C'est la vie, life gets in the way, blah, blah, blah.
It still is fun, though.
I scrapped the idea of building a pair of chairs, because I think doubling the work here is just begging for not one, but two unfinished projects. Instead, I am going for a single Welsh stick chair, but as a side chair this time. There doesn't seem to be too many of those on the internet out there, so here's mine.
The first thing I did was choose which piece of elm to use. I wound up using the smallest one, because I liked the grain on this one. I figure a side chair can be a little narrower than the arm chair was, so this one will have the grain going fore and aft just like my last chair.
Look! A piece of wood. |
The rake angle of the back legs on my other chair look a bit weak to my eye. |
I decided to start this with my scrub plane, taking heavy shavings across the grain in the center of the board to start.
Scrubbing across the grain. |
My beloved Veritas BU jack. |
My badass Krenov style jointer. |
As an aside, I followed Drew Langsner's instructions on the last chair, including the angles for rake and splay, and found the angles a tad on the conservative side. The back legs especially didn't have enough rake for my taste, so I decided to go radical on this chair. This chair's rake and splay will look extremely rustic. I can't wait to see if it looks good or not.
I spent a little time here laying out my idea for a chair seat.
Starting the layout. |
Layout done, ready to drill some holes! |
Look ma! I'm drilling a hole! |
A word about this smoked oak: it is cool. I paid a bit extra at the lumber yard for this, but figured it was worth it as opposed to fuming the oak myself. It was a little less than 8/4 rough, and is dark the whole way through. The guy at the yard said they do it with some kind of vacuum process. I'm impressed. It reminds me of working with wenge. This should make for a fairly un-traditional look.
Unless I get a unexpected session in the shop tonight, that will do it for today.
Here is today's progress. |
Easy, right?
I almost forgot! If you have been building a chair this month, or intend to, send me some pics or a link to your website. Life happens, and several of the folks who let me know they wanted to build this month haven't been able to for one reason or another. That's OK, though, because Ray Schwanenberger is well on his way to making us all look bad with his build. He started this project with a big cast on his foot, and looks to know what he is doing.
Ray has been steam bending. |
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