Adzing

Adzing out a chair seat is by turns my favourite and least favourite part of chairmaking - favourite when it goes right, least favourite when it doesn't. Either way, it's also very hard work. I favour the old-fashioned tool-between-the-legs method (not as rude as it sounds), which can put a lot of strain on the back after a while.

So the key for me is a technique that wastes as much wood as quickly and accurately as possible. A method for achieving this that I've been using recently takes away the tendency to hack away with an adze until something vaguely resembling a chair bottom appears and makes it a much more refined process that minimises generally bodily pain and makes the final smoothing much quicker.

Stage one involves a series of chopping stop cuts, in which the angle of the cuttting edge of the adze is held at a steeper angle to the surface of the wood than the more sweeping cuts employed later on. This stage breaks the fibers of the wood and make stage two easier. I find if I get into a good rhythm with this process, it's possible to make cuts at a surprisingly uniform depth, which, again, helps with the next stage.

Stage two involves the swinging, sweeping cuts more normally associated with the adze, with the cutting edge now held a shallower angle. You should now be able to be fairly aggressive with your cutting as the stop cuts already made should limit how much material is wasted with each swing. As always, keep legs and other fleshy parts well out of the line of the swinging adze! 

If you've been fairly uniform with the depth of your cuts in the first stage, you should end up with some fairly smooth hollowing once you've been through the second phase. This should mean only minimal use of travisher or in-shave to smooth out the seat....

On the subject of in-shaves, do people still use these? I find with my very nice James Mursell travisher, I don't really need an in-shave. Plus I've never got on too well with in-shaves anyway, but that's another story...