First Chair

[John Hunter]

Very nice!

[JR]

Nice work, Ken. I can understand your point about the mortises, though. There's quite a bit of work involved with that, for sure.

I'm curious about the backs. Can you get more than one slat out of a blank? If not, maybe a steam bender would be in order. There must be a lot of offcut if your bandsawing them.

Just doing my part to add to the complexity!

JR

[ChrisD]

I'm curious about the backs. Can you get more than one slat out of a blank? If not, maybe a steam bender would be in order. There must be a lot of offcut if your bandsawing them.

I can appreciate the amount of waste that you can reduce by steam-bending the back slats instead of bandsawing them off thick stock. The challenge then is cutting tenons on the bent pieces. I've read an article where the author glued an 'extension' piece to each end of a bent slat and then formed the tenon from it. Pretty cool approach.

[gerti]

Boy, that is nice! Deceivingly simple until you look a little closer, very pleasing curves and it really invites one to sit down. If they are half as comfortable as they look you got a winner!

[Pappy]

NIce work, Ken. Judging from the style, I would say go with white oak and fume it before applying the top coat.

[leehljp]

What everyone else said! I have loooonng wanted to do a chair. Looks like I will have to wait until retirement. I hope my 4th or 5th one can look as good as your first.

[lrogers]

Nice looking chair and I'll bet it will hold up to years of use unlike the junk we buy at furniture stores (yeah, there's a story there, but I don't like to use those types of words here).

[Ken Massingale]

Thanks for the nice comments, it's appreciated.

First or not, that's a great looking chair Ken!

For the curvy parts like the long piece on the back legs, do you steam/bend the wood or cut out the curve from a wide piece of wood?

All the curves are sawn on the bandsaw then either routed with a template and flush trim bit or smoothed on the OSS.

ken,

it doesnt look anything like 'first chair'. i could have sworn that you were an expert! the curve looks great, and most of looks comfortable.

nice job! any changes you plan on making after you made your 'trial' chair?

Edit: are the horizontal strips for the back curved aswell?

Yes, I will absolutely have a template and use a guide bushing on the router for the mortises.
The back slats are curved toward the rear.

The chairs turned out fine but I still haven't gotten over the PITA of finishing with slats.. nooks and crannies everywhere you turn. It seemed a never ending battle with 8 coats of wipe on.

Maybe you and I should quit our day jobs, form a partner-ship and rent a building about half way tween Liberty and Atlanta. Just go "pro" as chair-makers and maybe sell pit-cooked bar-be-que on the side to supplement cash in-take when business is slow.
Regards...

Ummm, I believe I'll do the BBQ and you can do the chairs!. True, there are dang nooks all over the place. Gotta learn to spray.

Hey Ken,

From the subject line, I thought you had joined your local philharmonic orchestra!

That kind of First Chair around here would be an upside-down tin tub!

****, Ken, that is the sweetest 'first' chair I've ever seen...and it's just a prototype! Sweet!

In looking at that chair as a larger American (6'+ and 250lbs+) I can see where that chair may hurt me after a nice sit down dinner...where the front legs sit proud of the top of the seat rails. My current dining table chairs have almost the same design where the legs sit slightly higher and even with the seat cushion I get to feeling it after a long sit.

This ain't a bashing...that is a fine piece of work!!!

I agree, the real ones will have nothing above the seat.

Nice work, Ken. I can understand your point about the mortises, though. There's quite a bit of work involved with that, for sure.

I'm curious about the backs. Can you get more than one slat out of a blank? If not, maybe a steam bender would be in order. There must be a lot of offcut if your bandsawing them.

Just doing my part to add to the complexity!

JR

No, just one per blank. The waste is not as much as it seems it would be. I do want to try bending but as said before, the tenons would be a real pain.

NIce work, Ken. Judging from the style, I would say go with white oak and fume it before applying the top coat.

I am considering that Pappy. Just got to get my mind and other body parts set to mess with that ammonia.

[Tom H]

Man, that's really nice Ken. Maybe someday, if I work at it really hard...

[GPA61]

Great work Ken.

[footprintsinconc]

pappy and ken:

what is fuming it mean?

[Ken Massingale]

pappy and ken:

what is fuming it mean?

Exposing wood, usually White Oak, to the fumes of commercial strength ammonia, in a hopefully very well sealed environment. The Oak will turn a nice shade of brown while still exposing the grain.

[rlah]

We found a plan that we both liked and of course it couldn't be a nice simple straight back chair, it had to have curves everywhere!

Nice looking design you picked... kinda like the one I had been thinking about... I've also been thinking about buying Jeff Miller's book on Chairmaking to see if I could tackle this kind of furniture... it's said to be one of the best... have you bought it?

Was your plan from a book or magazine?

By the replies you've gotten, it's obvious chairmaking is a special case of furniture building... we were in northern Indiana last month looking at the furniture builders there... one Windsor chair was priced at "26"... hundred dollars! My wife sat in it and said it was extremely comfortable... the builder said it was all hand made with joinery to last. Interesting field, this chairmaking. (I didn't buy the chair)


rlah

[tjmac44]

Nice work.

[footprintsinconc]

fuming wood

so, do you like put wood in one room and open a can of ammonia and leave and come back some time after? or do you create a sealed box, put the wood in it and then an open can of ammonia?

i guess i can search the internet for this too, but i am being lazy.

thanks.