Windsor Chair Book?

[James Jayko]

Hey all, thinking about trying my hand at making a windsor chair. I was going to get Chris Schwarz' 'The Stick Chair Book,' as I always like his content and style. But does anyone have a recommendation for a better and / or additional book or other resource I should check out before diving into this project?

[Stephen Rosenthal]

Chairmaker’s Notebook, by Peter Galbert.

[John Kananis]

James, I've not done one (I have many excuses if you'd like to hear them lol) but I sometimes check out Curtis Buchanan on yt. He's really thorough and quite good. Eventually.

[Stephen Rosenthal]

+1 on Curtis. Quite simply the best.

[Peter Mich]

+1 on Peter Galbert’s book and +1 on Curtis Buchanan’s YT channel.

[Warren Lake]

Michael Dunbar had a book. Wish he still had a course.

[Tom M King]

If you want some ideas about maybe building one a bit different than the ones you see all the time, there is a huge book on Windsor Chairs with many hundreds, if not thousands, of pictures of chairs in museums all over. American Windsor Chairs. It has something like 750 pages, but you can pick them up used for good prices sometimes.

[Prashun Patel]

Check out Curtiss Buchanan’s videos.

An excellent first windsor project is his Democratic Chair. It’s a brilliant training wheels project.

[Prashun Patel]

Check out Curtiss Buchanan’s videos.

An excellent first windsor project is his Democratic Chair.

Mike Dunbar’s book is also good. Dunbar also has some great YT videos.

[Scott Winners]

Only two small adds. Curtis Buchanan on youtube, box check. Pete Galbert's "Chairmaker's Notebook", box check. I haven't bought Chris Schwarz's book, but I do read quite a few of his blog posts and I pretty much feel ready to go.

One add is a dude in Hillsborough, NC who did a guest appearance series with Curtis Buchanan. Elia Bizzari. Not a lot of online content, and he doesn't own a book publishing company, but he is a good dude that has his feces in sequence. I met him in person once upon a time through a mutual friend. I am confident he could not distinguish me from Adam's cat if we happen to be in the same room tomorrow, but Elia is not a feather merchant.

The other is John Keeton who posts here regularly. I bought four drawknives from him. The first two I used to dull and realized I didn't record how he had sharpened them, what the various angles were. So I bought two more and have them in storage so I can look at them and get the first two that sharp before I use #3 and #4 for anything other than measuring from. I did agitate at John to write a thread about drawknife sharpening, which he did do. It is searchable here. John Keeton's drawknives are as sharp as witty, insightful profanity. To say they are sharp as @#%^ is to dam them with faint praise. You got to get the witty insightful thing going to do the edges of his drawknives justice.

[stevo wis]

James,
Both Pete and Curtis are excellent. I drew a angle chart that Pete used in his book, and he did a great job with the book.
Of the dozen or so chairs I have made, the welsh stick chair from Don Weber was the easiest to build, and many guests have said it is the most comfortable.

I have a small write up and plan for it if you or others would like a copy (free). Email me at sfirst@sys-seminar.com.

Be careful though, chairmaking is addictive.
Stevo

[Mike King]

James,
Both Pete and Curtis are excellent. I drew a angle chart that Pete used in his book, and he did a great job with the book.
Of the dozen or so chairs I have made, the welsh stick chair from Don Weber was the easiest to build, and many guests have said it is the most comfortable.

I have a small write up and plan for it if you or others would like a copy (free). Email me at sfirst@sys-seminar.com.

Be careful though, chairmaking is addictive.
Stevo

Some excellent advice here. I had the opportunity to take a three week course with Ellia at Anderson Ranch where we built Curtis Buchanon's Velda chair:

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I highly, highly recommend taking a course if you can make it happen. I don't know if you have experience with the tools of Windsor chairmaking, namely the lathe for spindle work, drawknife, scorp, travisher, reamers, or with steam bending wood. It isn't a trivial learning curve to climb, and some expert guidance from the likes of Ellia, or Peter Galbert, et. al. can be most informative.

Mike

[Warren Lake]

have a few windsors here from a guy that mass produces them. The original continuous arm chair is very nice. He changed the size as he says too many people are overweight. Design is one thing proportions another and the look was ruined with the change. Another guy not far from here is a hand made guy and his chairs are lovely. Ive told him past they are alive and have energy in them.

A friend with a bad back sat in the original mass produced continuous arm and said it was the most comfortable chair he had ever sat in. Its nice but my parents had dinning chairs from a known Danish designer and they were the most comfortable chairs ive ever sat in no question about it no arms but as a chair they just fit and felt great.

[Sam Shankar]

Lots of great thoughts here, but I'll add mine. Why not make a stick chair first? You don't need a lathe and you don't need to steam-bend. You will need some tools (scorp/travisher, stuff for cutting tenons) but unless I'm mistaken it's a subset of what you'd need for a windsor. All the skills you build doing a stick chair will translate, but you won't need to learn as many new things all at once. And you might end up liking stick chairs so much you don't want to bother with one of them fancy Windsors.

I did my first stick chair in Chris Schwarz's class (which takes 5 days), but I think you could do just fine with his book and accompanying video series.