As with the other Guild projects I've purchased, I think this one is one I'll be referring back to quite often if I like the technique. I can't tell you how many times I've used the other Guild projects I've purchased. The Sculptured Rocker series has been used a ton by me and it introduced me to a type of construction I absolutely love. That series changed my woodworking more than anything I've purchased. The Krenov Cabinet has also been an awesome purchase as it's my go to tutorial for hand cut dovetails. I've done about 3 projects since that one that I referred back to the video series for dovetail tips. That one also introduced me to drawers with a center guide, love them now.

So, I hope to get started on this build soon, I'm in the middle of a double Maloof Rocker build (2 individual rockers, not the actual 2 seat rocker), but I'm going to start the templates on this series soon and I'll post as I go along.

Are others are as intrigued as I am? 

https://thewoodwhispererguild.com/product/hank-chair/

So, I've been woodworking for just about 2 years now. I built myself a shop in my basement that I've managed to outfit pretty well. I'm American, but I live in Germany, so I don't have access to many of the accoutrements of the US-woodworking lifestyle (read: no dado blades, etc.). So far, I've built a snazzy desk based on a video by Canadian Woodworks that turned out great. I built myself a Roubo-Bench based on Marc's awesome course. I decided to put endcaps on both ends with dovetails. I was even lucky enough to go to LA for a week with my father and do a class with William Ng. I'm really enjoying this woodworking stuff! I especially enjoy how...humbling...it can be.

Anyway, my next big project is the Morris Chair. I picked up Marc's course and watched it 4 times. I like the design, but wanted to make it just a little different, so I went searching online for some ideas. I found some old Stickley Catalogs online and saw a picture of this great Recliner, I think it was called the Tsuba. I decided to try my luck. It's significantly different from the course though. I was originally going to wing it, just trying to slightly modify what I saw in the course. That lasted about an hour. Then I decided I had to model it up. So, I fired up fusion 360 and spent a week building it. This is what I came up with. It's got lots of stuff I've never done. Bent lamination, splayed legs. Through tenons coming off of splayed legs. Cloudlifts. More cloudlifts. Tenons coming off of angled side rails.

I'm going through the same order of procedures that Marc uses and trying to predict where I'll need to change the procedure. I've already pretty much given up on doing the through tenons. They look great, but I am nearly 100% sure I would screw them up enough to make it look crappy. Beyond that, I guess I'll post pictures as I go along, in case anyone is interested. 

I'd be really happy if anyone has some advice for me. Particularly with regards to pitfalls to avoid or anything else that comes to mind.

Best wishes to everyone and happy new year! Don't lose any fingers!

Will

I am rounding the corner on my executive desk build and I am currently "Paused" at the stage of routing the profile on the top edge of desk top.  The bit I purchased, based on Marc's recommendation is a 2.5" diameter table edge bit.  I have several routers but not the size of the OF2200 that Marc used and I am now considering all of the many ways that this can go horribly wrong with my OF1400 or Bosch 1617 routers if I am to attempt it.  First off the diameter of the bit is larger than the baseplate - this was my first clue that something is wrong with what I am trying to do.  Of course I know I need to slow down the speed of the bit nearly to the #1 setting but even with that I am having doubts about spinning something that big in a handheld machine cutting into 5/4 cherry.   Has anyone completed this build and can you offer any insight into how you routed the profile.  I am leaning more now twords just doing a simple round over on top and bottom to stay safe - but if im being honest I am not sure I will really love that look - but I guess I would like that better than loosing a finger or worse trying to make the original design.  I guess I could also buy a bigger router but that is not really in the cards right now moneywise as I would want the OF2200.

TomD

To keep things interesting, I'm going to be building them all slightly different in terms of wood combinations. The one for my oldest will be purpleheart/maple, to match some other things I've built for her. My youngest is going to get one made from maple/cherry, since the cherry will go with some of the other wood tones in her room. My wife is going to get the combination, so hers will be cherry/purpleheart. I made her a jewelry rack on purpleheart years ago, and she wants it to match.

So far, all I've managed is to get to my wood dealer (it had been over a year!) and pick up my supplies. I may end up needing more maple, but I already had a bunch on the rack so I figure I'll see how it works out.

Here is the plan.

A good portion of this project will be made from walnut that I got in a batch on craig's list. A guy was selling a couple 8/4 boards for $8/bf and threw in a bunch of scraps. The scraps are 6/4 rough and should plane and joint out to a hair over an inch. I'll probably take them down a bit further though to the thinnest common board.

So far i have leg stock milled with the curve laid out and I'm working on grooves and joinery.

I'm going to do some traditional style joinery with structural dovetails tying pieces together instead of just M&T. It's going to be fun to try some new techniques.

For a warm up I made a card box to set out and hope that people put money in at our wedding reception. I'm not above begging if needed.

I'm wanting to make some hardboard templates to cut out multiple large parts using meranti marine plywood (ranging from 1/4" to 3/4"). Once my templates are complete, do you have any recommendations on router bits to trim my plywood parts to the final shape? I'm assuming a spiral bit? Should the bearing be on the top or bottle of the bit?

Thanks!

Since this is a guild project I'll be following basically Marc's instructions and I'll point out where I've deviated from his directions. Marc does a great job with this build and with my first rocker I followed his directions down to the letter. Since then I've built chairs that were from plans supplied by Charles Brock and Scott Morrison. I've picked up a few tricks from these guys and my build will be an amalgamation of what I've learned from all three. 

The wood will be some gorgeous curly hard maple from @Spanky, I'm excited to use this lumber. I ordered two batches from him and one batch is a little more curly than the other, but I think it will all look great in the end. I know one thing, I'm saving every scrap of this during the build. 

Finally, in some of my past builds many of you have asked how long it takes me for one of these builds, I'll try my best to record the time I take to complete each step and try to keep a running tally as I go. I originally thought I'd start this around Thanksgiving, but I'm getting an earlier start. This build will be slow though, as it's prime surf fishing season here in the Mid-Atlantic region, and I'll be playing hooky from work and from the shop to wet a line.

Started the project by going thru the stock and began milling the parts. The seat is made from 5 pieces, approx 4" wide and 22" long. I had a board that was 11" wide, I was able to get two 22" lengths from this board and then I was able to get two 4.25" wide boards from each length and one 2.5" wide board from each length. I glued these two thinner boards together to make the center board for the seat;

Back legs, always good to get these from the same board and I had nice grain to follow at the bottom of the leg, headrest will likely come from the piece above and the adder blocks will come from the waste between the legs;

The front legs and the arms;

The back slats, you need 7, I'll cut out 8;

The plan calls for the width of the back slats is to be 1.5", I like my slats a little skinnier, these will be around 1.25", to me wide back slats look clunky. No matter how wide the main part of the back slat is, it still goes down to a 3/8th" tenon into the headrest, so thinner back slats are not weaker;

This is my piece for the rocker laminations, unfortunately I found some bark inclusions as I was prepping. I should have enough usable material and I can work around those inclusions;

Once stock selection was completed I moved on to the 5 seat boards. Glued up the 2 skinnier boards, jointed, planed and cut to length. Once that is completed I need to cut the 3 degree bevels for the coopered seat. These bevels will be on both sides of the middle board and on the out side of both boards that join with the middle board. You can see the direction of the bevels marked on the end of the boards in this pic;

****Real quick, a point about the coopered seat, I've done these seats both ways, coopered and just flat. I do like the coopered look a little better, but it's not extreme. The flat seat also looks pretty darn good. The coopered seat is definitely an option you can use or skip.****

Cutting the bevels, table saw set at 3 degrees:

Bevels cut and marking out domino placement;

This next step is really a little tricky, you need to domino into a beveled surface on some boards. Marc does a nice job of this and cuts all his slots with the 90 degree guide on the domino retracted, and the base of the domino sitting on his workbench. This results in a domino slot positioned toward the bottom of the boards and out of the way for future sculpturing, but is very difficult to do on boards 2 and 4, as the bevel orientation makes it difficult to get a correctly positioned domino slot and have it perpendicular with the face of the board. But his technique works great for the centerboard joints.

Below is a pic of the domino cutting the slots into the centerboard, you put the domino on the bench and slightly tilt to the face is perpendicular the the joint, it's hard to see if it's tilted, but it is, the opposing surface for this joint is 90 degrees, so you simply put the domino on the bench and plunge into the 90 degree surface;

Now with the other joints, the angle of the bevel prevents you for doing what I did above. So instead I set the angle of the domino to 87 degrees and cut the slot using the fence. To do this you need to put the fence on the bottom of the board as the reference for your plunge cut; 

Charles Brock handles cutting the dominos a little differently than Marc did, and I do a mix of their techniques. 

Now that the dominos slots are cut, I assemble and cut the seat to the correct width, you do this by cutting the excess equally for both outside boards. Once the width is correct I draw the outline for sculpting the seat;

Pre-sculpting bandsaw reduction is next. I want to cut my reduction with the 90 degree side of boards 2 and 4 on the bandsaw table, in this pic you see which side is which;

I then draw a line 1" from the bottom and develop a reduction cut line from that. I take a lot off, I want a deep seat;

Here's the board on the bandsaw, 90 degree jointed surface on the table. You can also see from the above pic I've got plenty of stock over my domino slots.

The center board is tricky, you have a bevel on both sides;

You can mess with your bandsaw table and put it at 3 degrees, or you can just cut from both sides, as the cut angles toward the surface and the end result is just a ridge in the middle of the board where your 2 cuts intersect;

Here are my 3 center boards with their pre-sculpting cuts, you can see in the center board I just have a little ridge, toward the front I've cut out an outline for the pommel;

Next are the joints that are cut into the outside boards and some pre-sculpting shaping. It's easier to do some gross shaping while the boards are apart.

Almost forgot, I'm about 3.5 hours into this.

With Covid-19 zeal, I was cleaning the front of my Thermidor stove and noticed a few grease spots under the oven door. They were not quite visible but since I was on a mission, I thought why not get rid of them. So I looked up on Google and someone suggested baking powder with water for an hour as a remedy. I tried that and ended up with a bigger mess than I started with. I am not sure why the grease spots morphed into much bigger splotches. (My faith in baking soda as a harmless cleaner has been shaken for sure :-))

You can see in the attached pictures that I have blackish stains as well as "bleach like" spots. Any advice on how I can get my old floor back? I read Oxalic acid can lift stains but I am being cautious and would like expert opinion first. 

I will happily live with a few grease spots under the stove that are not visible but this discoloration has to be fixed. Thank you. 

Anu    

I am a new woodworker and have always been taught that using the fence for cross-cuts was unsafe. I am not writing to be critical. The fact is my project would turn out better if I could use the fence. Are there circumstances in which it would be OK?

I started out with a rough design. I saw years ago in a furniture store a chair with the negative shape of a cat tail in the back rest. It always appealed to me. The region I live in is dominated by wetlands that have 2 distinct species of cattail. My initial design is below.

And prototype #1, I expect there to be 3 to 4 full prototypes.

The overall look was a bit clunky and after incorporating a lot more curves into pieces that are in the same room as the chair it made more sense for the looks to be more refined. I didn't want to angled side aprons but after prototype #1 I don't see a way around it. The look of the chair was just wrong.

I went back to the drawing board and added some curves and changed a few things and had model #2 made (left chair in the image below). The dimensions of the chair are 16" from front of backrest to front of seat edge. and 18" wide at the front. This made the chair look wider than it was long and I didn't like that. I want a bit wider of a seat for comfort sake. To make the look a bit better i pulled the front width of the chair in to 17" and resigned my self to angles and narrowed the back to 15" overall width. This made all the difference in the world.

I pulled the headrest down some to leave the legs proud to shape some horns. I also narrowed the back rest a bit. The leg length is going to be 41" with the distance from floor to top of apron in the back being 1" lower than the front. This 1" lower will slope the seat back to make the chair more comfortable. I may end up goign further with this in the end, as i make prototypes I'll play with dimensions and see what I like. Bmac and I discussed the pros and cons of doing more drastic sculpting to lower the butt area or cutting the back legs. In the end there is goign to be a combination of both sculpting and leg cut. 1.5" lower represents a 5 degree negative angle which isn't drastic.

Prototype #2, you can see the changed dimensions have a large impact on looks. This is also my very first attempt at sculpting out a seat. I'll post more on this later as I'm experimenting.

The seat sculpting is tough. Getting things roughly symmetrical and trying to eliminate high spots becomes difficult. For my first attempt it seemed like I'd remove 1 high spot and create another. I tried to get some racking light on the chair to show the challenges with this technique. I'll be documenting more on the seat later as I'm going to do a second power carving alter this week.

day 1: rip to rough lenghts

day 2: rough mill to 4 1/2

day 3 glue up

I am just trying to wrap my head around how sensitive the wood’s gonna be. Thanks!

I got the hardware, going Benchcrafted, over a year ago. Over the past year made two lumber purchase, one in April(2017) and the final January(2018). I did put the build off long enough to add a jointer to my arsenal. 

For lumber choice I went with European Beech. All the research I have done says the properties are almost identical, with respect to hardness and density, to hard maple. I also picked a piece of 12/4 Walnut for the leg chop and end cap. 

Here is is my pile of sticks:

I can be sure of one thing, this will not be a fast build. I will be taking my time and try to keep my son engaged as much as possible, I want this to be his someday. 

This will be my first time doing a journal, so hopefully I can remember to keep it up to date!

Let’s Do This!! Matt

My first thought was to scan the writing and then 'reproduce it' using a CNC afterwards ?

I just wondered if there is anyone in the Wiltshire area (UK) with a CNC who could do this, or are there any better ideas ? It is a rather knarly old board, which I'd also like to retain the character of, rather than flattening out too much !

I am making this out of Sapele.  When I first started thinking about this project 3 or 4 years back I was planning on doing it in Quarter Sawn White Oak but for some reason the lumber yards around here aren't carrying much 8/4 inventory.  They are nice enough to offer to order what I need but this does give me an opportunity to select my pieces.  I have done some other projects in Sapele and have really enjoyed it and I think this will end up looking good.

Once I got the initial dimensions down I haven't used the guild plans much, I did how ever watch the videos a few times so I guess it all the same.  I am going with a little more traditional thinking in what I do so I am not tapering the legs or doing the curved feature on the bottom side of ht topside rails or the top of the bottom rails and at this time I am planning of going with the straight side pieces for the back rest.

This picture below was the inspiration for my design.  I saw these in Crater Lake Lodge in Oregon a few years ago They have about 15 of these that were made in the early 1900's

These first picture are after a lot of the basic stuff was done.  The parts are littered with my chalk and blue tape notations.

I used a veneer to cover the glue line on the legs it's just a fuzz of 1/16 inch thick.  This picture was before anything was sanded.

After this I took it apart and numbered things in inconspicuously located spots like inside the mortise and on the tenons.  Then I worked on a detail for the bottom of the bottom rails,  I kind of stole or borrowed this design from Mick's chair.  I also did a cut out detail in some of the slats.

At this point I sanded everything to 150, I will do 180 once I am done "banging" things up and before the glue up.  Everything sanded and stacked on the cart.

Before I started sanding the other things I got my first arm glued up and in the bending form.  I was hoping to stay away from urea and formaldehyde in the glue I used for this so I was looking around at information on the internet, then while listening to one of Phillip Morley's podcast, he mentioned that he used Unibond One for veneer work and he was real happy with it and it doesn't contain anything that makes you worry.  Well now I am telling you I am REAL happy with Unibond One.  It did a great job, I had just a strong 1/16 worth of spring back and my glue lines are non existent, I am just real pleased with how they came out.  I was prepared to do an edge veneer on the arms to hide glue lines if I had to but no need now. 

Close up of the arm sitting arch up on my saw table.

Both arms all cleaned up and cut to size.

I didn't want to be wasteful with the lumber and the boards I had were odd widths. Everything was 7-7/8" wide which is frustrating. So i ripped half the boards I needed with 1 extra. I then took the too narrow boards and proceeded to make them wider. This is a bench not a piece of furniture so if some glue seams show up on end grain so be it. Odds are it's not going to be noticeable. The boards I laminated to get the needed thickness were placed towards the center. I also had some boards with heavy wane. I made sure that I coordinated them within the slab and used them as the picture below shows better than I can explain.

Yep there is a big void in the center of my bench towards the bottom. Do I care? Heck no! it's going to be buried inside the bench never to be seen what does it matter?

One of the boards had some really awesome figure. So I pulled one piece of that board out to make it the front laminate. The 2nd board was used as the show face of the rear slab. The board for the rear slab was a tiny bit thin so there is a piece laminated to the bottom. I tried to grain match it some and get a similar color board. In the end it's hard to tell and I'm happy with it.

After lots of milling and emptying this thing twice,

I got al the material for the slabs milled and together. I even used cherry dominoes for alignment.

I used Marc's hit and miss planing method to somewhat straiten the boards. This worked well and left me a LOT more material than he ended up with. I was able to do my rear slab with 6 pieces instead of 7 and my front is 4 pieces with a random stick of 3/4" thrown in for some extra width. While gluing the slabs together I was worried i was going to induce a bow. These boards were NOT strait at this point. I rotated them to offset as much as possible but in the end the chance that the slabs would be strait is low. SO i stacked the deck in my favor. Bent lamination uses a form to hold a curve the opposite can also be done. So i grabbed the front laminate strip and jointed it perfectly strait. I then rotated it and clamped it along both slabs during glue up and this will ensure that the side is strait and because all the boards are an even thickness everything is parallel.

In practice this worked just as well as in theory. My 52" veritas strait edge confirmed that these guys are laser strait. I used some winding sticks and confirmed that they were free of twist.

Holy !!!!! These things are heavy!

Next up is end cap and the mortise and stuff. I trimed the front slab to length and then cut the tenon.

I glued up some walnut that I scored of C_list a while ago for cheap. This stuff was some guys shorts, and were like 18" long and perfect for this. The color ended up being surprisingly beautiful. I cut the mortise in the end cap easy peasy. I extended the mortise and am setting my bench up to be able to come apart. I don't have the BC hardware yet and will probably use this bench for a while before I buy the tail vise. I'll buy the leg vise prior to completing the bench.

So I drilled the holes in the end cap and am using some 6" long spax screws to attach it to the front slab. Now the first big OH !@$(%! moment happens.

I realized I drilled the internal hole with a 1-3/8" forstner bit instead of a 1-1/2" bit. So taking a breath I grabbed a block of walnut because it's what i had sitting in the scrap bin. I drilled a hole all the way through like 1/16", this is the guide for the forstner bits. I drilled one side with the 1-3/8" bit and the other with the 1-1/2" bit. I used the smaller bit to line up the block on the outside of the bench. I fed it through the inside as seen below.

Once i had the block lined up on the outside I used the 1-1/2" bit to drill the rest of the way through the guide block and into the end cap.

After I got a good way into the end cap i took everything apart and finished the hole on the drill press to make sure that it was strait.

Next is the dog hole strip. After reading the part on this. I decided my time was worth more than the cool factor of square dogs. So I glued up three 3/4" pieces and made the dog hole strip. To get everything lined up I ran dominoes through all 3 laminations and into the bench. The dominoes were 65mm long and this worked flawlessly.

So here we sit. As i work through this I'll hit periods where glue needs to dry. I"m going to take that time to work on the templates for the dining chairs and get the bent lamination mold for the back rest started.

This walnut color is going to look awesome with finish.

I'm getting close to finishing the Guild miter station.  I'm at the point of trying to figure out where to position the saw and the Incra T-tracks. 

Ideally, the countertop would be deep enough to fully support the piece that can be cut by the travel of the sliding miter saw.  

It looks like this won't be possible with the setup as I built it.  (It is built to the dimensions in the Guild project document, to the best of my ability.  My saw is different from the Dewalt used in the build example.)

What is the best option for the placement of this saw on this miter station?  

1. Pull the entire miter station forward, away from the wall and push the saw back.  On the plus side, this involves no extra work.  On the down side, this solution leaves a gap between the countertop and the wall, allowing dust to fall behind the cabinet.  
2. Repeat #1, except add a 3" backer board to the entire countertop (left, right and center) to fill the gap between the wall and the cabinet.  On the plus side, this provides a block for dust falling behind the cabinet.  On the down side, it's more work and the cabinet doesn't sit flush against the wall (which kind of looks nice).
3. Do nothing.  Only 3" of potential cut is left unsupported.  Looking at the completed projects on the Guild (of which 2 use the Kapex), this seems to be the option of choice.
4. Do something else that I haven't thought of or I'm completely wrong / have made a mistake in the build/dimensions, etc.  I'm willing to admit to wrongdoing.

Side Note: The completed pictures appear to show the countertop edge banding (3/4") continuing around the back of the countertop.  I haven't added this yet and it doesn't appear to be a part of the original design plan.  

After my last build, I got a small pile of 8/4 hard maple to take home with me. I was originally going to put it on the lumber rack and buy new 4/4 for this build, but eventually decided that was silly. I don't have much wood storage, and I couldn't bring myself to go buy maple when I was trying to figure out what to do with this (and it's a perfect amount for the cabinet).

Here's what I started with:

I started by cutting some of the pieces down to rough length. I need to resaw it, then I'll be gluing it up to get the width on the main case.

Now, I don't have a band saw, and everything here is six inches wide or less, so I used the table saw. The starting thickness was 1 3/4", so I should have at least 1/16" to plane off afterwards to get to a finished 3/4" thickness. All of the lumber was very flat and straight, although I had two pieces that released a bit of tension when I cut them apart.

My process is to use a feather board, the riving knife, and to have good outfeed support. I had the rip blade in the saw and took 1" on the first pass, then 3/4" on subsequent passes, with the last one only being the last 1/4". I felt comfortable doing this, but I also felt prepared that the wood could release tension in the cut.

After I finished, all the pieces for the main case were there along with some extras. I'll put them through the planer later, and then start gluing up the panels for the main case.

I'm thinking I'll simplify the joinery a bit, and forgo the miters on the dovetails since I'm still new to hand cutting them. It looks like it should be a fun build. I may add some sapele accents to match the work bench, which it will be hanging over when complete.

Air-dried walnut with ambrosia maple door and drawer, with ebony pulls.

I know and accept that this makes me a bad person.

But I just saw this on the site this AM:

https://thewoodwhispererguild.com/product/fremont-chest-of-drawers/

WOW!  That's a work of art.  I might have to buy a project, for the first time, not with the intention of making it but rather to just watch the process.  This piece looks complicated and amazing.  

I don't think I will be doing the mitered through dovetails.  It will be just plain old dovetails all around.

As well, at this point I don't think I'll be making the outer doors, mainly because I really don't have that many tools, and I figure that it will be open most of the time, so outer doors don't seem critical to me.  In the future it will be easy enough to add outer doors for when I really need them.

The main wood will be cherry.  I've had a bunch of really crappy cherry hanging around for a while that I'm hoping to use up, but when I started measuring, I realized I could really only get the doors done.  These particular boards had a lot of knots, sapwood, etc that precluded long clean stretches.  The scraps from these pieces should be useable for the internal stuff.  I ended up getting a pretty good deal on some really nice 5/4 cherry, 10' long, 11' wide and very clean.  This will be used for the main cabinet.  I didn't even really attempt to grain match as all of these boards are likely from different trees...

All I've done so far is rough cut to length, with the help of my able assistant: