Stick Chairs - Days 4 and 4 1/2

Day 4 was pretty awesome.  In fact, it was so awesome, that we finally drug ourselves inside from the shop around midnight.  That made things a bit late to be fair with a proper blog post, so here it is today, instead.

I decided to stick around and do a little bit more on day 5 in the morning before packing everything up for the long drive home. 

In pictures, here's what happened:

Jonas leveling his bench preparing to cut the legs to length.

Me gluing a tenon getting with hot hide glue.

Jonas is holding the seat stable for me while I pound the legs home.

Leg seated.

Time to run some stick stock through the planer!

Olav working on his legs.

Mrs. Mulesaw and Asger trying out Jonas' bench now that it is at final the height.

Working on my sticks.

Olav is working on a reproduction from a photograph.  It had tapered, round legs.  The most efficient way to do this with this splintery ash was to plane them octagonal, and sand them round on the lathe.

Shaving my sticks round. 

What a nice coffee table!

Us adults didn't hog all of the fun!  Here Asger is smoothing a pine board.

Half of my sticks are rounded!

I found this to be a good technique for shaving thin stock at the bench.  I am supporting the thin wood with my thumb, but keeping it behind the blade, otherwise the end of the stick doesn't get shaped.

I used a round scraper after shaving.

Yes, even professionals refer to the plans every once in a while.

Meanwhile, Jonas is moving along. 

Here is a close-up of a wedged leg near where the hoop pierces the seat.

I suppose I should quit goofing off and start working on my arm rail, too!

Jonas drilled all of his stick holes by eye.

Olav referring to the photo of the original he is reproducing along with the John Brown book.

I needed to cut a lap joint for my laminated arm rail.

Meanwhile, Jonas is moving right along.

That is about as far as we got on day 4, which was officially our last day.  But we did get to sneak in a little more work the next morning.

Jonas showed me one of his chests that he built out of pallet wood while on board his ship.  It is even more impressive in real life than in the photos from his blog!

Here is the rough shape of my arm rail.  It is resting on some temporary mounting blocks.

Jonas' bench all but done.  Supposedly a settee takes twice as long as a chair to build.  Jonas got farther than I did, and I expect his chair will have finish on it in no time.

Time for me to cut my legs to length.

Olav testing his seat after cutting his legs to length.

At this point I really had to get on the road, so I loaded up the car and took off.  Jonas' parents invited me to pop in on them on the way home, which was about two hours away, but on the way home. 

They have an absolutely gorgeous house converted from an old one-room school house.  They have furnished it with a collection of some of the finest Scandinavian furniture I have ever seen.  One such piece is this fantastic Windsor rocking chair from Sweden.  It is very much like one in a photo of a Swedish Windsor in Drew Langsner's book.

Swedish rocking Windsor.

I couldn't figure out how the seat was constructed, so I peeked underneath.  The seat is actually coopered.  There are several boards glued up at angles with the grain going side to side.  The top is smoothed out and lacquered to complete this dramatic shape.

There is only a little left to do on the chair at home before mine is complete.  I need to drill the holes and insert the sticks, shape the crest and apply finish.

Hopefully I'll get to post pictures of the completed chair soon.