Video Switch – From Handsome Canes to Workbench Stools

We concluded the filming for a different batch of how to’s coming up and into the new year. Hard to imagine 2013 is coming to its close but then it closes to a new opening yet to unfold. I look forward to that.

Should I tell you about the next online broadcast project with woodworkingmasterclasses? I’d like to just because we had so much a sense of fulfillment from making the workbench stools for filming but also for using. What I take for granted, just my work and the way I work and make, causes me to really rethink when I know I have to make it in front of a camera and present it. Once the cameras are rolling, and sometimes that’s for a few hours with an occasional break or two, I start thinking about you and how this is going to create new woodworkers all over the globe.

Soon we will finish off the series on making walking canes, sticks and staffs and move on to more shaping and carving as well as more complex joinery. The workbench or and bar stool is our first step into chairmaking and all of the complexities that entails as we work out angles and rakes for shoulder-lines to tenons and so on. My goal in making the bench stool is to present a stool you will not find today. As I said, it’s a first step toward the complex craft of chairmaking; an aspect of woodworking and furniture making most experienced woodworking artisans and furniture makers avoid like the plague. It has eight mortise and tenon joints with angled shoulders to each joint. It demands exactness and an intolerance toward inaccuracy simply because the shoulders must meet the legs perfectly. In other words it’s a new level. Most stools in stores are made for bars and we discussed that in an earlier blog on prototyping this stool. These mass-made stools always have round rails which sit in round holes, shrinkage happens, the joints rack and soon they are wobbly and thrown out. I wanted the proper joints I knew would last for a century and more. I wanted to reinvent the quality we could have at the bench and a customising that matched the body that would sit on it and a quality of work you would be moving toward as you follow the various courses in developing your craft skills through woodworkingmasterclasses.

In making this workbench stool we entered the realms of seat carving and shaping. Instead of sending you out to buy expensive tools like inshaves and travishers, we made a radius plane from a single scrap of pine; offcuts from the scalloped and carved bench stool seat. You can adapt the methods we use in making this workbench stool to whole range of furniture pieces ranging from Craftsman-style pieces to Shaker-inspired pieces and a whole range of others too. I will be showing you how to make one of these planes and that includes the cutting iron from O1 flat stock, which we will grind and shape and harden for a lifetime of use in the workshop.

The seat, the frame, making the radiused plane, are all part of this past week’s work. I hope that you can join us next week as we finish off the walking canes, staffs and sticks and move onto a fully jointed workbench stool like no other.

Oh, and we haven’t forgotten some of the quick, beautiful and simple Christmas decorations and gifts you have never seen filmed before. Join us for that too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NOTE:Just so you know, Paul has a newer Workbench series. If you are interested in the updated version of Paul’s workbench please click the button down below. This page links to a cutting list, tools list, FAQS and much more.