Where to stop?

determining the character of a piece

I struggle explaining this piece of things, probably because I don’t fully understand it for my own work just yet.

In short, it boils down to this: Should the work always be at its most refined, if the chairmaker can make it more refined, or does a different approach make for more interesting chairmaking?

Chair parts made completely with the drawknife (a coarser tool) have different characteristics than one that utilizes spokeshaves, block planes, scrapers, and sandpaper. Those characteristics could be for the better or for the worse. Unfortunately, I often don’t form an opinion about which is better until after the chair has been built. Too late at that point. Though experience is helpful.

Often, the wood dictates the tooling strategy. Sometimes I cannot achieve a finish-quality surface straight from the drawknife. Too much chatter, or tearout, or the need for subtle details, and I will need to pick up a spokeshave (wet wood, for those who haven’t worked with it yet, is more prone to tearout than dry timber). Whenever I see a pin knot or figure in the grain, I know I need more help. In these cases, the material is too much for the drawknife alone.

There are other times when the wood shapes like butter and the drawknife makes every detail exactly as intended. Though, being the knife, it leaves behind clear marks of its use. The facets are heavier and often, upon close inspection, uneven and wandering. Sometimes tapers are not perfectly even. Some shapes take nicely to the tool, others do not. It’s up to the maker to sculpt the wood without any guardrails. The knife has no chipbreaker, no fine adjustment throat opening. The maker must navigate this.

The results can be incredible. Surfaces that glean in raking light. Crisp facets that show all the handwork of the chairmaker. The lack of uniformity that comes with it (even when perfect uniformity is the target). The drawknife can, in the right moments, elevate a piece.

And yet, there is always the pull within me to pick up the shave after the drawknife. To follow the instinctual path of: drawknife > spokeshave > block plane > scrapers > sandpaper.

I tried to break this trance a few years back by forgoing sandpaper. I wanted every chair (for that year or two) to come off the cutting tool. With no sandpaper, that also meant no scrapers, since a scraped surface is always followed up with sandpaper (at least with my work). I purposely restricted one part of the process in hopes to improve the other parts. And it worked. My tool work became better and my sharpening improved. I was happy with the chairs.

[The experiment ended when I had chairs/material that needed more than my cutting tools could tackle. I scraped and sanded those chairs. And the surface quality was better for it. I’ve scraped and sanded, as needed, ever since.]

Another sidebar: it seems we only have one word for work that displays tooling marks and hits another target besides high polish. That word is “rustic.” The term is insufficient. And it’s often used as the derogatory country contrast to “sophisticated” furniture. I don’t have a better or more nuanced word. Not yet, at least.

---

I like the surface from the drawknife. It creates the shape as I intend it. But that’s only me…I have no control over the audience (or really, any other maker who visits my shop).

There is a preference, it seems to me, towards smooth furniture, towards shiney, towards perfection, and towards polished. I think that’s fair. Those characteristics usually signify quality furniture (and inexpensive, mass produced furniture often mimics these characteristics). But greenwood chairmaking doesn’t always lend itself to them. Sometimes the chair has a different target, and it needs a different approach to achieve it.

I’m rambling and getting too close to philosophy….

In practice, it looks like this:

• I’ve taken lively, unique work (tapered legs for a stick chair, or the bent back of a post-and-rung) that came from the drawknife and sapped the life from them during the “refining” process of shaves and scrapers. I liked the rawness off the drawknife better. It had more life to it. And the shaved/scrapered parts, though more uniform, crisp, consistent, and free of tooling marks, had become less interesting because of it.

If you’ve made it this far, you can tell I’m still working though this. I’m inconsistent and uncertain. It’ll likely stay that way. At this point, it’s more of a feeling than an absolute set of rules to follow about the proper process path for each and every chair.

Best I can tell, I’m trying to re-wire my default instincts away from more refined/more smooth and towards a target of vibrancy. Many times refined and vibrant overlap. Other times they don’t.

This is just one of the angles into chairmaking that constantly challenges my abilities as both a maker and as a communicator.

Because how do you share something you don’t fully understand?