Ladder back chair class - Woodworking School at Pine Croft - Day 1

Placeholder as I didn’t start taking pictures until day 3. My workbench was by the window, second from the left on the top floor- although we spent as much time, if not more, at our shavehorses.

Day 1 – Monday, 13 March 2023

Shavehorse work with the drawknife and splitting out parts was the name of the game. After a brief intro by Andy, we set to work shaving out octagonal rungs for our chairs from green red oak stock. This chair has 7 rungs, 4 rails, 2 front posts, and 2 back posts- all worked out of oak and hickory on the shavehorse.

Not having really worked with green wood before I wasn’t sure what to expect when it came to shaving with a draw knife. Andy gave us a quick primer on how to work the parts:

Start by shaving the radial plane (with the growth rings pointing up). The goal is to follow the grain so that your finished side is all in the same plane. With red oak, the medullary rays should all appear wide and the color across the plane should be consistent.
Once you’ve got the first plane established, use a pencil with finger gauge/marking gauge to draw a line on one of the tangential faces using the radial plane you just cut as the reference.
Following the line, cut the opposing radial face with a drawknife. There should be two flat and, ideally, parallel faces.
Pick one of the tangential faces and cut it with the drawknife so that it follows the grain and is 90 degrees to the two radial faces. I found it much more difficult to determine whether or not you had cut down so the entire plane was following the grain on the tangential face than the radial face. The appearance of growth rings and color variations are indicators you’re face is not all on the same plane.
Put a line on one of the neighboring radial faces using the same technique as in step 2.
Cut the last tangential face as in step 3.
You *should* have a relatively square blank that follows the grain throughout the entire piece.
To make the parts octagonal, just cut each corner by eye until each facet looks to be even.

In theory, this sounds easy but I found it to be tremendously difficult to end up with relatively straight, flat, and square pieces. Most of my finished parts appeared to have a noticeable amount of twist (likely from not keeping the drawknife horizontal through the pull). While not structurally relevant, the twist did not give the piece a pleasing look and I wasn’t sure how it might affect the finished product. Even after I noticed the issue, I struggled to prevent the twist as I would get to a stage of work where the plane would appear flat and in line with the grain while working close but when I pulled back to get an overall view, it revealed a wavy cut and continued twist. Nothing more time on the shaving horse won’t fix but was a bit frustrating at the time.

How our rungs should look after shaving into octagons. These were worked by Andy sometime before we arrived so they could spend plenty of time in the kiln drying.

Splitting from the log

We also spent some time working to split more rung, front post, and back post stock from the log. This process was pretty straight forward and lots of fun. The log is split in half with wedges, and each successive piece is also split in half until you get to parts you think can be split with a froe. It gets a little trickier when you have to plan out your pieces but the general rule of thumb seemed to be, always try to split as close as you can to equal sized pieces.

Andy preferred to crosscut his logs to length before splitting. He found that the advantage gained by splitting a shorter log was worth the risk of running into a unforeseen issue inside a log that might be worked around a long split at full length but would be much more difficult (or potentially impossible) when splitting a short log. He also didn’t use any kind of riving brake with his froe. He didn’t find it necessary given the sizes (usually 1″ for the rungs and 2″ for the posts) of stock he was splitting. The rung stock was smaller, but it was short enough that he still would just whack the froe with the mallet, splitting the material pretty easily most of the time.

Logs we used to split out stock on the left. Rear post material in the center, front post material on the table.

We finished out the day back with an introduction to the story sticks and shaving the front post octagons on the shaving horse. The process for shaving the front posts is the same as shaving the rungs, except there is a taper on the bottom 7″ of the post. To accomplish the taper:

Start with a square blank (in this case 1 5/8″ square).
Draw a line 7″ up from the bottom around the blank.
Draw a heavy 1″ square on the bottom of the foot (if the blank is 1 5/8″ square, you can set a combo square to 5/16″ then draw a square on the bottom of the foot using the outside of each leg as a reference face). You want the leg to be on the thick side of 1″ to account for the shrinkage that will occur as the leg dries.
Using a series of cuts (first near the bottom, second 2/3 up, and last one at the line on the face) taper the leg until you reach the square at the bottom.
Repeat step 4 until you get all the way around the leg.
Now cut the corners until you have equal facets.

By the end of the day, 5 students and 1 instructor had made enough shavings to fill up two 55 gallon trash cans with red oak shavings. Fun, tiring, and heavy with the smell of fresh red oak, we were amazed at the amount of work we had accomplished and excited for day 2.