Repeatedly watching so many people learning to make a chair has been very eye opening, both about the subject matter and the way that we learn. It’s never enough anymore for me to know something, I don’t believe my knowledge or technique is complete until it’s teachable.
One approach to teaching is to simplify and limit the tools and techniques. Keep it simple stupid, as the saying goes. I love a simple shop and limited set of tooling, but I’ve noticed a bit of a catch to blindly striving for simplicity.
There are many things that are simple to understand but hard to do.
Not hard due to a lack of skill, but just because of a human operator, like changing out drill bits. I recall Dave Sawyer drilling the arm bow of chair he was making along side of me with a 7/16” bit instead of the correct 3/8”. In true Dave fashion, he didn’t flinch and just made fatter spindles.
But some processes have proven themselves too vexing for me to accept them in their “simple” form, such as setting a bevel square. It’s seems a great way to record and transfer angles, and it is. But in my experience, I found relying heavily on it is a mistake. Building a chair requires lots of angles, and lots of resetting the bevel square. Yes, after a quick introduction to the tool, you will be as good at it as you ever will be, but no matter how many years you use one, you will always be susceptible to distraction or confusion and the likelihood of correctly setting the tool for every angle required for a chair amounts to a form of gambling. It took teaching classes to see this clearly. A class of 8 students, each student having 20 angles to set and transfer, even with a conservative 2 percent error rate (probably thinking about upcoming lunch) meant that at least three holes were getting plugged. And one of them could have been mine (I get hungry too).
This was always a source of frustration and added tension to a class. I recall using the “angle board” method of drilling legs that I feature in my book while assisting Curtis Buchanan in a class at the North Bennet Street School . This method eliminates transferring angles with a bevel square. We had taught many classes together and were both used to the dance of chaos and correction that measuring angles and setting bevel squares required. Curtis allowed me to teach with the angle boards and we both sat at the front of the room watching as everyone in the class accurately and calmly drilled all their legs. Definitely one of my better moments. It didn’t shake Curtis’ attachment to his bevel square, but mine was forever altered.
But again, there’s a catch. It takes a little time and explaining to learn the process with the angle boards and why it works. It seems complicated next to just setting a bevel square. Alas, there is no free lunch, it’s easy to do, but harder to understand.
For most of the processes that I adopt and teach, this is often my preferred choice. I know, it may take a few minutes to learn, but then, for the rest of your life, it’s a reliable solution for accurate results.
Another example of this is the method that I now use for drilling seats. It requires a fixture (free design on my website) and a single reference point on the seat pattern for each mortise, but eliminates the need to use any numbers when actually drilling the seat. I didn’t know how students would respond. I thought that much of what people love about chair making is the use of unencumbered hand tools. When I put the jig into a class setting, the conclusion was overwhelming, students loved it. It empowers them to drill quickly and accurately. This also made me reflect on my own interests in chair making. Turns out, I don’t love drilling holes. I don’t get excited about it the way that I do shaving spindles, turning legs or carving seats. I just want the holes drilled properly and fast. And clearly, I’m not the only one.
Here’s a video explaining the drilling jig
When teaching “Harder to understand but easy to do” techniques, I usually, I explain just enough to let folks have success with the process and only then explain more fully as to how and why it works. This allows their satisfaction with the results to seed the curiosity to learn the how and why it works.
Choosing which techniques to teach is a common topic when I get together with other instructors. The goal is always to impart the craft in a way that encourages skill building and a passion for the work. I’m always curious about other teachers methods and priorities and expect that my own relationship to this topic will always be shifting, probably depending on how hungry I am.
Couldn't agree more...but you probably knew that 😉 I love the carving and shaping of chairmaking. The joinery, on the other hand, should be quick, easy and accurate.
Your clarity in teaching and generosity in spirit is impressive. Thank you.