The Democratic chair is designed to be made with a small number of hand tools, hence democratic. If a student learns this chair, they can make more complex Windsor chairs. ‘It wouldn’t be a Windsor chair without a bit of blood on it’, Jon said, as we gazed at my bloodied thumb, the victim of a Japanese hand saw. I was within an hour of finishing the chair, but now I had to pause to bandage my sawn appendage. As I stemmed the flow of blood with one plaster, and then another, I grinned at Jon, ‘There will be blood’.
One wall of Jon’s workshop is adorned with century-old American and English tools. The tools are divided into wall mounted boxes. Bench planes, hammers, drawknives, scorps, spokeshaves and travishers, among…
