The stretchers that join the legs were quick to make. Three of the four were 11/16" diameter cylindrical with 3/4" long, 5/8" diameter straight tenons. Square up a piece of wood to 11/16, octagonize, ease the facets with spokeshave and ... done.
The front stretcher only differed in that it bulged to about 1 1/16" in the middle. After squaring a piece to 1 1/16", I used a template to draw the shape, then used drawknife and spokeshave to arrive at a square version of the stretcher. Then octagonal, then roundish.
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| In process |
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| A little sanding and, fini |
To find the locations of the front and back stretchers, I measured down from the underside of the seat 5 1/2" and made a mark on the legs. Then I stretched a rubber band from front left to front right leg at that 5 1/2" location. I found a center point for boring each leg by measuring between straight portions of the rubber band. The rubber band method also allows you to find the angle for boring.
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Rubber band stretched from one front leg to the other
(dark wood board is there so you can see the yellow rubber band) |
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| Getting the angle at which to bore the leg |
The side stretchers were done similarly, except that the hole centers were 2" lower than those for the front and back stretchers.
The leg boring setup was as seen in the following picture: the leg was held in two cradles and clamped to the benchtop with a holdfast. The sliding bevel was placed in front of the leg and a small round mirror was positioned about a foot behind the leg so I could see how I was doing relative to the angle of the sliding bevel. Another mirror was placed to the left of the leg, with a combination square standing between the mirror and the leg to help judge vertical. While boring with bit and brace, I kept track of both angles using the mirrors. And I used a step stool to get me higher so I would be better able to bore from above.
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| Leg boring setup |
There was one potential hiccup here. The top end of the leg had already been tapered and that tapered end was placed in the left cradle. The bottom of the leg was still full diameter, so the leg was not clamped horizontally. Therefore, my sliding bevel, which was sitting on the bench top, indicated the wrong angle at which to bore.
I realized this later, after fitting the stretchers. Turned out not to matter much. It probably changed the boring angle by a couple of degrees, which was probably within my range of variability anyway.
Once the holes were bored, the legs were put into the seat and the lengths for all stretchers were determined using a couple of dowels.
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| Two sticks used to find the length of a stretcher |
Then that length was transferred to the stretcher, which was cut to length. Tenons were made on the ends of each stretcher using a drawknife. Finally, a test fit of the undercarriage felt very satisfying. It really tightened up the whole thing.
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| First test fit of the seat and undercarriage |
Next time I'll get into the spindles and crest rail.
Matt,
ReplyDeleteGood job. Be careful, building chairs of any size can be addicting :-). I've one that was built for the first grandkid that has been waiting to be picked up so long it is now for the second grandkid and another early chair will go to the first.
ken
Thanks for the warning, Ken. I'm teetering with the decision to purchase some of Curtis Buchanan's chair plans - more along the lines of his "democratic" chair rather than his fancy ones. We don't need any chairs around here, but making chairs can be so damned satisfying. They're the definition of functional furniture.
DeleteGood tutorial on chair making. I have not done one yet, but it has been on my radar for a while.
ReplyDeleteFound out that my taper bung borer is at 10 degrees taper. When researching taper angles in chair making they were all over the places from roughly 5 to 11 degrees. This mean two things for me. Build a tapering tool like yours at around 6 or 7 degrees then build two seats, one with your tapering tool and another using the bung borer to compare.
Bob, slowly catching up with his blogs reading while awaiting paint to dry and parts soaking
Bob, a few years ago I came across two tapered reamers that I found out later were for deburring the cut ends of copper pipes. But before I knew that, I tried making a joint in wood with one. It took a long time to taper the mortise with the 30° reamer, but I got the same taper on the mortise and the tenon and the joint was rock solid when glued. Certainly not optimal dimensions, but still worked.
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