Happy Autumn!
The summer has gone by in a whirlwind of shows, work on the buildings and chairmaking. The summer show season is now over; we’ve been blessed with the weather since Easter and managed to pack up at Hylands Park just before the rain came in a couple of weeks ago. It’s been lovely to meet so many of you this summer. Thanks to everyone who came and chatted to us at the shows.
A particular highlight for us was The Wonder of Wood Fair at Burwash Manor. The show is centred around children and we had lots of willing volunteers to build and weave this lovely little stool. We’ll definitely be back next year.
Although our scheduled courses don’t begin again until next March we’ve started teaching in Great Wilbraham already. We’ve had quite a bit of interest in private classes, particularly for seat weaving and we’re always happy to have guests into the workshop when we can. If you’re interested in private tuition please get in touch.
We’ll be at a few craft fairs in the run up to Christmas. At them you’ll be able to buy courses as presents or buy gift vouchers for courses. We haven’t booked all of the shows we’re going to yet so do check our Instagram for details.
Workshops
Roofing is finished on the workshops and the electricity is going in. We spent a week scraping the floor of the middle workshop and now have a smooth epoxy-painted concrete floor that we can actually sweep clean!
We’re ahead of our own timeline for the buildings and have already got customers in on private classes. The dedicated classroom workshop needs a bit more work before we can open it up prospective chair makers but we’re well on the way.
Reseating
We often get asked if we do reseating and despite the huge amount going on here we have managed to fit in a few chairs this summer. A couple of lovely ladderbacks came in last week and are waiting for some love and attention and this delightful little stool went off to its owner with a new seagrass seat a couple of weeks ago.
If you’ve got a treasured chair that you’d like reseated please send us some photographs and we’ll be happy to quote for it. We work in Reel Rush, paper rush, seagrass and Danish cord and can do most styles of woven seat in traditional and modern styles.
Course chair
In each newsletter we take a look in detail at each of the course chairs and stools we offer. These should give you an in-depth understanding of how we build each piece on a course. In the summer newsletter we looked at the simple stool. This time let’s have a look at the simple side chair.
This course builds on the skills learned on the simple stool course but you don’t need to have done that course, or indeed any chairmaking, to complete a beautiful chair.
The side chair class lasts five days and if you want to build an arm chair let us know and you’ll come back for an extra day at the end to shape and fit the arms rests.
Day 1: Our first job is to get the back leg posts, spindle rails and slats into the steam box so that you can bend them before lunch. They need to sit in their formers for as long as possible.
With all of the steamed parts bent you will then start shaping the front legs. You start with square section stock and plane the timber eight sided and then shave and scrape it round. This means that you’ll learn techniques that don’t require you to buy thousands of pounds of lathe and turning tools when you go home and want to build another chair!
Day 2: A busy day of rounding all the remaining legs, rungs and rails. For the rungs and rails you’ll use a dowel maker and then put the tenons on with a tenon former.
Day 3: Finish any rounding needed and drill the holes for the tenons in the front legs. If time allows you’ll assemble the front section of the chair.
Day 4: The back posts, spindle rails and slats come out of the formers and we drill the mortises for the rungs and rails and chop the slat mortises. By lunchtime we should have the back panel together and before the end of the day we’ll have the whole chair assembled and glued together.
Day 5: Seat weaving. You’ll weave a seat from either paper rush, Danish cord or sea grass. You choose the pattern from a range of square weave designs. Please note – you can only weave an envelope weave if you’ve done it before.
Tools for woodworkers
As well as building chairs we also make a few tools for woodworkers.
We’ve just finished up a batch of workbench vice screws. These are huge 62mm (2 1/2″) diameter screws that also work well in book presses and cider presses. They’re turned from a solid piece of beech, predrilled with a 27mm hole and come with a beech nut, garter and optional handle.
Our chairmakers’ workbenches use a vice that’s taken from a Shaker bench. It’s a great piece of old school design that uses no metal.
When the shop on the website goes live we’ll add them to it. In the meantime get in touch if you’re interested.
They’re £120 each and they come with a nut and garter.
As always, if you’re interested in coming on a course please give us a ring (07778 397328) or drop us an email.
Enjoy the autumn,
StJohn & Bryony
The Quiet Workshop 