John Zahurak
11-25-2011, 12:52 AM
I recently attended a week-long class on making a Chippendale Arm Chair. The class was taught by Ben Hobbs, the 2011 SAPFM Cartouche Award Winner. While having built quite a few case pieces, this was my first chair. In short, the class was excellent: I learned a tremendous amount and had a great week. Some of my impressions and highlights are below. I highly recommend the class.
Class Size: The class consisted of 3 students. Ben was the full time instructor and he had a skilled assistant helping part time as well. Excellent teacher to student ratio!
Typical Day: I stayed in one of the restored 18th century houses on the property which was very convenient and I recommend if you are from out of town. Breakfast was served at 7:30 and we ate with Ben and his wife in the main house. There were a number of very impressive pieces in the house that we spent time examining. The shop is a short walk from the house and we started around 8:00 and worked until a coffee break at 10. Coffee was in their restaurant which happened to be filled with ~50+ chairs of various styles that Ben made. Back to work until lunch at noon. (Breakfast and lunch were prepared by Ben’s wife Jackie and were excellent). We then worked in the shop until dinner at 6:00. Students ate dinner in town at one of the local restaurants. It is a small town, so there are not very many choices, but we were usually in a rush to return to the shop. We usually returned to the shop around 7:00 for some additional project time and instruction if you wanted it. This was optional, but I certainly took advantage of it.
Instruction: Ben made a chair alongside us, so he would demonstrate the technique and steps first on his chair. We then followed suite on our chairs while Ben watched and helped as needed. He has a calm demeanor and was very skilled at figuring out what was causing us problems and debugging our issues as they arose. In addition to the instruction of what to do, it was extremely beneficial to watch a skilled professional perform the processes at speed. His speed, precision, and results were extremely impressive.
Shop: Ben provided all tools for the class (a real benefit for those traveling by plane to his class, like myself). The shop is equipped with a Unisaw & Powermatic tablesaws, two bandsaws, two jigsaws, Delta Jointer, Powermatic Mortiser, and large planer and thickness sander (not used as stock was rough dimensioned prior to class). Hand tools consisted of a mixture of new and vintage tools. New were Lee Valley bench and block planes, spokeshaves, back-saws, shoulder planes, etc. Vintage were Stanley planes, compass planes, scrapers, etc. Nicholson rasps, Sureform rasps, Marples Gouges, etc. Each student had their own bench and work-area.
Techniques: The class blended both machine and hand tool work. Back legs were roughed out on the bandsaw and then hand planed to dimension followed by scraping. The splat was rough cut on the jigsaw and then fished with Rasps and Scrapers. Mortises were cut on the mortising machine. Roughly half the tennons were cut by hand and the rest on the tablesaw. All were fine-fitted using shoulder planes and chisels. The crest rail was initially bandsawn followed by the drawknife, rasps, planes, and scrapers to profile and detail the features. The rear leg assembly was final shaped after glue up of the posts, rails, crest and splat. Rough shaping was performed with a chamfer bit followed by spokeshaves and rasps.
After gluing up the “side-chair” portion, we worked on adding arms. This took roughly as long as the side-chair and involved detailed hand joinery and significant shaping to blend the arms and stumps. Final carving of the arm rest knuckles and terminations occurred on the last day of class.
Summary: Construction of my arm chair is largely finished. I need to complete two carvings on the arm rests (2 are finished) and final sand and apply finish to the chair. The chair is being shipped to my house and hopefully I can get back to it soon…..I need some chairs to go with the dining room table I just completed (I’ll post that later). Some pictures of the class are attached. I’m happy to answer other questions on the chair construction or the class, but as you can see, I am a satisfied customer.
Pictures from left to right:
1) Marking to plane rail to Back Leg Angle
2) Clamping to mark back leg tennons into crest rail
3) Chair at end of class
4) Shaping crest rail and back legs
5) Gluing arm stumps to chair prior to tennoning for arm rails
6) Ben with the Cartouche
7) Drawknife to shape the crest rail ears
8) Rasping to fair the splat and crest-rail
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Class Size: The class consisted of 3 students. Ben was the full time instructor and he had a skilled assistant helping part time as well. Excellent teacher to student ratio!
Typical Day: I stayed in one of the restored 18th century houses on the property which was very convenient and I recommend if you are from out of town. Breakfast was served at 7:30 and we ate with Ben and his wife in the main house. There were a number of very impressive pieces in the house that we spent time examining. The shop is a short walk from the house and we started around 8:00 and worked until a coffee break at 10. Coffee was in their restaurant which happened to be filled with ~50+ chairs of various styles that Ben made. Back to work until lunch at noon. (Breakfast and lunch were prepared by Ben’s wife Jackie and were excellent). We then worked in the shop until dinner at 6:00. Students ate dinner in town at one of the local restaurants. It is a small town, so there are not very many choices, but we were usually in a rush to return to the shop. We usually returned to the shop around 7:00 for some additional project time and instruction if you wanted it. This was optional, but I certainly took advantage of it.
Instruction: Ben made a chair alongside us, so he would demonstrate the technique and steps first on his chair. We then followed suite on our chairs while Ben watched and helped as needed. He has a calm demeanor and was very skilled at figuring out what was causing us problems and debugging our issues as they arose. In addition to the instruction of what to do, it was extremely beneficial to watch a skilled professional perform the processes at speed. His speed, precision, and results were extremely impressive.
Shop: Ben provided all tools for the class (a real benefit for those traveling by plane to his class, like myself). The shop is equipped with a Unisaw & Powermatic tablesaws, two bandsaws, two jigsaws, Delta Jointer, Powermatic Mortiser, and large planer and thickness sander (not used as stock was rough dimensioned prior to class). Hand tools consisted of a mixture of new and vintage tools. New were Lee Valley bench and block planes, spokeshaves, back-saws, shoulder planes, etc. Vintage were Stanley planes, compass planes, scrapers, etc. Nicholson rasps, Sureform rasps, Marples Gouges, etc. Each student had their own bench and work-area.
Techniques: The class blended both machine and hand tool work. Back legs were roughed out on the bandsaw and then hand planed to dimension followed by scraping. The splat was rough cut on the jigsaw and then fished with Rasps and Scrapers. Mortises were cut on the mortising machine. Roughly half the tennons were cut by hand and the rest on the tablesaw. All were fine-fitted using shoulder planes and chisels. The crest rail was initially bandsawn followed by the drawknife, rasps, planes, and scrapers to profile and detail the features. The rear leg assembly was final shaped after glue up of the posts, rails, crest and splat. Rough shaping was performed with a chamfer bit followed by spokeshaves and rasps.
After gluing up the “side-chair” portion, we worked on adding arms. This took roughly as long as the side-chair and involved detailed hand joinery and significant shaping to blend the arms and stumps. Final carving of the arm rest knuckles and terminations occurred on the last day of class.
Summary: Construction of my arm chair is largely finished. I need to complete two carvings on the arm rests (2 are finished) and final sand and apply finish to the chair. The chair is being shipped to my house and hopefully I can get back to it soon…..I need some chairs to go with the dining room table I just completed (I’ll post that later). Some pictures of the class are attached. I’m happy to answer other questions on the chair construction or the class, but as you can see, I am a satisfied customer.
Pictures from left to right:
1) Marking to plane rail to Back Leg Angle
2) Clamping to mark back leg tennons into crest rail
3) Chair at end of class
4) Shaping crest rail and back legs
5) Gluing arm stumps to chair prior to tennoning for arm rails
6) Ben with the Cartouche
7) Drawknife to shape the crest rail ears
8) Rasping to fair the splat and crest-rail
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