The Jimmy Possum Chair

Section 1

Splitting the Log & Riving the Parts

Goal: Straight, long-fibered billets for every part.

This is where a chair begins: not by cutting wood, but by separating it along the lines the tree already grew. Splitting reduces the log to manageable quarters; riving with a froe divides those quarters into the billets from which every part is shaped.

Splitting with sledge and wedge

Start by splitting the whole log in half lengthwise, if you can — a habit Andy Glenn recommends in Backwoods Chairmakers. Beyond halving the stock, the fresh split face does something useful: it reveals any large knots hiding inside, so you can plan around them. With the interior in view, buck the halves into rough part-lengths — about 36″ and up — cutting out knots as you go. Quarter each half, then get rid of the crappy juvenile wood near the pith before splitting any further. If you can't split it off, at least beat it up with an axe so that it doesn't affect your future splits as much.

With a big log, quarters are often still too heavy to handle and too fat to rive. Keep going. Split the quarters into eighths. These first splits are radial — pith-to-bark, along the rays — which is what gives each part its strong radial face. But once the wedges of wood get narrow, a radial split has little width left to take. At that point switch to splitting tangentially, along a growth ring, to peel a piece down to billet size.

To make a split, follow the procedure Drew Langsner lays out step by step in Country Woodcraft. Begin at the end grain: score a line from the pith out to the bark — if the log already shows a radial check, follow it. Drive a narrow starting wedge into the scored line with the sledge. When the crack begins to open, switch to a standard splitting wedge and drive it until the crack travels along the length. Then comes his technique that makes long logs manageable:

Continue leap-frogging to the end of the log. Use gluts to further open the crack… Gluts must be placed so that they won't intercept interior cross fibers — they will split apart if driven into cross fibers.

Drew Langsner, Country Woodcraft: Then & Now (Lost Art Press, 2020)

In other words: as each wedge frees itself behind the advancing crack, move it ahead of the others, walking the split down the log. Gluts — large wooden wedges — widen the gap behind the steel. When interior cross fibers are preventing the log from opening, brute force is not the answer. Use a hatchet, framing chisel, hewing axe, or even a chainsaw to separate the fibers.

Riving with the froe

Once you have smaller billets, you switch tools. Splitting opens a log; riving is controlled splitting.

How to rive

Set your billet in a riving brake — Langsner's “old English woodlands word for any device that holds your material in place while you do something to it.” His favorite is a forked sapling, which “self-binds” when you lever against it. Follansbee and Galbert have each written up their own brake designs — both worth a look before you build one.

With the blade buried, set the club down and use the long froe handle as a lever, twisting and prying to open the split. The single most important habit is Alexander's cardinal rule: riving works best with equal mass on both sides of the froe. When the split starts to wander toward the thinner side, lever the froe handle toward the thicker side to draw it back — Alexander's “tic-tic-tic, and you're back on track.” The tension side of the brake encourages run-out — Langsner's observation — so let the wood guide you and correct early.

Rive everything oversize, remembering the roughly-⅛″ green allowance. Wide stock — the arms and crest — should be split so their broad faces fall on the ray (radial). Rive a few extra of every part; some will reveal flaws, and the spares become practice stock. If you can't get to your rived parts soon, bag them to slow their drying.

Section 2

Shaving the Parts with a Shavehorse & Drawknife

Goal: Read the grain; shave clean, flat faces with the drawknife.

With a pile of riven billets, you move to the shavehorse — the foot-clamped bench that frees both hands for the drawknife. This is where most of the build's hours are spent.

The shavehorse and the drawknife

A shavehorse holds the part in a pivoting wooden jaw — the “dumbhead” — that grips harder as you press the treadle harder. Sit astride it, work projecting toward you, and pull the drawknife in long, slicing strokes, bevel down. To shave the section hidden under the jaw, flip the part end-for-end and carry on. Shaving the whole chair this way traces to Jennie Alexander, who was kept from a lathe at a 1978 demonstration, shaved her parts instead, and never went back.

Roughing and refining

The drawknife does two different jobs, and it pays to name them. First you rough: peel the wood down fast to an even fiber level. Then you refine: bring that even shape to a smooth, finished surface. Peter Galbert, in Chairmaker's Notebook, draws the same line and calls it carving versus shaving — roughing and refining is how I think of it at the bench.

Picture the fibers rising out of a face like a low hillside. To rough, cut into the hillside: the blade catches the rising fibers and peels them off, down to one continuous, even layer. It is really just a controlled split, so the surface comes off a little torn — and that is fine, because you are setting the shape and the fiber level, not the finish. This is where the wood comes off fast. One trick worth stealing from Galbert: the torn fibers left where the knife lifts out of the cut mark the level to work back to on your next pass.

Once the shape is even, refine with the grain — the way the fibers lie, like petting a cat. Shave the way they lie and they smooth down and the blade slices clean; shave against them and they lift, catch, and tear. Riven fibers rarely run dead parallel to a face, so the lay can switch partway along a part or across a knot. When a refining cut starts to tear, you have found a spot where the fibers turn — stop, flip the part end-for-end, and come back the other way.

Not sure which way is which on a fresh billet? Take a light pull each direction. The way that catches and starts to dig is into the hillside — rough that way. The way that glides is with the grain — refine that way.

Three cuts, one knife

Roughing, refining, and fitting are the same bevel-down knife held three ways — the difference is your angle, your grip, and which part of your body drives the cut. To rough, drop the handles so the edge bites, take a thick peel, and drive from your shoulders with your body leaning in. To refine, raise the handles a touch so the knife rides up and out, skew the blade, and take long light pulls from the forearms. To fit — dialing a tenon to its hole — go feather-light with a hard skew for the finest cut, moving from the fingers and wrists. You are shaving tenths now, not shapes.

Two more habits make every cut cleaner. Skew the blade — hold it at an angle to the part rather than square across it. And slice — draw the knife sideways as you pull. Both lower the effective cutting angle and put more edge on the wood: flatter surface, cleaner cut, less effort. Just as you slice, not chop, a tomato, slice the wood using the entire length of the drawknife edge.

Section 2b

Four-Square, Taper, Octagon

Goal: Tapered legs and octagonal sticks, set aside to dry.

Shaving is not random whittling. Each leg and back stick goes from rough billet, to two adjacent faces, to a true square — then the legs get tapered and every stick gets knocked into an octagon. Then it all goes aside to dry.

Shave to four-square

First face, second face

Start with the radial face. Shave it dead flat and straight. Alexander's test: hold it against a known flat surface — the long fibers should exit only at the ends of the stick, never out the side. A fiber running out the side means the face isn't following the grain. Then shave an adjacent face flat, straight, and square to the first.

Square it

Shave the remaining two faces square, bringing the part to a true square at the target dimension. Work all four faces in rotation rather than finishing one at a time, and watch for what Alexander calls a “bell-bottom” — the end that shaves easier ends up thinner than the rest.

Taper the legs (while still four-sided)

Before octagonalizing, taper the legs — to 1″ at the top, starting 20″ down. Keep the leg four-sided while you do it: a taper is faster to judge and cut on flat faces than on round ones. (Alexander's observation: a dead-straight taper reads slightly concave to the eye, and therefore weak; a hair of convexity looks right. Practice on scrap first.)

Octagonalize, then dry

Now knock every stick — legs and back sticks alike — into an octagon by taking off its four corners. Pencil guide lines around the square stick, bring each corner up under the jaw in turn, and shave a little at a time, working the corners evenly so the eight facets finish equal in width. An octagon of equal facets reads as round to the eye and hand but keeps the crisp, faceted look of handwork.

With the sticks octagonalized, set everything aside to dry. This is where the green-wood method pays off — if you get the moisture difference the right way around. Tenons must be dry; the seat (the mortised piece) goes together a little wetter. As the seat dries, its holes shrink around the dry tenons and grip. A wet tenon does the reverse: it shrinks as it dries and the joint lets go. Dry your tenons hard.

How long is “dry”? A few weeks in a dry indoor spot, for sticks this size. A warm corner near the woodstove — or a hot box rigged from a chest and a light bulb — hurries it along. The honest test is a kitchen scale: weigh a part every few days; when the weight stops dropping, it's done.

Section 3

Laying Out the Seat

Goal: A layout that locates every leg and stick hole.

With the sticks drying, turn to the seat. This is where the JP parts company with the staked chairs in the books: no compound angles, no sightlines. You scribe a simple grid of layout lines, and those lines guide every hole and angle from here on.

Any shape, traditionally a rectangle

The seat can be almost any shape. A rectangle is traditional; a gentle arc on a side or two is pleasing; irregular off-cuts and slabs are fair game — the Tasmanian makers used whatever wide stock was on hand, packing-case timber included. The seat is the one part you start dry (a wide green slab will check as it dries), so it's the one part that doesn't come off this year's log: buy a kiln-dried slab, or rive one out and sticker it a season ahead.

The layout lines

Scribe a line 1½″ in from every edge of the seat. These four lines do two jobs. Where two cross at a corner is that corner's hole centerpoint — rear corners take the outer back sticks (and later the back legs), front corners take the front legs. And each hole's drilling angle is read along the layout line parallel to the nearest edge. That second job is the key to the whole chair.

Section 4

Drilling the Outer Back Sticks

Goal: Outer-stick holes bored through seat and arm at once.

Now you bore the first holes — through the seat and the arms at the same time, so the outer back sticks pass cleanly through both when the chair goes together. Stack drilling, JP style.

Line up the arms under the seat

Draw a centerline down each arm blank. (If the blank is wide, offset the line to put the stick where you want it in the finished arm.) Clamp the seat and both arms together, arms underneath the seat, each arm's centerline on the seat's nearest side layout line. The arms are still overlong; let each run about 1″ past the back of the seat, with the slack out past the front. What matters most is that left and right line up.

Bore through both

Drill the outer back sticks through seat and arm in one pass: rear-corner intersection, 1″ bit. Sight the rake along the side layout line as you bore, and choose it for how the chair will be used — about 9° for an upright, dining posture, up to 17° for a relaxed, reclined one. Because both parts are drilled together, the holes can't disagree.

Section 5

Fitting the Back Sticks & the Legs

Goal: Sticks and legs fitted and drilled — the chair in your hands.

From here the chair grows in your hands. Fit the back sticks into the arms, then fit the legs to the seat with a scribed shoulder — reading each angle off the work, not off a number.

Fit the back sticks to the arms

First, tenon the tops of the two outer back sticks. Use whatever you like — a tenon cutter, a dowel cutter, a drawknife, a saw and chisel, a file.

Fit those sticks into the arms at the height you want the arms to sit — 8″ to 10″ above the seat is typical. A reliable way: stand the stick in its seat hole and mark where you want the bottom of the arm to land. Drill a couple of 1″ holes in scrap to stand in for the arm, so you don't bruise the real mortise while fitting. Round the stick down with a drawknife (a spokeshave works too, but a knife is quicker) until it passes through the scrap up to your line, redrawing the line whenever shaving erases it. Go patiently near the bottom so you don't overshoot and land the arm low. Reaming the bottom of the mortise a little can help the fit. With both outer sticks fitted, the top of the chair is taking shape.

Fitting the front legs: the scribed shoulder

Drill the front-leg hole first, at 90° to the seat, centered on the front-corner layout intersection, with a 1″-or-larger bit. Then fit the leg:

1. Round the upper section of the leg until the top 10″ or so can enter the mortise. Tap it in firmly with a hammer so it jams.
2. Trace the leg where it touches the hole — this contact line is the wood telling you how deep it went. Then scribe a second line one seat-thickness DOWN the leg from the contact, toward the foot. That second line becomes the shoulder.
3. Remove the leg. Saw lightly into the shoulder line; that kerf becomes the joint's shoulder. Then pare or shave the band between the two lines down to the kerf with a chisel or drawknife, without marring the contact line above it — that line will be the visible top of the tenon when you look down at the finished chair. Seat the leg with the shoulder tight against the seat.
4. All four legs are tapered, so before you commit, try a leg in different holes — one may seat better than another.

Mark the arm for the front leg

With the leg fitted to the seat, you locate where it must pass through the arm. Push the leg up through the seat until its top just touches the underside of the arm. If the top lands off the arm's centerline, rotate the leg and see if it improves; if it's still far off, try it in the other front hole. Then sight the position from two directions:

1. At eye level, sight the center of the leg-tip down the layout line — lined up with the arm and the stick — and mark that line on the top of the arm.
2. Sight down the adjacent layout line — lined up with the front of the seat — and mark the approximate center of the leg-top onto the arm again.
3. Where the two marks cross is your drill point. Bore the arm there at 90°, ⅞″ diameter (or whatever thickness you can make a solid tenon at the leg's top).

The back legs

Assemble the leg, arm, and outer back sticks, then hold a back leg up to the chair to choose its angle and location. You are balancing two needs. You want the foot to land well back so the chair can't tip backward — but you don't want the back stick's through-tenon, where it protrudes below the seat, to collide with the back leg. An angle of 20–30° is good. Put the hole's centerpoint 2″–5½″ from the back-stick hole, along the front-to-back layout line. Where it lands within that zone varies with the angle, the seat thickness, and the leg thickness — so hold the leg up to the chair and verify before you bore.

Drill and fit the back leg the same way as the front, with the round-and-jam, trace, scribe, and pare sequence. The only difference is that the scribed shoulder line will run at an angle rather than square across the leg, because the leg meets the seat at a rake.

Section 6

Drilling the Arm for the Back Leg

Goal: The arm bored for the back leg; the chair assembled.

The back leg, like the front, must pass through the arm — at its raked angle. Find it the way you find everything on this chair: set up the real parts and read it off them.

Mark, then read the angle

First confirm the arm is at its correct height at both intersections, checking with a 12″ square stood flat on the seat. Mark the arm for the back leg the same way you did for the front. Then trace, onto the back stick and the front leg, where the arm crosses them.

Now remove the arm. Stack books or blocks and shims on the seat and rest the arm on top, positioned so it meets the lines you drew on the back stick and the front leg — this puts the arm exactly where it will live in the finished chair. Seat the back leg. Trace its shape onto the arm with a half-pencil — a carpenter's pencil planed to half thickness, a trick borrowed from Chris Schwarz — and take its angle with a bevel gauge. Compare that to the angle you actually drilled the leg at: close is fine; wildly off means something upstream needs a look.

Drill it the right way around

Drill the arm's tenon hole at that bevel angle, on the point you marked along the layout line.

Section 7

The Remaining Back Sticks & the Comb

Goal: All the back sticks in, and the comb fitted.

With the outer sticks, arms, and legs established, fill in the rest of the back and cap it with the comb. The chair's shape and posture come together here.

Space and drill the inner sticks

Assemble what you have so far. Rotate the two outer back sticks until they sit at roughly the same angle along the layout line, and take that angle with a bevel gauge — that's the angle for the inner sticks (unless you have a “spicy” plan, like a curved crest, in which case you can vary them deliberately). Space the inner sticks evenly (or don't): divide the distance between the centerpoints of the two outer sticks by (n − 1), where n is the total number of back sticks, and you have the spacing.

This is the moment to nudge things for the look you want — move drill points fore, aft, left, or right to accentuate whatever vibe you're after, and try sticks in different holes to find the best fit for each. If a seat mortise came out a little off, cut that stick's tenon at a slight compensating angle so the stick still lands where it should.

Fit the comb

Set the comb's height by eye and by comfort — hold it against the sticks, sit in what you have so far, and see where it wants to be; there is no magic number. Trim the stick tops to suit, then drill the comb to receive them — at an angle, to match the sticks' lean, with a bit matched to the tenons you'll cut on the stick tops. The mortises can be stopped (blind) or drilled clean through: through-tenons can be wedged and left proud in the JP manner, while stopped holes leave the comb's top edge unbroken. Dry-fit and assemble; glue comes later, at final assembly. The comb is what makes a forgiving chair: as it goes on, it gathers the sticks and pulls any strays into line, which is why you can afford a little wander in the individual stick angles.

Section 8

Final Shaping of the Parts

Goal: Bring every part to its finished profile before glue-up.

Before glue-up, take everything to its finished shape. The joinery is settled and you can see the whole chair — this is where it stops being a pile of sticks and starts being yours.

Arms and comb

Refine the arms and the comb with a drawknife — round the arms over, ease their ends, bring the comb to its final profile. If a piece has grumpy, swirling grain that the drawknife wants to tear, switch to a spokeshave or block plane; they take a smaller bite and handle reversing grain more kindly. This is also the place for stylistic touches — a faceted arm, a shaped comb, a chamfered end, something cool carved in.

Legs

The legs already carry the taper you put in earlier; now you can carry it further if you like. Continue the taper farther down the leg for a more delicate line, or cut a double taper — slim toward the foot and again up near the seat, leaving a swell in the middle — for a livelier shape. Keep an eye on strength: don't thin a leg so far it loses its backbone.

The middle sticks

If you want the inner back sticks to read as a uniform set with the outer ones, refine their shape now — match their diameter and taper to the outer sticks so the fan looks intentional. Or leave them a touch varied; on a folk chair that reads as character, not error.

Surfaces and edges

Clean up any tear-out with a card scraper or a spokeshave — a scraper especially loves the spots where the drawknife fought the grain. Then chamfer or round the edges of the seat so they don't bite the backs of a sitter's knees, and ease any other sharp arris your hand will meet. A few passes of detailing here make the difference between a rough chair and a finished one.

Section 9

Assembly & Leveling

Goal: The chair glued up, standing true, and reclined to taste.

Now bring it all together for good, and stand it on its feet so it sits the way you want.

Glue up

Assemble in the order you built the chair, gluing as you go. Any decent wood glue does the job; use hide glue if you'd like the joints to be reversible someday. For the legs, seat each one most of the way, then put the glue on the leg before driving it home — if you put glue down inside the mortise instead, you'll squeeze out a mess and may hydraulic-lock the joint. A wedge across a leg-to-arm joint is a nice touch where you want a positive lock. The comb only needs a wedge if its tenons aren't a tight fit; if they're snug, leave them. Through-tenons can be left proud and stylized — domed or chamfered — or cut flush, as you like.

Level the seat, then set the recline

Stand the assembled chair on a dead-flat surface. First get the seat level side to side, using blocks and shims under the feet until it stops rocking. Then set the front-to-back attitude — the recline — to the sitter's taste by shimming the back (or front) feet. When it sits the way you want, scribe each leg with a block and a half-pencil and saw to the line; the four feet now meet the floor together.

Section 10

Pinning, Wedging & Finishing

Goal: The key joints locked, the tenons dressed, and a finish on the chair.

Lock the joints that need it, dress the proud tenons, and put a finish on the chair. How you do this is partly engineering and partly style.

Pinning and wedging

A well-fitted Jimmy Possum stands largely on friction and the green-wood grip, but a few joints reward a positive lock:

• If a leg-to-seat joint is loose, pin it with a trenail or dowel driven through the long-grain side of the joint (never through end grain, which would split).
• Leg-to-arm joints can be pinned, wedged, or both — they carry real load.
• Do not pin the arm to the back stick. That joint needs to move as the back sticks flex under a sitter.
• Wedge the comb only if its tenons aren't already a tight fit; otherwise leave it.
• Every tenon may be cut flush or left proud and stylized — domed, chamfered, or shaped — as you like.

Finish

Pare or saw the proud tenon tops to their final look, dome or chamfer them if you left them proud, and give the whole chair a last going-over with a scraper. Then finish to taste — oil, wax, milk paint, or the traditional bush coat of paint (the old chairs were often green or grey). Oil is simplest and shows off the tooled surfaces; paint hides humbler wood and is every bit as authentic. Last step of every chair: sit in it.

Extras

Saddling the Seat

Optional: historic Jimmy Possum chairs were left flat.

Saddling means carving a shallow hollow into the seat to cradle the sitter. Historic Jimmy Possum chairs were left flat — authentic, and comfortable with the chair's raked stance — so this is optional. But if you'd like the extra comfort, here's how.

Coarse to fine

Saddling moves through a sequence of tools, each finer than the last. Hog out the bulk of the hollow quickly with an adze or a large gouge, working across the grain where the cutting is easiest. Refine the shape with an inshave or scorp — a curved drawknife for hollows. Smooth the surface with a travisher, a small curved-sole plane made for the job, working with the grain now. Finish with a scraper. Keep the deepest point under where the sitter's weight falls, and don't overdo the depth — about a thumb's depth is plenty.