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Chairmaking requires its own unique tools and skillset. It may be daunting, but building a Windsor chair opens up a whole new world within woodworking. Here's how to do it.

Once you understand ‘resultant’ angles, sawbenches (and chairs) are easy. Most first-time chairmakers are intimidated by the compound joinery used to fasten all the legs, stretchers, spindles and [...]

An 18th-century chairmaker’s saw makes 21st-century work easier The graveyard of obscure and forgotten tools is large, densely packed and many layers deep. Many of these tools richly deserve [...]

  A little geometry and a simple prototype ensure a pleasant ride. I recently set out to design and build a new rocking chair. I’ve designed and built a handful of rockers, but my past [...]

Gerrit Rietveld’s simple design for a lounge chair is a great platform for exploring ergonomics. PROJECT #2005 • Skill Level:Beginner • Time: 4 hours • Cost: $50 Gerrit Rietveld was a Dutch [...]

Sit up straight. Or lean back and relax. This Gustav Stickley Morris chair is an icon of American furniture design with exposed joinery and solid quartersawn white oak. Reproduce an Arts & [...]

While visiting with chairmaker Bob Erickson (pictured above with his son Tor), it seems appropriate to ask, “What chair are you sitting in right now?” He explains it’s an [...]

I moved to Kentucky/Cincinnati on July 1st, and by the 15th of the month, I was already starting out on building the furniture for my new house here. Josselyn (my partner) and I had committed to [...]

Traditional chairmaking starts with a shaving horse and a drawknife. Used with both green and dried wood, woodworkers have relied on these two tools for centuries. Simple to use, there are just a [...]

One of the challenges when building a chair is clamping the dang thing down so you can work on it. I’ve seen lots of solutions that use band clamps. But I dislike band clamps (perhaps I had a bad [...]

When you make a table it’s fairly straightforward. Four legs (or some variation thereof) and a top. Not too hard. If you choose to splay the legs, then you’ve added some geometry and math to the [...]

Successful wood bending with heat and water is more art than science. Long ago, some caveman made a curious discovery: Wood becomes pliable when it is both hot and wet, allowing it to be bent to [...]