About 550 people a year study at The Windsor Institute. Having read about our classes and being in the area, even more people stop by to visit. Both students and visitors ask the same question with great frequency. "How did this all come about?" Their reaction does not surprise me. When I look back at what I started these many years ago, I too am surprised by how big it all has become. Having so often described how the Windsor Revival came about, I decided to write its history. The account begins with the very first Windsor chairmaking class ever held anywhere in the world.

The Windsor Revival was born the evening of January 28, 1980 when I received a call from Dale Nish the chairman of the woodworking department at Brigham Young University. He explained that he was organizing a conference to be called Woodworking West/State of the Art '80 that was to be held that May. It would be a follow up to the Wood '79 conference that had been held the year before at the State University of New York at Purchase. Being the author of two books - one on Windsor chairs and another about old tools - Dale invited me to be a presenter. Since very few woodworkers knew what a Windsor was, he felt I would help round out the program.

Later that evening Dale called again and said a lot of people were very curious about these Windsor chairs I was making. Would I be willing to stay the week following the conference and teach a chairmaking class? I jumped at the chance. It had taken almost a third of my then young life to resurrect the dead craft of Windsor chairmaking. I feared that if anything happened to me the craft would again be lost and I had been pondering how I could ensure its survival. Teaching a class seemed a workable solution. I had never done this before. In fact, no one had ever done this before. I would have to figure it out from scratch. We agreed to limit the class to 20 people. I promised I would provide Dale with a list of tools and materials he would need to obtain. A couple of weeks later Dale called again. The class was full. Would I be willing to stay another week and teach a second class of the same size? I agreed.

The conference was wonderful. I met Tage Frid, Bruce Hoadley, Garry Knox Bennet, David Ellsworth, Art Carpenter, Wendell Castle, and a host of other well known woodworkers. I was only 33 years old and was thrilled to be a part of such a renowned company.

Woodworking West brochure.

Brochure for the first ever Windsor chairmaking class.

I chose my production sack back as the project for the two classes. Sack back is a challenging chair, but its back is built in stages. Each stage is referenced from the previous. This makes the sack back much easier for the novice chairmaker. Other chairs such as the continuous arm require the ability to envision the finished chair and accomplish it independent of any reference.

The first class started out as a disaster. I had no idea it was going to be this difficult. We began as we still do today by making and bending our arms and bows. Dale had bought new drawknives and wooden spoke shaves from a woodworking tool catalog. These tools did not behave at all like mine, which were antiques. Instead of taking long uniform slicing cuts, the new draw knives dove into the wood. The spoke shave cutters kept pulling loose instead of cutting straight, fine shavings.

I examined the tools and discovered that the draw knives were ground like chisels, which was all wrong. The spoke shave bodies had a round sole instead of a flat one like mine, and their cutters had square tangs loosely fitted into round holes. Every time a student pulled on a shave the body would roll forward on the sole and the shaving would yank the cutter loose. The students were all very frustrated. I did some quick and dirty surgery on the tools. I was able to slightly round the draw knife blades with a file and with some sandpaper on a block of wood. I jointed the spoke shave bodies on a hand plane and glued on new soles. We stuffed shavings around the tangs so they would hold better in the round holes. The tools now worked, although just barely.

Next, the students had to turn their legs and other turned parts. I had not realized that so few people knew how to turn. The students spent hours trying to make just one leg. Their efforts to duplicate the first leg were disasters. There were not enough lathes for everyone and lines formed as the students occupying the machines struggled for hours at a craft they did not know. The delay at the lathes forced the students to work late into the evening of the first day, and most still did not finish their turnings.

The next day the students were exhausted, but gamely went back to work. We began making the seats. Once again, the tools Dale had purchased from the tool catalog would not work. Instead of clearing thick, heavy chips, the adzes chopped straight into the wood like an ax, leaving deep half-moon marks in the surface. The scorps would only scratch the surface of the wood instead of slicing uniform shavings.

Again I examined the tools. Instead of a knife edge, the adzes too, were ground like chisels. The head's angle to the handle was too open resulting in the chopping action. To create the proper cutting angle students had to bend their wrists so much that they had very little control over the tool. A scorp too should have a knife edge. However, these tools were also ground like chisels. The grinding was so coarse the tools had a heavy wire edge and were not even close to sharp. The blades were bent to a U shape with the bottom of the U being nearly straight. How could such a tool be used to work a concave surface such as a chair seat?

These crises required another round of emergency, meatball surgeries to make the tools work. While I could make rough alterations to their improper chisel edges, I could do nothing about their incorrect shapes. I placed my personal tools on a bench and invited the class to use them. My tools endured a lot of wear and tear over those two weeks.

People who could not get to a lathe the first day, again worked into the wee hours of the morning. Wednesday, everyone was exhausted and testy.

With the parts completed, we began to assemble. I quickly discovered I was unable to explain to people how to drill holes at angles. I did it intuitively, just like the original makers in the 18th century. Telling the students to "Just do it like this," was not sufficient. Hole angles were all over the place and legs were all akimbo.

Somehow I made it through the first week. For all of us it had been more of an ordeal than a class. When we wrapped up on Friday evening many chairs were still incomplete. Incredibly, everyone was all smiles and basking in a real sense of accomplishment.

Two of the students who took that first class.
Notice the problems with the legs.

The second week was a repeat of the first. It too was like running a Marathon. Turning was again a disaster. The tools Dale had bought did not need to be altered a second time, but they still worked very poorly. My tools were again passed from student to student. Although the students were exhausted and most did not complete their chairs, they too, felt a deep sense of satisfaction.

When I returned home I called John Kelsey, the editor at Fine Woodworking magazine. He too, had been at the conference and we had spent some time together discussing some books he wanted me to write for Taunton Press. I complained to John about the tools we had worked with and argued it was a shame that such junk was being passed off as woodworking tools. It was no wonder that most woodworkers were unable to use hand tools, I said. The fault wasn't theirs. It belonged with the tool manufacturers and the tool sellers. I argued that John should use Fine Woodworking's stature and credibility to prod manufacturers into producing better quality tools. He agreed to give it some thought.

Several days later I received a call from a fellow in Ohio named Ernie Conover. Ernie and his father Bud, ran a catalog company that sold woodworking tools. With a strong manufacturing and machine tool background, Ernie and Bud had begun to produce their own line of tools. For example, the pair developed the well-known wood threading tap and die set that has since been flagrantly knocked off by other companies. Ernie told me he had been contacted by John Kelsey and that he wanted to explore with me the possibility of manufacturing quality chairmaking tools.

To be sure the Conovers wanted to commit their company to this venture, Bud flew out to visit me and to see my tools. Next, I flew out to Ohio to visit Ernie. I spent the afternoon at their business showing my tools to Bud and Ernie. I pointed out the features that made my antique tools so efficient to use and comfortable to hold. I realized that I really liked Ernie. He had a hearty laugh and an endless repertoire of corny jokes. However, it was our mutual concern for quality and doing things the right way that made us kindred spirits.

That evening Ernie broke open a bottle of scotch and we sat down in his parlor to chat. He knew of my books and had seen me on the Fall 1976 Woodcraft Supply cover. He knew that I had revived the long-dead craft of Windsor chairmaking. Like most people, he wondered how I had started making what to most woodworkers was an unknown furniture form. He also asked what I had been up to lately.

I told him about the Windsor chairmaking class I had developed for BYU and of my recent experiences doing it twice. Ernie mused aloud that such a class might have a broader appeal and suggested we work together to develop a program of Windsor chairmaking classes. The agony of my BYU experience had faded sufficiently from memory and so I agreed. Dunbar-Conover Workshops was born in Ernie's living room and the new-born Windsor Revival experienced a growth spurt. Little did Ernie and I appreciate at the time that we were pioneering the woodworking workshop movement that has grown so large in two decades.

Ernie arranged to rent the art room at nearby Hiram College to use as a work shop. Students were housed in the college's dormitories. We scheduled our first class for March 1981 during Hiram's spring vacation.

A young Mike Dunbar teaches a class at Hiram College.

To run the class we needed lathes. I drove out to Ohio with mine in the back of my truck. Ernie bought and reconditioned two more old lathes and borrowed a fourth from a neighbor. Along with one of his Amish employees Ernie and I cut down a red oak and a maple on his father's land. We hauled the logs out of the woods in a trailer.

The class was small, perhaps only eight students. We experienced some of the same problems as at BYU. No one knew how to turn, and making the legs and other parts required working late into the night. The students and I were soon exhausted. Although scheduled to run Monday through Friday, we worked Saturday morning. Still, most did not finish their chairs. However, as at BYU everyone was smiling and full of pride at the end of the week. They had climbed the Everest of woodworking and were standing at the summit.

A couple of months after my first class with Ernie I returned to BYU for another two weeks of classes. I taught a sack back class the first week. The second, I introduced the new continuous arm class I had developed. Some students stayed for both weeks and made both chairs. The new class also attracted some of the students back from the previous year.

Teaching my continuous arm course at Hiram College.

Because Ernie had not yet developed his line of chairmaking tools, these classes were also forced to work with the tools Dale had bought the year before. As before, the class was as exhausting to teach as it was to attend. As I look back on the experience I am surprised at how persistent I was. If I had not been so much in love with Windsor chairs I would have quit. The whole Windsor Revival would have folded up and never happened. It also helped that I was young then, and much more energetic.

Summer 1982 Ernie and I ran a program of chairmaking classes that included the sack back and continuous arm. As at BYU, we found that people took advantage of the opportunity to do two classes in a row. We also found that people from the previous year returned for the new chair. By now Ernie had developed his line of chairmaking tools and had introduced copies of my scorp, draw knife, wooden spoke shave, spoon bits, and reamer. Having a steady supply of chairmaker tools available made teaching classes easier. However, each student still had to do the turnings. The five day class remained long and grueling and very few people actually finished their chair. Most took home parts hoping to complete the project there.

A Conover brochure advertising a line of Mike Dunbar Windsor chairmaking tools.

A brochure for the Dunbar-Conover School.

After teaching at our own school during the summer of 1982 I once more took to the road. I taught a series of classes for the old Cutting Edge stores in San Diego, Los Angeles, and Berkley, California, traveling from city to city in a three week stint. I taught my sack back class at numerous other places such as Wendell Castle's workshop in up state New York. All this practice made my class easier to run and I was getting much better at it. However, still doing their own turnings, most students could not complete the chair in a week.

A class at one of the Cutting Edge stores.

At about this time I also developed a one and two-day seminar that I began to offer. In this presentation I explained and demonstrated how to make a chair but instead of working with me, the audience just watched. This format was most suitable for large groups such as woodworking clubs and allowed me to introduce Windsor chairs to far more people at one time. In only a couple of years after BYU several thousands of woodworkers across the country had at least a basic understanding about Windsor construction.

Mike showing a class how to turn a baluster leg. Most students do not know how to turn. As a result, chairmaking classes were exhausting experiences for students and teacher alike.

In 1983 Ernie and I decided to address the turning problem. We felt we could eliminate the late nights and have more people complete their chairs by substituting my baluster leg with the simpler, double-bobbin style. It did not work. Each time we introduced the new, simpler turning the following discussion inevitably ensued:

Student: "Why aren't we doing the fancy leg?"

Me: "Because so few people know how to turn and it takes so long to make the baluster."

Student: "I want to do the fancy leg."

Me: "Do you have a lot of turning experience?"

Student: "No, but I want to do the fancy leg."

My youthful exuberance finally ran out. I informed Ernie I did not want to teach any longer. There was too much resistance to the simpler leg and classes that did the baluster turnings were just too exhausting. I said that I could stay home and by making two chairs a week earn more than I did teaching. Fortunately, Ernie was more wedded to continuing than I was. He asked what we could do to make the class easier? I proposed that we require students to bring their turnings with them. Ernie pointed out that students who could not turn in class would have no better luck at home where they had no assistance at all.

A sack back with the simpler double-bobbin legs. There was a great deal of resistance to the legs. Even though they did not know how to turn, students wanted to use the baluster form.

I mused that perhaps we could find a way to do the turnings for them. Ernie liked that idea. I turned the patterns and he took them to a job turner, who made sets for us. The first class we ran with the prepared turnings was a joy for everyone. Without the ordeal of turning, the class could focus on just making a chair. With no more late nights, we began each day well rested. Above all, everyone completed his or her chair by Friday afternoon. We had finally perfected the formula.

Ernie and I continued to run our summer program and during the rest of the year I traveled all over the country teaching in other locations. Wherever I went Ernie shipped turnings and tools in advance. My classes were fun and everyone finished the chair.

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