might take some time.

 

[Racers]

Looking forward to this build, I have been meaning to do a Windsor chair course.

Was it this bit of Walnut?



Pete

 

[CHJ]

That's some impressive output from the pole lathe, eagerly awaiting further instalments.

 

[blackrodd]

That's some impressive output from the pole lathe, eagerly awaiting further instalments.

Yep, I'd like to see the follow up too. Would love to see the rest made in fact.
When that's done, you'll have a leg like Arnie.
Regards Rodders

 

[John15]

The turned pieces look beautiful Tony. I wish I could have a go but I don't have the room.

John

 

[AndyT]

I'm watching with interest too - that's a most impressively well-matched set of spindles, Tony.

 

[NickWelford]

I've been on a Windsor chair making course with Mike Abbott, and I'm really impressed with your pole lathe turned legs. Great uniformity.

 

[custard]

All the turned parts are made by froe, axe, drawknife and pole lathe.

I take my hat off to you. That's a considerable achievement.

=D>

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The piece of walnut is not actually one of the ones Mike was cutting when we were there - it is a bigger board, enough to get the arm rest parts from too I think. I hope that lovely colour it had when wet will be brought out by an oil finish.

I was quite pleased with the legs (thanks for the kind comments) - the wood being halfway to seasoned meant a lot more energy needed for turning, and more frequent sharpening of the skew, but it does seem possible to get finer details than when turning very wet wood. Getting them reasonably matched is not down to a finely tuned eye, but frequent use of the calipers ! I turn one leg, marking on the joint positions etc. Mark that one as the master to avoid Chinese whispers setting in. Then I offer that one up to the rest of the legs and transfer the positions of key features by eye, but the thickness at each point is checked with a vernier caliper. I rather like the incongruous combinaton of vernier calipers and pole lathe !

Rodders, because I mostly treaddle with by right leg, I fear my chair legs might well be better matched than my own by the time I'm done.

 

[DTR]

Watching with interest, keep up the good work!

 

[StarGazer]

Any updates Tony?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Oops sorry. I've stalled on this one a bit. I've been preoccupied with various events (Sutton Hoo, Bodger's ball etc), and building a wood fired oven. I will get back to it soon, honest.

 

[Sheffield Tony]

Gosh, this has been sitting in a pile of pieces for too long ! I've been up to a lot of other, non-woodwork, things. Mostly involving going walkabout in the hills.

Got back to it this weekend, making the seat and arm bow from that board of walnut. For this I followed Jack Hill's advice and drew up full sized plans based on the design in his book. I used tracing paper, so that I can trace the 5 pieces that make up the arm bow and seat onto templates that I can juggle around on my board to get the best fit, avoiding a small split and trying to work round the knots. One knot remains of the seat (for character :wink: ), shaping the seat might improve it, or I might have to fill with clear epoxy. All the sawing was done by homemade bowsaw. Here's the arm rest glued up, and with the beginnings of shaping. Again, I'm being purist and sticking to hand tools so the shaping is by bowsaw, homemade travisher and spokeshaves. There's more work to do, so it looks rather heavy at the moment.

Here I departed from the otherwise excellent instructions from Jack Hill's book. He would have you shape the seat etc then drill the holes for the spindles. As I'm using brace and bit, and struggle enough to drill straight, I prefer to drill the holes whilst I still have square, flat faces to work with and shape later. His instructions also are very terse regarding position of these socket holes. A diagram shows pair of dividers pointing at two holes with 4 1/2" written by it, the notion of the sight lines is marked on the diagram, but not the exact positioning of the intersection point relative to the arm rest. Nor how far in from the edge to drill the holes. Going back to my full sized plans, I marked on where the intersection point of the sightlines in on the seat (that is given), then marked the hole positions in the underside of the armrest as evenly spaced. Now because I used tracing paper, it is easy to stack the armrest plan on top of the seat plan, and judge where the relative position of the arm rest and seat looks about right. The interesection of the sight lines for the arm rest must be vertically above the intersection of the seat sight lines, so I could then mark that. Then the position of the armrest holes define the sight lines for the arm bow, and can be traced onto the seat plan too. Measuring the difference in radius of the seat sockets and arm sockets, and knowing that the arm rest is going the be 215mm above the seat gives me the drilling angles by a little trigonometry. Which are nearly (but not exactly) the 10 and 15 degrees the book mentions. There must be an easier way.

The parts:

To drill the holes, I copied the sightlines from the plans, marking out in white pencil. I judged the angles by standing a tri-square to judge vertical perpendicular to the sight line, and frequent checking with a sliding bevel for the angle between the drill and the sight line along the seat. The other white lines are for the seat shaping; to do this I sat on it and drew around my butt !

Trial fitting the spindles as I went to be sure I all looked OK.

Since the demise of Clico, good sharp auger bits that suit a hand brace are are getting hard to find. I've got a lot of old ones with worn out spurs, but here a clean hole is important. This Sandvik one is almost new, and although the shank has three flats at the top, there is a small section which is square, allowing it to be gripped by a Stanley 2 jaw brace - I'm using the one that Droogs gave me in the 2015 Secret Santa.

Again, trial fitting the spindles and offering up the arm to check the top hole positions line up. My maths seemed to have worked fairly well. Time to knock off for dinner, the last couple of holes will have to wait.

 

[Harbo]

Looking good - very nice work

Rod

 

[AndyT]

Looking great!

Re angled holes, I can see two answers. The best one, now that you have found the angles required, is to carry on making hundreds more chairs!

The other way, from a newly found book on the History of the English Chair, is to get one of these machines and connect it to a steam engine...

 

[xy mosian]

Great work on the chair, I have been looking forward to the stages towards completion. =D>

The machine Andy shows is a fine example of what can be achieved in industry, where that suggests high volume production.

Perhaps one of the stand attachments for electric drills with a hinged pillar could work. I am sure I have seen an image of one somwhere, but where?
Keep up the good work.

xy

 

[Sheffield Tony]

That's quite a machine Andy. But a more appropriate tool for this scale of work might be one I know you already have:

not-a-boring-machine-t89822.html

At least it might allow repeated drilling at the same angle. They look rather appealing, how accurate / repeatable are they, I wonder ? Should I be keeping my eye out for one ?

 

[AndyT]

Ah, how could I forget?!

It certainly ought to work, though I've never heard of a chairmaker using one, not even Roy Underhill.

But I suspect it might all be more trouble than it's worth to set up and it's better to get comfortable with sight lines, try squares and a brace and bit.

 

[custard]

But I suspect it might all be more trouble than it's worth to set up and it's better to get comfortable with sight lines, try squares and a brace and bit.

I've never made a Smoker's Bow but I've made plenty of Windsor chairs. Even though they look superficially similar I suspect they require a very different approach in construction.

Windsors are actually very forgiving of small drilling errors, the whole point of them is that the dimensions aren't that critical and the components are thin enough and flexible enough to accommodate steam bending spring back and small misalignments in drilling. Looking at that Smokers Bow it's an altogether different proposition, the components are much heavier and won't have much flexibility, in fact it looks more like a manufacturing design than a craft design. Consequently I guess (and it's only a guess, as I say I've never made one) that it requires a different order of build precision, so maybe jigged up drilling machines are the order of the day rather than sight lines and a relaxed approach?

 

[Sheffield Tony]

The weekend just gone I got around to finishing the drilling; the last couple of holes in the seat, then the underside of the arm rest. This is harder without the nice flat board to draw sight lines on. I resorted again to the full sized plan; spread out on the bench draping over the edge so I coud set the arm bow on top, upside down with the crest of the back rest hanging over the edge. By lining it up with the plan and clamping it down with a couple of holdfasts, I could use the sight lines directly from the plan. And my maths must have been near enough, because it goes together ! Here's a trial assembly:

There is a little wiggle room for inaccurate drilling, but probably 10mm at most or about a couple of degrees in angle. I will confess that one of my holes was a little bit out, wandered a bit I think because of some awkward grain. Or maybe not enough care. Anyway, only a very slight adjustment needed, which I made by easing towards the bottom of the hole with an in-cannel gouge; only a fraction of a mm shave needed to get it together, can't be seen when assembled, and as it is only one socket out of 16, I can't see it will cause any weakness to speak of.

Thinking ahead to glueing up, I'm considering using the Titebond liquid hide glue. I think Custard was extolling it recently on anouther thread ? How long is the shelf life of that stuff, and can I tell if my bottle is over the hill ? I bought it for wooden plane repairs a little while ago, normally use Titebond 3. Maybe I should just buy fresh.

I'm now shaping the seat, and refining the arm bow shape.