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| Matt Dollard |
I feel fortunate to work at a place with a program that encourages employees to pursue their passions outside of their everyday careers. My passion (or “healthy obsession”) is building hand-crafted furniture. The majority of my work to date could be considered cabinet-making – mainly a lot of right angles, which is relatively “easy” once you practice at it. I was ready to take on a new challenge and, with the support of RSM, decided to learn chair-building. Specifically, I wanted to construct a chair that had no right angles, with lines skewing and curving all over the place. With this challenge in mind and the firm’s support, I chose to take woodworking classes from one of the best chair makers in the country.
In March, I spent one week in North Carolina studying with Elia Bizzarri. I encourage you to look at Elia’s work; it’s of the highest quality and done by hand. There were three other students studying with me - all of them retired. Being the youngest participant and far from retirement, I felt lucky to be there. Were it not for RSM’s Pursue your Passion program, I too would have waited until I retired!
The project was to construct a continuous arm Windsor chair. This chair design is several hundred years old and very much in use today, however, its contemporary examples are mass produced in different forms. There is a growing revival of hand tool craftsmen who have begun writing about and documenting their methods and taking on students. I’ve been inspired by these craftsmen and have coveted what they do.
We began with a red oak log, and a wide plank of pine for the seat, and transformed them into a finished chair.
We split the logs with steel wedges and sledge hammers into rough sections for chair spindles. We shaped them with hand tools on a shaving horse, basically a foot-operated vise that holds the work while you sit in it.
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| My near complete Continuous Arm Windsor |
In March, I spent one week in North Carolina studying with Elia Bizzarri. I encourage you to look at Elia’s work; it’s of the highest quality and done by hand. There were three other students studying with me - all of them retired. Being the youngest participant and far from retirement, I felt lucky to be there. Were it not for RSM’s Pursue your Passion program, I too would have waited until I retired!
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| Elia Bizzarri demonstrating how to split logs with steel wedges and a sledge hammer to harvestchair spindles. |
The project was to construct a continuous arm Windsor chair. This chair design is several hundred years old and very much in use today, however, its contemporary examples are mass produced in different forms. There is a growing revival of hand tool craftsmen who have begun writing about and documenting their methods and taking on students. I’ve been inspired by these craftsmen and have coveted what they do.
We began with a red oak log, and a wide plank of pine for the seat, and transformed them into a finished chair.
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| Elia demonstrating how to use a shaving horse and a draw knife to rough out the chair spindles |
We then made the chair back by splitting it from a white oak log, as white oak bends nicely and is perfect for the chair back. We shaped it with similar methods as the spindles. Then we put the chair back in a steam box for over an hour at 220 degrees, bent it over a form, clamped it down, and placed it in a kiln to dry for a few days.
The chair seat is made from Northern White Pine, a softer wood good for carving and shaping by hand. If you look, most wood chair seats you find today are a series of wood pieces laminated (glued) together. Original American Windsor chairs more often used a single section of pine for the seat. This requires a wide section of knot-free pine, which isn’t easy to find. Lucky for us, Elia has a connection that supplies him.
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| Bending a steamed chair bow (or back) over a form to make the distinctive continuous arm chair back |
The seat took several days and multiple steps to complete. After cutting the basic profile, we determined the leg and arm stump angles then bored holes by hand. We then temporarily inserted the legs and used their resulting angles as a guide to take measurements to drill holes for the cross stretchers for the undercarriage. With that complete, we carved both the top, parts of the bottom and the sides of the seat to give it a curvy shape.
We then began gluing and hammering wedges into the tops of the legs to firmly set the leg joints into the seat.
The next step was to drill holes in the seat deck for the spindles and begin orienting them in the chair by eye. The spindles by nature weren’t totally straight. We followed the wood fibers, which makes the spindles strong but leads to some natural variability. The trick is to align them by turning them so they appear as straight as possible. This works surprisingly well. The eye naturally seeks symmetry and finds it even if the spindles are a little less than perfectly straight. The final steps involved sighting the angles, then drilling holes in the chair back, then inserting the spindles and arm stumps for a dry test fit. We aligned them, then gently tapped the chair back over the spindles, drove wedges into the tops and sawed them off.
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| Carving the seat with an in shave |
My completed chair,
after shipping it home and spending about eight hours applying 8-9 coats of
various finishes is pictured here.
I could not have taken a week off of work to study with a master chair builder and complete a project like this without the support of RSM. Getting time away and funding would have been a challenge with all the priorities in my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the time and resources that were provided to me by RSM’s Pursue your Passion program. I learned so much. Elia is a brilliant and humble instructor, and an entertaining storyteller while he teaches.
I could not have taken a week off of work to study with a master chair builder and complete a project like this without the support of RSM. Getting time away and funding would have been a challenge with all the priorities in my life. I’m grateful for the opportunity and the time and resources that were provided to me by RSM’s Pursue your Passion program. I learned so much. Elia is a brilliant and humble instructor, and an entertaining storyteller while he teaches.
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| Organizing the spindles in the most aesthetically pleasing way - each spindle has natural variations due to following the direction of wood fibers |
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| Test fitting the bow on the spindles |
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| To finish the chair I applied 4 coats of barn red milk paint, two coats of black "wash coat," four coats of Tung oil and one coat of wax. The next project I will tackle under Elia's instruction in May 2018 - a back comb windsor rocking chair. |
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| Hand drilling the holes in the seat deck to insert the spindles - using the bow as a reference point to determine the proper angles |
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