Dining Chairs

[Chestnut]

2 minutes ago, wtnhighlander said:

What, you couldn't do the glue-up in the remaining 9 hours of "free time"????

An hour of that I used to shower and eat. Another hour when to getting trapped in some youtube videos.

Luckily today is a new day and I left work after only 10 hours of slaving behind my computer. I was able to get the remaining chairs together tonight. It didn't take more than 45 min or so to hit the last 2 chairs worth of parts with my #4 sanders and then glue the chairs together. I brought them up stairs and positioned them around the table to get an idea of what they will look like.

I think I'm gonna like these chairs quite a lot. Getting finish on them is going to bring out a word of character.

I also inherited 4 dining chairs from my grandmother. She asked me a while back If i wanted the chairs and not knowing much about them said yes. I knew I was only going to make 6 chairs for a table that potentially could seat 10. I didn't really know what to expect but was presently surprised when I picked them up.

She told me that they were her grandmothers and estimated their age around 100 years but that was a guess. There are no makers mark on the chairs so they could have been locally made but who knows.

The thing that i really like about the chairs is how delicate they look. The legs are very thin and have some nice subtle details. The downside is they were stripped and refinished, not a bad thing, but when doing so they glue let loose. When the refinisher put them back together they were not very careful removing squeeze out around some of the joints. They stayed on the safe side of just not removing it at all....

[wtnhighlander]

Looking great, Drew! Your inherited chairs are a nice compliment to the 6 you are building, too.

[Chip Sawdust]

Those are nice chairs, and it appears they are in the right hands if they ever weaken  

Oh and the chairs you’ve made, awesome  

I AM stealing that design.... when one day I may make a dining table and chairs! My wife loves them. 

[Chestnut]

Seat carving process has started and it is going a LOT faster than I thought it would. I was able to get the first seat done in 4 hours and that wasn't overlapping glue drying time. If I do other operations while glue is drying I could easily get that down further but I won't bother timing it because it doesn't really matter.

First step is to select material. I had some nice 10" wide boards from my order of 6/4 Cherry. I figured I'd use 2 pieces to make the seat. In order to do the pre-sculpting though that board gets hacked into parts to be glued back together.  Spoiler the grain turned out quite nice despite cutting and gluing back together. I'll be able to spot the glue seams but an average observer probably won't look close enough.

In the picture above the center of the board is missing. The pre-sculpting works best of the center of the seat is a board about 4" wide. This sets up the pommel area, as well as the  main seat area. To make the 4" center I took 2" off of each board, jointed and glued them together to make a 4" board.

To start of the pre sculpting and ensure the chairs end up roughly similar, i made a template with index marks to make sure that the profile is accuraly placed on the center board of each chair.

The profile is then cut on the band saw. To set the pomel area I needed to cut an angle. I didn't want to tilt my band saw table to do this as that would be a hassle as I use the glue up time to back out the milling for the next seat. Also this doesn't allow the wood to sit long in a partially milled state which may cause movement I don't want. The angle was achieved by setting my fence at 2_1/8" and using a 1" spacer.

After the center board is pre-sculpted, I align all the boards and draw on the outline of the sculpted area with my template (the picture is old and the template needed to be cut yet.)

Because of the curve on the backside you have to be careful with the profile of the pre-sculpting. It's possible to cut into an area that should be left. The boards just to the sides of center are the main boards that your legs sit over so they are recessed 1/4" from the pomel and sides of the chair. It's kinda hard to see below. The seat area I think is about 5/8" which leaves around 3/4" under your rear.

The outside boards are the most complicated to pre-sculpt. It's not really easy to do it on the band saw as you can't do a through cut so there are some weird compound angles and well it's easier to just do as @Bmac instructs and take the outside pieces to your bench and sculpt them with your sander/grinder. This is a step that Mar doesn't do in his rocker videos and it's immensly helpful as you have more room around the part to maneuver your tool to get the perfect shape.

I also use a very high tech measuring device to set an offset from the outside line. This tells me about where I want the curved side to stop. I remove the bulk inside the line and then setting the grinder on the angle blend  from my rule of thumb line to the outside line. This has helped prevent me from trying to make the sides too steep which doesn't work very well and isn't very comfortable.

The outside part after pre-sculpting, next to it is an untoched piece.

After this point the seat is ready to be clued together and shaped. With all the pre-sculpting there isn't a lot to be done. Really it's just even everything up. This is why pre-sculpting seems like the cheat code to do this.

After I use the RAS with 24 grit paper I  go over the seat with a goose neck scraper. This is where I deviate from others. I know Bmac uses 50 grit and the moves into the RO90, while I don't have the RO90 and every time i went to buy it I had a really hard time pulling the trigger. I did one of my trials with the goose neck scraper and found it was an excellent way to get between 24 grit and 80 grit with an interface pad.

It may be hard to see in the picture above but after sculpting there are some high spots and some deeper scratches. Trying to level all this out with sanders left a surface that felt like it undulated a lot to me. When i used the scraper I was able to remove those high spots and the surface felt far more uniform. Both were smooth it's more the difference between laser flat and slightly scalloped.

The scraper did not leave a perfectly clean surface though. With the changing grain directions there was some tear out and other issues. Goose neck scrapers and difficult to sharpen and get tuned up well so that doesn't help either. So I started sanding at 80 grit on my 125mm sander with the foam interface pad. This generally goes well. but the sander is VERY under powered so care has to be taken to not stall the RO movement. After 80 grit i jump to 120 grit on my 150mm sander with a foam interface pad. Using the 2 sanders back to back it's very apparent that the 125 ets needs more power. Due to the curved surface the 150 nearly jumped out of my hand numerous times. I ended up turning it down from 6 to 4 as i found it almost unwieldy at full power. After 150 is 180 than 220.

Next up is finishing touches and round over to the seats then finishing and mounting. The end is near. My goal is to eat dinner Friday on one of these chairs fully finished. If I don't meet my goal so be it but it's my goal.

[Tom King]

And so, the Rule of Thumb pays off once again.

[wtnhighlander]

Nice work, Drew! And thanks for journaling the details, I'm sure to use several of these techniques when I finally get around to building chairs

 

[Chip Sawdust]

32 minutes ago, wtnhighlander said:

Nice work, Drew! And thanks for journaling the details, I'm sure to use several of these techniques when I finally get around to building chairs

 

Me too. I thought the 1” piece of wood against the bandsaw fence was brilliant. I would not have thought of that. 

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, Chip Sawdust said:

Me too. I thought the 1” piece of wood against the bandsaw fence was brilliant. I would not have thought of that. 

Don't ever do it with a table saw. I'm sure there are plenty of reasons you shouldn't do it with a bandsaw too... i just don't know those reasons.

2 hours ago, wtnhighlander said:

Nice work, Drew! And thanks for journaling the details, I'm sure to use several of these techniques when I finally get around to building chairs

 

If you have questions or want more details let me know i have more pictures that I didn't share in the B roll.

[Mark J]

2 hours ago, Chip Sawdust said:

I thought the 1” piece of wood against the bandsaw fence was brilliant. I would not have thought of that. 

Ditto.

[duckkisser]

I can just see your wife or kids coming in with face in phone not paying attention and trying to sit down at one of the chairs.  Worst seats ever

 

[Coop]

On 2/23/2020 at 9:37 PM, duckkisser said:

I can just see your wife or kids coming in with face in phone not paying attention and trying to sit down at one of the chairs.  Worst seats ever

 

?

[Chestnut]

13 minutes ago, Coop said:

?

Ya know how ladies get mad when you leave the seat up ....

[Coop]

Gotcha! 

[Ronn W]

Wonderful work, Drew.  Great documentation.

[Chestnut]

Shop smells like the finish line!

[duckkisser]

almost done so excited....

is your shop in the basement? if so how did you get those huge tools down there. 

[Chestnut]

1 hour ago, duckkisser said:

almost done so excited....

is your shop in the basement? if so how did you get those huge tools down there. 

Yes my shop is in my basement. The table saw is pretty easy to get down there I took the top off and carried it down  mounted on 2 boards with a helper. The planer I took apart as soon as I got it and carried it down with a helper in 3 parts, it wasn't so bad because it was  only 300 ish lbs and wasn't an awkward shape.

The jointer..... that nearly killed us. I also took it apart to move it into the shop but the beds can't really come off. So the top part with the beds and cutter head weighs probably 450 lbs and nearly put 2 of us through a wall when it started to tip over. My stairs go down about 7 steps and then turn a corner to go down about 5 more. To make the corner we had the main part stood on end it was very awkward. This reason alone is why I'm never moving. If i have to move the jointer is being sold with the house. It'd be entertaining to coat the thing in cosmoline and just build it into a secret room under the stairs or something for someone to find in 100 years.

[drzaius]

Maybe we should start a pool as to whom will finish first: @Chestnut and his dining chairs, or @pkinneb and his home theater  Both have been stellar builds.

[pkinneb]

3 hours ago, drzaius said:

Maybe we should start a pool as to whom will finish first: @Chestnut and his dining chairs, or @pkinneb and his home theater  Both have been stellar builds.

It appears Drew has me beat but I will be done by Sat evening   (with the theater interior still have work in the basement) 

I love these chairs especially the back slat design! While I have never designed anything I have been thinking about how to incorporate Drew's design into a kitchen set for our home...but there I go getting ahead of myself again LOL

[Chestnut]

26 minutes ago, pkinneb said:

It appears Drew has me beat but I will be done by Sat evening   (with the theater interior still have work in the basement) 

I love these chairs especially the back slat design! While I have never designed anything I have been thinking about how to incorporate Drew's design into a kitchen set for our home...but there I go getting ahead of myself again LOL

I think you going to have me beat, the bet only outlined the home theater. I would like to get 1 to 2 more coats of finish on each chair. Sanding between coats on 6 chairs and applying wiping poly takes roughly 2.5 hours. All the nooks and crannies are miserable. I also still have 4 chair seats to complete finish sanding on and need to apply 4 coats of finish to said seats.  But If I lied and had 1 chair finished, took pictures, and said I was done who would know the difference? The theater project is incredibly involved and I am thoroughly impressed with it.

 

[Coop]

Nut, the red handled brush, is it used as a dust brush? 

[Chestnut]

1 minute ago, Coop said:

Nut, the red handled brush, is it used as a dust brush? 

Yes i use it to sweep off bench tops an what not. It's one of those handheld brushes that comes with a small dustpan.

I was looking for that last night and couldn't find it. Thanks for letting me know where it is

[Coop]

I’ve had nights like that! 

[Chestnut]

3 minutes ago, Coop said:

I’ve had nights like that! 

K now where is my pencil and tape measure ...

[RichardA]

6 minutes ago, Chestnut said:

K now where is my pencil and tape measure ...

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