
This project went well; I had a lot of things to figure out at just about every stage of the build. I’d like to build more of these, and I’m recording here a bunch of the things to remember, or do differently next time.
This was a project article written by Peter Galbert for the June 2019 issue of Fine Woodworking. I tried to just do what Peter said to do and not overcomplicate things with modifications. I stuck to that pretty well except for one large change. That is that I ended up shaving the legs and stretchers instead of turning them. I tried really hard to turn those parts. I’ve tried really hard to like turning in general. While turning these legs I realized how much I dislike turning. I built a shavehorse and love using it. I’m going to sell my lathe.
- There were some rough spots on the bottom of the seat because of a bit of inconsistency in thickness of the boards I glued up to make the seat. I thought those would get cleaned up later in the process but they weren’t. Clean up the bottom of the seat before, or right after gluing it up.
- Less is more. Shape the seat less. It’s pretty. But a little too country on the ends.
- Angle the bevel on the under side of the seat back more, at least in the front. Do most of this on the band saw when first cutting out the seat.
- I’d been thinking it, and Jeff said it before I did; move the front mortises back into the seat just a bit. We thought this visually, but it will also move those mortises back into the thicker part of the seat.
- Steam bending; The forms need some work. Maybe skip the v-groove on the form side and just have that in the little clampy parts. Also do a test of what works to glue that felt down; a bunch of those came loose.
- The little levery things on the form need to be attached via longer arms so that the arms are more parallel to the legs when clamped down.
- Don’t crack the seat. Thinking I’d avoid denting the seat if it was against the bench, I put a couple of layers of leather on it, and pounded the seat near the mortises while seating the legs. And the seat split near both of the front mortises.
- Don’t drill through the leg where it’s supposed to be a blind mortise. Duh.
- Line the wedges up well enough to not have any gaps. Duh #2.
- All my good spokeshaves are high-angle. They’re great, but a low-angle shave might be good for short grain like on the ends of the seat.
- The contrasting color on the seat bottom is a neat effect. And it adds a lot of work. If you do that next time make sure to mask off the whole thing while painting the legs and finishing the seat
- Milk paint. Love it and hate it. I put on 2 coats of yellow followed by 3 coats of the blue. It looked really blue when I started with the TruOil finish. And somehow the oil pulled the yellow forward, and made it green. Test board, maybe?
- Milk paint, point 2: Filter it like Galbert says to. I filtered the blue but not the yellow. And the difference was noticeable. I just used a paint filter from Ace.


