Making A Chair Part One - Timber

January, Buckinghamshire.

There’s a low sun and long shadows as I drive south, crossing over the Ridgeway. The furrows in the fields look deep and black as a woodcut print. It’s a journey I’ve made many times. The familiar countryside scrolls past while the Danish String Quartet plays softly on the stereo.

A quick stop to pick up chocolate for the lads in the yard (bribery works better than flattery) and I’m almost there. Tyler Hardwoods is tucked away in a little valley past Hungerford, a ‘blink and you’ll miss it’ turning off a winding country road. There’s a yard full of timber drying outdoors, various outbuildings for machinery and a large warehouse which stores the boards after they’ve been through the onsite kiln. I’m after plenty of ash today, and Tyler’s is the only place I’ve found which reliably has what I need in stock.

Ash, drying slowly in the yard.

I’m occasionally asked if I can make a chair from a tree felled in someone’s garden. The short answer is “no” (although I’m open to being pelted with money to change my mind). The main reason is that I need timber with dead straight grain, especially if I’m steambending or turning it, and that comes from commercially planted woodland. Trees that are grown next to each other in rows shoot up nice, straight and tall. Trees in a garden or hedgerow get to express themselves, which looks more picturesque but makes for unruly grain.

Another reason for using a commercial woodyard rather than a friendly tree surgeon is that I can choose timber which has been sawn to the right thickness. In making a chair, I need a variety of thicknesses with as little work as possible - it’s no fun trying to plane down a three inch seat to two inches!

There’s some chairs in there, somewhere.

Back at the yard, I’m hunting for straight grained ash in the right sizes. I’ve also got an eye for appearance - particularly the boards that will end up being a seat. Factory made furniture, even at the very expensive end, is uniformly awful when it comes to choosing and using attractive timber. It only takes a few extra minutes (and some petrol station chocolates) to select the perfect boards for the job in hand, and it makes a huge difference to the finished chair. On this mission I’m making a set of six dining chairs, so I’ll be able to make sure they’re not just from the same tree, but the same board. In sequence, so the grain flows from one chair to the next. Yeah, I know, it’s pretty cool.

Take your pick.

The drive home with a load of creaking, shifting timber is a bit slower. After unloading I’ll update my Grown in Britain spreadsheet - this is an ongoing record of all the timber I buy and use, ensuring a chain of custody from the forest to the customer.

The following day was dry and bright again, so I set up my tracksaw and cut the timber down to size. The waney edges (remaining bark) are trimmed off and kept for the woodburner. Everything else is used. The main advantage of using a single species such as ash is that any extra goes into the next chair. I no longer have a shed full of strange offcuts of dubious provenance…

Windsor Chair. Needs a bit more work.

Next week I’ll be steambending, one of the mysteries of chairmaking…

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