Tuesday, September 24, 2013

Making a dining chair - part two

Once the seat was scooped, it was time to start thinking about the legs. I actually propped the seat on a shop stool to just see how it felt on my rear end. 

It felt great! I'd made a couple of sample legs, to test how they fit into those notches on the seat and to experiment with the back angle. 


I'd decided decided on a 15° angle. So I dug out a nice piece of Ash and started laying them out. 


It's a little bit tricky, but if you're careful you can actually nest two pieces side-by-side and get two pieces out of a board that's about 7 inches wide. 


Which is what I did here.


Once the first piece is cut away, you can use the same fence setting to cut your second piece. You have to be careful that you don't intersect the two cuts with each other, or you'll get an overcut. 

Which is why they're connected on that center piece. I finished that cut using the bandsaw.





Using a dado blade, I cut the notches that fit around that seat blank. They fit in perfectly, and a clamp allowed me to actually sit on the chair.


 Carefully.


 These chairs match a dining room table that I made a while ago, and the legs on that table have six sides.  I wanted to match the legs of this chair with that table, so I took out a hand plane and shaped profiles that I needed. 

What?!

No, I didn't use a hand plane. Luckily I had a 30° chamfer bit for the router.  


 The last thing I did was cut some stretchers to go between the legs. Yes - I could've cut mortise and tenons to tie everything together, but I decided that to use the Festool Domino and employ floating tenons. The Domino is perfect for something like this... 

...and now it's time to start curving the back. I'll be using an old trick of Tage Frids - stay tuned!

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