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The Traditional Craft of Chair Making Coppiced ash would be felled and cleaved in the woods in the autumn and winter by men working in pairs. Together they would fell the coppiced ash trees, cut the logs to size and cleave them (splitting them down the grain). This splitting, as logs would do naturally in time, releases the tension in the wood and means the wood is unstressed and therefore does not warp as it dries. It shrinks back on itself. 
One man would use a shaving horse and a draw blade, one of the oldest known tools, to take the edges off the cleft quarters before giving them to the other man on the pole lathe, an ancient tool first used by the Egyptians, to produce legs, stretchers, spindles and seat rails for the chairs. The wood to be turned is firmly held and spins back and forth as the bodger operates the treadle. With each foreard spin of the wood, the bodger applies his chisel rounding the leg and cutting the familiar grooves and ridges. Because green wood is softer to work with, it is possible to work a hard wood like ash in this way. In the earliest days the chairs would probably have been finished in the woods, with the seats being made of bark strips or rushes. As villages developed sawpits, plank seats could be made and fitted in town workshops. The chair pieces, seasoned during the summer by being left in airy stacks or threaded through hedges, would be brought down to the town chair makers. In the towns the chair makers would re-turn the ends of the stretchers and spindles - they would have ovalled as they dried - and make the chairs without glue. The pieces were fitted so that any shrinking of the wood (by the thicker pieces which hadn't dried out completely) would tighten the joints. They would fit the seats of planked ash or sometimes elm. These were the first ordinary people's chairs, after benches settles and stools, and very few makers made their mark on them. As more and more carpenting skills were acquired by the chair makers, the chairs became more sophisticated with ladder backs and square, rather than round, back seat joints. Chair Making at the shows. Enjoy a traditional demonstration of this fascinating craft. |
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