Lots of progress on the tool box in the past two weeks. I'll let the pictures and captions do most of the talking. Feel free to ask any questions, I'm happy to answer them all. Scanned copy of plans is still in the works.

Only other thing of note that is not evident from the photos is that I have used Old Brown Glue's Liquid Hide Glue for all of the joints in this box. Everyone at school uses yellow PVA glue but I'm attracted to hide glue for a lot of reasons, mostly related to dis-assembly but in part the naturalness of it as well. I was introduced to OBG by Peter Galbert in his Continuous Arm class. He gave each participant a small bottle and I've been using it since. Christopher Schwarz said on his blog that he is in favor of liquid hide glue but from the photo he uses the tite bond brand. I'd love to hear opinions of liquid hide glue and different brands, for or against.

My first semester at North Bennet Street School is officially over. Once the tool box in complete I'll have three requirements: a table, a case piece and a Chippendale chair. That is the minimum, if all goes well I'll have plenty of time left over to build a few more pieces.

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If drafting is considered a form of hazing then the toolbox is a rite of passage. Every student that goes through the Cabinet & Furniture Making Program is required to make the toolbox.

The toolbox is the first large project that is designed to the student's practical and aesthetic choices. There are size and drawer number parameters, and wood species recommendations, but students are able to measure their own tools and plan the tool box accordingly.

I'll try to get the plans up for the toolbox at some point. For now I have some shots of the start of work on the carcass. It's a dovetailed box that will have stopped dadoes for the drawer divider frames. A lapped back and frame and panel lid (in the front) will enclose the box.

I settled on cherry for the primary wood and will be using pine for the drawer parts and poplar for the secondary wood in the divider frames and lapped back. I purchased the cherry from a fellow student, Timm Schlieff, and was pleasantly surprised to find that it was unlike any cherry I had ever seen. As it is an anomaly, I don't really think it would be appropriate for some other projects so I'm glad to be able to use it on the toolbox.

_Almost two full months of drafting make up the first part of the NBSS curriculum. Starting with a simple edge joint the lessons progress to more and more complicated joinery and culminates in full scale drawings of a desk-on-frame and a Chippendale chair. After these exercises students are required to include full scale drawings with their project proposals for the rest of their time at North Bennet.

The drawings shown here are just a few of those that I completed. I'll try to get the full scale drawings up as soon as I can. Note that as a part of the exercise we draw ALL of the visible and hidden lines which is much more than is really practical or even helpful.

we start simple:

and get increasingly complex:

this is one of the last drawings we do before moving on to drafting whole pieces of furniture:

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It's hard to describe what it's like to go to the North Bennet Street School every day. To leave the house, get to the front door, say Good Morning to Lillian, walk up the stairs past the Bookbinding, Piano and Jewelry departments and stop when I get to my bench. I have looked forward to this walk since I started the Three Month Intensive offered by North Bennet and would wonder, what is it that happens on the fourth floor? And since I have been honored to start here as a full time student this walk has lived up to all of my expectations. It doesn't seem like much, does it? Despite the straight forward routine, it is the surroundings that make this everyday event something special.

The atmosphere on the fourth floor, one that permeates the bench rooms, seeps from the demo room where a full wall of sample chair and table legs, in various stages of completion, is displayed, from the binders with photos of completed work by students past and present, from the floor boards as they creek in the same way that they have since students first started walking on them, from the four instructors who are either helping a student of consulting one another as to how best to demonstrate a technique and lastly from the benches and the students standing over them. The atmosphere is one of excellence. It makes the air thick and demands that you slow down as you walk through it.

So what have I done to participate in or contribute to this excellence? Well, I've been flattening this board:

In this photo you can see the difference between using the hand plane across the grain (on the right) which is easier but yields a rough surface and with the grain (on the left) which, with a well tuned plane, can leave behind a glassy, polished surface.

Traditionally a cabinet or furniture maker would have another, larger plane plane for srubbing across the grain but a No. 4 can be used to the same end. Next we'll joint an edge, progress aground the six sides and finally we'll thickness the board. Of course I didn't get it quite flat by the end of the day Friday so I'll probably have to start over on Monday.

Although most milling will occur on the jointer and planer in the future this exercise is a valuable one for learning how to use a hand plane (setting it up to cut and checking that the blade has been sharpened properly) and as an introduction to the way wood works.

In the four weeks leading up to the hand plane exercise the thirteen of us who began this semester have been drafting. Lots of drafting lap joints, dovetails, splined mortises, tapered dovetails, wedged tenons and more. At some point soon I hope to get my drawings scanned so that I can post them here.

I spent thirteen hours at the school today to get the chair finished. I have a new baby coming next week and I knew that if not today then not for a long, long time.

As busy as I was I did try to take a bunch of photos.

Today was devoted to assembling the stool or the lower half of the chair. We drilled holes in our legs for the stretchers and holes in our stretchers for the cross piece. With the "H frame" dry fit we double check the fit in the legs and seat.

After a deep breath we glued up our joints and drove the wedges home.

If yesterday was devoted to the curves of the sitter today was devoted to curves designed to complement the work we did yesterday. As far as comfort goes probably could have stopped with the shaping yesterday but that would have left the rest of the seat looking flat and angular, not exactly the most inviting look.

Today was devoted entirely to the seat. We spent most of our time reaming out the holes that we drilled yesterday for the legs and arm posts. A reamer is used to turn a straight hole into a tapered one. The rest of the day was for carving out the seat.

There are a few reason why the tapered hole requires so much time and attention.

First it is the tapered mortise and tenon joint, with the wedge to lock it in place, that makes the Windsor chair so strong. If improperly tapered and assembled the joint and thus the chair will actually work itself apart so the chair actually pulls itself to pieces. If assembled properly, however, will last forever.

The second reason these joints are important is that they directly determine the angle at which the legs hit the floor. When looking at a chair from the front this angle is called the splay and when from the side, rake. If these angles are different for each leg then we can still make all four legs touch the ground but the chair will look lopsided and a seated person will put uneven pressure on the legs.

Not too many photos of the process but this one gives the idea. The reamer (the t shaped tool under Pete's elbow sticking out of the seat) is lined up simultaneously with the square (in the middle) and the bevel gauge (on the left).

Day three of the class with Pete Galbert. I would say that today we did the two steps that define a Continuous-arm Windsor: we bent the arm and drilled out the seat. Naturally the bent arm is the stand out feature of a chair named for its continuity. The drilled out seat sets the stage for what makes this chair a windsor in that the seat ties the chair together. In most other chair the back legs go up through the back corner of the seat and in to the crest (the top of the back). If there are arms then they are often the front legs as well. In the case of a windsor the pieces that go to the seat stop in the seat. This is a loose definition of windsor chairs that more experienced makers might take issue with but I think it serves well as a starting point.

The first set up photos are of the continuous arm in the bending form.  It spent about an hour in the steam box and is then bent in to the form in about thirty to forty five seconds.

The next set of photos are of the layout and drilling process for the seat.

Here are some photos from the class that started on Saturday. Taught by Peter Galbert, an expert chair maker and excellent teacher. I consider myself lucky to be taught by him. I have a lot to learn from him beyond just the steps of chair making.

This first photo is a continuous arm chair that was made by Peter. I think it will help put the following photos in perspective.

Step One:

After splitting a red oak log in a way similar to fire wood but a bit more deliberate and discerning in just where to place the wedge we shape the spindles into squares. The spindles are the vertical elements that run between the seat and the continuous arm.

In the following pictures the spindles get progressively more shaped. A taper and a bulb is cut into them and they are made octagonal, the first step to the infinite sided shape that they will become.

Here's a shot of the shave horse with a spindle held in place. I put pressure on the spindle by pushing down with my feet and pull the draw knife towards myself.

In the following photo I stopped mid stroke. I'm taking off quite a bit of material here but the draw knife is capable of taking a very fine shaving.

To end the day we started shaping the five foot long continuous arm. After it is steamed it will put into a form and bent to the final shape.

It's a bit hard to make out but in the foreground you have the underside of one of the hand holds.

Here's Pete demonstrating the arm shaping process