Democratic Armchair, Part 4

I got sidetracked for a few days being sicker than a dog (are dogs sick?).  Not sure what hit me, but it hit hard.  And I rarely get sick.  I'm hoping I'll be better by this coming weekend for the Summer PAST tool collectors meet in Half Moon Bay.

Since the last post, I've completed the joinery for the legs and undercarriage, as well as for the posts, crest rail and spindles.  Not glued up yet, but ready for glue after a few more tasks.

Fitting the post conical tenons to their mortises

Found some misalignment - not surprising since both posts were bent.
Had to ream the holes a bit more to compensate,
 but unfortunately that set them a little too deep in the seat
and the locations for fitting the arms are now a little too low and not equal.  C'est la vie!

On to the undercarriage.

Using rubber bands to scribe a parallel line on the seat for mortise hole angle.
Bored the holes using the line as a guide.

Turned the tenons using a makeshift bungee lathe.
(These stretchers were a tad too long for my regular bungee lathe.)

This picture shows the bench chaos and how many different tools I used here.
Bungee lathe at left, shave pony at right, clamps, hammers, drawknife, spokeshave, ...

Undercarriage dry-fit, with other parts temporarily in place.
Starting to look like a chair.

Then I bored the holes in the posts for the crest rail, and also in 
the crest rail and seat for the spindles.  All spindles were slightly bent,
and the crest rail didn't have quite the curvature on the plan, so I adjusted the angles.

With that stuff done, I started shaping the bowl of the seat.  Oh man, I was crushed after that.  It took about 4 hours and I still hadn't smoothed it out.  Then the shaping of the edges took another 2-3 hours.  And I was crushed after that, too.  But well worth it - Curtis really worked out some good looking details for this chair.

Laid out the contours and drilled holes to desired depths

Plugged the leg mortises so that I wouldn't get any blow-out around the mortise rims

Used gouge and compass plane for most of the work

The shop floor was a big mess with all those small chips

Bowl carved.  Still more shaping to do in this pic.

Shaping the rest of the seat went OK, though it takes me 5-6 times as long as it does for Curtis.  Maybe if I had access to white pine like he uses is would be easier and quicker.  As it is, I'm using some unknown species of Asian hardwood that was once a tabletop.

Tomorrow I hope to get the undercarriage glued up and wedged.  Hopefully I'll also be able to work on the posts, crest rail and spindles.  The last thing will be connecting the arms.  That was not included in Curtis' video series about making a democratic chair, so I'll have to use the techniques learned so far to figure it out.