A Walnut Windsor    12/28/2007

I enjoy woodworking.  This blog follows my process of making a comb back Windsor arm chair.  The style is from Philadelphia, circa 1780.  I am not a traditionalist in that I do not work green wood, I do use power tools, and the chairs are not painted.

My woodworking is an avocation.  My vocation, on the other had, is as a Professor of Psychology at the University at Buffalo.  My typical week is a bit on the long side, so my woodworking is done in small blocks of time on occasional weekends.  I usually make two or three chairs at a time.  The process, from starting with rough lumber to finishing, takes me about two years.

The chairs documented here start with a walnut tree in the back yard of my brother-in-law’s family.  When they decided to remove the tree, he offered to have it milled into lumber and I offered to split the cost.  So, these two chairs start with the trunk of a tree.

The chair will be all walnut except for the thin spindles in the back.  The thin spindles will be hickory because it is strong and flexible.

The inspiration for doing chairs like this comes in two parts.  The first was a trip to Cape Cod to visit my grandparents (my mother’s parents) in the early 1970’s.  While out exploring with my grandparents, my wife Ann and I wandered through an antique store.  I saw a comb back Windsor arm chair and was fascinated.  I do not think that it occurred to me at the time that I could build one – I knew too little about the construction and my skills as a woodworker were rudimentary.

The more profound and enduring influence on my chair making comes from Michael Dunbar.  His book: Make a Windsor Chair with Michael Dunbar, was my starting point.  The book steps you through the traditional, hand tool and green wood based process of making a windsor chair.  I think that this book is no longer in print, but you can find lots of useful information, chair making supplies and inspiration at Dunbar’s web site.

With Dunbar’s book, and some additional research on windsor chairs, I made my first chair – a comb back like the ones here and the one I’d seen over twenty years earlier on Cape Cod.  I think that I’ve gotten a bit better since that first chair.  However, the most important point is that I enjoy making the chairs.

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