Second chair

It was time for our monthly meeting at Wimpole today. I decided I have enough dibbers, so time to start another chair. Still seems exciting, although second chair lacks the ring of first.

This one is to be a ladder back chair. A bit simpler than the first with only a dozen turned components rather than 22 for the spindle back, but my plan involves more complicated angles on the back legs. Today I completed 6 of 12 turned parts including the front streatcher with twiddly bits, so a good start.

Ahem - pictures?

Ooh, looking forward to following progress on that CH.

freebird wrote:Ahem - pictures?

I knew I wouldn't get away without ! It turned to rain at Wimpole, so no work in progress shots, and the light was not good enough for my phone camera last night.

Ok, it is just a start but here is how far I got:

From the top, front stretcher with twiddly bits, front seat rail, then side stretchers x 4.  For the spindleback, I made all the rails and stretchers the same shape, like the front seat rail here (2nd down).  This time I'm doing it differently; the seat rails stay as a parallel 24mm diameter cyclinder tapering to a 17.5mm diameter tenon at a well defined shoulder - it is better for the seat weaving and stronger.  But for the other stretchers, Ive kept the centre at 24mm diameter with a smooth taper down to the tenon.  I tried this on a stool and liked the look of it, but it has another couple of advantages - without the well defined shoulder, you can trim them slightly to length without it being visually apparent - useful for adjusting them to meet the steam-bent legs.  You can see that there are two pairs at different lengths to accomodate the expected outward curve of the back legs, but steam bending is not a precise science an a bit of wriggle room is good.  

The other advantage is efficient use of wood; to get the parallel rail, I need to split the billet into pieces a bit bigger than 24mm over the full length to be sure to get a piece without the odd flat facet left on it after turning.  But with the tapered version, if the split runs off line a bit, or there is a slight curve to the piece, I can still use it if the middle is fat enough to get the 24mm thickest part, and the ends are not too thin.

The wood looks very white in the photo, Chilli head, what wood is it?

Ah yes, forgot to mention.  It is ash, as I used for my first chair - I want them to sort of match but not match ... the idea is to make one for each of the family, tailored to suit their requirements, then a new dining table to go with them.  This might be a very long term project. This chair is for DS, so the seat is a little bit lower than the first one, in fact a bit smaller all round - the first was roughly based on a Clissett design and his chairs seem on the large side.

The white of the ash will yellow a little when finished with oil & beeswax polish, and with age. Ash is pretty traditional for chair parts, as it is easy to cleave into reasonably straight pieces.  Elm is the opposite - terribly hard to split, so traditionally used for chair seats.  I will be sticking with a woven seagrass seat, partly to keep the materials the same through the (not-quite) set, but also because I find woven seats more comfy.

Wasn't elm traditionally used for coffins as well? I think this was a (fairly useless) bit of information picked up when I had to do a term's woodwork at art college. Unlike CH I did not excel at using wood, and got back to clay and weaving as soon as I could!!

Looks beautiful CH

I have been rather thwarted.  My plan on starting a chair was that I might be able to continue it over the craft festival at Sutton Hoo.  But one of the problems (amongst many ) is that they have mature ash trees on site, which currently show no signs of Ash dieback, and understandably they'd like to keep it that way, so we are not allowed to bring any green ash wood onto their site.  Needless to say we can't cut down theirs either ...  So I'll have to make something else from Sycamore or plum, which we can take.

Interesting to hear that about the efforts to keep ash die-back at bay.

Yes. It is well and truly after the horse bolted, but still, heartening to see some action. As far as I know Wimpole don't have any confirmed cases yet either, so it is all rather precautionary. What I still don't understand is how come we were importing ash saplings in the first place. Anyone would think they were difficult to grow !

All of these things - biosecurity, health and safety risk assessments etc are important and worthwhile, but must give Jim our organiser a headache !

We have planted an elm hedge as apparently Dutch elm disease only affects trees over a certain height. I hope it will be successful.

Yes, that fits what Simon the Wimpole forester was saying. They have elm, and coppice it to keep it healthy. The trouble is that you don't get nice wide boards of elm that way, to make chair seats from. I fancy making a "smoker's bow" chair sometime, not because I smoke (I don't) but because it fits perfectly my mental picture of Enid Blyton's wishing chair ! They look great with an elm seat, but I do know a man with some beautiful wide boards of English walnut, which would be beautiful too.

I did a bit more work on this chair at the weekend; steam bending the back legs and cleaning them up. The front legs I turned at Wimpole the previous weekend - now I have all the pieces ready for assembly. Watch this space !

There are a lot of things I like about greenwood chair making.  One of them is that there is a lot of working by hand and eye; a lot less obsession with tape measures and try square - if it looks right, it is right (enough).

The other thing I like is how quickly you can move from the stage of a pile of turned and shaved pieces, to something looking very like a chair !  I put in a bit of time on Sunday, and no more than an hour yesterday afrernoon to go from a pile of components to this stage:



What remains now is to trim the back legs to length; they are left about 1/2" too long at the bottom (for levelling) and there is maybe an excess 2" at the top (makes it less likely to split during the fitting of the back slats).  It will need oiling, waxing, and then a seat weaving.

I've not shown all the steps as I did with the first chair, because the principles are much the same.  Here the back slats are cleft from a log, and left to dry before planing to thickness, rather than the turned components of the spindle back.

For the spindle back I followed a Clisset design as detailed in Jack Hill's Country Chair Making - an excellent book that makes complexity seem plain.  For this design I took some ideas from Mike Abbott's Going with the Grain - notably the bending of the back legs.  The Clissett designs have a sharpish bend near the seat level, and are curved straight back, so the back legs are parallel when viewed from the front.  This one has the back legs bent in a continuous arc using a former which is a 45" radius circular arc.  The legs are fitted rotated by 20 degrees, so that the rear legs and the back flare outwards a bit, lending a little extra stability, a wider back at shoulder height, and (I think) a more elegant look.  it also makes judging the drilling angles for the joints a bit more tricky ...

It took me longer to get around to seat weaving than I had expected, but I've finished it now:


I went for seagrass, with a simple splayed weave (because that is all I know how to do !).

That looks fabulous CH - the weaving bit is a whole different skill. Is it completely finished now or do you still need to wax the wood. It looks a different colour from the previous picture but the light could be different.

It is part the lighting, but part the finish. Ash tends to yellow with any oil or wax finish, and with time. What I have done is applied one coat of Danish oil, followed by my homemade beeswax/linseed/turpentine based wax. I find that if you put the linseed directly on, ash goes very yellow (although it brings out the colours marvellously on dark wood like walnut). The Danish oil is a drying oil, and seems to yellow less.

I must try to grasp some of the other weaves. Mike Abbott's books have some beginner-friendly descriptions. This weave is really just a development from what I learned making one of those Dryad craft kit footstools that someone gave me !

I did start chair number 3 at the Wimpole scythe festival - that won't need weaving though; it is going to have a solid Walnut seat.