Throw an -ion Party (Construction, Instruction & Indigestion)

Plus 2 plans for Irish chairs.

I’m not much fun at parties, mostly because I’m always thinking about how I’d rather be in the workshop instead of playing “slap the bag.”

But I like to do things with friends. So since 2010, I’ve thrown a fair number of multi-day ragers at my house where we take a bunch of X (that is, we take “extra” care with sharp tools), get lubed up (jojoba oil or paraffin for your plane sole) and work some wood (that is – oh never mind, you get it).

We build stuff together. Teach each other a thing or two about what we know. And we eat ourselves ill.

Pretty much every year, I throw one of these parties. We’ve built sawbenches, six-board chests, Milkman workbenches, coffins and lots and lots of chairs.

Last week, we hosted a get-together in my shop and built Irish chairs with members of our editorial staff (Megan, Kale and Katherine) and three woodworkers who are You Tube famous: James Wright of Wood by Wright, Rex Krueger and –all the way from Ireland – Eoin Reardon.

I’d met James once in person, but I hadn’t met Rex or Eoin (pronounced “Owen”). If you aren’t familiar with them, they’re the cream of the crop of the next generation of hand tool missionaries. None take sponsorships money from tool companies, and all three of them are dedicated to preserving the craft and are generous with their time and knowledge.

While all three are great at teaching hand work, they each have their strengths.

James has an analytical mind, and he puts it to work to answer seemingly unanswerable questions such as: Who makes the best-holding glue? Who makes the most durable chisel? And James goes to enormous lengths – some of his tests take years – to collect data. And he freely shares his fire hoses of information with everyone.

For a good taste of James’ work, check out this video on testing handplane blades.

Also, James has done every kind of job and been everywhere on the planet. Ask him about the chicken noodle soup he ate in China.

Rex is a former college English lecturer and approaches the craft through a historical lens. He’s well-read and always gets right to the point. His Instagram posts are amazing in how much information he can pack into a short amount of video. Then watch this great video “Woodworking was WORK. What Happened?” So many people (even our machinist) sent me a link to this video. Good stuff. Thought provoking and well researched.

And then there’s Eoin Reardon. He’s 24 and was most recently a receptionist at a shopping center. That’s when his Tik-Tok channel blew up to more than 1 million viewers. You can now find him also on You Tube and Instagram. I don’t know how Eoin will take this compliment, but he’s like a young Roy Underhill. He’s charismatic, and his videos are fun to watch, even if you aren’t a woodworker. Eoin is also passionate about Irish history and crafts, so his videos are peek at a world most people never get to see.

So we built some chairs together. Because of a nasty winter storm and travel delays, we lost almost two days in the shop. But everybody hit the tools hard and finished their chairs on Friday afternoon. During the upcoming weeks and months, they’ll be rolling out videos on You Tube about making the chairs, so I recommend you subscribe to their channels if you want to learn to build these chairs.

I was too busy building and helping others to shoot any video, so my contribution to the project are the following full-size patterns for the two Irish chairs. For the get-together, I drew up plans for two stick chairs I’ve been meaning to build: the Chapel Lane stick chair and the Slane hedge chair.¹

Patterns for the Chapel Lane chair:

https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/chapellane-irish-chair-full-size-plans-24-x-36-sheet.pdf

Patterns for the Slane Hedge chair:

https://blog.lostartpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/01/Slane-Irish-Chair-24-x-36-pattern.pdf

Here are some construction details on the chairs.

Chapel Lane. This looks like a simple chair, but it ain’t. The five back sticks are all drilled at compound angles so the back tilts 15° and the sticks fan out. The seat is insanely thick (more than 3"). Just use the thickest board you have for the seat; that’s the point. The seat is so thick that someone started calling it the “badonkadonk” chair. This chair holds a fairly largish person and sits best when there’s a sheepskin on it.

The Slane Chair. It’s similar to the chair I made for “American Peasant,” but it has pure Irish roots. I first encountered this form in Mark Jenkinson’s cider barn in Slane, Ireland. This chair is built using “sandwich drilling” and can be made in a day or two. It is surprising comfortable. The arms hug the sitter. So if you are blessed with great badonkadonk, I recommend making the seat 2" to 4" wider (and lengthening the backrest pieces by the same amount).

Oh, and we ate. Gluttony is key to the week. Highlights included Sacred Beast restaurant (get the Dirty French), Olla for Mexican food, Eli’s barbecue and Taglio for Detroit-style pizza. (Plus Pepto-Bismol to wash it all down.)

The three left this morning to hit Homestead Heritage in Millersburg, Ohio – the best hand-tool shop in the world. Then James and Eoin will travel to Washington, D.C., Colonial Williamsburg and the Mid-West Tool Collectors Association’s Peach Meet. Plus James promises to take Eoin to Buc-ees, which might just blow his Irish mind.

Here’s the lesson: You can throw an event like this, too. I highly recommend it. I’ve used these events to bring together old friends, to work out construction problems with a new design of mine or simply to have a week where I didn’t look at the computer.

I’m already thinking about planning an event for next year. Something that Chris Williams and I have been dreaming about for years. Here’s the gist: Take one part “Robinson Crusoe.” Add a dash of “Lord of the Flies.” Maybe some “Pitmasters.” Then build some chairs using only found materials and improvised tools.

1. How do I know they’re Irish? I’ve encountered these forms many times in Ireland. Similar ones show up in the United Kingdom, but they are rare there. How do these chairs get a fancy name like “Chapel Lane?” That’s simply where I first encountered the chair or measured it.