Diamond Willow Roorkee - Part II: Joinery

I'm pooped! We got all of the joinery for one chair done today, and have parts roughed out for a second. I'm too tired to write too much tonight, so here are a bunch of photos for the day instead.

All I will say is we wanted some stock that was a bit thicker than the stuff Dad usually uses for his walking sticks.  It turned out he didn't have much, so we used what we had including some stock that had parts smaller that 1 1/2" in diameter.

It wasn't ideal. but after some testing involving a hammer and a tapered mortise and tenon, we decided these should be plenty strong for chairs.  We'll see.

Legs for two chairs.

Dad got pretty adept at roughing out the taper on the disk/belt sander.  He doesn't have many woodworking tools, so we made due with what he had.  I did bring a LV tapered reamer and a tapered tenon cutter.

This was one of the work-holding solutions I came up with.  Dad has no woodworking bench and no woodworking vice or proper clamps, but we figured out what to do without them.

It really didn't take long for the two of us to make enough stretchers for two chairs.

Here is an action shot of me doing some precision sawing.  The meat saw we were using was great for the dowels, but I had to use the hack saw for the back pieces.

The only 5/8" drill bit Dad had was this crappy Chinese spade bit.  It worked fantastic, but was a challenge when the hole had to be drilled directly in a diamond.  Note another workholding solution here:  Dad is stabilizing the piece to be drilled on the barbeque before I drill it with a corded drill.

The hardest part was figuring out the angles to drill.  There was  a lot of eyeballing going on as none of these sticks were straight.

Here is the tapered reamer in the drill.  It worked great as long as you went slow.  All that work practicing with a brace and bit paid off here as the same skills were used to drill straight holes.

Here is Dad doing his thing with finishing the willows.  He uses a random orbit sander for this most of the time.

It fits together!

Almost done.  I stripped some zinc-plated carriage bolts and blued them with something called Black Aluminum.  They look cool now.

Done with the joinery.  One chair to go, and then the leather.  - Or, maybe the leather next, then the rest of the other chair.

Diamond Willow Roorkee - Part I: Materials

After three flights and a whole day of travel, I made it to Great Falls for a short visit with my folks. It has been far too long since I have been back to my hometown to visit my mom and dad, so I am really looking forward to spending some quality time with them.

I thought one great thing to do while I am here, is to build a Roorkee chair with my dad. While we're at it, why not make it something totally fantastic, and build it from a material that isn't seen often outside of these parts? Diamond willow!

My dad with his prize walking stick.

My dad has been making canes, walking sticks and the like for years from this material.  He says they are worth a lot of money, but he usually gives them away as gifts to people he thinks deserve one.  I have to say they are striking.

For those who have never heard of this stuff, here is what I know about it (which is not much):  It doesn't grow everywhere, and even in places where it does grow, it can be hard to find prime examples that look good enough for a project.  Dad will harvest a carload of these things, let them dry out for a few years, and work on them in his free time.

The rough material looks like this.

These are what the "diamonds" look like on the raw material with the bark on.

Dad will whittle the bark off, and do any shaping that he deems fit.  He has been known to color some of the diamonds when the contrast isn't exactly what he wants, but typically he will leave them the way they are.  Many of the willows have a wood that is a really bright, creamy, almost white color, with dark red inside the diamonds.

Here are a couple of sticks mid-progress.  The bark has started to have been removed.

Here are some of the potential chair legs.

Once the stick is the shape he wants and has the look, it will be finished.  I'm not sure but I think he usually uses a spray lacquer on them, which gives them a durable finish.

Here are a few examples of dad's finished walking sticks.

Here is dad's most remarkable stick to date.  It has an incredible number of diamonds.

Dad seems pretty excited to start construction of these chairs with me tomorrow.  He will teach me about the willows, and I will show him the steps in making a Roorkee chair.  This project will be special to us both, no matter what the chair looks like in the end,.

Tomorrow we will select what we will use for chair legs.  We will make one for sure, and possibly two.  I have two full shoulders of leather, which we might be able to make stretch for two chairs, if we are stingy.

I also have some red oak for the other parts of the chair:  I got some 1 1/8" x 48" oak dowels from the internet (against Christopher Schwarz' explicit instructions in his book!).  I have to send a shout of thanks and approval for the folks at Cincinnati Dowel and Wood Products Co. for sending me such nice dowels.  I took a gamble with them, and specified that it would be great if they could select some nice straight grained ones for me.  This is because being for chairs, they absolutely must be as strong as possible.  Any run-out could cause them to break at the worst possible time.  These nice people selected and sent me four dowels with perfectly straight grain with virtually no run out on any of them.  I ordered four, thinking that if I was lucky I might be able to get enough stretchers for one chair.  I fully expected none of it to be suitable, and to have to go get some more wood to turn dowels from.  Happily, those dowels are everything I could have asked for.  Those four dowels will have enough wood to make two chairs.

I also got some red oak from the local Borg that will make nice back slats.

I can't wait for you all to see what we come up with. 

5/8" Tapered Tenon Cutter

One would think that it seems a bit late, now.  I've built my chair already.

Today, I received in the mail a Veritas 5/8" tapered tenon cutter.  Where did I get it, you ask?  The Lee Valley website says they are out until November.  I was going to order a smaller one, but that one was out, too.

What did I do?  I ordered a 1/2" one from Dictum, because they didn't have the big one.  Before it arrived, I borrowed one, finished the project and cancelled my special order.

Now, however, it appears I will be making another Roorkee (hopefully more).  And, I need one.  Rather than settle for something too small, I checked around on the internet some.  No luck at most of my tool porn distributors.

I did have some luck at Dieter Schmid's Fine Tools.  Besides some guy in the UK who is asking twice what Lee Valley wants, it is the only place I have been able to find one.

Lucky for me I live in Germany.

I ordered mine two days ago and it arrived today.  If you can't wait until November, you might want to check out Fine Tools, I know he ships about anywhere.

http://www.fine-tools.com/taperedtenoncutters.html

UPDATE 8 April 2014:  I saw today on Lee Valley's website these are in stock and available to order again.

Roorkee Build Part 3 - Finishing Touches to the Leather

Ever since I finished my chair, there was a little nurgle in the back of my brain that told me the edges of the leather needed some treatment.  Back to the Tandy Leather website it was!  This store has a wealth of instructive videos (complete with instructions how to use the tools they sell).  There is one called Finishing Edges that sounded promising, and it was.  It seems the trick is to round the edges of the leather with a simple tool that cuts the sharp edge off, burnish the edge with a nifty little plastic tool called a "slicker," and to paint the edges with some special leather paint (I used "Edge Kote"), applied with some wool daubers.  All in all, about $30 set me up with everything I needed.

Oh!  I also put some leather creme based in beeswax on the leather.  The stuff I used is called Skidmore's Leather Creme.  It applied super easy.  I just applied it with a paper towel, and buffed it off with a clean paper towel.  It took about five minutes.

Here is the result:

After

Close up of the arm strap

Close up of the seat

Just as a reminder, here is what it looked like before:

OK, so you probably can't see much difference from this angle.  It's all I got.

Before, there were sharp edges on all of the parts of the chair that are touched a lot like the arm straps.  This treatment helps incredibly with the comfort of the chair.  At least on my baby-like sensitive skin.  Also, this leather wasn't struck-through, meaning I could see a much lighter color on the edges.  With this treatment, it looks "finished."

Coming up, I am making a trip to my home town in Montana for a week or so.  While there, I talked my dad into building another Roorkee chair with me.  I'll have to take a few tools along, but it should be a lot of fun.  We are going to build it in a rustic style using diamond willow for the legs.


I can't wait.

Roorkee Build Part 2 - Leather

Pretty much done.

Future Roorkee.
Photo by Daniel Steger

I have never worked leather before.  I probably wouldn't have tried this had Chris Schwarz not done it and said woodworkers can do this easily.  While it wasn't as easy as I hoped, it was something I was able to do learning on my own.

One bit I had to learn, was how to buy leather online.  One can spend an awful lot of money on leather.  Tip:  Don't do that.

I got a side of latigo leather in a burgundy color and about 9-10 oz. weight for about $140 plus shipping.  After I thought about it for a while, I got nervous about the color, and decided to order a side of black, too.  Holy cow!  that's a lot of leather.  This way, however, I was able to look at a couple different sides and decide which one I wanted best.

I finally settled on the black one.  As these sides (that is the leather industry term for a half-a-cow's worth of leather) were economy grade, there were just enough imperfections and parts of the leather that were unsuitable, that I was able to only get enough leather from the side to make one chair.  Perhaps there is enough left over for a camp stool, we'll see.  Unlike Chris, I made all of my straps from this leather, too.  Perhaps that makes a difference.  Regardless, I couldn't figure out how to get my templates on decent looking parts of this cow and leave enough left over for another chair.  Perhaps with a bit of practice, I'll do better next time.

A sharp box cutter is a good tool for cutting out the big parts.  I'll go out on a limb and say if you want nice looking straps, go ahead and spend the extra dough on a strap and belt cutter from Tandy Leather Factory.  This really sped things up and worked like a charm.

I'll not go to in depth what I did for the leather working, as there is already plenty online regarding this.  Read what Chris Schwarz says about the leather, and also use the free instructional videos on the Tandy website.  Do a bit of surfing around, and make sure you know what the plan is before you start.

I finished up the chair this morning, and I am pleased with how it turned out.  It took me a while to warm up to this chair, as when Chris first started writing about it I had never seen one before.  It always takes a while to get used to something new.  Probably the best compliment I could have gotten was when the Frau said, "It's not nearly as hideous as I expected!"  Needless to say, she was not a big fan of the form.  Seeing it in person, it really is a beautiful chair.

All I have left to do is to color the edges of the leather when the edge dye arrives in the mail.

Just in case you want the specs of mine, here they are:

• Pear wood finished with straight beeswax.
• Black latigo 9-10 oz. leather.
• Stainless steel hardware including stainless screws, washers, and carriage bolts for the back.  The buckles are cheap $.96 versions plated with something silver in color.
• Copper rivets.

Enough blather, take a look for yourself.

Fitting the arm straps while it sits on my ATC.

The Frau is pleased enough that it might wind up living in one of our living spaces.

Although I also have brass hardware, I decided stainless was the look I wanted on this chair.

Comfy.  Perhaps I'll have to get a new video game console.

AAR:

• Pear is a beautiful wood.  Not sure if it is known for ease in turning, but I had no problems with it.  This is my first turning for a piece of furniture.
• The leather did take a bit longer than I thought it would.  I suspect that this will be easier next time.  Part of the problem was I didn't have a proper tool to cut the posts of the copper rivets.  I wound up using the snipper on the inside of a cheap pair of Chinese pliers.  Nothing like having the right tool.
• My little eight pound anvil was a nice tool for riveting.
• Luggage in the trunk of the car can shift around during transport.  Do not let the chair parts fall to the surface of the parking lot.  If you do, try to avoid dropping the parts 17 or 18 more times during construction of this project.
• I think another of these will have to be built.  This project was fun!

Roorkee Build Part 1

It has been another of those times where I haven't been able to get enough shop time.  That, and the project I am working on is getting more and more frustrating.

What to do?  Same as I always do.  Start another project!

Last summer Christopher Schwarz taught a couple classes at Dictum here in Germany.  The first was making a bowsaw.  That class I attended and was pleased with.  The other class was building a Roorkee chair.  I was not pleased with this class as I couldn't go.  I had to work.  I did, however, crash a couple of mornings and imposed myself on the group at the Biergarten at the end of a couple days.  That chair looked so fun to build, I knew I just had to do it myself one of these days.

Lost Art Press released Chris' new book a week or two ago, 'Campaign Furniture.'  I bought a copy and also downloaded the ebook.  It seems to be a great book so far.  I have to admit, that I haven't read it all.  I skipped to the chapter about Roorkee chairs and got really excited.  I decided I had to build one.

Looking at my available stock, I had plenty of pear that was thick enough for the legs of the project.  This pear was earmarked for another project, but I decided that the other project isn't going anywhere and I want to build a Roorkee, so pear it is.  After all, wood grows on trees.  I can always get some more, right?

The first night of the build I broke down my roughstock and cut out leg blanks by hand.  Not so fun in 2" thick lumber, but good practice.  Once I got them cut out, for good measure I planed reference faces and reference edges.  This whole process took about three hours.

Several hours of work getting these bits cut out of a solid chunk of wood.

I like hand tools, but I'm not a sadist.  The next day, I thought I'd run down the road to the Dictum store and see if I could get into their shtop.

Good news:  the shop is open!

I spent the next 20 minutes running the pear through the machines until I had all of the parts needed for the Roorkee cut out, jointed and planed, and ready to go.

If you have the opportunity to use a machine like this, do it!

While I was there, I decided to turn the parts as there is a lathe, also.  I have no lathe in my 100 square foot shop.  No machines, at all.

I did something a bit outside of my usual philosophy:  I bought an Easy Rougher.  If you were to read my earlier blog posts about what tools you should buy, you might be correct in thinking I would recommend a traditional tool, learning how to sharpen and use it as the skill is something that you'll use forever.  However, I did decide to buy this tool, which has a carbide insert for a blade and works by scraping.  It is very easy to use, and easy to learn.  I justified buying this tool as I just wanted to get the parts turned for this project and get it over with.  I am not really interested in learning to turn much, I just wanted to get the legs for this chair done.

Sue me.

My first real turning project.

I think I need some practice, as I had an awful lot of sanding and scraping to get the tool marks out of the wood, but overall I was pleased with the result.  Every once in a while, donkey work just needs to get out of the way for the fun part.  In three hours, I had processed all of the stock to get parts for my Roorkee, learned to turn and turned all of the legs as well as all four stretchers of this project.

The results of half-a-day's work in a power tool shop.

Next up in the project is laying out the holes for the stretchers and boring them.  I made myself a story stick to assist with the turning layout, and decided to use it again here to lay out the holes.  I drilled three 1/8" holes (big enough to hold a pencil) and used the story stick to mark the points on the legs where the stretchers should go.

"Finger Weg!" is the only German phrase you need to know to get by in Germay other than, "Stimmt."

Only three different measurements for boring stretcher mortices.

In action.  Notice the leg and the story stick are butted (is that a word?) up against my planing stop.

Once the layout is complete, bore away!  I used a 5/8" bit in my brace.  I would recommend practicing a bit first to get good at boring straight holes.  Once you got it, you got it.  I use a single 6" square as an aid when I need them to be dead-nuts perfect.  I am looking at the square from two sides to ensure the bit is straight.

boring...

I usually keep my eyes in front of the bit, which keeps the hole going in straight from that way.  Every once in a while, I peek over to see this, the square and the bit lined up.  At least, hopefully I do.

 Now a quick word on buying more tools.  You really need both Jennings bits as well as Irwins.  Many people would look at the below photo and say the left bit is for hard wood and the right bit for soft, as the left obviously has finer lead-screw threads than the right.

Those people would be wrong.

Jennings on the left, Irwin on the right.

Jennings bit has threads in the lead screw are doubled up, where as the right they are a single screw.  Normally I prefer a Jennings bit, but in pear the lead screw kept clogging up.  After 1/2" to 3/4" of boring, the lead screw would get clogged and the bit would quit cutting.  Once I changed to the Irwin bit, there was no more clogging.  The Irwin bit would consistently drill the entire way with no clogging.  If you are having trouble with your bit clogging, try using the other kind of bit.  It made my boring go four times faster.

The next step is to ream out the 5/8" holes you just bored into tapered mortices.  I again used my brace, and was very careful to ensure everything stayed nice and square.

For some reason, this looks weird to me.

When I get a few turns in, I insert a stretcher and measure.  If I need to make some adjustments, I do, and then I check again when I am almost to the bottom.  Once you are at the bottom, there isn't much room to make corrections.

Checking the stretcher.

 Once this was done, I checked to see if it all fit.

I think I need to adjust some tenons and mortices, but overall I'm happy.

Now we get to the fun part.  How to shape the rounded tops of the legs.  Chris Schwarz recommends in his book to mark it out using a template and using a band saw.  Due to a slight miscalculation, my legs turned out a bit skinnier than he recommends.  To get the top to look round, I used my combination square to mark 45 degree lines from the corners and rounding from that center point with a compass.

The layout for the curved top.  Also, you can see the tools I will use to do it, besides a hand saw.

I'll get a bit specific with this.  This technique will be handy for the folks at William Ng's this week.  If you find yourself 12th in line to use the band saw, try this and get on with it.  The whole process took me less than ten minutes each to go to a finished surface.

I first sawed off the corner at about 45 degrees.

A closer look.

I can't pass up an opportunity to point out my DICK saw!

Just pare away the sharp corners with a chisel.  Take light cuts and go down to the line.

Notice the grip:  No flesh is in front of the blade.  If I slip, the tip just goes into my backer board, not a vital artery.

A little more progress...

I think this is smoother than I could do with a bandsaw.  Now for the rasp:

Some light rolling cuts with the rasp down to the line and Voila!

I could have done this in about a half an hour if I didn't continually stop to take pictures.

Now to drill a hole on the back legs to hold the back pieces.  More precision boring, I go in a few turns on one side, flip it over and drill all the way through from the back.  This prevents blowout, and also helps match up the hole in the middle.  It does need to be perfect for a bolt to fit in.

Same drill, different bit...

First from one side, then the other.  Notice the nice long shavings one gets with a sharp bit.

Not too shabby.  But the real test...

Does a bolt fit?  Yes!

Pretty much now all I have to do is finish.  I decided to go with one of my stand-byes:  polissoir the crap out of it, then finish with straight beeswax with more polissoiring.

This is as far as I got tonight.  I'll finish the waxing in the morning.

If you're still reading this enormously long post, congratulations!  You are one of my hard-core fans!

Next time - Leather!