Building Gragg’s “Elastic” Chairs — Harvesting the Wood 3
In concert with both ongoing firewood harvesting and shooting a video Building A Gragg Chair I replicated some of the work undertaken at my neighbor Bob’s house five years earlier, this time with oaks felled up the mountain from the barn. There were three large trunks that had nice lower sections and and one smaller but straighter one about fifty yards away, set-aside for the harvesting efforts. Interestingly the larger trees, grown in a dense forest setting, were quite problematic with lots of wind and interlocked grain. My yield from them was about a quarter of what I got from Bob’s “urban” trees. I have no explanation for this phenomenon.
The largest of these trunks was also the largest disappointment. While seemingly sound and straight, the first split caused me to go, “Hmmm.”
As the splitting proceeded the disaster was readily apparent as the entire trunk segmented into an interlocked mass of uselessness, and ate all of my wedges and guts to just get torn apart. The pieces were cut into short bolts for the firewood splitter.
The two smaller of these three trunk sections were better, but still not great. The wood was straighter and more sound, but with more interlocked grain than I expected.
The smaller, straighter trunk was, I hoped, a somewhat different story. It had grown in very tight setting, much, much more crowded than the larger trees and the grain showed it. I was hoping it was more promising than the first trunks, which mostly wound up as firewood. More about that later.
I fear you will clear cut your wood lot! Back to elastic oak for the chair. Have you tried “young trees”? A book by John Gardner , “Building Classic Small Craft” (the commemorative two book edition) had a blurb about using younger white oak trees with more flexibility for frames well under 1-inch. If Gragg was anywhere near a small boat of his time, it would inspire his building technique. I can’t cite the reference because reading usually lulls me to sleep at night.
The odds of clearing the wood lot are slender given that we have almost 70 acres worth. No I have not tried young trees but am willing to give it a try as I thin the under-canopy. My former student and fellow-Graggite Mike Podmaniczky asserts that Gragg’s shop’s proximity to the Boston harbor means that he was well-versed in ship building in addition to his knowledge gleaned from his wheelwright father. If only Gragg was a Millennial, we would then know of his every thought and impulse. For now we know way too little, alas.
“The higher, the fewer.”-old Klingon proverb