Michael Fortune #1 Chair Build

[pkinneb]

This will be my journal as I build two Michael Fortune #1 chairs, one at the MASW and one on my own. I just returned late last night from my first 8 days at the school I will go back in late September for the second week. Two days building jigs for the chair, 5 day week 1 class, and 1 day bandsaw seminar with Michael. 

First a couple callouts. The MASW is an awesome place to learn. I have met some wonderful woodworkers and life long friends there and this week was no exception. Its a first rate operation and the instructors, facilities, food are all first class.

Michael Fortune is not only a world renowned wood worker but one of the nicest funniest people I have had the pleasure of working with.

Tonight's post will be quick becuase I am tired lol and I have many pics to sort through

MASW is located just outside Indianapolis IN

Here is a pic of the Michael Fortune #1 Chair these are done in solid Ebony with real silver and mother of pearl inlays. My chairs will be done in walnut and then ebonized.

This pic is of a walnut chair like the ones we are making in class, its not assembled so that we can take it apart and see how everything fits together. As you can see the chair has curves everywhere of the 19 pieces that make up the chair only 3 do not have compound curves. 

Here are some of the many jigs and templates required to make the chair

This pic shows the chair parts. From the top down: back chair legs, back slats (all 5 are on this drying form), and the arms. all of these parts were steam bent. Next you have the front legs, the front seat stretcher, crest rail, and bottom rail, and finally the seat frame. at this point all the joinery is cut in the non steamed parts and the shaping has begun.

[Coop]

Those are amazing. Are all of the pics in his shop?  Sounds like a great time as well. Look forward to seeing your completed chair. 

[Bmac]

This is my kind of journal. Thanks for posting Paul. Few questions; 

First, with the steam bending it's my understanding there usually is a little bit of spring back. I've always wondered if thats the case, how is detailed joinery done if you get a little spring back? Are the bent pieces oversized slightly and the jigs and patterns correct this? Or is this spring back I'm concerned about not a problem?

Secondly, is that a through dowel that will join the front leg, back leg, and arm?

Finally, will you be doing the upholstery?

 

[Mick S]

I am so envious. I wanted to take this class in the worst way, but can't take the follow up class in September. I'm looking forward to getting Martha's impressions, too.

Can't wait for the future posts.

[Chet]

This looks like an intense, challenging build.  Why is there such a long break between sessions.

[sjeff70]

If you guys are traveling to these schools where are you staying?  Are they 8-hr days?

[pkinneb]

20 hours ago, Coop said:

Those are amazing. Are all of the pics in his shop?  Sounds like a great time as well. Look forward to seeing your completed chair. 

No the bottom two are in my shop. It was definitely a hard week for a guy like me who rides a desk in air-conditioned office normally  

We were working from 8-6:30 ish and several days were in the 90's with no ac LOL. Having said that I really had fun and learned a lot especially about steam bending I worked with a couple other guys and we probably bent over 40 of the 64 Leg/ Arms that were bent. ALso did a fair amount of back slats.

13 hours ago, Bmac said:

This is my kind of journal. Thanks for posting Paul. Few questions; 

First, with the steam bending it's my understanding there usually is a little bit of spring back. I've always wondered if thats the case, how is detailed joinery done if you get a little spring back? Are the bent pieces oversized slightly and the jigs and patterns correct this? Or is this spring back I'm concerned about not a problem?

Secondly, is that a through dowel that will join the front leg, back leg, and arm?

Finally, will you be doing the upholstery?

 

I'll keep you posted as I progress but I can say this after bending them and moving from the form to the drying jigs there was a ton of spring back and in fact this is the step where you have to move pretty quick. When you take them out of the steam box you have about 15 minutes to get them bent before you start having issues. When you go from the bending jig to the drying jigs you want to be Johnny on the spot. After three days on the drying jig a couple clamps will hold them and keep the shape and it will take about a week or two to fully dry. when I switched out the school clamps fro my own (3days) there was probably less then 1/4" of movement and Michael advised once dry there will be almost none. The blanks are a bit oversized and with this chair a lot of material will be removed. I ordered the straps from LV last night now I need to find some air dried walnut

You are correct on the dowel joint. FWIW it was cut on a Felder Slot mortisier but could have been done on a Pantorouter (how I will do the second chair) or a drill press with a plug cutter 

Yes on the upholstery

7 hours ago, Chet said:

This looks like an intense, challenging build.  Why is there such a long break between sessions.

Partially to allow parts to fully dry but we will also be working on the front legs and seat frames over the summer. We also need to purchase the upholstery items. I also suspect just scheduling vacations and stuff since most folks came from a fair distance.

 

1 hour ago, sjeff70 said:

If you guys are traveling to these schools where are you staying?  Are they 8-hr days?

I stayed in at a Candlewoods Suites and would not recommend it 

When I go in the fall I have a room in one of the MASW houses.

The days were more like 10-11 hrs for must of us

[Chestnut]

Awesome work. It's really cool that we have resources and places like this in the world. It just doesn't seem like something that should work given the massive change society is making towards throw away furniture. That kind of seems like it is slowly changing though.

The chair looks awfully complicated. Also ebonizing walnut? That seems odd but i guess it's cheaper than the original chair. I suppose there are very few woods that fall into the category of easily steam bent, and a similar grain pattern to ebony. Did steaming the walnut get messy? Given steaming is how they even the color out it seems logical that steam bending walnut will release that color and make a mess but maybe not?

[Bmac]

So @pkinneb, I just keep coming up with questions on this build, it looks complicated for sure, but I do think there are some aspects of the build that he has made easier with the jigs. So if you don't mind being so inquisitive, here are some more questions, for now...

The back support, are those individual slats attached to the back of the seat frame? I looks to me as though they are not attached, but I wasn't sure from the pics. 

Did he discuss bent lamination in place of steam bending? I'm thinking with the ebonizing the grain match won't matter as much, but I'm interested if both techniques would work. 

I had the same line of thought as @Chestnut, ebonizing walnut seems odd. Do they use different woods at the school for this chair or just walnut (like cherry, oak, etc)?

As for the arms, I now see the dowel in the top of the front legs in your pic where everything is deconstructed. It also looks like you'll get a decent area of long grain to long grain surface area for gluing the arm to the arm/back leg piece. Will you still have the dowel extend into the top piece that forms the arm or will you just rely on the long grain gluing surface? 

With the shaping and sculpting, what do they teach in regards to tools?

Finally, good luck finding some air dried walnut. I've got a lot of it here in Delaware and if you lived closer I'd be happy to help out.

Thanks in advance for your patience with all my questions and thanks again for sharing this!

[Chestnut]

6 minutes ago, Bmac said:

Finally, good luck finding some air dried walnut. I've got a lot of it here in Delaware and if you lived closer I'd be happy to help out.

Air dried walnut is pretty easy to find around here. Cremona doesn't live too far from us afterall.

[pkinneb]

On 6/22/2021 at 8:12 AM, Chestnut said:

Awesome work. It's really cool that we have resources and places like this in the world. It just doesn't seem like something that should work given the massive change society is making towards throw away furniture. That kind of seems like it is slowly changing though.

The chair looks awfully complicated. Also ebonizing walnut? That seems odd but i guess it's cheaper than the original chair. I suppose there are very few woods that fall into the category of easily steam bent, and a similar grain pattern to ebony. Did steaming the walnut get messy? Given steaming is how they even the color out it seems logical that steam bending walnut will release that color and make a mess but maybe not?

The chairs in the pic (book) were actually laminated real ebony. Re ebonizing Walnut these will be in my basement and a a lot of the wood down there has been dyed or stained black so these will fit right in. Michael assures me his process will look awesome on Walnut we shall see 

No not at all but some woods like walnut will stain rather deep if you leave the straps on to long, we went about 30 minutes and you can see, in one of the pics below, the outside is already black. 

I will be reaching out to Matt this week to see if he has any  

On 6/22/2021 at 9:25 AM, Bmac said:

So @pkinneb, I just keep coming up with questions on this build, it looks complicated for sure, but I do think there are some aspects of the build that he has made easier with the jigs. So if you don't mind being so inquisitive, here are some more questions, for now...

The back support, are those individual slats attached to the back of the seat frame? I looks to me as though they are not attached, but I wasn't sure from the pics. 

Did he discuss bent lamination in place of steam bending? I'm thinking with the ebonizing the grain match won't matter as much, but I'm interested if both techniques would work. 

I had the same line of thought as @Chestnut, ebonizing walnut seems odd. Do they use different woods at the school for this chair or just walnut (like cherry, oak, etc)?

As for the arms, I now see the dowel in the top of the front legs in your pic where everything is deconstructed. It also looks like you'll get a decent area of long grain to long grain surface area for gluing the arm to the arm/back leg piece. Will you still have the dowel extend into the top piece that forms the arm or will you just rely on the long grain gluing surface? 

With the shaping and sculpting, what do they teach in regards to tools?

Finally, good luck finding some air dried walnut. I've got a lot of it here in Delaware and if you lived closer I'd be happy to help out.

Thanks in advance for your patience with all my questions and thanks again for sharing this!

RE the back slats yes there is a bottom rail and a crest rail. The bottom 5 slots are all the same set up the crest rail has three different sizes center, then the middle two, and finally the outer two they go wider to narrower as you go out.

Yes absolutely and the chairs in ebony were laminated. I will show pics of some curly maple chairs that were steam bent later on.

Everyone is using walnut but not all are ebonizing them

Re the arms I'll get back to you on that not sure yet.

The front legs will be done with palm router, spokeshave's, rasps, scrapers, etc. When we go back in the fall we will be adding die grinders with spurs and sanding cones as well as the hand tools. Steam bent parts do to the compression of the wood fibers will respond better to rasps, scrapers and such more so then cutting tools like planes and spokeshaves.

NP at all that's what these journals are all about, learning from each other.

-------------------------------------------

So unfortunately I didn't take as many pics as I should have but here are a few on bending

Here is the set up we used at MASW. Mine will be similar but will use an electric steamer box from Rockler as a steam generator.

Make sure you keep an eye on the water level's or your pot may start on fire and liquidate the bottom...In our defense they advised us to leave that to the shop helpers

Here is a pic of us bending a leg in the first pic and arm in the second photo

 

The next photo's show the compression caused by bending. Wood will not stretch which is why you have to use a tight strap on the blank back to force it into compression if it is allowed to stretch it will crack and break, we lost 3 legs out of 64 while we were figuring this out.

One other thing to point out is you want to steam at 210-212 and go approx 1 hour per inch of thickness. If you go too long you will start to get ripples,  you can see a slight case of that in the first pic here

In this pic we are getting ready to pull the arm out of the bending form and move it to the drying jig. You need to be quick here so have everything ready to go. first run a bar clamp from edge to edge to pull the piece tight to the form then you can remove the other clamps and place on the drying form. you can see here the black staining of the wood after only 30 minutes.

 Here's the pic of them on there drying forms

We bent the back slats the same way except we did two at a time.

Here is the bending form

You want the blocks on the end to fit the slats snuggly 

[Bmac]

Loving this Paul and thanks for your responses to my multiple questions!

One quick followup ques, so the back slats are attached to the crest rail and the bottom rail, but they do not attach to the back of the seat frame, correct? 

[pkinneb]

On 6/24/2021 at 4:38 AM, Bmac said:

Loving this Paul and thanks for your responses to my multiple questions!

One quick followup ques, so the back slats are attached to the crest rail and the bottom rail, but they do not attach to the back of the seat frame, correct? 

Bmac That is correct.

Started receiving parts for the steam box/ bending project. Block and tackle with a clutch and also the thermometer. When I bend by myself I will need the added advantage help of the block and tackle/clutch. FWIW LEE Valley has a free booklet that can be found on the web here

https://www.bing.com/search?FORM=U501DF&PC=U501&q=lee+valley+steam+bending+pamphlet

that goes through steam bending. This was written by Michael and the products they sell were designed by him as well.

Here are a couple of better shots of the staining from the strap which shows why you don't want to leave the parts on the bending form to long. This is fine but the longer you leave it the deeper it will go which could turn into an issue.

This is the setup we used on the Multi Router for the crest and base rails to mortise for the slats. I will do mine on the second chair using my Pantorouter in a similar fashion.

In the following photo's you can see how I will shape the front legs. Using the pattern I will first remove material with a palm router then move to hand tools like rasps, spoke shaves, scrapers, etc. but That will be a bit need to retro fit my Noden adjustable bench with the new vises prior to starting on that.

[wtnhighlander]

Paul, I bet you could mitigate staining from the bending form strap by wrapping it in a layer of aluminum foil, or covering it with foil tape. I assume it is the interaction of wet wood and steel that creates the stain.

[pkinneb]

Well it was a busy summer at work, and in my personal life, but I did get a few things done and just returned from my second week at MASW working on the Michael Fortune #1 chair. To date I have about 150 hours into the chair and I suspect I have another 50-75 hours to go. At this point all joinery is cut and the bottom is glued up.

First up was to glue up the chair seat frame with nothing straight or square it requires jigs and cutoffs to insure a good glue up

Next up was to shape the front legs. I used a die grinder, spokeshaves, rasps, & card scrapers for this task as well as a modified bar clamp to hold the work. Makes a pretty good pile of shavings/ scrapings

After glue up I worked on the leg to stretcher joint using rasps, rifflers, & scrapers

Then more shaping on the glued up seat

With that roughed out I started cutting the joinery on the back legs using custom made jigs and a router

Then a quick dry fit

T

Then I cut the flats that will mate up with the arm on the table saw using a sled and stops

 

Laid out for shaping

Once shaped it was ready for glue up and I cannot tell you how stressful this was LOL. There is a lot going on so a dry run is mandatory. Mine came up well and now for the first time I could actually see some progress

I started working on the arms next cutting the flats for both the arm/leg joints as well as the arm/crest rail joints. The first on the bandsaw and the later on the table saw. Sorry I didn't get pictures for all of this.

Next I laid out shaping lines

And that's about it for now

Here is the current state

 

 

 

 

[Chet]

With all the forms, templates and jigs used in this project, do you make your own set or does the school provide them?

[wtnhighlander]

150 hours?!?! Wow, and I thought my projects took a long time!

That is a beautiful chair, though. Are the back legs steamed, bent lam, or segmented? Can't tell from the photo.

So, have you given the Mrs. an ETA on the remainder of the dining suite?  

[Bmac]

I’ve been waiting for this follow up post, looking great Paul!

[pkinneb]

On 10/5/2021 at 7:08 PM, Chet said:

With all the forms, templates and jigs used in this project, do you make your own set or does the school provide them?

We made our own 19 jigs and 23 templates so far...

On 10/5/2021 at 8:13 PM, wtnhighlander said:

150 hours?!?! Wow, and I thought my projects took a long time!

That is a beautiful chair, though. Are the back legs steamed, bent lam, or segmented? Can't tell from the photo.

So, have you given the Mrs. an ETA on the remainder of the dining suite?  

I hear you good thing I didn't realize this before i signed up LOL

Thanks! The legs and arms are both steam bent

LOL yeah no think one more to use by our digital Pacman table in the basement but we will see. I think I could do the second one in about half the time since the jigs are done and I kinda know what I'm doing now.

[pkinneb]

Geez I cannot believe its been nearly a month...

Only had a little time today but made a clamp block to use while shaping the upper arms. Using this in the pattern vise allows me to do almost the entire arm with out moving the arm just the vise. I can use a dowel in the mortise of the arm to stabilize the outer end as well.

First up make a dowel in the Pantorouter, the on the template allows you to dial it in a little at a time until you get the fit you are looking for

Then I just bored two screw holes and added some sandpaper and its ready to go

To use simply mark the screws drill shallow holes and you're good to go

Some pics to show what this allows me to do

[Mark J]

I like that vise.

[MikeW]

What better way to spend a week, than to be a student at the Marc Adams school (MASW).  I was last there in 2007 for my rocker and I was both completely fulfilled and completely exhausted when I left.  Looks great.  I'll be watching this one for sure!

[pkinneb]

Ok time to finish this chair.

Tonight I only had about an hour but I started working on the rough shaping of the arms. Much of this needs to be done prior to glue up and its easier to do it now as well.

I started with the arm pads on the base. these need to be rough shaped or I will not have the space I need to do the final shaping

As you can see here I use pencil and marker to give myself a rough idea of the shape. Then I use a burr in a air powered die grinder to hog out a good deal of the waste and switch to rasps and rifflers for the finer detail.

As I had hoped the adjustable bench and new vices are very handy for this project. Here I am roughing out the curve under the pad on the arm.

Next I began roughing out the underside of the upper arms. I use blue tap on those faces I want to insure I don't touch as they have hard lines I don't want to lose.

I'll do the right arm tomorrow night. I work the same parts (left and right) together so that I can replicate them with better accuracy, at least that's the plan

On a side note I don't recall who suggested the flexible air hose but man it is nice, absolutely a must have for this.

[Coop]

WOW! Beautiful so far! 

[pkinneb]

Got some more time in the shop today...

A few shots of the main tools I use for shaping

Also these new vices are really handy for this project being able to move the chair position without actually un clamping it is very nice.

Sometimes holding parts on one end with my chest

First up today was to rough out the remaining joints on the base

Then with some scraps from the bent lamination back slats I started working through the process off how to cut them to the right length

QUESTION:  

In another post earlier this week I believe it was @Ronn W on veneer holes there was a discussion about using coffee grounds with epoxy to fill holes. I was think of trying that technique out on this:

It's about 1/8" hole about 1/4" deep what do you think? How do you do it just mix them in and go?

Thanks!