Dear Good Hours.
I’m starting this letter around 1145 on Friday night, I’ve played a good D&D game tonight with some good friends that ended around 1000 and now I have one Four Roses Bourbon double on a big ol’ rock already in the system and a second one up loading. Come tomorrow mid morning I’m due to be a little over an hour north in Alma WI at the Castlerock Museum of Arms and Armor demonstrating for their annual Viking Day.
I sold my maile armor this spring. The 2013 knee injury I picked up doing an exhibition combat demo (not even competition!) finally caught up with me and it was time to pass some of my armor on to someone who would use it instead of leaving it hang on a stand for the dust and rust.
Here’s to the good old days….
So, without my “heavy metal” persona, how would I demonstrate at the event. I spent a long time pondering my new paradigm. I decided I would sit and demonstrate the game of Tafl, possibly known to the Norse as Hnefatafl, the spelling and pronunciation, vary by miles over meters.
I hope this link works but the Wikipedia article is not un-terrible. Copy and paste if you must for a primer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tafl_games
Ok.
Here’s the crux of the issue.
I will be sitting with my Tafl board, offering to play against perfect strangers, wearing my Viking “soft kit” (read: not armor!) I’m not great at Tafl. It’s a precursor to Chess and despite my sometimes efforts to improve, I’m not great at Chess either. Just not how I’m wired, even though I’ve tried.
Ok… so I’m going to be sitting for a day. Cool. (That is cool!) my brain says “fuck man! You should at least be sitting on something Norse in origin.
The “Lund Stool” is a significant historical archeological find. A “D” shaped seat found (if I remember correctly) just the seat, with no legs. However any Google search is now corrupted with a ton on “hey buy my stuff” pictures that show a great amount of bullshit.
I decided I needed to try and build one, if not two of these stools to hold my ass off the floor. I had the midmorning into the afternoon today (Friday) with maybe an hour Saturday morning to knock out the details.
It’s still in the air whether I will have something to sit on tomorrow (today now???) or not.
I worked fast, I took few pics. I had a lot of fun!
I haven’t fired up the lathe in a long time. But after reminding my hands how to work, I knocked out 9 legs cut from a chunk of 2x10 construction lumber.
Then I decided to keep to the way I’ve done things so far. I haven’t made many chairs, but I want to change from tapered tenons to straight tenons with a shoulder. I’m just still set up for this way, so I’ll stick to it.
Then I scribed the seat on a 18” long section of 2x12 I had on the rack. The sage Chris Schwarz once said, “if you are going to make one, it’s only a little more effort to make two.” Or something like that… look people who are supposed to know can’t even quote the Bible accurately these days… what do you want from me??!!
Hahahaha! Much love Chris. I wish we’d had a chance to talk chairs and history at Naryan’s but those events aren’t really built for wishes, only happy accidents.
As long as I’m summoning the demon by name… I stole the resultant angles, the aesthetic inspiration, and more from Chris’s “High Stool“in his “The Anarchist Design Book) He’s generously given permission for these hijinks over and over. This is me showing my work.
After sawing the seat blank at the bandsaw I clamped it up in my Big Ass Wood Parallel Clamp and used a spokeshave to clean the machine cuts and bevel the underside a bit. This BAWPC was the best $10 I’ve EVER spent at an estate sale.
We were late to the thing… so many people must have walked past it… The thing is a monster at this.
Next I screw a block of wood to the underside. Yea I wrote notes on the block so I know what I need to do to replace it if shit goes sideways.
The block is the same thickness as the seat, any wonder why that’s a fact?
No adjusting the parallel clamp!
But I ran out of time. I had to go get ready for the D&D game I was running tonight. But I still had some creative energy when I got home. I went back out to the shop and in about an hour and fifteen I was able to drill and ream the seat and saw the leg tops to accept a wedge.
I use the tapered reamer from Lee Valley. I admit, I’ve struggled with it on the past as I’ve fretted over the “perfect” projection of the leg’s angle and the depth to ream. Tonight I didn’t take the time to screw around, I made a guessing mark on the reamer using a sharpie and one of the better legs I made today as reference. This was the depth I shot for.
Then I pushed the reamer tight into the 5/8” pilot hole and hit the go trigger. On 6 legs, only one was noticeably wonky, and not by a deal breaking amount.
I flipped the seats over, sawed off some of the stub that stuck through, and knocked a few hardwood wedges home.
Very satisfying.
*****
All my life I’ve tried to be a man unto myself. A jack of all trades. It’s lead me to seek out a diverse skill set that branches from wood to metal to models and miniatures. It’s stretched me from painting and illustrating to printmaking and photography. Then there’s the writing and of course my day job in healthcare.
This winter I’ll spend a few weeks tearing apart most of the engine of my middle child’s car to replace the oil pump. If you know, then you know that’s a big, intricate job.
Over the next week or two I have to replace two walls in our new house. We pulled down a false ceiling and some bad paneling to find a void, likely left from removing a chimney. I refuse to slap drywall over the top. I’ll do it right and strip it to the studs and then up goes the new drywall.
The only thing I don’t like doing much is mowing lawn, but that’s probably because it always feels like a waste of time.
Why do I work so hard at self reliance? To encompass so much about so much? I’d like to think I’m above such things, but the little validation seeking troglodyte in my brain desperately want to someday, organically, be referred to as a polymath.
Isn’t that a weird accolade to strive for? That’s something that you just are, not something you learn to be.
And still… the older I get, the more I dream of being financially sound enough to hand off projects like this drywall and the oil pump. The more I envision downsizing my shop by half and settling into a focus on making chairs.
I remember resisting this virus when I started reading Chris Schwarz’s blog posts on the subject back when he worked for Popular Woodworking. Sure I had “Windsor Chair” on my someday bucket list, but that was pie in the sky thinking.
“I don’t wanna do that… that’s a rabbit hole.”
Well, I fell in anyway. I’m not sad about it.
A while back we were up at the massive healthcare mothership The Mayo Clinic in Rochester MN chasing some appointments for my son. If you’ve never been, the organization has constructed a city below the city there as there is a massive network of tunnels that connect all the carried buildings with each other. A way for patients and staff to move about without stepping into a Minnesota winter don’t-cha-know!
Lining the tunnels are a series of storefronts, bakeries, and coffee shops. Some are franchised chain stores, some are “as seen on TV” oddities, and some are high end art or jewelry. A lot of money flows through those tunnels.
I saw a little empty storefront, maybe 10x14, and I started to wonder what the rent and overhead was, and if a guy could set up a little store/shop there and make stick chairs for sale. I think the novelty of “seeing the dude” build chairs by hand and then be able to buy one or two could work in that setting. I wonder how many chairs it would take to cover the overhead and afford a little bourbon.
You see where I’m at. Fully infected…
Love Derek
Ratione et Passionis