Chairs for beginners


bbaude

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Hey folks,

Every time I think about building chairs, I get creeped out and intimidated.  Do you guys have a recommendation on a chair design that would be a good starter? Maybe with less curves or complex joinery. Or even plans?

Thanks in advance.

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Another thing you can do is look around in the furniture stores and find a simple design that you like and buy just one chair.  Most chairs at most stores can be purchased individually and a lot of them are made over seas out of rubber wood or para wood so they aren't very expensive.  Then you can disassemble it and see how it was made and use some of the parts as templets.  Reverse engineering or reverse woodworking as the case may be.

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I really hate to be "that" guy but Marc's guild build on chairs was very informative. It covered how to design the chair as much as how to build the chair. Floating tenons for chairs is your friend was my major take away. With a couple simple techniques angles become a non-issue.

Otherwise take a tape measure and head to a furniture store, if they ask questions just say that your trying to match chairs to a table.

I always want to tell the furniture store employees that i buy more when i don't have a sales person following me around like a puppy.

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looking at dinning room chairs frankly...and simple is even better.  Most of the designs I have seen would be tough for me as I haven't made the splash for a bandsaw in part because I want to start with a decent one out of the gate. Will check the guild project. I'm comfy with floating tenons too.

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19 minutes ago, bbaude said:

looking at dinning room chairs frankly...and simple is even better.  Most of the designs I have seen would be tough for me as I haven't made the splash for a bandsaw in part because I want to start with a decent one out of the gate. Will check the guild project. I'm comfy with floating tenons too.

There is always a way around a band saw and your going to need it for the dining room chairs. Strait rear leg chairs are not comfortable, i learned this the hard way. Making rear legs and back rest from separate pieces is not easy either. For a band saw workaround a jigsaw and template routing is your best bet. Hand saw is another option but i think it's obvious why that's a bad idea.

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27 minutes ago, bbaude said:

looking at dinning room chairs frankly...and simple is even better.  Most of the designs I have seen would be tough for me as I haven't made the splash for a bandsaw in part because I want to start with a decent one out of the gate. Will check the guild project. I'm comfy with floating tenons too.

It sounds to me, that your looking for a chair design like a Shaker ladderback chair.  Try Goggleing that.

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It can be done, so don't get me wrong here...but I'd say your intimidation is very warranted.  Chairs are advanced projects and I personally wouldn't even think about dining chairs without a bandsaw. 

I don't have the 50k shop that some guys here have, but my tooling is "complete."  Last year I bought dining chairs from Wayfair.

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