Thanks again, all. I appreciate the kind words. It's a joy to work with nice wood.
Richard D. Wrote:The hardest part about building the chair is seeing it through to the end. Have you posted it on the Yahoo group?
Agreed. I hate the sanding/finishing steps, so I have a ton of projects that stall at that point. And yes, I posted pictures on the Yahoo group. They had helped with some of my questions along the way (as had Woodnet a couple times).
WaterlooMarc Wrote:Since you mentioned the photography, what camera are you using? I ask because I’m trying to go down that rabbit hole myself.
Haha, to be clear, I have not jumped down that rabbit hole and am nothing close to a "real" photographer. I grabbed a nice DSLR camera from work for the pictures, but upon getting home, discovered that it was broken (we have multiple at work, but I grabbed the one bad one without checking). So I used my Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7, which falls somewhere between a small point-and-shoot and a DSLR in quality. Can't change the lens. I followed some online guides (such as Neal Addy's) for some pointers on taking decent shots and doing things like correcting white balance. I think that helped a lot over the pictures I might have otherwise taken, but there is certainly still lots of room for improvement.
YSU65 Wrote:I did buy a lot of unique tools for the job so that was a plus. I have a large cherry board for another one. Why would I do another?
Projects are always an excuse for more tools, especially if they're for a significant other. And yes, someday I'd love to make one for myself. Although we just had a baby, so one for her might come first. We'll see.
The chair is beautiful as everyone else has already said. I have looked at pictures of lot of these chairs and never saw a prettier seat than yours. Did you resaw the plank yourself? It must have been massive to have yielded to pieces thick enough for the chair seat. This chair always looks really nice in walnut as does yours. Ken
Ken Vick Wrote:Did you resaw the plank yourself? It must have been massive to have yielded to pieces thick enough for the chair seat.
No, I didn't resaw the plank. I bought a bookmatched set of boards (see the picture). They were about 2-1/8" thick, 8' long, and 16" or so of heartwood. So big boards! The ends have wax on them covering the crotch wood so they didn't crack while drying.
I had/have some walnut from a tree that I personally milled that includes some crotch wood, but it wasn't the "right" wood for this project. I might have been able to make the boards work, but I felt like I would have been forcing it.
Question: I don't know much about chair construction. It looks like the back slats are just loosely fitted into holes in the seat. Is that so they can move in/out and not stress the top of the chair as they flex when you lean against it?
Question: I don't know much about chair construction. It looks like the back slats are just loosely fitted into holes in the seat. Is that so they can move in/out and not stress the top of the chair as they flex when you lean against it?
+1 ^^ Can you explain the gap behind the slat/seat interface?
I too have made efforts to use crotchwood in projects and appreciate the challenges you faced. You have a spectacular match and when you do justice to wood like that everything is better forever. Bravo.
The slats are meant to bend and flex with your back, bending to cradle it. They're four thin laminations glued together in a form to get the curved shape. The center two laminations are ash to increase strength while allowing for flexing.
At the top and bottom, wedges are added between the laminations to make them a little thicker and stronger where they're profiled down to a smaller width.
Since the back braces are meant to bend and flex, the top and bottom connections must allow for that, so they're floating instead of glued. The bottom is a squareish peg in a squareish hole (prevents rotation). There's almost no play on the sides, but room to move backwards (natural state with no one in the chair is almost completely forward). The top connection is more circular, but there too an angled hole is drilled in the main hole to allow the top of the brace to come forward a bit when someone sits.
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