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.

Berea Trip Report #3: Nemot00ls meets Adam Cherubini

This is the last Berea trip report, I promise. I had the great opportunity to sit in on a couple of Adam Cherubini's lectures. He's a unique personality and very knowledgeable. His mortise chopping technique was very different from Frank Klaus's, and I think I may try melding the two together.

First, Adam only scribes one line with the grain, not two, and chops to the line. This makes sense. If the mortise chisel is the width of the tennon, what other mark do you need? I know that I have had slight accuracy issues when my mortise marker was not exactly set to the width of my chisel. Which of the two lines to follow? Stick to one or the other? Try to stay in the middle? Getting rid of one of the lines just simplifies the issue.

Secondly, he pares, bevel up, a shallow groove to outline the mortise before chopping. This serves to help further in aligning and registering the chisel. His technique, if I can describe it properly, was to hold the mortise chisel like a pen in one hand, with that elbow flat on the bench for bracing and orientation, and while holding the handle with his other hand, leaning into the chisel with his shoulder. This sounds like serious contortion, but it looked pretty easy. I'm going to try it. If I can get a photograph of myself doing this, I'll post it. I will say that the big broad handle of the pig sticker mortise chisel lent itself to nesting against a shoulder so maybe Adam's contention makes sense that paring with your shoulder leaning into the chisel is the ergonomic way to do it.

My only concern is that a high bench would be the best choice for this technique, but a low bench works best for planing. Does this lead you to a need for two benches?