[MR] Woodwright Shop / Welsh Stick Chair maker/turner

[rmhowe]

This guy worked really quick and skipped some details.

Today on the Woodwright Shop there was a program with a Welsh
Bodger from Paintwick, Kentucky, USA. Uses beech or maple for
his chair legs. As he is working he is giving a slight history
of the English turners near London, using Beech. He also teaches
smithing apparently for those of you who may live in that area.

He's using a large curved Gouge, fully round that he turns
as he cuts to bring it to rough round, a square ended chisel
about 2-2 1/2" wide to plane with as he goes down the length
of the legs, and a skew chisel to put beads (half rounds) on
the legs. Copies he made of a former chair bodger's tools
borrowed from the wife.

He is using a bow/reel style lathe.  The basic lathe bed is
post 1100, but incorporates two uprights on either end to
the height of seven or slightly more feet. From a horizontal
beam between these is tied some sort of bow about five feet
long that looks very close to full round and not tapered on
it's limbs. The bow string splits in the middle into four
holes in a fair sized spool. I would guess the spool is
at least two inches in it's internal diameter and has a
wider flange either end. From the spool hangs the cord which
is subsequently wrapped around the drawknifed blank and then
the other end joins a movable foot treadle. He stands on a
thinned out base with his right foot and works the foot treadle
which connects via some sort of hinges at either end of the
base board. A third board completes the triangle.
He said the spool and bow were a 16th C invention.
The lathe used a handled turned threaded point on the end.
The Elm plank Seat is first cut to shape, marked out, basically
sunk with an adze, worked each way with a travisher, which is a
very large curved bottom spokeshave, then the edges of the seat
are thinned.

At this point he leaves the seat alone and takes a steamed
square withe out of the steambox and bends it around a wooden
former into a bow arm/back with a winch on a tiller brace to
the bow form on a square wooden board. This he leaves until it
dries.

He uses spoon bits to go through the seat for the spindles.
The small ones for the back do not go all the way through but
are tightly forced in.  He is using a rounder plane, like an
endless pencil sharpener to make the long back spindles.
There are six spindles going up from the back of the seat
to the comb on the top, and there are three either side under
the arm rests.

While we saw one leg draw knifed and turned, it did not show
the whole assembly being done, nor the complete finishing of
a seat, nor the making of the top of the back, but you get
the basic Idea.

Not terribly dissimilar from Make a Chair from a Tree or
Green Woodworking by Drew Langsner.

Welsh Chair Bodger Don Weber

Woodwright's Shop Series
1-800-PlayPBS.   shop at PBS.ORG (shopPBS)
http://www.shoppbs.com
or 1-877-PBS-SHOP
Over the web the current listing is:
http://www.shop.pbs.org/  Search Videos / Woodwright's Shop

ShopPBS, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA 223114 ,
1-800-531-4727  www.shop

Returns PBS Fulfillment Center, Returns Dept., 6602 Hawthorn Park Drive,
Indianapolis, IN 46220  10/00

Woodwright’s Shop Site http://www.uncpress.unc.edu/features-ww.html 6/02

Master Magnus Malleus, OL, GDH, Atlantia © 2002 R.M. Howe
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