The glue up.

 It is always rewarding to be able to see the project come together. I think woodworking is so gratifying to me because I am able to see results after a lot of hard work and patience. An hour of shop time releases 40 hours of work stress.  I have built quite a few projects and have always wanted to try my hand at chair making. You have to be very precise and detailed oriented to make it all flow correctly.

So now I have the chair glued up My next steps are to cut out the back and shape it. And then the grinding of it all to make it all flow. I will hopefully have the back done in a week and will post it soon. 

Shaping of legs and Stretchers.

So somehow in all of this hard work I failed to take pictures of my hardest parts. I had to hand shape each leg with a rasp and file. I have them all round and sanded up to the joints, I leave the joints square and will grind them round when the chair is glued up. Each leg took me about an hour to an hour and a half to shape. The sanding took just as long. I also had to turn on the lathe the straight stretcher. So the legs are shaped the stretchers are shaped. The next step was to drill the holes for the stretchers and glue it all up. Getting the front stretcher to fit was really difficult because of the curve. But with a little adjustments I was able to get it all to fit nicely.

The Seat

 So the part of this project that appeals to me is the shaping and forming of all the parts so it flows together.  I bought a 40 grit sand disc.  Scott Morrison recommends a 100 dollar carbide grinding disc. I was able to find these sand discs for 6 dollars a piece and they did the job perfectly.

So I ground out about 7/8 of an inch in the back and 3/4 inch in the front. I had a pile of saw dust 12 inches high. As you can see my hair is white because of it. After looking at these pictures i need to wear a respirator.

Dry Fitting joints.

Step 3. Legs

So I now have the seat all ready to be cut out. And need to trace the leg patterns and cut out on the band saw. 

Legs glued up.

Dado lines

 Legs all cut. Now the fun begins. Hand shaping them round.

2nd step. Dadoing

After Planing everything down the next steps are to dado where the joints are for the legs. And to also put in some dowels in the seat so it won't bow and have extra strength.

Seat all traced out with Dadoes.










Front leg dado.

Lines for dowels.

Routing of joints.

 Holes drilled and ready to glue up.

First Steps.

So today I started with some 8/4 maple. We bought this wood 11 years ago and never made anything with it. So since it was laying around I decided it would be the perfect wood to begin with.  It was cupped pretty bad.  So I cut it to length first for all the pieces.

I then ran all my boards through my jointer so I could cut it on the tablesaw.

Once I got all my pieces to a rough width, the next step is to plane it down so I can glue it all up.

I was able to match up some great grain for a very pretty looking seat.

I also have all my templates ready to go.

Next week I will begin all the cutting out on the bandsaw.