3 chairs

3 chairs

Monday, January 2, 2012

First project of the year

A really beautiful day today! Started off a little cool but warmed up to about 70. Great day to have the big door on the shop open. I started the bench for Renee Miller in Denton. It's going to be similar to the settee pictured in the previous post except it will seat three. She is going to use it for the dining table.  We're using cherry to match the rest of the furniture in the room. I spent all morning milling the pieces for the seat. There are 15 they make up the seat. The challenge was to make the dimension from center to center of the rear legs the same so that the headrests are all the same length and still get the coopered effect for the seat to look right. I used some poster board taped to the bench so that I could draw the seat full-scale.


Here's a sketch of what we're doing. Overall length is about 60".

All the pieces laid out on the bench. I spent some time looking at the grain to get the best matches. The black lines show me which way the bevels go on each piece.

I beveled and jointed all the edges and added biscuits to keep everything in line. This is a dry fit. I also used the bandsaw to cut out some of the material for the seat scoop. It saves a lot of time and sawdust later. This thing is going to be a bear to glue up.

You can see the coopered effect. Makes for a more interesting seat.  I spent most of my career throwing crooked boards away; now I spend hours making straight ones crooked!

These lines are where we'll cut the outside edge after glueing and where the scoop will be. The front also gets some scallop-like cuts.  Tomorrow I'll cut the notches for the legs. The front center legs will actually go all the way through the seat which will make a nice look. Should get the seat glued up tomorrow and do some work on the legs. Unless it's really nice again (golf!).

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