# WIP: a Smoker's bow



## Sheffield Tony (12 Jan 2016)

I think we could do with some more chairmaking in here !

When some of us were gathered at MAC Timbers last year, Mike demonstrated his sawmill by slicing up a big lump of walnut. I was struck by how lovely it looked. I resisted temptation then and there, but when I got home I mulled for a while on what I could do with a bit. I have a copy of _Jack Hill's Country Chair Making_, and took an instant liking to the Smoker's bow in there. I suspect, perhaps, that this is because it fits perfectly my mental picture of Enid Blyton's _Wishing Chair_, a childhood favourite ! The one in Jack Hill's book is particularly beautiful, with yew spindles and an elm seat. I decided to have a go at one with a walnut seat and arm rest, contrasting with ash for the turned parts. Went back to see Mike and bought a 2" walnut board, wide enough to make the seat from a single piece. I had half an ash log, left over from making a greenwood chair but now a bit dry, that would do for the turnery.

For the last few days, I've been turning legs. All the turned parts are made by froe, axe, drawknife and pole lathe. The finish is straight from the skew, burnished with shavings. I would not be winning any log to leg race here though - it took me 2-3 hours per leg ! 

The finished kit of turned parts (minus 2 to be completed) looks like so:







There's some spare at the ends of some of the pieces that will need trimming off, but I don't want to lose the centres until I'm sure that the tenons are the right size. The wood was fairly dry by now, about a year from felling, but may still shrink a little more - I've left a guestimated allowance.

More later, but don't hold your breath, got a lot on at the moment and this might take some time.


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## Racers (12 Jan 2016)

Looking forward to this build, I have been meaning to do a Windsor chair course.

Was it this bit of Walnut? 





Pete


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## CHJ (12 Jan 2016)

That's some impressive output from the pole lathe, eagerly awaiting further instalments.


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## blackrodd (12 Jan 2016)

CHJ":aha4x1ah said:


> That's some impressive output from the pole lathe, eagerly awaiting further instalments.



Yep, I'd like to see the follow up too. Would love to see the rest made in fact.
When that's done, you'll have a leg like Arnie.
Regards Rodders


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## John15 (12 Jan 2016)

The turned pieces look beautiful Tony. I wish I could have a go but I don't have the room.

John


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## AndyT (12 Jan 2016)

I'm watching with interest too - that's a most impressively well-matched set of spindles, Tony.


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## NickWelford (12 Jan 2016)

I've been on a Windsor chair making course with Mike Abbott, and I'm really impressed with your pole lathe turned legs. Great uniformity.


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## custard (13 Jan 2016)

Sheffield Tony":8rleil6y said:


> All the turned parts are made by froe, axe, drawknife and pole lathe.



I take my hat off to you. That's a considerable achievement.

=D>


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## Sheffield Tony (14 Jan 2016)

The piece of walnut is not actually one of the ones Mike was cutting when we were there - it is a bigger board, enough to get the arm rest parts from too I think. I hope that lovely colour it had when wet will be brought out by an oil finish.

I was quite pleased with the legs (thanks for the kind comments) - the wood being halfway to seasoned meant a lot more energy needed for turning, and more frequent sharpening of the skew, but it does seem possible to get finer details than when turning very wet wood. Getting them reasonably matched is not down to a finely tuned eye, but frequent use of the calipers ! I turn one leg, marking on the joint positions etc. Mark that one as the master to avoid Chinese whispers setting in. Then I offer that one up to the rest of the legs and transfer the positions of key features by eye, but the thickness at each point is checked with a vernier caliper. I rather like the incongruous combinaton of vernier calipers and pole lathe ! 

Rodders, because I mostly treaddle with by right leg, I fear my chair legs might well be better matched than my own by the time I'm done.


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## DTR (14 Jan 2016)

Watching with interest, keep up the good work!


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## StarGazer (19 May 2016)

Any updates Tony?


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## Sheffield Tony (23 May 2016)

Oops sorry. I've stalled on this one a bit. I've been preoccupied with various events (Sutton Hoo, Bodger's ball etc), and building a wood fired oven. I will get back to it soon, honest.


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## Sheffield Tony (16 Jan 2017)

Gosh, this has been sitting in a pile of pieces for too long ! I've been up to a lot of other, non-woodwork, things. Mostly involving going walkabout in the hills.

Got back to it this weekend, making the seat and arm bow from that board of walnut. For this I followed Jack Hill's advice and drew up full sized plans based on the design in his book. I used tracing paper, so that I can trace the 5 pieces that make up the arm bow and seat onto templates that I can juggle around on my board to get the best fit, avoiding a small split and trying to work round the knots. One knot remains of the seat (for character :wink: ), shaping the seat might improve it, or I might have to fill with clear epoxy. All the sawing was done by homemade bowsaw. Here's the arm rest glued up, and with the beginnings of shaping. Again, I'm being purist and sticking to hand tools so the shaping is by bowsaw, homemade travisher and spokeshaves. There's more work to do, so it looks rather heavy at the moment. 

Here I departed from the otherwise excellent instructions from Jack Hill's book. He would have you shape the seat etc then drill the holes for the spindles. As I'm using brace and bit, and struggle enough to drill straight, I prefer to drill the holes whilst I still have square, flat faces to work with and shape later. His instructions also are very terse regarding position of these socket holes. A diagram shows pair of dividers pointing at two holes with 4 1/2" written by it, the notion of the sight lines is marked on the diagram, but not the exact positioning of the intersection point relative to the arm rest. Nor how far in from the edge to drill the holes. Going back to my full sized plans, I marked on where the intersection point of the sightlines in on the seat (that is given), then marked the hole positions in the underside of the armrest as evenly spaced. Now because I used tracing paper, it is easy to stack the armrest plan on top of the seat plan, and judge where the relative position of the arm rest and seat looks about right. The interesection of the sight lines for the arm rest must be vertically above the intersection of the seat sight lines, so I could then mark that. Then the position of the armrest holes define the sight lines for the arm bow, and can be traced onto the seat plan too. Measuring the difference in radius of the seat sockets and arm sockets, and knowing that the arm rest is going the be 215mm above the seat gives me the drilling angles by a little trigonometry. Which are nearly (but not exactly) the 10 and 15 degrees the book mentions. There must be an easier way.

The parts:






To drill the holes, I copied the sightlines from the plans, marking out in white pencil. I judged the angles by standing a tri-square to judge vertical perpendicular to the sight line, and frequent checking with a sliding bevel for the angle between the drill and the sight line along the seat. The other white lines are for the seat shaping; to do this I sat on it and drew around my butt !

Trial fitting the spindles as I went to be sure I all looked OK.






Since the demise of Clico, good sharp auger bits that suit a hand brace are are getting hard to find. I've got a lot of old ones with worn out spurs, but here a clean hole is important. This Sandvik one is almost new, and although the shank has three flats at the top, there is a small section which is square, allowing it to be gripped by a Stanley 2 jaw brace - I'm using the one that Droogs gave me in the 2015 Secret Santa.





Again, trial fitting the spindles and offering up the arm to check the top hole positions line up. My maths seemed to have worked fairly well. Time to knock off for dinner, the last couple of holes will have to wait.


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## Harbo (16 Jan 2017)

Looking good - very nice work 

Rod


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## AndyT (16 Jan 2017)

Looking great!

Re angled holes, I can see two answers. The best one, now that you have found the angles required, is to carry on making hundreds more chairs!

The other way, from a newly found book on the History of the English Chair, is to get one of these machines and connect it to a steam engine...


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## xy mosian (16 Jan 2017)

Great work on the chair, I have been looking forward to the stages towards completion. =D> 

The machine Andy shows is a fine example of what can be achieved in industry, where that suggests high volume production.

Perhaps one of the stand attachments for electric drills with a hinged pillar could work. I am sure I have seen an image of one somwhere, but where?
Keep up the good work.

xy


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## Sheffield Tony (17 Jan 2017)

That's quite a machine Andy. But a more appropriate tool for this scale of work might be one I know you already have:

not-a-boring-machine-t89822.html

At least it might allow repeated drilling at the same angle. They look rather appealing, how accurate / repeatable are they, I wonder ? Should I be keeping my eye out for one ?


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## AndyT (17 Jan 2017)

Ah, how could I forget?!

It certainly ought to work, though I've never heard of a chairmaker using one, not even Roy Underhill. 

But I suspect it might all be more trouble than it's worth to set up and it's better to get comfortable with sight lines, try squares and a brace and bit.


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## custard (17 Jan 2017)

AndyT":cxkhm4ga said:


> But I suspect it might all be more trouble than it's worth to set up and it's better to get comfortable with sight lines, try squares and a brace and bit.



I've never made a Smoker's Bow but I've made plenty of Windsor chairs. Even though they look superficially similar I suspect they require a very different approach in construction. 

Windsors are actually very forgiving of small drilling errors, the whole point of them is that the dimensions aren't that critical and the components are thin enough and flexible enough to accommodate steam bending spring back and small misalignments in drilling. Looking at that Smokers Bow it's an altogether different proposition, the components are much heavier and won't have much flexibility, in fact it looks more like a _manufacturing_ design than a _craft_ design. Consequently I guess (and it's only a guess, as I say I've never made one) that it requires a different order of build precision, so maybe jigged up drilling machines are the order of the day rather than sight lines and a relaxed approach?


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## Sheffield Tony (24 Jan 2017)

The weekend just gone I got around to finishing the drilling; the last couple of holes in the seat, then the underside of the arm rest. This is harder without the nice flat board to draw sight lines on. I resorted again to the full sized plan; spread out on the bench draping over the edge so I coud set the arm bow on top, upside down with the crest of the back rest hanging over the edge. By lining it up with the plan and clamping it down with a couple of holdfasts, I could use the sight lines directly from the plan. And my maths must have been near enough, because it goes together ! Here's a trial assembly:






There is a _little_ wiggle room for inaccurate drilling, but probably 10mm at most or about a couple of degrees in angle. I will confess that one of my holes was a little bit out, wandered a bit I think because of some awkward grain. Or maybe not enough care. Anyway, only a very slight adjustment needed, which I made by easing towards the _bottom_ of the hole with an in-cannel gouge; only a fraction of a mm shave needed to get it together, can't be seen when assembled, and as it is only one socket out of 16, I can't see it will cause any weakness to speak of.

Thinking ahead to glueing up, I'm considering using the Titebond liquid hide glue. I think Custard was extolling it recently on anouther thread ? How long is the shelf life of that stuff, and can I tell if my bottle is over the hill ? I bought it for wooden plane repairs a little while ago, normally use Titebond 3. Maybe I should just buy fresh.

I'm now shaping the seat, and refining the arm bow shape.


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## AndyT (24 Jan 2017)

I've had a few bottles of Titebond liquid hide glue. The first one had no date on and lasted several years. Later bottles have had dates on, but the glue has been fine long after the expiry date. I've read that a good test is just to put some between finger and thumb and see how sticky it gets. I reckon a better test would be to glue two bits of scrap together and wait 24 hours. If it works, it's good.


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## StarGazer (30 Jan 2017)

Good to see an update, interesting to see you working on the top before fixing up the legs and stretchers.


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## disco_monkey79 (10 Feb 2017)

That's coming along lovely.


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## Sheffield Tony (13 Feb 2017)

Got a chance to do a bit more on Saturday. Stargazer spotted that it is unusual to be working on the top part of the chair before sorting out the undercarriage. I think I mentioned part of the reason earlier, which is that I wanted to do all the drilling in the seat and arm bow before shaping them, so I had a nice flat surface for sight lines and to stand my square / sliding bevel on for checking the angles. But what I forgot to mention is that I did drill the leg sockets in the underside of the seat at the same time as I did the holes in the top side for the back spindles. The method is just the same though, with brace and bit and sightlines for alignment. 

What I hadn't done is drilling for the stretchers. Again Jack Hill's book gives partial information about these angles, and I didn't want to trust them blindly, so I checked them in two ways. First by a fair bit of trigonometry; knowing the orientation of the sight lines for the legs, and the angle and position of the leg sockets in the seat, it is not too complicated to work out the lengths of the stretchers and the required angles. But I didn't trust my maths completely ... so I found a simple way. Assemble the seat and the legs, mark on the legs the height where the stretchers will go. Then place a _large_ elastic band around the legs at that height, measuring the angles between the centreline of each leg, and the rubber band using a combination square. Amazingly this all agreed, so we can start drilling ! 

One more useful tool is a Mike Abbott style centre finder:





By sitting the bird's mouth over a spindle, the nail can be stuck lightly to make a starting centre for the drill nicely in the middle of the leg. 

Here I let my purist approach slip. Although sharp, the augur was just too brutal for boring into the legs. The combination of the angle of the hole and the convex shape of the leg meant that the spur didn't scribe a nice circle, and the risk of splintering around the entry of the hole was too great. A forstner bit makes a much cleaner hole, and the cordless drill was to hand. I still regret it a bit though. It is the only point at which I've reached for a power tool, and I could have used a breast drill maybe. Oh well, it's done now. A couple of V blocks help to hold the leg down, whilst again using the pair of squares to judge alignment:





Another trial fitting, and measuring to check the drilling angles for the lateral stretchers, then the final trial fitting:





You'll spot that in the intervening time I've scooped out the seat a bit, using the outline of my backside I drew on earlier in white pencil. Jack Hill says "by any safe method", I was going to rough out some of the waste with a really heavy Henry Taylor sculpure gouge, but it seemed a very noisy and energetic process, so I used my homemade travisher again. The travisher is a somehow very theraputic tool to use. At the same time I rounded and lightened up the arm bow with spokeshaves, Iwasaki rasp and card scrapers.

Now comes the stage I really love. The assembly. After days (months more like) of shaping parts, in the space of an hour it becomes a chair ! This particular assembly was a novelty for me, because glue was involved. My previous 2 chairs were made from green wood, and needed no glue, just the drying shrinkage to hold them together. In this case I had planned to use Titebond liquid hide glue for the longer open time. Andy's suggestion of testing if my open bottle was still OK by gluing a couple of bits of scrap together seemed like a good idea, but my glue failed an even simpler test - is it still liquid ? So I used Titebond 3 instead. This made for a frantic hour. Assembling the seat/arm bow/back spindles very nearly caught me out; the joints were a good snug fit, but after applying water based glue to all 32 surfaces, the spindles began to swell, and it was more than snug ! A good bit of wrestling and persuasion with a big mallet was needed, but here's where I'm at now:






It's a shame about the fuzzy picture, but it had gone dark by now. The old blanket, incidentally, was to allow me to work on the floor without getting scratches from grit all over the seat whilst assembling the legs and stretchers. Learned the hard way on a previous job.


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## Setch (13 Feb 2017)

Lovely! I was dubious about the contrasting spindles at first, but it looks superb - can't wait to see how it pops with some oil in it.


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## xy mosian (13 Feb 2017)

Wonderful. I'll bet you got a fantastic fealing the first time you sat in it. Suddenly all the time and effort involved so far makes sense and the remaining tasks seem, for the moment , trivial. Great job.
xe


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## custard (13 Feb 2017)

Sheffield Tony":sdch7eoo said:


> Now comes the stage I really love. The assembly. After days (months more like) of shaping parts, in the space of an hour it becomes a chair !




Excellent job, you must be delighted with that (I know I would be).

=D>


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## Racers (13 Feb 2017)

Cracking job Tony!

I did the elastic band trick for the stretcher angles when making my oak stools it works very well.



21st March by Racers, on Flickr

Pete


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## AndyT (13 Feb 2017)

That's looking fantastic, Tony. 

This picture






reminded me of this old bit-of-a-chair in our basement. I pulled it out of a skip years ago - it's worm eaten, abused and has been ham-fistedly stripped by someone with some very coarse sandpaper and little skill. I've not done anything with it - it just gets used to stand on. That aside, I think it's evidence that your chair is a) firmly in the tradition and b) more elegantly and decoratively made. 






I sympathise about the forstner bit - did you manage to get any of the Clifton chairmaker's spoon bits before they disappeared from the market?


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## Sheffield Tony (13 Feb 2017)

Thanks folks. I am very much looking forward to seeing how the walnut looks with oil. This is where I usually rush the finishing and regret it. I was planning to use Danish oil, then homebrewed beeswax polish (FIL is a beekeper). Although the walnut I've played with before takes a nicer deep colour with linseed. But the legs would go alarmingly yellow, so would need to avoid them. I think I'll experiment with some offcuts. And yes xy, I did enjoy settling down into it. I find it very comfy, but as I made it to fit my bottom I suppose that is not surprising ! 

I thought for a moment I had invented that elastic band trick Pete. There's no such thing as a new idea, is there ? 

That chair does look pretty similar Andy; it looks to me like the top parts might have been different though, the rectangular holes at the back of the seat suggest a lath back of sorts. I started making laths for the back of chair #4 the weekend before last ... it will be an ash lath back, in a more craft / greenwood style though.

The chairmaker's spoon bits can still be found if you know where to look. I've never tried one, maybe I should snap some up whilst I can still find them. Lee Valley do make a set too, but I don't know how easy it is to get them over here. But the cordless drill is pretty widely used amongst modern day "bodgers"; Mike Abbott has popularised using the Veritas tenon cutters in a cordless drill for his chair designs made with riven/shaved spindles.


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## n0legs (13 Feb 2017)

The chair looks great =D>


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## DTR (15 Feb 2017)

Fantastic chair Tony =D>


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## Sheffield Tony (3 Mar 2017)

Last weekend I finished off this chair. 3 coats of Rustins Danish oil applied by cloth, then a couple of applications of the homemade beeswax polish - 2:2:1 beeswax, natural turpentine and linseed oil.

The aroma of turpentine has now faded enough for it to be allowed in the house !






The MAC Timbers walnut is brought back to life a bit by the oil and wax. One little niggle that will annoy me forever is the slight sticker stain on the seat. The slab of walnut was not thick enough to plane a lot away, and I had expected the seat shaping to remove most of it. And it did remove most, but not all of it. Non woodworkers don't seem to notice though.






In this light, some ripples still show on the seat from the travisher. I had thought I have spent enough time with the scraper to have removed them all, but I think I'll regard them as a feature, an indication of hand making :wink: In fact, I often grapple with the dilemma of how to finish things. Here I have deliberately NOT sanded the turned parts at all, they are a tooled finish straight from the pole lathe, burnished wih shavings, so as to keep a bit of the "greenwood" look, though you can't really see it here. I've also tried to keep a crisp edge to the seat hollowing which I like, so only limited sanding with abranet there.






Here it is in its new home. This is DS's "library corner"; he likes to sit here to read next to his books and with the good light from the conservatory. Should be more comfortable than the footstool he was using before !

So that's all. Well not quite all. AndyT has tempted me into buying some old stock Clico chairmaker's spoon bits. I now have them sitting on my bench, waiting to be tried out. And I also have the beginnings of Chair #4 - which will be a lath back chair - to try them out on. Coming soon ... ish :lol:


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## AndyT (3 Mar 2017)

Wow, that looks really lovely.
Sturdy, comfortable, beautiful. You should be very proud of that.

I especially like the symmetrical grain patterns on the ends of the arms.

=D> =D> =D> 

And now you've spent out for the spoon bits, you'll HAVE to make some more chairs.


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## Racers (3 Mar 2017)

Really nice work, I like the combination of woods.

Pete


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## xy mosian (3 Mar 2017)

Beautiful, splendid work.

xy


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## n0legs (3 Mar 2017)

Tony that looks amazing with some finish on it =D>


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## DTR (5 Mar 2017)

Amazing! =D>


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## custard (5 Mar 2017)

Excellent job, looks terrific!

=D>


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## Phil Pascoe (5 Mar 2017)

More patience than me, Gunga Din. Beautiful. When you next make up some polish, although I know you like to keep things trad. get hold of some microcrystalline and some carnauba instead of beeswax. I've used beeswax for years, but find a mix of these two much better as it is harder and has a much higher melting point so doesn't mark so easily when handled.


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