Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Dave Thompson - Champaign, IL

>If you have any people selling firewood in your local classifieds, they would likely have see plenty of green wood... or else a tree trimming service found in your yellow pages.

I've talked to some independent guys who sell firewood regarding bowl blanks for the lathe, and they are more than willing to give the stuff away just to put it to some greater purpose than the fire place.

good luck.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

David Galloway

>Really good source is Russ Cherry. He lives in LA...lower Alabama.

He supplies several teachers and student with blanks. See his website at www.russcherry.com. or call him at 334-983-4520. He' a really great guy, knows his wood, and will be helpful. I have just started with Windsors recently and am enjoying the process of learning. Have fun.

David Galloway

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Phil Yourno Albany, NY

>My guess is that you'd have more logs than you'd know what to do with locally. The tree svc idea is a good one. Are you taking a course with Jim Rendi? If so, does he still do courses in Rockville? He's an excellent teacher and a great guy. Good luck.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

JL

>Get friendly with a number of local tree service companies. While many pieces of urban lumber have problems, you will often find some reasonable straight-grained reasonable stuff. For loop backs and continuous arms, you'll need some long logs (maybe 6') for the bent pieces. For the spindles and the rest, 30" is more than enough. Get used to recognizing lumber in the log, but ask them to supply a branch with leaves if possible. You may find yourself with more lumber than you can possibly use. Usually, the tree service companies in urban areas have to pay for disposal.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Greg B�tit, Vergennes, VT.

>A word of caution about the fruit of urban tree surgeons. The log you are looking for is growing in a forest, not on a street somewhere. Trees that are lining streets are not competing with their neighbors, and spend their energy growing branches. Trees in the forest want to be in the top of the canopy, and mostly don't waste their energy branching out until they get up there.

Ideally you want a straight, clear, branch free, veneer quality log. Over the years I've worked a lot of gift logs from friends' yards, and I'm pretty sure this is an experience that you want to avoid. It takes a lot of the fun out of it.

Greg

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Mike Jurnigan in Suffolk

>Although I am not in your area, I am down the road a bit in the Tidewater area. I have trained under two nationally known chair makers. The differences in the two are night and day. Who you take a course with depends on what you want out of the class. If you want to go back home after the class and build a chair from square one you need to investigate the classes. Some question to consider asking about the classes:

1. Do you make all the parts for the chair or some parts pre-made for you? i.e. do you turn your own legs and stretchers?

2. Do you rive your own parts or they already rived when you get them?

3. Do you get training in the sharpening of the specialized tools used in chair making?

4. Does the class provide the tools that will be used in class? This is important because it can take a while to acquire some of these tools and some of the modern equivalents are not worth the money, and if you get the right modern tool it can be better than the old. This way you get to try before you buy and find what works for you personally. You also get the benefit of the instructor�s experience. Also some of the tools can be expensive.

5. What is the class size? Large classes mean you have to compete for the instructor�s attention. Can you deal with that?

I am not going to recommend one instructor over another publicly. If you want my personal views, you are more than welcome to ping me offline. My home e-mail is chairmaker_1@juno.com and my work e-mail is above.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

JL

>I guess I've been lucky so far, the amount of development around here means that they have been clear cutting wooded areas with lots of relatively straight trees w/o many branches.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Phil Yourno Albany, NY

>Same here. Lots of local knot-free, straight, min taper butt logs. I agree that you should be careful with gift logs though.

Philip

Anyone have feedback on classes?

Todd M

>Hi Mike,

Your posting is right on the mark. I just sent you a private email.

I'd love to hear any feedback that folks may have if they have taken Windsor chairmaking classes. I'll state up front that I acknowledge, and embrace, that there is more than one way or style to teach chairmaking, and to make Windsor chairs, which is why I want to hear about different approaches. I'm not looking to denegrate any approach, just to learn about what my options are. I want to book my class before the time slots fill up.

Thanks everyone.

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Greg B�tit, Vergennes, VT.

>Hi Todd,

I have taken four classes at The Windsor Institute, and have had one one-on-one week with Dave Sawyer, one of the most respected Windsor chair makers in the country. Before taking my first class I had roughly 20 years experience making post and run (ladderback/Shaker) chairs. Dave Sawyer taught me the rudiments of splitting wood and shaving parts on the shaving horse in the late 1970's. No matter how passionate I may be about chair making I am a amateur, and will stay that way. I have made dozens of ladderbacks and about 24 Windsors. With that as calibration I offer my opinions on the instruction I have had:

I think Mike Dunbar's classes are a pretty darn good value. The Windsor Institute requires that the sack back be the first class you take with them, no matter what your level of experience or desires might be. I'm not sure the sack back is the best choice for an entry level chair, but it works for TWI. This course is taught like a foundation course, introducing the methodology used to make and bend parts from green wood, leg up, saddle, drill seat holes, assemble, etc. throughout the whole line of chairs TWI offers classes on. The format is that the staff performs the operation around a lecture on the step in question, and then the students go off and do it themselves. Mike and his instructors circulate, monitor progress and offer help as needed. This curriculum has been exposed to far more students than any other Windsor chair instruction out there, and is constantly being revised by Mike and his very capable staff.

There is a well rehearsed flow to the week, and even the most inexperienced woodworkers should be able to take their carefully taken notes home and build a chair on their own. Almost. The class provides already 'riven' (band sawed, really) green red oak billets for the spindles and bows, so you don't get any instruction about choosing a log, splitting and riving it. The turnings are all provided; making spindles could perhaps be the subject of a week's class all by itself.

I don't like Mike Dunbar's aversion to the shaving horse. I eventually started bringing mine to the classes. I have spoken to several people (both former and prospective students) who are put off in varying degrees by the tongue-in-cheek banter that revolves around Mike's mock "Knight of Windsor" rituals. You will get a flavor for this by perusing The Windsor Chronicles, a quarterly publication that TWI sends out to anyone who has taken a course or expressed an interest in doing so. I think the humor is a little hokey, but some people really appreciate it in a fun sense of comaraderie.

Some of the changes to the TWI curriculum have been criticised as "dumming down" the process, reaching out to the lowest common denominator. While some of this thrust may ending up in wasted class time for more skilled/experienced wood workers, to me it is not a big issue. Nobody can say they have the last word on how chairmakers approached the craft 200 years ago, and the use of power tools for operations such as drilling is not for me a defining issue. I take anything I learn about chairmaking as someone's opinion and feel free to pick and choose the methodolgy I like best.

My week spent with Dave Sawyer was wonderful. He expects that you will have quite a bit of experience, and he builds on that. The two of us built the same chair together. His curriculum is the methodolgy he uses to produce a chair interspersed with discussions about alternate approaches along the way. If you took notes on all the information coming through you wouldn't have time to build a chair yourself.

From that experience I extrapolate that any one-on-one class with a competant chair maker should be worth while. You certainly will have more time for questions, discussions on tools, sharpening, etc. than in a multi-student environment.

My wife made me promise that the week at Dave's would be the last "chair camp" I attend. I'm hoping that this isn't going to be how it really plays through. The experience of working together with other people (both students and the instructor) who are passionate about making chairs is almost worth more to me than the additional knowledge I pick up.

Greg

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

Steve Kubien

>Great review! I'll appreciate it even more when I get around to selecting and taking a course.

Cheers,

Steve Kubien

Ajax, Ontario

classes

john jesseph

>Hi Greg;

I didn't realize you have taken four classes with Dunbar. Which ones?

I have sort stated my thoughts on TWI before in other places. It is a place you can learn lots. I just think that if you are going to bill yourself as the pinnacle and yardstick of Windsor knowledge, you should at least have a lathe in the shop.

I would like to learn some from Curtis Buchanan. May be a long time before I get a free week to do it. I wish the second FWW Williamsburg session featured him, but I am more than happy to learn more from Dave.

There are all kinds of chairmaking teachers now, but I don't know much about most of them. I think you suggested I put together a section of class reviews at the windsorchairmaking yahoo group, I guess I should blow the dust off the group and revive it again....

Colonial Williamsburg Conference

Greg B�tit, Crown Point NY

>Hi John,

I took the TWI sack back, Philadelphia high back, continuous arm and settee classes, in that order. I made a balloon back with Dave Sawyer. His balloon back is the best hoop back side chair I have seen. It's also a pretty basic Windsor, and I wanted to work with Dave on the basics rather than fuss with intricate features peculiar to one chair style or the other.

Funny you should mention Curtis Buchanan. If I could go to more classes, the next would be with him. I am enrolled in the first session of Colonial Williamsburg's January conference for exactly that reason. It's not a "chair camp", it's a symposium, so I get to go.

Who else is enrolled? Although sessions don't overlap, perhaps we could arrange to meet between the two. I have never met any of you WC chairheads, I'll bet it would be a meeting we would all remember.

Greg

Re: Sources of green wood for Windsor chairs

ThomD

>I took one of the lessor courses from a guy who had taken some courses with Mike. I thought he was excellent, (can't remember his name something like John Jacob's in Ontario) and I could pretty easily take on what was required to build a chair or two at home. I think one can overthink this stuff. The TWI course is apparently proud of the fact that they have never had anyone come to the course who hasn't "made a chair". That is cool, but it is going to dumb down a the course. It seems to me that anyone should be able to build a chair from Drew's book, though the Windsor mafia seems to have it in for him. It is certainly better than either Dunbar book, both of which are pretty out of date.

It's interesting that mike says they no longer teach students to check their edges by shaving the hair on their arms because someone peeled back his skin. He said that if you teach enough people everything happens. Overlay that on teaching students to spindle turn at the rate of 600+ a year. Probably smarter to rely on the idea that the bodgers really did that for the chairmakers!

'Nother class opinion...

Scott in Douglassville, PA

>I took a class about a year ago with Jim Rendi. It was kind of a hybrid course - I live a couple miles from him, so he agreed to teach me one-on-one as our schedules allowed, plus I sat in on a few days of one of his six-person courses.

Jim's another Dunbar-taught chairmaker, and I think, save some technique evolution, Jim teach's Dunbar's method. He taught me to shave spindles on a dumbhead horse; during a multi-person class, though, students rotate between the horse and vises. Jim also advocates setting angles by eye, which turned out pretty well, though I'm going to try Dave Sawyer's sighting/resultant line method next, which appeals to the engineer in me.

Almost everything you need to know is taught, from splitting and riving, to shaving spindles, saddling (using an adze, scorp, and spoon plane), bending, legging up, setting arms, sharpening. There wasn't as much info as I'd liked (and I pressed a bit) on sourcing logs around here, how to read a log for grain, and turning. In fact, if it hadn't been for the proximity, the turning aspect'd been a deal breaker for me.

Jim, like Dunbar, supplies turnings. Being one-on-one, I got a bit of a demo on the lathe, but no turning time. I strongly feel that, logistics be damned, turning is an essential part of the chairmaking process and is replete with techniques not necessarily obvious to the uninitiated. I'm on my first solo chairs now, and having turned about a dozen legs and several arm supports, I see how necessary turning instruction is. I'm disappointed that Jim doesn't include it in at least his one-on-one courses.

All that said, I, too, am striving to take an eventual course with Curtis Buchanan. I'm shooting for the more delicate, balanced, lithe type of Windsor, and between Buchanan and Dave Sawyer, I think there's opportunity to learn from true masters, not just experienced teachers.

And that ring thing grates on me... ;^)

Re: 'Nother class opinion...

john jesseph

>I had a great day today in the shop, maybe my new c-arm will be done by New Year's!

No doubt you can't make a chair Nutting or Sack would have raved about if you don't do your own turnings. It might be useful for a new chairmaker to look into a local turning club for some fellowship and instruction on the lathe, don't you think? I have been meaning to do this, never got around to it.

Looked like Jim Rendi teaches the older, pre-Martha-Stewart-era Dunbar method, according to his book. Probably a better book than either of Dunbar's.

Still working on the photos, getting a bit better. (Didn't pay attention to the glare from the table). You can see the photocopy of the leg I am using for inspiration. I think this leg is about right, I'll chuck this onto the lathe and refine the taper at the top and be done with it.

Re: Colonial Williamsburg Conference

john jesseph

>Greg, I know I mentioned this a while bakc, but I may ask a few questions about the arm rail assembly on the Philly chair when I get around to making my interpretation. I began scaling from a pic two or three years ago, but got sidelined.

I'll check back closer to the meeting to see if I can get there early. I will probably carpool with some other SAPFM members from around here. I hope some of us can get together...

OT baloney post

Adam Cherubini

>I also had trouble finding green wood. Every log I split open was brown on the inside. So I gave up and now I use regular wood and just paint it green.

Adam

Milk paint, I trust?

Steve Kubien

>

Re: Colonial Williamsburg Conference

Mike Jurnigan in Suffolk VA

>To all that is going to the Williamsburg Conference: I am going to the second one. Anyone that wants to get together for either the first or second conference for dinner one evening afterwards let me know. I have a wife that is an excellent southern home cook. I live about an hour or so from Williamsburg. I have invited Dave Sawyer over for dinner one night. He informed me that he was coming into Williamsburg early in order to see Curtis's presentation, maybe I will get lucky and they both will come for dinner.

Greg, since I have comunicated with you several times, I would definitely like to meet up with you.

Mike Jurnigan

What a helpful thread!

David Galloway

>First, thanks to Greg for what has already been noted as a helpful review.

Second, I took a Curtis Buchanan course at Highland Hardware and thought he was an excellent teacher. The class was quite a mix with some very experienced folks and then idiots like me. The creative solution was to partner the new folks with the experienced. The old adage of teaching as the best way to learn really helped the experienced student reenforce in their minds what Curtis had just taught by teaching it themselves.

Curtis is non-pretentious, no attitude, willingly helpful. He's also funny as hell. We all finished our chairs but there was a definite dispersion of quality, as it should have been. Highland keeps samples of the people of have taught and in my opinion, no one comes close to Curtis in terms of craftsmanship and style. I hope to take others soon but you can't go wrong with Dr. Buchanan. By the way, while drinking beer after a tough day, a number of the class came up with several alternatives to the Dunbar Knight for Curtis' students.

Thanks again for the thread. I hope there will be more from Windsor folks.

David

Any Country Workshop Veterans?

David Galloway

>I was surprised that in the responses to the question of classes, there were no Country Workshop notation. With Langser's book on chairmaking, that I think is excellent, and with the large number of classes there, you would think someone would chime in. Anyone taken a Windsor class at CW?

Re: Any Country Workshop Veterans?

Jim Crammond in Monroe, Mi

>David,

I haven't taken a Windsor class at from Drew Langsner, but I've taken a post and rung chair class from him. He recommends taking another chairmaking class or some experience in chairmaking before taking a Windsor class.

I'm sure any class at Country Workshops would be a positive experience. Drew is an excellent teacher who is very good at explaining the processes in a simple manner that is understandable. If you've spent much time reading his books, you'll have a feeling for his teaching style because they are similar.

I took a tutorial class from him that had four students so there was lots of one on one instruction and access to him to ask any questions that you had. He covered all aspects of the subject in depth. The shop itself is well organized and he furnishes all of the necessary tools, so you can bring your own if they are available or use his.

The location of Country Workshops is a little out of the way but once you arrive, you become immersed in chairmaking so there is no reason to leave the property. Accomadations are clean and adequate, if a little spartan. The food is excellent, almost worth the trip by itself.

Be aware that you will work your butt off. Each student in my tutorial finished a chair, but it included a couple of 12 hour days and the others were about 10 hours. A lot of the work is fairly physical, so be prepared for that. I'd recommend taking a class from Country Workshops.

Jim

another one here...

john jesseph

>I have almost exceeded my self imposed WC bandwidth, but since you asked...

I took the bowback class at Country Workshops six years ago. I was scheduled to also go to the Windsor Institute a couple months later to take the first kid chair class. Jim gave an excellent overview of the week. The school is remote, seemed like the closer I got the further away it was, way up there in the hills of NC. Thought I might get a blast of buckshot if'n I hit one of the neighbor's chikkins near his long driveway.

My class was also a tutorial, with two other guys, so I got lots of personal attention. Nearly all the chairs in the book are in various locations around the grounds, which was kind of neat. As a matter of fact, the John Brown Welsh Windsor was in the guest cabin I stayed in, very handsome chair, and comfortable for reading. It was a peaceful setting, very relaxing week but with very physical work, and the food was excellent. I really admired Drew's homestead, quite a place they carved out for themselves. Lots of neat details on the house, which I guess he built himself.

It was almost a bit of a letdown to go to Dunbar's after that. The class was the two kid chairs, his first time teaching it. It was a tiny bit disorganized, for a couple of reasons. I think he just cranked out prototypes and went with the first ones, so I think there were some structural and design issues not fully worked out. The other was that he was obcessed with his upcoming appearance on the Martha Stewart show, or trying to get it booked, so he was very distracted, running for the phone when it rang, etc...