The Traveller

This project started after I spotted a piece of old Victorian campaign folding furniture in an antique shop in Cirencester.

A few years ago I made a basic model of a boot jack for Pam out of reclaimed cedar floor boards. The WWW branded into the wood stands for the Wooden Welly Wemover, the mythical company that has made a number of these boot jacks from an assortment of wood.

The folding model looked like an interesting challenge further constrained by wanting to use our own reclaimed wood. We have an old oak single bed head that we have already partly cannibalised, and this bed post looked like a possible source.

The first step was to turn the post into a usable plank which took many hours of planing. The post had already split in half, which reduced the work.

I then created a vector-based design and built a prototype in pine, and refined the template. The two halves had to be carefully shaped to be mirror images of each other. Although this design was based on the Victorian boot jack, it incorporated aspects of the original. In particular, it tapers slightly and the slot for the boot has a curved wedge to better grip the boot.

The hardest part was making rebates for the brass hinges, and positioning the hinges to get the ideal movement. The feet were cut from a piece of 100-year-old oak left over from when I trimmed down our hall stand. The deep rebates for the feet took almost a day to saw, chisel and smooth as the tolerances were quite fine.

Folded, a view from the top:

There are some beautiful curves:

Finally, the finished product, given a protective coating of home-made bees wax polish:

For comparison, the two models are shown together:

Click on the following to see the brochure that accompanies the item: