Saddling Tools for Beginning Chairmakers

A student using a Windsor Workshops travisher. This is right before I said: “Put your thumbs behind the blade.”

With tools for saddling a chair seat, the problems are that (1) there are so many different kinds, and (2) some of them are hard to come by. Beginning chairmakers get especially frustrated by this – and with good reason.

When beginners take a chairmaking course at Lost Art Press, I have the luxury of telling them that they don’t have to worry about saddling tools – I’ve collected enough of them during the last 23 years that they can try all the different ones we have and discover which they prefer.

This situation also gives me a window into which tools are easiest for beginners to use. This entry is the result of watching beginners use saddling tools for the last seven years.

Caveats to this Entry

I am not an adze-vocate. I learned to saddle seats using a gutter adze, but I don’t think it’s necessary for stick chairs, which have a shallow saddle. I have a few adzes and enjoy the hack-hack-hack process at times, especially when I use the adze made by Matty Sears (John Brown’s son).

But I have a difficult time telling beginners it’s a must-have tool. Because it’s not.

So With that Out of the Way…

To saddle seats fully, I think beginners should buy the deluxe travisher from James Mursell at Windsor Workshops. Plus a Crucible Card Scraper (apologies for the self-promotion)¹ and a cork sanding block.

Yes, you are correct. You don’t need a scorp.²

The Windsor Workshops travisher has three advantages that other tools do not have.

1. It works much like a block plane, so beginners take to it much easier than to any scorp or travisher I have encountered. Wrap your hands around the body and put your thumbs right behind the blade (important). Push down and forward. Work across the grain (at first). You are now off to the races.

2. The blade can be set rank to remove a lot of material. Or finer to prepare a seat for scraping and sanding.

3. The brass mouth plate of the tool and the Delrin body are a perfect combination. The Delrin provides weight that beginners appreciate (lighter-weight tools require more strength in my experience). And the brass provides long life.³