Posts tagged ‘chair’
This past weekend I had the opportunity to take a chair design class with Jeff Miller who came to speak at our Cumberland Furniture Guild meeting.
This was a condensed version of Jeff’s normal class, but we had the opportunity to explore design ideas by sketching, small scale modeling, and full scale mock ups. I worked on a variation of my bent lounge chair.
Most of the concepts Jeff discussed were really not all that revolutionary to me, but perhaps the biggest takeaway was that design is a skill that can be cultivated like any other with practice. It’s tough to form new habits, but putting more effort into refining my designs before construction begins is something I hope to achieve.
After I was fairly satisfied with my drawing and templates, I started making the bending forms for the legs/stretchers and the arm rests that will be created with bent lamination. Using my templates, I rough cut the forms in MDF and used a flush trim bit to make them match the template perfectly. I was out of packing tape, so I used a little Alabama chrome to protect the surface from glue.
I selected a nice plank of cherry from my stock and began to layout my components for the best grain graphics. Again, the templates are very helpful here.
Next I sliced thin 1/8th inch veneers for the legs/stretchers. 12 layers will get me 1 1/2″ thick. I marked the stock with a triangle before re-sawing to keep the grain oriented.
I used Old Brown Glue hide glue to glue up the lamination. The extended open time really helps with these glue ups and I find that the dried glue is not as hard on planer/joiner knives.
I have a couple different chair ideas in mind to build this year, and we also need a new set for our dining room table I built over a year ago. So, I started messing around with this prototype on New Years day. This is certainly a derivative of several other chairs I’ve seen in the past, but hopefully I will be able to put a little of my own spin on it. Making a full scale drawing and then a rough prototype is so helpful in chair making.
This morning we started by gluing up a bent lamination that will become our chair backs. What a mess! It’s funny how well yellow glue acts as a lubricant until it dries. All those layers really wanted to squirt loose until the clamping pressure was equal.
After that it was more work on roughing out the front legs and front rail and cutting all the mortises using the Festool Domino.
The remainder of the day I spent cutting the decorative curves out of all the rail pieces that were previously rough cut in 8/4 stock. After laying out the curves on the top edge of the rail pieces they were cut out on the band saw and then cleaned up with the horizontal belt sander and oscillating spindle sander. These two machines were key in this process. They made it so fast and easy to clean up the rough band sawn surfaces.
At the end of the day, I had two sides mocked up and ready for some final sanding and glue up tomorrow.
Oh, one more thing. I was looking around a little at lunch and found a couple of these great Krenov style planes that I guess some of the students made. I think I may have to find some time to take these for a test drive tomorrow.
Aaron M. Wells 