I have begun to make greenwood chairs which are ideally seated with woven bark (typically a 1 inch wide strip of Wych Elm bark, here in the UK).
Wych elm bark is rather hard to come by, either in the form of an available local tree or as dried strips cut by a seller. When you do find it, it can cost anything up to $70 for a seat’s worth. Dutch Elm disease didn’t help.
My first chairs were in ash but from now on they will be in oak. Oak has a lot of sap wood which looked like it would be wasted. But hold on! I have also learnt recently to make oak swills, which are weaved from 1 inch strips rived very thin from cleaved, boiled sapwood lengths. Perhaps these sapwood strips can make seating – saving all round.
Well, I will try. But my oak is a maximum 4 feet long. This will mean that, if I use rived strips of sapwood for the seat I will be having to join it many times. A seat can use 132 feet of strip!
SO, to my questions.
* Can I successfully form a number of closed-loops of rived oak strip around my seat rails by overlapping the strip ends and gluing them to each other? (I would then weave across these initial closed loops to complete the seat, tucking in the loose ends underneath).
* Specifically, what glue will hold when a fat bot such as mine descends on such seating from a great height? The forces on such a glued joint will be mostly shearing forces, although a fully woven seat might distribute the forces across the weave a bit.
I will be grateful for suggestions or observations about the proposed seating method and an appropriate glue for the experiment. I would like to get it right first time rather than use Uncle Cornelius (a large man) as a guinea pig, with possibly fatal consequences, at least for his dignity, should the glue fail.
Replies
Lat,
What you are proposing sounds do-able. Any wood glue will be strong enough given a lap of 3-4 inches, but very labor intensive, even for chair bottoms. The traditional means of joining splits here in Appalachian USA, is a mechanical joint, one end of which looks very like a keyhole, into which is inserted and twisted into place a mating end, which looks like an arrowhead. As short as your strips are, this would be impractical as gluing loops, I believe.
Often we use alternative, easily available materials in stead of ash or oak splits for chair bottoms. For instance: Woven (cloth) tape, or twisted cattail leaves (rush) commercially available as "fiber rush" (already twisted craft paper, supplied in rolls). Locally here in the Shenandoah Valley, "baler twine" or "binder twine" (sisal or jute cord used in agricultural machines for baling hay) is often used to cover country chair bottoms in basketweave, twill or herringbone patterns that are surprisingly attractive.
By the way, what is a "swill"? Hereabouts, swill is what a hog eats.
Hope this helps,
Ray Pine
Ray,
Thanks for the advice and the list of chair seat materials. I did consider some of those you mention but the bark I used on the first two looked so good that its "spoiled" me for anything other than stuff from the tree.
The glued-up strips method is going to be rather slower than winding 2 or 3 long bits of nicely pliant bark around those seat rails. However, I'll just be gluing the initial back-to-front wrappings. Once that weft (is that the right word?) is in place, the cross strips will each be woven across the weft with their ends overlapped and tucked in underneath (not glued).
Well, that's the theory. :-)
To stick those weft strips together, I think I'll use gorilla glue. Its filthy stuff but seems to stick very tenaciously even when not clamped hard.
A swill is an open basket about 9 inches deep with an oval top about 18 inches by 12 inches. It's made by initially bending a 1 inch diameter hazel rod into a hoop, sticking 2-inch, thin, shaped pieces of oak (spelks, pronounced "spells") through the rim then weaving even thinner 1 inch oak strips (taws, pronounced "tars") through the spelks. You have to cleave, boil and strip the spelks / taws from oak sapwood. The stuff weaves fairly well when still wet but dries rigid enough in the basket so you can turn it upside down and stand on it.
There are many variations on the theme - different shapes and sizes as well as various handles and so forth.
Millions were made in Northern England from the middle ages until the middle of the twentieth century. They were used as measures for dry goods, packaging for all kinds of produce and as man-sized carriers (eg for fish, seeds, fruit/veg, coal - you name it). With the advent of cheap metal containers and then plastic, they have all but disappeared.
Some pics will follow in a later posting (I'll have to downsize them on another PC and bring them to this one for posting as attachments).
Lat,
Thanks for the description of a swill. Love learning new words-swills, spelks and taws. Is the hazel rim split, or mortised to accept the ends of the spelks?
Regards,
Ray Pine
Ray,
Its sunny here just now (albeit only 1 degree above freezing) so I've been draw-knifing chair rungs and back slats all day. Despite this, I still have enough fingers left to type this:
The hazel bool is split with a bodkin (a blunt-ended knife) to insert the initial spelks for the swill. Only the first 5 spelks go in like this; the rest are tucked into the first taws that are woven on to those first spelks.
Some pictures are attached (I hope - haven't fully got to grips with the technicalities of this web site yet).
The bloke with the blue trouser is me. The other bloke is Owen Jones, who taught us. The B&W is an ancient swill shop circa 1920.
Lataxe,
Thank you very much for the pictures. That's a project I'd like to tackle one day.
Regards,
Ray Pine
Ray,
Owen Jones has a WORD doc of some 50 pages that tells you exactly how to make one. First, you need a boiling tub...... :-)
Interesting thread, with good information on what sounds to be a dieing art. Glad to see that there are at least a couple of folks keeping it alive!
Thanks...I learned something new here.
James
Could you glue up your loops ahead of time and insert them as you assemble the chair ?
I tested Gorilla glue against Tightbond, ended up throwing out an almost full bottle of the nasty stuff !C.
C,
I shall form a cunning plan to do as you suggest.
The loops made from the oak taws would run around the front and back seat rungs of the chair, which is a constant distance (give or take a few millimetres due to woggly rungs). So, if I make a frame of the same dimensions, I should be able to wrap and glue many taw loops in advance of assembling the chairs.
I suppose they could be slightly loose, to ensure they will go on the chair and to allow the seat to sag a liitle for comfort (dried oak taws are surprisingly hard, much harder than bark).
The chairs are assembled sides-first (one front and one back leg connected by three rungs). When two sides are put together, in stage 2, I could slip the required number of taw loops over the front and back seat rungs first. Once the chair was assembled, the seat would be completed by weaving more taws across these loops and overlapping/tucking in their ends under the seat.
If the glue holds, this should be OK. The taws are very strong and if I prepare the overlapping end of the taws well, where the glue goes, the scheme might be a goer.
I'm doubly motivated to try this now, as the only bark-seating supplier I can find wants £45 for each seat's worth and won't be cutting any until June! (I started making 4 chairs but now the order list is up to 10).
Perhaps I'll try an experiment with a stool......If I make it with rungs that can be prised apart again, this could also become my loop-making frame.
Thanks for the advice, by the way.
Lataxe.
Here is a table of one vendor's relative glue strength (scroll to second page): http://www.titebond.com/download/pdf/ww/GlueGuideTB.pdf
There appears to be less than 10% difference from least to greatest, which says to me there is probably more variabilty with the application than the choice of glue (PVA, aliphatic, hide, polyester, etc.)
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