Workshop smell after the first snow. Sawdust, linseed oil, and the faint edge of cold air through the window gaps. Something about it feels like home.
Started roughing out a chair seat today. Cherry, from the tree the neighbor took down last spring. Good grain, few knots.
No deadline on this one. Just making something because I can.
I do not know how to explain it to people who do not work with their hands, but there is a specific scent to a woodshop in winter that is different from any other time of year. It is not just sawdust – that is always there. It is the way the cold air crystallizes everything, sharpens the edges of the smell. The linseed oil on the rag by my finishing station gets a bit thicker, more pungent. The cherry shavings on the floor have a faint sweetness to them. And underneath it all, there is that bite of cold coming through the gaps in my old windows, mixing with the warmth from the space heater under my workbench.
If I could bottle it, I would. Some days, I go out to the shop just to stand there for a minute before starting work.
The Neighbor Cherry Tree
My neighbor Frank took down a cherry tree last spring that had been dying for a couple of years. Emerald ash borer, which does not actually affect cherry, but the stress from the neighboring ash trees dying opened it up to some kind of fungal infection. Tree guys said it was a hazard, so down it came.
Frank knows I do this, so he called me before they hauled it away. Showed up with my chainsaw and took every piece of trunk over 12 inches diameter. Milled it into slabs with my Alaskan chainsaw mill – messy work, but free lumber is free lumber.
Those slabs have been stickered in my garage since April. Checked the moisture content last week: 14%. Getting close. Another month or two and they will be ready for furniture. But I grabbed one of the smaller pieces – about 18 inches wide, 24 inches long, 2 inches thick – for today project.
A Chair Without a Commission
There is something rare and wonderful about making furniture for no one. No deposit. No client emails. No deadline except before I die, probably.
I am making a chair seat. Just the seat for now. It is going to be a sculpted Windsor-style seat, the kind that looks like it was scooped out by hand to fit a human body. Because it will be. By me. By hand. With an adze and a travisher and a whole lot of elbow grease.
Today I roughed out the blank. Traced my template on the cherry – a shape I have refined over maybe a dozen chairs, slightly wider at the front, narrowed for the spindle platform at the back. Cut out the profile on the bandsaw. Marked the center line and the high points where my carving will leave ridges.
The Rough Shaping
I use a gutter adze for hogging out the seat. It is a tool that looks medieval and feels brutal, but in skilled hands it removes wood with surprising control. You swing it down into the end grain, and it scoops out a hollow maybe a quarter inch deep with each stroke. Do that a few hundred times and you have got something starting to look like a seat.
The cherry fought me a little. It has got some interlocked grain from the stress of dying, and the adze wanted to dive deeper than I intended in a couple of spots. No matter. That is what the travisher is for – a curved-bottom spokeshave that smooths out the valleys and blends everything together.
I got about an hour of carving in before my shoulders reminded me that I am not as young as I used to be. The seat is maybe 40% roughed out. The major valleys are established, but the transitions need work, and I have not touched the pommel – that ridge at the front that keeps you from sliding off.
Why I Do This
Commissions pay the bills. But projects like this, personal projects, projects with no deadline and no specification beyond make something beautiful – these are why I became a furniture maker.
Twenty years ago I was sitting in a cubicle writing TPS reports or whatever corporate widget we were pushing that quarter. Now I am standing in my own shop, surrounded by tools I have chosen and wood I have harvested from a tree I watched grow for a decade, making something that will outlast me by a century.
The chair seat will sit on my bench until I feel like working on it again. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe next week. The snow is coming down harder now, sticking to the window. I can see my breath in the corner of the shop where the heater does not reach.
Time for one more cup of coffee and another hour with the travisher. No rush. The cherry is not going anywhere, and neither am I.
This is the work. This is why I do it.
