Building the Chris Schwarz staked chair (pics!)

[Funky Space Cowboy]

As I mentioned last week in my post about my staked stool I'm now working on a Schwarz style staked chair / backstool, using information gleaned from his blog posts on the subject:

http://blog.lostartpress.com/2015/01/19/...ked-chair/
http://blog.lostartpress.com/2015/01/20/...resultant/
http://blog.lostartpress.com/2015/01/29/...-own-work/
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodwo...ding-setup
http://www.popularwoodworking.com/woodwo...chair-seat

In my other thread Arlin asked for some build instructions so I thought I'd document the chair building process since the first half of this project is just building the first stool again :-)

First off some basic rough dimensions:

Seat blank: 10/4 poplar, 18"Wx16"D
Leg blanks: 3x 6/4 oak squares, 22" long.
Crest rail: 4/4 oak, 17x3"
Back spindles: 4/4 oak squares 18" long.

After doing all the rough prep work my first step was steam bend the crest rail for the chair back, which I discussed in an earlier post.

Next up octagon-ing the legs.







Easiest way I know to do that is to mark two lines down all four faces of the blank that's 1/4 of the total width of the face, for 6/4 stock that's 3/8". Then just plane the four 90 degree corners down to your links and boom nice and easy octagon.

Next I went to work on the seat.



First I marked out the final shape and then position my joinery holes accordingly. In this case the holes for the front legs are 3" in from the corner, the back is 1 1/2" in straight in from the back edge of the blank.







Drill away with a brace and 1/2" auger bit. Using a bevel gauge set to 70 degrees as a guide. I'm using 70 degrees for the splay because it looks about right and seems to be working out just fine on the first stool. I have no idea if this is common or at all appropriate



For the front corners I also used a 70 degree splay angle but incline along a line towards the corner. So much for compound angles!

Next up to taper the mortises. I use the LV large tapered reamer for that, and like Schwarz I have a hard time using the reamer in a brace without turning the hole into an ellipse so I used a corded hand drill





That's it for tonight! Next installment will feature turning and tapering the leg tenons and figuring out how to do the back...

Cheers,

Josh

[Skip J.]

Excellent build along Josh, you can take my shop pics anytime! Those are just excellent, well done! Those octagons are great too!

[Bob-Jones]

Looking good so far, keep it up. Those are on my short list of to build.

[Funky Space Cowboy]

Lots of progress to document since my last update!

After reaming out the mortises in the seat next step is to add the tapered tenons to the legs. Since at 1 1/2" these legs are far to large to fit into the tapered tenon cutter, tenons have to be cut first. I do this on the lathe since it's quick and easy. If you don't have a lathe, I feel sorry for you, they're a lot of fun and terribly useful on projects Actually a draw knife can be used to good advantage at this stage from what I understand.



Here's the basic tenon before tapering. I size these so that the ends will be about 1/4" proud of the seat surface (trimmed flush later of course) and at the maximum diameter as will fit the tenon taper cutter. I add a rough taper on the lathe to save time and wear on the tenon cutter blade, as you can see above.



Just sharpen your pencil till the cutter bottoms out...



Ta da!



You'll notice that one of these tenons is much larger than the others, that's for the back leg. I didn't do this on purpose, I accidentally reamed the mortise for the rear leg to the full depth of the tapered reamer, which is far too big for the 1/2 tenon cutter to support. When I realized my error I figured I had two options: bourbon and sadness or just turn that tenon by hand on the lathe. Since I was low on bourbon that night I opted to hand make the tenon

It was actually a pretty simple process, I just set a pair of calipers to the maximum width of the rear mortise, turned a straight tenon to that thickness, then set my calipers to match the exit hole in the top of the seat and turned a straight taper. Fit perfect on the first try! I may dispense with the pencil sharpener for leg tenons on future chairs and just do them all on the lathe this way.





We have a stool! This is pretty much all that's required, structurally, for the simple staked stool. If you're playing at home you'd now cut out the seat to it's final shape, saddle it, size the legs to the height you want, glue and paint. But not me! I'm pressing on to uncharted space and adding a back to make this a proper chair.

[Funky Space Cowboy]

With the basic stool part built it's time to move on to the back! Uncharted territory for me, prior to this the only proper chairs I've made have been Roorkees. I've also purposely avoided reading up on proper chair making and design for this project, it's been more fun to figure out things on my own just using the knowledge nuggets Chris has dropped in his blog

To make the back spindles I'd originally planed on just turning them down from 4/4 squares of oak. After making one I remember that I really, really, really hate turning dowels that thin and decided to go for octagons instead.



I happened have to a little bit of scrap with a 45 degree angle planed into laying around that made a handy support for these spindles. When I go into production mode on these chairs later I have an idea for a little work holding jig to make it easy to crank these suckers out on the bench.



I just eyeballed the octagons on these instead of marking out the lines like I did on the legs. I'm happy with the results, but there's room to improve with practice.

I forgot to photograph a step, apologies. To drill out the mortises in the crest rail for the spindles I scribed a line exactly down the middle of the rail and then used a pair of dividers to walk out four evenly spaced marks for the 1/2" spindle holes. I cheated and used the drill press for this, these are blind mortises, stopping about 1/4" shy of the top of the rail. Then using the smaller tapered reamer from LV, in a brace, I created the tapered mortises. Important note: leave your dividers locked in from this step, you'll need them later for marking the drill holes on the seat!

The next thing I needed to do was determine what sort of angle to use for the seat back. I grabbed a bit of 2x4 and drilled holes at different angles, attached a couple spindles to it and the crest rail and clamped it to the chair:





With it jury rigged like this I gave it a few gentle test sittings till I found an angle that felt good. I settled on 10 degrees off vertical.

Mortising the seat for the back.



This was pretty easy. On the top of the stool I traced out the shape of the crest rail, marked a line through the middle and then just walked off the mortise locations with my still set dividers from earlier. Drill out the four 1/2" holes with a brace and auger, using my bevel gauge as a guide, same as with the legs and Robert's married to your aunt.

I used through holes for the seat mortises so I could fully taper the holes in order to get as deep a connection as possible when seating the spindles. Again tapering was done with the small LV reamer in brace.

Assembly!









Just dry fitting here. Whack the spindles into the seat first and then fit the crest rail on top. I couldn't resist and immediately gave it a careful test sitting. Very comfy! Super stable on the single rear leg, evening leaning back.

I have some fining turning to do - the crest rail is lopsided and the far right spindle isn't seated at all in the rail. I need to check the spindles and mortises to make sure everyone is consistent in size and tapering but that should be pretty simple.

Next up after sorting out the crest rail wonkiness is to cut the seat to final shape and saddle it.

It'll be a few days before I can share any more progress as I have to do and do boyfriend things for most of the weekend... sigh.

Cheers,

Josh

[eg54string]

Thanks for the post and the pictures. It is good inspiration.
I like the octagons, esp.
Will the spindles have wedges in the tenon ends on the seat underside?
Eric.

[cputnam]

Uncharted territory: Sounds like the lead in to a Star Trek episode. You're looking good dude! Keep up the build along please, I'm really enjoying it.

[Funky Space Cowboy]

eg54string said:

---

Thanks for the post and the pictures. It is good inspiration.
I like the octagons, esp.
Will the spindles have wedges in the tenon ends on the seat underside?
Eric.

---

Eric,

No, no additional wedging beyond the conical shape of the mortise/tenons. Honestly it doesn't need any further mechanical support, when bench testing the joinery in scrap I found that the tapered spindle joint was secure enough w/out glue to lift the end of my bench up and drag it back and forth a few inches. The wedging action from the conical shape of this joint type is more than strong enough as is.

Thanks,

Josh

[Funky Space Cowboy]

cputnam said:

---

Uncharted territory: Sounds like the lead in to a Star Trek episode. You're looking good dude! Keep up the build along please, I'm really enjoying it.

---

Thanks Curt! Glad you're enjoying the build-along. It's a lot of work to document the steps in the shop and write it up later so it's good to hear people are enjoying it!

Cheers,

Josh

[Window Guy]

Josh .......... Thanks for the pictures and build along, looks like a lot of fun. I haven't done anything like this but would like to. I will start with the stools for the workshop similar to the one Paul Sellers built.

Thanks for sharing !

Steve


PS: Good to see you back!