Making a Schwarz "Short Back" Chair, Part 7

Before shaping the seat, I made some plugs to fit into the leg holes so that I wouldn't blow out the hole rims when removing material for the saddling.

A redwood plug in a leg hole

Concentric semi-circles drawn and depths marked

Depth holes drilled (most of them) and spindle deck inner aspect defined

I kind of winged it when it came to mark the depth to which I wanted to excavate the seat.  It's based on things I've read and the few seats I've done before.  But it dives fairly quickly from the spindle deck - those first holes nearest the deck are 3/8" deep  - but then levels out at max depth of 1/2".  One thing I should note: I defined the inner aspect of the spindle deck with a knife, being careful not to stray from the line.  Then I used a router plane to create a little flat about 1/16 to 1/8" deep on the saddling side of that line.  I started the excavation about 3/8" from that line.

I still don't have a scorp, so I did the waste removal with a homemade compass plane (bottom curved in two directions) and a makeshift travisher.  I took a LOT of time to get to where it felt like there were no bumps.  Then I scraped and sanded until smooth.

Tools of excavation

This knot was a bear - right next to the spindle deck and leg hole

Getting close to the drilled depth holes

I had penciled in the bottoms of the depth holes for better visibility

And now scraped and sanded.  Also, removed the perimeter waste at back
with saws and chisels and then smoothed that rear edge with a #4.

Another view showing detail

Marked the edges all around for a chamfer on the underside.
Waste was removed using scrub plane and spokeshaves.

When the seat was finally done, I glued up the undercarriage.  I used white glue for the convenience, so I hope I never need to repair this chair.

Rails and stretcher glued, legs glued into seat and wedges tapped home

I let that dry before getting the upper part of the chair glued up.  After the glue had set, I removed the protruding leg nubs.  And man, it was a bear getting the leg tops flush with the seat.  I tried many different things - flush saw, gouges, chisels, scrapers.  I don't even remember what worked best - I just remember it was flippin' hard.  But we persevere and we get it done.

Next was gluing the upper part, sans comb - I left the comb for last.  But the spindles and arm bow went pretty well.  I had done several dry runs.  In the end, I couldn't get one of the long sticks all the way down into its seat mortise.  It was about 3/8" shy.  No problem though, I just trimmed 3/8" off the top and I'll never notice.

Arm bow set at proper height and wedges applied to the short sticks

You can tell the third long stick from the left is a little taller than the rest

Due to the flat surface of the arm bow, the short stick nubs were easy to 
remove with a flush cut saw, then trim level with a chisel

That's all for this post.  Next time I'll get into the comb.  It was a really challenging piece to make and to bore holes into.  Until then ...