American Welsh Stick Chair

This new video is designed to be the easiest and simplest way to try your hand at chairmaking for the first time. You’ll learn to make a comfortable and attractive chair using kiln-dried lumber and dowels that you can get at a home center or any lumberyard. And you’ll learn to do it with tools you probably have in your shop, including a table saw, band saw, cordless drill and jack plane.

You don’t need green wood, and you don’t need a shavehorse, steambox, lathe, drawknife, spokeshave, froe, hatchet, inshave or travisher.

You’ll learn to drill all the complicated angles without having to do trigonometry (or build dedicated jigs). All the hard parts of the complicated angles are made easy with a cheap construction laser you probably already have in your toolbox.

The chair itself is a comb-back inspired by the country chairs in Wales. It is a versatile form that is great for dining, working at a desk or (by cutting the back legs down a tad) for relaxing by the fire.

As a bonus, the video comes with a video that shows how to shape the seat – called a saddle – with one chairmaking tool  (a travisher) plus a random-orbit sander.

The video is hosted by Christopher Schwarz, a chairmaker and writer in Kentucky who has spent the last 20 years teaching woodworkers to make these chairs using simple tools and straightforward techniques.

1. The American Welsh Stick Chair in the new video is designed to be an ideal first chair for a woodworker who has made some casework but has never attempted compound-angle joinery.
2. You can build this chair with bench tools and machines found in almost any garage/basement woodworking shop. No specialty chairmaking tools are required. We show you how to saddle the seat with one specialty tool (a travisher). But the chair doesn’t have to be saddled to be comfortable.
3. The American Welsh Stick Chair doesn’t require stretchers or the complex tapered mortise-and-tenon joint found in Windsor chairs. It uses a simple drill bit to make all the mortises. Tenons are made with a plug cutter in a handheld drill.
4. All the stick are dowels from the home center.
5. All the wood is kiln-dried stuff you can find at any lumberyard – or even a home center.
6. What is most important is what you DON’T need: a lathe, green wood, a steambox, a drawknife, shave horse, froe, beetle, drying kiln, spokeshaves etc. Literally almost any home woodworker can make this chair – it even uses a pocket-hole jig.
7. The other videos I’ve produced on chairmaking are the next step into the craft. Once you’ve decided that chairmaking is something you want to specialize in. They feature special tools (tapered tenon cutters, reamers, travishers, inshaves and on and on). You don’t need this stuff to make the American Welsh Stick Chair.
8. And, of course, the video quality is worlds better than what I’ve been able to achieve. We shoot our videos on iPhones and edit them on laptops. This video is slick, insanely well-edited and designed to give you all the information you need without wasting your time.