These laser-cut templates are a supplement to the instructions in “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition.” If you own the book, there is an entire chapter devoted to making your own templates with trammels and a ruler. In other words, you don’t have to own these templates to make the chair.
Why offer them? To remove one more barrier to you making a chair. The templates are laser cut from MDF, so they'll last through many chairs. The templates contain all the important information you need to lay out your parts: the mortise locations, the sightlines, resultants and even the shape of the seat’s pommel. They are a shortcut. Plus they are a jumping-off point for developing your own designs for arms, crests and seats. When Christopher Schwarz develops a new chair, he usually begins with existing templates.
The templates are made up the road, just north of Cincinnati; they were developed by Ed Sutton at FirstLightWorks.
Note that the templates are a supplement to the instructions in “The Anarchist’s Design Book: Expanded Edition.” If you are a beginning chairmaker, you will need the book to guide you through the construction process.