80 hours, 2 chairs, and Too Many Stories to Count

About two years ago Heather bought me a week long chair making course with Curtis Buchanan who is a renowned Windsor chair maker in downtown historic Jonesborough. Because of the house project, it took a while to finally get around to the much anticipated week long experience.

Little did I know that my younger brother was taking an interest in furniture making himself. After coming to this realization near Christmas I had an epiphany - the two of us could do the course together. Curtis was amenable and Brad was able to get time off from work so we were set to go.

The course involves beginning with a freshly split oak log and turning it into a windsor chair. The spindles and back were split and shaved from white oak. The chair was carved from a hunk of yellow pine. And the rockers are cut from rock maple. The whole process took us about 80 hours from Monday until Saturday night. Brad and I finished at 10:30 Saturday night - only 6 and a half hours before his flight left the next morning.

One of the most interesting parts of the week was the seemingly endless supply of stories that Curtis has to draw from. Most of the stories come from his youth when he hitchhiked all over the US and Central America for 7 years of his life. Oh, to live on the road.

Lance

Pictures included are 1. Brad on the shaving horse, 2. Curtis on the horse (notice Heather in the background who stopped by to entertain), and the final chairs.

One fine March Week

This past week (March 3-11) was eventful. It all started with Brad (little Bro) arriving on Saturday for the beginning of a long week of chair making with Lance and master chairmaker Curtis Buchanan. Details will be filled in the following blog titled "80 hours, 2 Chairs, and Too Many Stories to Count." Shortly after Brad's arrival on Saturday, Aunt Kim and Olivia (Scott's daughter) came to visit the farm. The details of that story are documented in the blog titled "Klosterman Girls Visit Walnut Grove."

Paul Bunyan

As the original sill logs of the cabin were heavily damaged by termites, we decided to replace them with new, hand-hewn logs. Luckily, Mike had felled some large white oak trees on a mountain near Bristol about five years ago. The situation was perfect: White oak is very rot resistant, and the fact that these trees had been cut for a few years decreases the chance of shrinkage. So, Mike and crew spent several days on the mountain hewing away. (We did agree to let him run the logs through a portable saw mill to square them off--a luxury our hearty ancestors did not have.) The logs were so long and heavy, we had to hire a U-Haul truck (the modern version of a team of work horses) to transport them to the farm.