Mount-Royal Windsor Chairs Blog

Round trip around the world for $9.49

May 12th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Note: Sorry to my chairmaker friends as this has nothing to, again, do with chairmaking… It’s just about life in general and how I perceive it.

I recently bought a book from one of the major used/discount book sellers on Internet.

As some of you might know, I am fascinated by raw materials of all kinds - wood, glass, metal, and minerals.

That’s why I work wood in its roughest, “purest” form, and why I have tried my hand at glassblowing, blacksmithing and why I still tinker with stained glass. My two geology courses were the highlight of my sojourn in college.

I also have a fascination for pure sciences such as physics, chemistry and meteorology, but that’s a story for another day…

So I decided to get a little reading on mineralogy. Clickety click! Order it online… The choice was easy. Local university co-ops sell it for $156. I got it for $68.94 + $9.49 shipping.

I thought I was ordering it from California. I got a little surprise when I received the UPS tracking information. It was coming over from Hong-Kong.

My book's round trip around the world

The book was first printed in the USA by Oxford University Press.

Let’s assume it got to Hong-Kong directly from the US’ East coast.

Here is it’s path from Hong-Kong to my house - it took three days:

Started out in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong
Left for Chek Lap Kok, Hong Kong (the airport)
Stopped in Incheon, South Korea
Flown into Anchorage, Alaska
From Anchorage, fly into Louisville, Kentucky
… to Mount-Hope, Ontario, Canada
… into Lachine, Quebec
finally to St-Philippe, Quebec.

Approximately 40,000 km (the earth’s approximate circumference) for $9.49??

Someone’s DEFINITELY losing money here.

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Born of fire

May 2nd, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Antiquing a windsor chair with shellac and fire Fire is often associated with death, destruction, and an unpleasant afterlife.

But it is also a source of life.

Mountains, metal tools, and even some majestic trees like the giant redwoods are its children.

Unbeknownst to most, it also brings to life Windsor chairs.

It is one of the final steps to making an antiqued finish on a chair.

It oxidizes the last coat of paint, giving it a variegated sheen akin to real antiques.

The process is quite simple:

Prepare a 1# cut of orange shellac.
Brush it onto a small area and light it on fire before it dries.

The alcohol contained in the shellac will burn off in seconds, leaving behind the caramelized shellac.

Finish it off with a coat of wax, and you’re done!

Posted in Chairmaking report | No Comments »

Of plastics

May 1st, 2008 by Jean-Francois

What would the world look like without plastics? Have you ever wondered?

We have them in our beds, they make up our clothes, they carry our water, preserve our food.

I bet you there’s not one room in your house where somewhere you will not find some in one form or another.

They move us around, entertain us, they sometimes even save our lives.

Or do they?

You’ve heard it in the news.

Polycarbonates, containing Bisphenol A is but the latest. It is one of many dangerous products that compose polycarbonates that leach from them that are a known carcinogens.

How about the pipes that bring water in your home? PVC (Polyvinyl chloride) contains numerous toxic chemicals called adipates and phthalates. Phtalates, that “soften” the brittle plastic to make it flexible namely in children’s toys, have also been proved as carcinogens.

Last but not least, the one that is in direct contact with our food, Polystyrene. Some compounds leaching from polystyrene food containers interfere with human hormone functions, which in turn cause cancers.

Have we gone mad?

Or are we being mislead by greed?

In any event, you won’t find plastic in any of the chairs, or even in the tools that have been used to make them, for that matter.

Plastic free, and proud of it!

Posted in Environment | No Comments »

To halve and to hold

Mar 28th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Windsor chair patterns

Chair patterns.

Its DNA.

Some people covet them, and treat them as secret recipes.

Some others wouldn’t care less if theirs went up in smoke.

Some see Freemason symbols on them, as on the picture on the right.

They take time to develop and to refine - sometimes weeks, months or even years to get a perfect chair.

I’ve seen all sorts of patterns from different chairmakers:

Made of 1/4″ lauan plywood;
Made of pasteboard, mostly white, but even some fluorescent orange;
Made of Scotch taped paper sheets, barely held together like ancient papyrus;
Some treated as the Volume of Sacred Law, revered and stored away in a safe after use, in the Holy of Hollies, away from prying eyes and grubby hands;
Some looking more like nuclear power plant engineering drawings, with so many technical information on them that you almost need a magnifying glass, a secret decoder ring and a PhD to interpret them;
While others look like dirty napkins, coffee stains included, with so many crossed out marks, deletions, indications saying “drill here”, “no here”, crossed out three times and arrows going every direction.

I’ll be damned if I don’t see one written on paper towels someday…

But the real question is: to halve, or not to halve?

Chairs are usually symmetrical, so what’s the use in having a full size pattern? Or a half size one, for that matter?

Full patterns are great because:

You just place them on your seat blank, trace the contour and mark the points where to drill.

They are not so great because:

They take up more space and are unwieldy
They take up more materials to make - not really an issue with pasteboard, but more of a problem for lauan!
They are sometimes asymmetrical - i.e. the left side is not the same as the right, when they should be.

Halved sized patterns are great because:

They usually generate a symmetrical blank - i.e. since it is traced on one side, flipped and re-used, there is a very high likelihood that both right and left sides of the seat will be symmetrical;
Sight lines are sometimes easier to transfer to the blank, as some of these cross the centerline of the seat and can be traced on the blank without the use of calipers
They take less materials and less space - in a small shop, space is at a premium

They are nor so great because:

When flipping them around, you have to align them properly with their opposite side!
When working with very tight blanks or when wanting to avoid defects in blanks, it is sometimes easier to have a full sized pattern.

I think it’s all a matter of preference.

I hope you realized that I own all the aforementioned (coffee stained included) patterns… It’s called chairmaker evolution.

Posted in Chairmaking report | No Comments »

Nantucket arms

Mar 25th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

I’ve recently sent plans to a friend for my modified Nantucket rocking chair. Arms, legs and back have been changed for more comfort and a different look.
I’ve realized I did omit some information that I have changed from the Windsor Institute’s course (this friend also learnt this chair model at the WI). Maybe they do it this way now, I do not know, but it is different than when I first learned it in 2004 with them.

I have made the following changes to the procedure:

I don’t drill the short spindle holes in the seat before i have fitted the rough arm on the stumps and the stiles.
I drill the arm when it is installed on the stumps, and I put a backer board under it so that it doesn’t blow out. I also use clamps to make sure the arm doesn’t move from its appropriate position on the stiles. The C-Clamp on the arm is there in case the drill bit gets jammed and exerts shearing forces on the arm which could break it.
Afterwards, I drill the short spindle holes in the seat with an extension on a drill bit going through the fitted arm. It also tells me how accurate I was in drilling the hole in the arm.
I make the arm out of straight grained hardwood (i.e. maple) instead of poplar - it is much more sport to carve, but also much more robust!
I don’t glue parts to make the knuckle. It is made of one solid piece - no chance for any part ungluing, or an unsightly glue line on the carved knuckle;
I don’t use”faceted” tenons on the short (or any other long ones, for that matter) spindles. This allows me to get an excellent glue joint and to do a dry fit, before starting to carve the arm.

With this method, I have never split any arms, nor have any that I had to either widen the stump holes to an unsightly dimension.

Next step, carve, and re-install permanently.

I hope this will help you build a better chair! I know it has done so for me.

Posted in Chairmaking report | 4 Comments »

Hiver, quand tu nous tiens… (Winter, when you get a hold of us…)

Mar 10th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

We all thought, around here, that winter was over - that we would be getting a break. NOT! I’ve lived in St-Philippe for eleven years and have never had such snow.Please bear in mind that the van is 96.3 inches at its lowest roof point, without the antenna…

I guess it’ll be around till June!

You lucky buggers down south!

Posted in Daily thoughts | 1 Comment »

Small steamer

Mar 9th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Small steamer

Steaming outside in cold climates isn’t always ideal - strong winds want to blow out your propane burner, biting colds force you to crank up the heat to fight the ambient -20°F (-30°C) and you have to run in and out of a heated workshop…

After seeing the success Peter Galbert has with electric kettles, and since I am presently bending a lot of smaller parts such as crests and spindles, I decided to build a smaller version of my larger steam box to use inside the workshop.

It is 6″x6″x35″ (inside dimensions), with two shelves, just enough to put two crests or a good bunch of spindles.

The kettle is attached to the box with a radiator hose, and the legs of the box can be removed so that the box can be stored without taking too much trouble. One end of the hose is fitted to the kettle with an aluminium tube shoved in the kettle spout, and the other end is held on the box with schedule-80 PVC (high temperature resistance) plumbing.

My first steaming was the easiest I have ever done.

I wanted to steam for 45 minutes. I had prepared/boiled another kettle 25 minutes into the steaming to fill the main one so the steam would not be any steaming interruption - pouring cold water in the kettle would have completely stopped the steam for about 15 minutes.

Apart from the steam bath in the workshop, it was a great success. So much so, that I am planning on building a longer one for my larger parts!

I highly recommend it over propane to any chairmaker.

Posted in Chairmaking report | 3 Comments »

Oxymoron? a Shaker Windsor Chair?

Feb 15th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

I’ve always been told that “Shaker” and “Windsor” could never be used in the same sentence.

Why? Here are a few differences between the two styles:

	Windsor	Shaker

Seat	Saddled - carved from soft wood	Woven fabric tape
Comfort	Usually very comfortable	Very relative
Production	Somewhat interchangeable parts, difficult to mass produce. Elaborate turnings.	Interchangeable parts, can be mass produced. Extremely simple turnings (cylinders)
Design	Can be elaborate, elegant & refined	Austere, straight lined
Construction	Everything revolves around the seat - undercarriage and backrest are always separate, and held by seat	Everything revolves around the back legs that also act as backrest.
Robustness	Very robust construction because of conical joints in seat	Failure common in joint between seat and back posts because of shearing forces

Now, what can we say of this beast? It has been credited to Bro. Micajah Tucker, of Canterbury bishopric, circa 1834.

It’s definitely a Windsor, from the definition that I gave in the above table.But we know it was made in the Canterbury Shaker Village.

A Windsor Chairmaker turned Shaker?

Or did he simply steal his plans from the Windsor Institute just down the road?

Food for thought!

Posted in Chairmaking report | 1 Comment »

Shaker Ingenuity

Feb 15th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Although I don’t build Shaker chairs, I have a deep appreciation for the Shakers* and their work - their community vision and strength, their ingenuity and moral code are for me a great source of inspiration.

Shaker style and ideals are anything but ostentatious. It seems they were real fans of the KISS principle.

Have a look at the well known icons of Shaker woodworking: Shaker Boxes and Shaker chairs. Simple, elegant, innovative, and easy to mass produce.

One of the problems I currently have is space - as I try to keep at least one chair of each style, I am laterally stumbling over chairs in my house.

That’s where the Shakers (and one of their inventions) come in.

If you have ever visited the Canterbury Shaker Village (or any other Shaker settlement), you will have noticed shaker pegs sticking out of the walls everywhere.

They were used, amongst other things, to hang up everything from chairs to brooms to clear the floor for their religious ceremonies or for sweeping up the floor.

Hanging up Windsor chairs with Shaker pegs

I installed Shaker pegboards on some of my walls to create more space.

Voilà! Instant chair storage.
*The Shakers were a Protestant religious community who left England to flee persecution and established themselves in New England in 1774.

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Time for a little R&R

Feb 5th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

Influenza virus Things have been a little slow, lately, on the chairmaking side.

That’s why this blog entry has not much to do about chairmaking…

It’s a good thing, since I am slowly getting over my acute bronchitis (it’s the second time I have been sick since the beginning of the year). Don’t worry, I’m not contagious anymore…

I have been mostly busy taking new chair pictures, putting them on the website, doing some maintenance on the website (new sitemap, server-side includes,…), writing new press releases and documents about chairmaking (warning! 5MB PDF!).

I am currently working on a couple of settees and will build three new rocking chairs after tackling kitchen stools.

————————————————————-

During the night, when I wake up because of the cold, I have made a few interesting discoveries on the Web.

When I was a child, my father had given me a small telescope.

It started a fascination for the stars that I have kept since then.

Here are two gems: even if you’re not an amateur astronomer, you should have a look at them:

Stellarium: a free virtual planetarium, with all the features of commercial ones, and much nicer and quicker to boot! It can even control computerized telescopes…

Celestia: a space simulator that lets you explore the universe in three dimensions. Fascinating views of our universe. Travel like you’ve never done before.

I feel that astronomy itch coming back! Where’s my sky atlas?!?

Happy observing!

And stay tuned for my next blog entry, which will be about chairmaking…

Posted in Daily thoughts | 1 Comment »

Get Ready, Get Set…

Jan 20th, 2008 by Jean-Francois

You know all the little tasks you accumulate that you never have time to do?

“I should do that, when I have time! - it would be a real time saver. I’ll just jot it down for now.”

The time never seems to materialize, does it.

It’s sometimes hard to justify doing these “little” things when you have chairs to build, prototypes to work on, customers waiting.
These little things accumulated so much over 2007; I now had quite a list!

That’s when I decided that if I wanted the list to shrink in 2008, I had to do them before I was going back to the workshop after the holidays… So that I could accumulate a new one for 2008!

Here are but a few things that were on my list - some of them made it, some others were put back on the new list:

Take new pictures of some of my chairs - done!
Update the web site with the new pictures - done!
Build a new “Sustainability” web page on my main website - done!
Use “Server Side Includes” (SSI)* on my main website - done!
Write new press release / press documents & distribute them - done!
Build a spokeshave rack for my metal spokeshaves - done (albeit crude…)!
Make a smaller reamer for children’s chairs and arm stumps - done!
Build a leather hand strap - done!
Repair splitting break - almost done!
Build a bigger steam box - back in the 2008 list (now is where it starts getting ugly)
Set up a better sharpening station - back in the 2008 list
Clean up my splitting area in the barn - back in the 2008 list

That’s what happens when you have too many ideas, but not enough time…

* SSI: a method for including bits of text in multiple web pages without having to copy/paste it in all files

Posted in Daily thoughts | No Comments »

SMAQ 2007 Post Mortem

Dec 28th, 2007 by Jean-Francois

SMAQ 2007 - Booth 603 I had been told the Salon des Métiers d’Art was tough.

I thought nothing of it.

The length.

The people.

The dryness.

The darkness.

Now that I have gone through it, I can tell you it is tough.

I have to extend a very grateful thanks to my wife, family and friends without which I could not have managed!

Thanks a million for your support - be it moral or practical!
I really appreciate your support.

The length: 16 days, nonstop, 12 hours per day. Fortunately I had a few days off: Anne, Suzanne, John and Isabelle held the fort a while to give me a breather.
The people: I met tons of wonderful people. From other craftsmen, antique furniture aficionados and people who didn’t know what Windsor chairs were. About 300,000 in all. I handed out almost 2000 business cards.
The dryness: I live in a cold climate. Heating systems in large buildings (especially concrete ones) dry the heck out of the air. I know, I had brought my hygrometer - average relative humidity hovered around 15%. Some cabinetmakers that were at the show had pieces split one day after the show had started! I was understandably worried for my chair seats. I didn’t have any problems, though! They remained intact. Quite a baptism by fire!
The darkness: no windows, no other lights than the ones from the exhibitor’s stands. It creates a great atmosphere, but I don’t think I ever saw the sun from December 6th to December 23rd! A little gloomy!

The response was overwhelmingly positive.I even received a honorable mention from the Conseil des Métiers d’Art for the quality, originality and innovation of my products and stand!All four models that I had brought, which represent the different Windsor chair styles that I build, attracted Oohs and Aahs!

High chair: the real eye catcher. I’ve seen people walk by real fast by my stand, catching a glimpse of it from the corner of their eye, and backtracking to have a look at it! I would never have thought that the response to this chair would have been so strong. People (craftsmen and the public alike) loved the way its forms flow, its curves and how gracefully it shoots up. It represented the children’s chair category.
The Fanback rocking chair: most French Canadians have never had contact with Windsor chairs. However, this one reminded most of the rocking chair their grandparents had when they were kids. As for the high chair, people also had a very emotional link to this chair. It represented two categories: easy chairs, and rockers.
The bow back: I’ve even had a French designer, who was on hollidays in Quebec, stop by and marvel at the curves of this chair. But the strongest reaction was when people sat in it. Their eyes widened at the comfort. People were expecting a hard and uncomfortable seat, and to their surprise, they had a very comfortable seat. Represented the dining chair category.
The sackback settee: also extremely popular. People were amazed at the gracefulness of the piece. Although it is a large piece, it is quite fine. A very good seller.

If nothing else, the show was a great ego booster. As most of my friends and family know, I always question my work and try to make it better and better, because I always doubt.

It was also a great way to teach people what Windsor chairs are, how wonderful they are and to re-introduce them in the province of Quebec.

Posted in Daily thoughts | 3 Comments »

Mount-Royal Windsor Chairs Blog

Thoughts and tribulations of a chairmaker

Round trip around the world for $9.49

Born of fire

Of plastics

To halve and to hold

Nantucket arms

Hiver, quand tu nous tiens… (Winter, when you get a hold of us…)

Small steamer

Oxymoron? a Shaker Windsor Chair?

Shaker Ingenuity

Time for a little R&R

Get Ready, Get Set…

SMAQ 2007 Post Mortem

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