The Travis Curtis Experience

‘I don’t care, it’s not MY chair’

Since the beginning of June I’ve been in and out of Covington traveling for both work and vacation, which means I’ve barely been at my bench. But last week I was able to refresh the callouses on my hands at a shavehorse at Greg Pennington’s workshop.

An exclusive group of high-profile woodworkers have a secret chair camp once a year, and this year, they decided to invite me (God knows why). This year, Travis Curtis taught the group how to build a Jennie chair¹ – a chair that I’ve grown up around and a variation of which I have in my home.

Billy and Bean love this chair.

This was a five-day class full of techniques that were unfamiliar to me: using and making a jig to drill legs, being extroverted for 15 hours straight, working with green wood, splitting logs, using and making bending forms, weaving and not picking up a handplane through the whole process (my poor block plane stayed put in the cat sock it traveled in).

We’d get to the shop 8 a.m. sharp, have coffee and a delicious treat that Travis would make and bring every day, then get to work.

I had met everyone in the group before but I still found myself nervous and feeling like the runt of the litter. The only other time I’ve worked side by side with people while trying to keep up with them was in the workshop at Willard where my dad was teaching us. I was worried I’d lose some sort of confidence that I only had in the Willard shop. Luckily, I was able to pull myself together every morning and turn my learning brain on for the full day. I didn’t beat myself up when I had to ask Travis to re-explain something that the others understood immediately. It also helped that Travis is an amazing teacher and a very patient person who never leaves a student behind before moving on to the next step.

My spokeshave and I became quite close in this time; same as with the drawknife Travis let me borrow. Almost every step started with the drawknife for shaping, and ended with the spokeshave for cleanup.

I grew in this class. I found myself truly not worrying about cleaning up tear-out and ugly bits after each step. And I’ve also accepted that tear-out and cracks will almost always happen. Greg and Travis told us that about 25 percent of Jennie chairs develop a crack at some stage. Our special group outdid ourselves and got that number to 80 percent for this gaggle of chairs! But not because of user error (wink); wood does as it pleases – as we all know.

Don’t you dare zoom in on that mortise.

We had longs days at Greg’s shop that consisted of 70 percent work and 30 percent eating (and drinking…) and when we got back to the Air BnB, we had a drinking session with shop talk for an hour before bed.

This was way more woodworking in a single day than I was used to back in Covington. It felt good to keep focused on the craft and really lean into it, but I was also drooling over the idea of going full fetal position in bed. I admire how passionate this group of experts is about building chairs and was excited to be part of it.

The day came to assemble our chairs. I found that this glue-up felt more straightforward to me; I think having no through-tenons to be wedged was a big factor. You can really whale on this chair when putting the sticks into the legs. I thought for sure Travis was going to snap one of the stretchers during his demo. But nope. The beast of a seven-pound chair just took it.

There also wasn’t as much wrestling with the chair trying to get the tenons into the mortises. This was thanks to the jig Travis uses to drill the mortises in the legs.

The different skills I learn every time I enter Greg’s workshop is baffling to me. I think the AC blasting and the dad jokes act as an upper of sorts…

Have I turned the corner into dark and mysterious Spokeshave Alley? Absolutely. My spokeshave is creeping up on my list of favorite tools in my chest.

Will I be building my own shavehorse? Unclear…

Greg and Travis were curious how we felt about the shavehorse after riding that baby all weekend. We all creaked our sore backs to look at him asking if it’s normal for our posture to be this bad afterward. The answer was yes, and it doesn’t get easier.

So for now I will stick to my vise on my workbench and visit ol’ Bessie at Greg’s whenever I need a good shavehorse session. ²

So many fun memories were made over this weekend, and also lots of great pictures.

Here’s a compilation of “The Grudge” building a chair.

I was channeling Blanket Jackson.

Twinning with left-handed Bestie!

Before I left, I gave Travis a hug and a handshake, and told him how glad I am I got to know him better.

“Never heard that one before.”

–Katherine

1. Editor’s note: If you want to make a Jennie chair, I recommend what we affectionately call MACFAT.

2. I (Megan) just told Katherine we have a shavehorse in the basement. She did not express delight.