Barley twist chairs

[phil]

I just got home with a set of 5 of these chairs for free from Craigslist. They have a few clean breaks which I can fix. Looks like the upholstery and webbing is original no one has sanded them or messed with the ammonia fumed finish.,they are oak I’m unsure of the date guessing 1920s ?
They are nicely made and look not too hard to do the type of work they need.

Phil

[Manalto]

Great score, Phil! I have a particular fondness for barley twist; my dining room has a pub table and chairs, both with barley twist legs - but not nearly as nice as those.

[Gothichome]

Phill I don’t think your to far off on the dating, maybe a bit earlier but not much.

[1918ColonialRevival]

I'd say 1920s is spot on. They look British.

Clean them a little and re-cover the seats and they'll be good for another hundred years. Great catch, especially for free!

[phil]

the diameter of the turnings on the back is a bit weak, two of them had a broken spindle about 2 inches up from the seat. a third had a break near the fancy diamond shape at the center of the back. I repaired one of the broken spindles and made a clamp jig so I can glue up the other broken piece. ( I couldnt fit a clamp where I needed to so I cut a block of wood with two thin strips to form a U shape that will go through the gap so I can clamp them for gluing)

the owner had reattached the spindles with one nail , no glue.. weird repair and not strong at all but it at least helped them not get broken further. very little wood was missing so I can make these repairs pretty invisibly.

I found I have a huge roll of vintage webbing so I'm ok for that. I need some burlap and Im not sure if there are different grades. I didn't want to use cheap burlap if I can get better since it is so far down in the structure and probably not expensive.

I have some leather that looks ok but it was from the back of a couch and bonded leather not top leather. Im wondering if I might be able to use shoe polish products and actually revive the original leather. maybe I could re dye it and polish it up but the seats do need to come apart for the padding and webbing to be refurbished. at least if I fix the breaks they wont get worse.

I tried bending the backs and observing how strong they are. thought of trying to inject glue into the joints or completely disassemble them and re glue them with hide glue. I think I may be best off not to open the whole can of worms by taking them apart but re-gluing every joint might make the backs a bit more stiff. Ill use epoxy for the breaks but if I were to take the joinery all apart I wouldn't use epoxy for that or they could never come apart again. they aren't' wiggly , but of course that old glue lets go as shrinkage takes place. the vertical parts of the back are not held by glue but trapped in their mortises. perhaps being able to free float allows for expansion. the legs and corner blocks all seem ok. I can see proper shrinkage of the parts that reflect upon the age and prove they were never refinished or sanded or anything. Taking them completely apart is possible but I think may not really be necessary. the best way to re-glue all the joints is with complete disassembly for cleaning of the old glue, but its a bit of work for sure. Just fixing whats broken will be easy.

I think the carvings on the back are done with some sort of machine involvement and not repwood. I imagine the maker developed a machine to do this carving with the machine following patterns of some sort. some early barley twist stuff is hand carved but I believe these are machine made. it was an adaption of a lathe that could allow the turning of spindles like this. It would be interesting to see how the lathe and early carving machinery worked.

I think they will be fine for adults to sit on , if kids were leaning back and what not then they could fail. the 6th was likely lost to breakage . they aren't the toughest chairs Ive seen but they lasted 100 years. I like that they arent' too clunky to move. I have others that are way more sturdy and older, but have porcelain wheels on the front legs and I think the wheels might just wreck the floor. those ones are deeply carved and quite nice too but perhaps suited to a larger table. what happens if the table is small and the chairs are big they all knock together.

[T. J. Albrecht]

Those chairs always impressed me, and I guess I didn't know the turning was done with a lathe, but it makes sense. Sounds like you're just the person to bring the old chairs back to life!

[phil]

wood lathes just spin the workpiece and allow the turner to attack it with chisels. a metal lathe has a toolholder that can advance automatically in two directions.

a metal lathe is capable of different feed rates so if you were making a screw that would define the pitch or number f threads per inch. the spindles are like a screw but the speed of the advance of the cutter would nee to be linked to the rotation and it would advance ( across the length) too quickly to be controllable. If you were to make the cutter move across like that is isnt' practical. you could however mount a router to the lathe and screw it across slowly.

I had a jig for making barley twists with a router. it clamped a post and then youd turn a hand crank and with cables it would turn and advance the router in proportion. so instead of the spindle spinning at a high rate it would be turned by hand and the router would do the cutting. I never really used this jig so I sold it. it was made by craftsman in about 1970 or so. I remember an old TV commercial advertising it ,. I think he was making porch spindles. I figured it wasn't that precision, probably worked for bulky porch posts but for furniture you'd want a bit more precision. I suspect the chair factory had a better machine than that. Routers took a while so perhaps the chairs predate a router but i dont think they predate machinery.
I have a nice gate leg table that I think is hand carved barley twist. If you feel them and they have inconsistencies it indicated hand work. one thing many dont see when they first look at this type of furniture is that they ran the twists in different directions to compliment each other. I think my gate leg table has 6 spindles and at least two run the opposite direction to the rest.

Ive seen my dad show how to take chairs apart and reglue them. He'd glue all the joints at once and use a lot of different clamps. It is important that is is square and not racked.

to get those old hoof glue joints apart is usualy easy If you just give them a whack the glue often just breaks free. that old glue is activated and can be resoftened with heat and humidity.
I found an old chunk fo stuff. it was amber a sheet with a logo on it. I thought the stuff was really old shellac in sheet form but I put it in alcohol and nothing dissolved.
now I think it's old glue. they had a glue pot with a little alcohol burner and I think they put water and the glue in and kept it warm all day long.

he had a story about one of the workers making tea for the boss. he took the glue pot spoon and stirred his tea and gave it to the boss. He said the boss took the cup and said "sssippp... mmm takes an englisman to make tea" my dad and the other workers of course were laughing knowing which spoon he used..