Starting to Look Like Chairs

The chair project is moving along with considerable progress in the last few weeks.  While I have two sets of plans and templates for this chair, it has evolved into my own design with the templates used for joinery layout and geometry only.

New insert in place.

With my Veritas fence and hold-fasts installed.

One thing that was holding me up was the router table. My original Jessem had developed a hump in the middle of the metal plate which I think must have been there all along. after months of run-around by Jessem I finally ended up buying a new router insert as they could not help me at all.



This meant a new router top for my tablesaw as the new plates are the new industry-standard insert size. I made a new top from a couple 1/2" baltic birch pieces laminated together and covered with laminate. I used the Jessem template to rout the opening, added a few t-slots and I was back in business.

Back to Chair Building

Here are a few pictures to show the progress as things moved along.

The seats with the joinery cut and the front legs test-fitted.
The holes in the seat will define the depth for me in the carving phase.

Two hours from the previous picture to this point.
The seat is rough-carved, ready for some assembly.

Test fitting of the front and back legs, as Norm would say -
"ready for some assembly".

Before gluing the legs have been rough shaped on the spindle sander,
to make less work carving on the assembled chair. Here the back legs
are being glued on.

As I mentioned in the last blog, I was fretting over the arm design.
I do not favor the traditional style so set about coming up with my own.
This picture shows the original in blue dashed lines and my freehand
sketch of the one I want to use. A little flatter and less dramatic.
The actual shape would be refined on the chair.

The arms rough shaped, glued and screwed on,
Ready for some serious grinding and carving work.

The backs glued and screwed in place, ready to remove all the
bits that don't look like a chair.

Here's where I am at this point. I went with a round-over on the top of the crest rail. A large radius curve
on the tops of the arms, and likely rounded on the bottom edges (TBD). All the transitions have been rough ground and ready for some refinement work. many hours of  rasping and sanding yet to go!