written & illustrated by Peter Galbert You can download an excerpt from this book here. Whether you are an aspiring professional chairmaker, an experienced green woodworker or a home woodworker curious about the craft, “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is an in-depth guide to building your first Windsor chair or an even-better 30th one. Using more than 500 hand-drawn illustrations, Peter Galbert walks you through the entire process, from selecting wood at the log yard, to the chairs’ robust joinery, to applying a hand-burnished finish. And if you’ve never thought about building a chair, this book might convince you to try. Building a chair will open your eyes to ways of working wood that you might miss if you stay in the rectilinear world of boxes. Once you understand chairmaking, then odd and compound angles become child’s play. You will know how wood works in a deeper way (and how to exploit it). And you will gain access to an arsenal of open-ended tools, such as the drawknife, that will fundamentally change the way you work – plus expand the shapes and surfaces you can produce. At 406 pages, “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is an in-depth look at the craft from the hand of a professional chairmaker, teacher and artist. During the last 20 years, Galbert has developed processes, tools and ways of understanding joinery that have simplified the way people build chairs using hand tools. He has traveled the world to teach his techniques to other chairmakers. And he spent more than three years drawing out every step of the process for the illustrations in “Chairmaker’s Notebook.” The result is a book on chairmaking that starts with understanding a single stick you would find on a walk in the woods then takes you into advanced areas of the chair craft that no other book has ventured. Like all Lost Art Press books, “Chairmaker’s Notebook” is produced entirely in the U.S. The text is printed on heavy #80 matte 8.5" x 11" paper, and its signatures are sewn together and then bound in cloth tape to last several lifetimes. The book is hardbound, covered in cloth and a heavy full-color dust jacket. The book is also available for download as a PDF. If you need a tutorial on adding our digital books to your iPad, click here. Full-size plans for the chairs featured in this book are available for purchase here. Contents Foreword viIntroduction vii 1: Why Green Wood? 22: Windsor Joinery 143: Chair Design & the Plas in this Book 244: The Chairmaker's Workshop 345: Hand Tools: Sharpening & Use 486: Woods for Chairmaking 667: An Introduction to Splitting Tools 788: Splitting Parts from the Log 929: The Drawknife 10010: Shaving & Carving with a Drawknife 11211: Shaving & Shaping Parts 12812: Bending Wood 14213: Turning Tools 16014: Turning Practice 16815: Turning: From Rough to Finish 18416: Drilling 20617: Reaming 21818: Tools for Seat Carving 23419: Carve the Seat 24620: Undercarriage Joinery 26821: Undercarriage Assembly 28822: Complete the Undercarriage 29823: Uppercarriage Assembly: Balloon-back 30624: Uppercarriage Assembly: Fan-back 32825: Finishing 336 Appendix A. Creating & Using Sightlines 352Appendix B. The Shavehorse 360Appendix C. Grinding Drill Bits 372Afterword 378Sources 380Further Reading 381Acknowledgments 382About the Author 383Index 284 About the Author Peter Galbert is a full-time chairmaker, toolmaker, teacher and writer. He has taught at many craft schools around the country, including the Penland School of Crafts, the North Bennet Street School, the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship, Kelly Mehlers School of Woodworking, Highland Woodworking, the Arrowmont School of Crafts and The Port Townsend School of Woodworking. Besides making chairs and teaching, Peter also writes the Chairnotes substack and produces woodworking tools. Read more about Peter in our full profile.
