Build a Chair from Bulls%$t - Christopher Schwarz

Build a comfortable wooden stick chair using only materials and tools found at your home center. No jigs, no specialty tools and no exotic techniques.

For centuries, farmers and people who were handy with tools built comfortable chairs using simple tools and the materials around them (usually stuff from the firewood pile). You didn’t need special training or fancy tools – just a normal amount of cleverness and the need to sit down.

“Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” shows you how easy this is to do – even today. Modern home centers are awash in materials that can be adapted to make a nice chair. Shovel handles and stair handrails can be easily made into chair legs. The seat and headrest come from the construction lumber aisle. The spindles? Dowels. And the curved arm? Plywood.

Then stop at the home center’s tool section to find the gear you need to make the chair. All the sawing is with a handheld jigsaw or tabletop band saw. You’ll also need a battery drill, a block plane, some drill bits and other basic tools. (You probably own most of them already.)

And there’s one more thing you might need: this book.

“Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” shows you how to make this chair using a series of simple illustrations. Instead of wandering into a protracted discussion of trigonometry and compound angles, “Build a Chair from Bulls%$t” shows you how to drill all the weird angles in a chair simply by clamping the arm to the seat and drilling holes through both of them.

Tricky operations – like working in curved compound-angle environments – are revealed to be easy. Once you know a trick or two.

The chair itself is spacious and comfortable. It’s based on antique folk chairs you might find by a fireside in a stone cottage. But its straight lines allow it to fit seamlessly in a modern living room or kitchen as well.

After you build a chair or two using the methods in this short book (you can read it in less than an hour), you’ll be ready to embark on making different chairs – smaller, taller, wider, whatever.

Oh, and there's a bonus section at the end of the book that shows you how to use your scraps from the chair to make a nice three-legged stool.

About Lost Art Press

Lost Art Press LLC was founded in 2007 by two enthusiastic woodworkers, John Hoffman and Christopher Schwarz, while attending a Lie-Nielsen Toolworks Open House in Warren, Maine.

We are believe in the principles that Lost Art Press was founded on, and are proud to carry some of the titles they have to offer