The Furniture Institute of Massachusetts

Now Available IN DVD

Creating plans for superior results

This is really an overview of measuring and build a Queen Anne Chair Reproducing a piece of furniture can be a challenge when you don’t have a set of plans. In this video, Phil Lowe shows you how to take measurements off an existing piece, create a set of plans, and then reproduce the piece in the workshop. You’ll learn how to make simple aids to take measurements without damaging the furniture and how to use these measurements to make a set of full-size plans. You’ll see how to:

• make freehand sketches
• use story sticks to find dimensions
• scribe profiles of curved parts
• measure and analyze hidden joinery
• make templates from your drawings
• use templates to rough-out parts

Now Available IN DVD

Making a hallmark of 18th-century furniture

The ball-and-claw foot, combined with the cabriole leg, is a hallmark of 18th-century furniture. Here, Phil Lowe shows you how to design and carve the version made popular in Colonial Philadelphia.

You will learn about:

•The history of the cabriole leg
• making leg-profile patterns
• refining the shapes with spokeshaves, rasps and files
• laying out the ball and claw on the foot of the blank
• rough-carving with straight and spoon gouges
• sharpening carving tools
• rounding out the legs scraping and varnishing