Popular Woodworking 2005-04 № 147, страница 67
Cheating Nature Kiln-dried Lumber Can Work Building a chair with green wood that is split from a stump is a joy. The wood is easy to work and the grain is arrow-straight. But for some of us, green wood is hard to come by. So I tried using dowel stock and spokeshaving it to size, but that was frustrating. Dowels don't have the straight grain of riven materials, which are split out along the grain using a froe. Dowels also aren't as strong and they are difficult to spokeshave without tear-out. In the end, I used a card scraper to finish up the sticks. In other words, it was more work and didn't look as good. John Brown, a Welsh stick chairmaker and personal hero, has used sawn stock for his sticks in the past, according to his columns published in the British magazine Good Woodworking. He would band saw the lumber along the grain lines and then shape it with "rounding planes," which are small metal and wooden gizmos that make dowels (more on those tools later in the article). That was good enough for me. I purchased quartersawn ash, and I sawed out my sticks by following the grain lines. My results were good. The sticks are strong and you can spokeshave them readily. It's not as easy to work as green wood, but it's good in a pinch. I had even more luck when using kiln-dried wood for the other parts of the chair besides the sticks. I used kiln-dried white oak with great success to make legs and stretchers. Poplar from the lumberyard made an excellent and easily worked seat. — CS The sticks are kiln-dried ash; the leg blanks are kiln-dried oak. By sawing them out by following the grain lines of the wood I was able to get reasonably sturdy and workable stuff. Curved rasps are great for many parts of the chair, from removing tear-out in a seat to shaping the outside of the seat, the bow and the comb. Their strength is they can detail curves and work (in general) without regard to grain direction. Cheating the Seat Alternative Hand Tools Many woodworkers are put off by "saddling" the seat, which is where you scoop out the wood to make things more comfortable. Traditional bodgers hew the seat with an adze, then finish it with some combination of inshave, travisher, compass plane, scrapers and sandpaper. I wanted to see if it could be done well with fewer tools. So I skipped the adze and began the work with the inshave, a tool that re semble s a drawknife with a curved blade. Working across the grain, the tool was quick. After hogging out most of the seat, I then worked with the grain to tune things up a bit more. Cleaning up the tool marks left by the inshave is usually a job for a travisher. One option is to use a chairmaker's curved rasp. These tools resemble overgrown rifflers and can smooth out j ust about any part of the seat. The French rasp s shown in the photo at left are from Auriou and are the sweetest rasps I've ever used. Ifyou're comfortable with hand planes, a curved-sole plane can saddle a seat. The vintage Stanley No. 100V2 model makers plane has a sole that curves both front to back and side to side. Woodcraft makes a copy of this plane, and another manufacturer is planning its own version. - CS Traditionally, the inshave is used after the seat is roughed out with an adze. But my experiments found that the seat can be roughed out by an inshave alone. It takes a little more time, but is a good option until you find (or can afford) a proper adze. The Stanley 1001/2 might not look like much, but its scarcity (and utility) make it a hard plane to find. New adaptations of this tool are available for less money (I paid $80 for my vintage one. Ouch). 64 1 Popular Woodworking April 2005 |
