Morris Chair Class

Just got back from Dale Barnard's Morris Chair class in Paoli, Indiana. What a blast. Six solid days of working my A$$ off. I've never worked 8 to 10 hours a day straight at woodworking, much less 6 days in a row of it.

The upside is, I walked away with a professionally made bow-arm Morris Chair. I also learned a lot about commercial production techniques.

This class has a lot of equipment to get your hands on: Planer, jointer, wide belt sander, mortiser, router, chop saw, lathe, table saw and band saw. Toys for big boys. I also found that my hand tool skills came in very handy. There are some things you just can't do with a machine. You just have to break out the plane or chisel.

I think the highlight of the class was steam bending the bow arms. It's really not that hard, once someone shows you how. Dale's steam box is the simplest thing you could imagine and the bending is just a matter of clamping the steam-softened arm to a plywood form.