Sculptured Chair

[wtnhighlander]

I think you are safe. Nice job on the repair!

[Chestnut]

I've done repairs like this and they have worked for me. If the repair did fail again it was never where i did the fix.

[Bmac]

Well I thought the repair would be fine, but it was sure reassuring to hear others agree. I would assume like Drew said that if it were to break again it would not break at the repair. 

Well got the first coat of finish on the walnut chair, few pics;

Just about 6 more coats of finish to go before I can show off the final result.

[lewisc]

Looking great. It's always fun getting the first coat of finish on.

[Brendon_t]

Now those are beautiful forms for a chair. Out of curiosity, how much time do you think you have in each, and... Are they comfortable? 

I have thought about making two sculpted chairs for the ends of my dining table. These would definitely fit the bill but I'm unsure about that kick up where your leg comes over. 

[Bmac]

First off these chairs are very comfortable. In fact way more comfortable that I expected. The leg extending up does not seem to be a problem. The design also allows you to sit in the chair sidesaddle, meaning one leg over the side and one leg in the front. 

Time wise, these were my fastest sculptured projects/chairs yet. It helps you only have 3 legs and 3 leg/seat joints. I'm also getting faster. As for specific hrs spent on them I can't say, I don't track that and I would only be guessing. I started this journal June 15th, and from there I've only worked about 8-10 hrs per weekend. When I started the journal I had the seats glued up with the joints cut and the leg blanks glued up with no joint cut yet. Building took less than a month.

If you are interested. here's the website for the plans, a real steal for $29.99, video and templates.

http://finewoodworker.com/build-the-tea-party-chair.html

[Bmac]

Well time to wrap this up. It was fun doing this journal and I appreciate all the comments and feedback. I'll critique a few things about the chairs as I go through this post. These chairs are now headed to my dental office so parents that come back with their children for treatment will have a nice seat to sit in. The single back leg design allows the chairs to nicely fit into the corners of the treatment room. You can see from the photos the chair is almost made for a corner.

Finished both chairs with 4 coats of Maloof oil/poly and then 3 coats of Maloof oil/wax.

Finished and ready for sitting;

Another angle, this shows the stretchers, which were the toughest part of this project for me, turned out very nice;

A couple photos of joints, not too bad;

The backrests, the plan called for the glue up I did on the cherry seat. For the walnut seat I had a thick enough piece of wood to be able to cut the curve of the backrest out and not go through the piece on the show side of the backrest. I did glue on a backer piece for the joint on the walnut chair. Definitely like the walnut backrest better. If you ever plan to do these chairs you will need a piece at least 10/4 thick to accomplish this.

A picture of two legs of the walnut chair to point out a few details in the construction. To make the legs you need to glue up stock for the proper thickness, the plan called for glue up of two 7/4 pieces. The plan then called for you to keep that glue joint centered on the leg. I had a slight misstep and planed my initial leg blanks too thin for the joint. I need to add to the blanks and this made the glue joint off center. I think if I was confronted with that problem again I my glue two equally thick pieces of thinner stock on each side of the blank to help keep the glue joint centered. You can't see the glue joint in the first photo, but it is more obvious in the back leg. The glue joint all but disappeared in the cherry chair. At least the back leg is in a corner against the wall. These photos also show the plugs, used the same wood as the chair's main wood, these didn't blend in as well on the first photo of the side leg but did blend in better on the back leg.

Finally, photos of my repair, hard to tell it was broken, very pleased with this outcome considering the work I put into the chairs at the time of the break.

There is a smudge on the seat of the walnut chair that I noticed while posting this, I just checked the chair and it was only a dusty finger print as I just came in from the shop and must of put it there moving the chair into the staged photo.

Overall this was a really fun build and Scott Morrison's templates and video instruction were very nice, made the whole project go smoothly. I think I'll revisit this build in the future, these are chairs I'll likely make again. They do ask for large blanks and there is significant waste, but I do like the final look and they are very comfortable to sit in. They will also reassure my patients that if I'm capable of doing this in wood, doing there teeth is no problem. I often tell my patients as a dentist I'm nothing more than a glorified and expensive carpenter anyway.

 

[..Kev]

Those turned out awesome!  Super nice job!

[Chestnut]

I like my dentist but i wish i got chairs like this to sit in while i waited. I probably wouldn't do much sitting I'd be inspecting the chair the whole time but I'd be entertained.

Wonderful work. The grain layout on the walnut chair i think is better overall than the cherry chair. Did you have better walnut stock to deal with?

[Bmac]

With the grain layout I agree with you.

First off I should take more time with that part of the build. Cherry the grain isn't as visible before you finish and I don't take the time to wet with mineral spirits to see the grain pattern before jointing.  

If I had thick enough stock with the cherry I could have made the backrest nicer.

Another challenge with these sculptured chairs is trying to figure out the grain pattern in the seat. What I mean by that is I'm taking 3/4" to 1/2" of material off, visualizing the grain pattern that far below the surface is tough. As you reduce the seat boards I sometimes think I've made good choices but they blend less and less as stock is removed.

 

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Bmac said:

With the grain layout I agree with you.

First off I should take more time with that part of the build. Cherry the grain isn't as visible before you finish and I don't take the time to wet with mineral spirits to see the grain pattern before jointing.  

If I had thick enough stock with the cherry I could have made the backrest nicer.

Another challenge with these sculptured chairs is trying to figure out the grain pattern in the seat. What I mean by that is I'm taking 3/4" to 1/2" of material off, visualizing the grain pattern that far below the surface is tough. As you reduce the seat boards I sometimes think I've made good choices but they blend less and less as stock is removed.

 

That is a good point that Derek made on his Apothacary build. The walnut looks like you have rift to almost quarter sawn wood edged together. That looks like a good strategy to make things meld together well and look good.

Looking at the end grain of the board is something that i would do to try and see how the grain is going to change as it gets worked down. That old advice to alternate the end grain direction i think also helps to make the ends of the boards look more cohesive. Puts almost a sin wave with the end gran. I personally find that more pleasing to look at than rows of semicircles.

[pkinneb]

Turned out great Bmac! Adding one of these to my ever lengthening want to make list.