Popular Woodworking 2005-04 № 147, страница 71

This rounding plane by Ray Iles excels at turning down This simple three-piece band saw jig will cut perfect your sticks to the right dimension. wedges all day long.

make one diameter of dowel, so you have to buy a few of them to make a chair. However, once you set them up, you leave them (until they need to be sharpened). I tried several brands (including a homemade one) and recommend - without reservation - the ones made by Ray Iles. These are heavy-duty, have excellent blade geometry and are well made.

You can spin the tools on your stock by hand (that's what the handles are for) or you can drive your sticks through them using a drill and socket. Ray Iles has made these for a while now, but they are only recently available in the United States.

— CS

An Easier Way To Make Wedges

Making perfect wedges - which secure the spindles in the bow - stymies many first-time chairmakers. My first wedges looked like crooked gnome caps. Granted they would be buried in a piece, but the thought of them waving back and forth as they descended seemed rather humorous and slightly unprofessional.

Serendipity visited one night as I was poking around the dark corners of Lee Valley's web site. I found an archive of tips and to my delight a description of how to make wedges using a miter gauge. It was a "duh" moment to realize how easy this would be to adapt this technique to my band saw.

I use a sled that is made of two pieces of scrap and a wooden guide that fits in the miter track of my band saw. It is super simple to make. First glue the two pieces of scrap together to make an "L" about 8" long. Next pencil a line on the guide that will hold it 4° clockwise to the blade. Carefully glue the "L" onto the guide aligning the back edge with the pencil line. Allow the "L" to extend past the band saw's blade. A couple of short brads ensure the "L" won't come off the guide.

When all is dry pass the sled through the blade and cut off the end. To use, take your "squared" wedge stock, put it in the sled and cut. Reverse the stock aligning the wedge "point" near the edge of the sled. Cut again and you have a perfect 8° wedge. — EH

For Shaving Spindles, Meet the Shaving Pony

Several years ago a few upstate New York members of an Internet mailing list for hand-tool enthusiasts got together to enjoy a picnic, share toys and admire each other's work. One brought a Windsor chair she'd built at Michael Dunbar's school, The Windsor Institute. It was the first time we'd seen a hand-built Windsor. The comfort and beauty of the design was impressive, and it was much nicer than a machine-made replica.

We decided as a group to build Windsor chairs using the techniques described in Dunbar's

book. This group approach gave us the opportunity to share our skills, learn from each other's mistakes and pool our tools.

Handmade Windsor chairs are noteworthy for their spindle construction, each split down

the grain and then shaped with a drawknife and spokeshave. This gives them strength and flexibility that turned spindles lack, along with the facets that give character to a handmade chair. Traditionally, a large shaving horse would be employed to do this. The horse permits the blank to be clamped firmly yet turned repeatedly as it is shaved round. None of us had a shaving horse. No one had the space to store one or access to the timbers required to build a traditional horse. We tried to use vises and clamps to shave spindles at the bench, but it didn't work.

We needed something small enough for the group sessions and

The shaving pony allows you to work chair spindles without a space-sucking shaving horse. This simple jig clamps in your bench vise and stores away in a corner or on the wall when not in use.

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Popular Woodworking April 2005