I spent last week at the London International Woodworking Festival, taking Chris Schwarz’s Comb-back stick chair class and attending the show at the weekend.

At the same time, Megan Fitzpatrick was teaching a Dutch Tool Chest class. Mark Harrell was teaching a saw sharpening and making class, and Ian Parker was teaching Illustration for Furniture makers. I knew more than few of the students coming, so the evenings where lively, and a lot of whiskey was put away (Phil Smith won the best bottle competition by a country mile).

I was a little nervous about the class. While I’ve made a few stools, I’ve never tackled a complete chair. I’ve also had some issues with long covid over the last few years, so I wondered if I would have the physical stamina to be on my feet and working all day.

On day one, we picked our benches and got the stock for the 4 legs and the seat. Some nice Oak for the legs, and a wonderful one piece Elm seat blank for me. The first job was to taper the legs (They were already octagons). Cue furious jack planing. Pretty quickly, I began to wonder if I would be able to keep up. I sweat buckets, but lunchtime came, and I had 4 tapered legs on my bench. Chris advised us not to worry if facets were not perfectly even. “A little wonkiness is OK”, I think I passionately embraced the wonkiness…

Then it was time to layout the seat with a template, take it to the bandsaw and cut it out. Fairly straightforward. Likewise taking the armbow templates, marking them on a blank, and then cutting them out. Nice easy work.

Chris Schwarz has clearly taught this class, or variations of it a lot. He calls everyone over, demonstrates the next steps precisely and clearly, and calls out potential pitfalls. Few people need much help after that, they just get on with it. Each next step is kept relatively simple. He does a great job of calling out potential problems or missteps.

The first scary operation came after that. Drilling the leg mortices. When I take a class, I try to do everything as the instructor demonstrates. What is the point of taking a class, and then doing things the way I always do them? As you may have noticed in the past, I do not use many power tools. I needed to drill one inch holes with a power drill. Not something I’m used to, at home the brace would come out at this point. I discovered I prefer the brace. It may take a little longer, but you do not need the wrists of a gorilla, and you have a lot more control.

The template includes holes that mark the spots you join up with your pencil to form sight lines. You line your drill up with the lines, and then set your bevel to the desired angle. The trick now is to line the drill up with the sight line and the bevel at the same time. A laser helps with lining up the drill and the line, but its difficult to do that and match the angle of the bevel at the same time.

Thankfully, Alexis at the next bench was willing to be my spotter, and it went pretty smoothly. You drill in from the bottom side of the board, breaking out the top. As the seat is getting saddled, a little breakout is no big deal (we still used a backing board). The design of this chair is fairly forgiving. Being a degree out is not going to result in an awful looking chair. With the holes drilled, I test fit the legs and was pretty happy with what I saw.

Finally we did a little work on the short sticks that join the armbow to the seat at the front. Used a Veritas power tenon cutter in a drill to create the tenons, and then tapered them a little to the shoulder using a block plane.

We wrapped up for the day, with something that looked like a 4 legged stool. Not bad. I was tired and sore from all the planing, but feeling like having a chair at the end of the week was possible.

Day two was not as physically demanding, but we had some more difficult operations. We set about glueing up our arm bows. The arm consists of three pieces. A central piece, that joints the two arms. These are glued together and held with pocket screws to act as clamps while the glue dries. I looked at the 3 curved pieces and wondered how to joint them to get a good glue joint. The solution is pretty simple. Mark them with carpenters triangles, then hold the pieces side by side and line up the ends and clamp them together. Then plane them flat as a single piece. You will will probably not have a perfectly flat joint, but it will be seamless. Being a tiny bit out does not matter for an arm, and you can plane it afterwards to correct it if you need to.

After jointing the 3 bottom pieces, drill the pocket holes, apply glue, and screw them together. We used yellow glue in the class, so we could move on quickly. Once it has set, make sure top top is planed flat and that the shoe matches and will not leave any visible gaps when clamped. Remove the pocket screws (they might get in the way of drilling stick holes), Then yellow glue the shoe on. At this point I had a little problem. With the 3 piece glue up on the bench, I set about glueing up.

Most of the small clamps had been snapped up by other students, and I was using very large clamps. As I added one, the clamp holding everything to the bench gave out, and the armbow loaded with clamps came down on top of me. I was in no danger, but I was below the arms tightening a clamp at the time, and at an awkward angle. As I struggled to hold it all up, the 3 piece glue up came apart….. After getting some help to get everything back up, I tried my best to line everything up again, and get the clamps back on. In theory the glue joint on the shoe should hold everything together anyway. After the clamps came off, I could see a little gap, but all in all, it still looked good.

We moved on to the long sticks for the chair back. A somewhat similar operation to the short sticks. Tenon one end with the power tenon cutter again, but run most of the length through a rounding plane. This gives you an octagon for the part of the long stick between the arms and the seat, and a narrower rod that will run up to the crest. Again, we tapered the octagon down with a block plane. By the end of the day my left hand started cramping into a claw. I’m just not used to doing one operation for hours at a time. At home, I’d switch up far more often.

Chris gave us a demonstration towards the end of day 2 on drilling the remaining arm and seat holes. He has a plywood jig that holds the arms above the seat, and makes lining everything up a fairly simple process. You drill down through the arm, using a bit on a drill extension. Your job, aim at the matching hole in the seat and get left and right correct. Your spotter helps you line up the angle correctly using a long stick to eyeball it. It feels like you cannot possibly get it right, and I’m sure I was off in places, but the overall design of the chair seems very forgiving. When it came time to assemble later, all went smoothly.

Day 3

I got my drilling done, nerve racking, but all went well. Again, a spotter is pretty much a must to get this right.

I attempted to cut the seat bevel with the bandsaw. The blade seemed to take on a life of its own diving and rising with no warning. I wound up with massive gouges where it got completely out of my control. I learned later that heavy use by people unfamiliar with the tool had left it in rough shape. I broke out my favourite Tchernis spokeshave and removed about an 8th of oak all the way around to clean up the mess. Just as I was finishing, the wear plate on the front of the spokeshave just dropped off… Its not really intended to be worked that hard for that long. I’ll get it glued back in when I get home.

I should probably mention that as I attempted to get all of this work done, Ric Archibald, Canadian ne’er-do-well, was entertaining himself by sneaking in from the saw sharpening class next door and stealing my tools when I was not looking. Before long, I’d look for something, get up, walk next door to Ric, extend an arm and just say “Jack Plane”. At one point when I went to get something I discovered an entire pile of my tools on his bench.

Time to saddle the seat. I was much more in my comfort zone. I’ve done this before on three stools, but I’ve never had to hit a line or create a pommel. Chris demonstrated using a Scorp to remove the bulk of the material, and then a Travisher to refine and finish. Finally scraping/sanding. Up until now there have been few chair specific tools. Chris’s method is optimized to allow woodworkers to use the tools they probably already own. I had to remove so much material to fix my bandsawed bevel that I had to saddle slightly shallower than usual at the front, but I still like the result.

After that I worked on refining the shape of my arms. Chris demonstrated “Pre-Flight” checks for final glue up. A dry fit, and tips on what to look out for that might make final assembly tricky. Long sticks that will not line up and are too tight to manoeuvre seem to be the big one. I discovered as I attempted pre-flight that all of my long sticks were way too thick. None would even remotely fit through the drilled holes. Cue more frantic planing with the block plane, which made me fill a little silly, as I had spent some time scraping them all. There would not be time to do that again.

Day 4

I finished up my long sticks in the morning, got pre-flight to a promising state. One trick Chris showed was to slightly ream the underside of an arm hole to give some wiggle room if a stick was too stiff. As all of our sticks had been hand planed, they were rarely perfectly symmetrical. So rotating the stick could often get it to line up with its hole.

Levelling the legs was pretty straight forward. Put wedges under the legs until everything is level. Then use shims to add a few fingers of height to the front legs. The leans the seat back a little, and avoids a sensation of the chair wanting to throw you forward. I got to use Chris’s Fat Boy Scriber, a wonderful nifty little tool, to trace around the legs. Cut them off, check for rock, and do a little fine tuning with the block plane and you are done. A tiny bit of rock when you are out of the chair, tends to mean no rock in it once your weight is on the chair.

Chris then gave a little speech on how these chairs do not really need stretchers. Then asked how many people wanted to do stretchers…. All but one. He seemed a little disappointed. This even turned into a post on his American Peasant sub-stack. I didn’t really care about stretchers, but it would be a long time before I got a chance to do it with an instructor. So, sorry, not sorry!

Chris’s technique for drilling for the stretchers involved shimming a power drill so its level. Using a straight edge to line up the facets on the front and back legs. Then drill with the drill lined up between the two. Use pinch rods to measure the length of the needed stretcher stick. Similarly the middle stretcher goes from midpoint to midpoint. Nerve racking drilling, but it all worked out.

Day 5

Not long into the day I was ready to glue up (except for the crest).

The undercarriage was the tricky bit. Unfortunately, in the middle of the glue up, I got the process a little confused, Chris came to help and got confused about where I was at, with the result that a fully glued up under carriage got completely seated into the seat. I asked how we would get it out to glue the legs in, and got a look of confusion from Chris. He thought I had glue on the leg tenons. Ah well, with a good wedge it should be fine, and if it ever fails, I know how to fix it.

A few minutes later Chris gave a demonstration on glueing in the leg tenons… He started with “This is the most important joint in the Char”… Gulp…

On the plus side, I brought a 4 1/2 pound Thor Nylon Mallet with me. Chris started referring to it as “Mongo”. It does a fantastic job of seating legs. Driving wedges on the other hand… the nylon just doesn’t give a firm enough hit. I got to use a Crucible Exeter hammer to seat them. Its a far better tool for the job.

With the bulk of the chair glued up. I shaped and drilled the crest. Then I went to dry fit it… and discovered Ric had stolen my entire chair. The sneaky divil had not even taken it out of the room, he just stuck it in a corner and covered it with card board…. It took quite a while to find it.

With my chair retrieved from the maple syrup slurping degenerate, I dry fitted it, and marked the desired height on the first and last sticks with blue tape.

When it came to the glue up, my first attempt to adjust the crest position knocked the blue tape out of place. Cue frantic adjustment and use of the level to get it right. Then drill two tiny 3mm holes to pin the first and last sticks in the crest… Done. I have a stick chair. Exhausting but rewarding. All 12 students completed very nice chairs, and even Chris’s chair made it to the finish line, no one destroyed a vital part and needed to borrow one.

Most people managed to finish up by 2 or 3 on Friday, allowing some time to visit the IWF bazaar on its first day. I took advantage of the bazaar to load up on some books and router plane irons. A top up of my supply of Skelton Peacock Oil . And then just enjoyed browsing.

I played with Windsor Workshop Travishers, which I honestly think are the most effective Travisher. Their Traviscraper is a wonderful tool, but I struggle to think of a job for it that I could not get done with a simple card scraper.

Richard Arnold brought along his usual wonderful array of 18th century tools. He also had a John Brown stick chair. It was a treat to examine it and sit in it after spending the week building a stick chair.

Phil Edwards was kind enough to let me play with one of his wonderful smoothing planes.

Derek Jones had a selection of his Cricket Tables on display, and was kind enough to sign my newly acquired copy of his book.

The IBTC had one of their Gorgeous boats on display and gave a talk on steam bending techniques.

Kevin “Welsh Kevin” Gooch brought along a selection of his magnificent tools.

I got to enjoy Mark Harrell of SawSharp deliver an entertaining history of Disston, and Richard Arnold demonstrating how some 18th century planes have features that shame many modern tools. There were many other speakers, but with so many old friends around I could not possible make it to all of them.

Richard Hughes brought along a selection of eye wateringly beautiful planes he has made. I spent a very happy time pouring over every detail of them.

The good news is, if you missed it, the IWF with be returning in 2025!

See the pictures below to see some of the chair building build and a tiny glimpse of the IWF.

It was a wonderful week, I met some amazing people, and I now have a very comfy place to sit. If stick chairs interest you, it is worth taking a look at Chris Schwarz’s Stick Chair Book. The chair in that book is very close to what we built in class, and remarkably, you can download the PDF for free. He also has a video where he demonstrates a lot of what I learned. The actual chair we built in the class is closer to the Comb-back chair in The Stick Chair Journal No. 1.

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The starting point. 4 stout Oak legs, already in octagons. And a wonderful one piece elm seat. Stick Chair

Laying out the taper. Chris recommends setting out two sets of lines. Work down to half way all the way around, then again to finish. Tapering is simple. mentally split the leg into 3 portions. Take a stroke cover the last 3rd, Then 2/3rds, then a full length pass. Just keep going and you will taper it. Stick Chair Chris made heavy use of the whiteboard. Here you can see the overall layout of the chair. And advice on which faces of the leg to tackle first. (Radials first, then flat, then the “bastard” grain. Stick Chair Four tenoned and tapered legs. Stick Chair Seat band sawn to shape, and the all important sight lines layed out. Keeping those offcuts is important. They are really useful for propping work on throughout the process. Stick Chair

Seat clamped for drilling on the end of the bench. Line up the bevel with the sight line, and have a spotter help you make sure you drill at that angle. Stick Chair And then just do it. A backing board is nice, but not essential. You will be saddling the far side, and that should take care of any tearout. Stick Chair End of day two progress. Stick Chair

Cleaning up the armbow with my soon to die spokeshave.

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Chris demonstrates his jig and method for drilling the stick holes.

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End of day 3 progress. Stick Chair

Saddling done, and the arm bow is shaped. Stick Chair

Rather wonderful Bench Talk 101 banners at the IWF. Thanks to Andy Brown and Geoffry Fowler. Stick Chair

First two stretchers in. Stick Chair

Almost all the glue up done! Stick Chair

And the arm crest is on. Stick Chair A litter of new stick chairs is born! Stick Chair

After a little more clean up, my chair is ready to go home. Its a remarkably comfortable chair. Nothing special about mine, I took the oppertunity to sit in a lot of the students chairs. The design cradles you wonderfully.

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The IWF main hall. I was exhausted after the week, and did not have the presence of mind to take many photographs. But it was a wonderland for woodworkers.