Woodworking in a Tiny Shop

I'm stoked! Jazzed! Chuffed (for our British friends)!!

At the end of the previous post, I asked for suggestions about how to add the recess details to the backrest panel and the front seat rail.

Detail work on the original chair

Thanks to the help I got from Ralph, Jonas and Bob, the job got done. It took two days - one day to think about it and one day to do it - but the job is done.

Yesterday I tried a bunch of things in laying out the patterns. For the seat rail, I started by drawing points exactly 5/8" up from the bottom, but not straight up - the points were perpendicular to the bottom at each point. After connecting them with a curve, it didn't look quite right.

Experimenting on the template - not quite right

Then I realized that whoever made this chair originally used the exact same template to mark out the detail as they did for the rail's bottom edge.

A very close match

The original builder probably drew in the shape from the template and then freehanded a powered router with an 1/8" bit. The small inconsistencies lead me to think it was freehanded.

So I drew the shape on my work piece with my template 5/8" up from the bottom. Then made many marks 1/8" below that line and connected the points either freehand or with the help of some French curve templates.

For the backrest panel, I experimented with making a template based on the original chair. I made a rub of the original to get the outline.

Made a rubbing of the original backrest splat

Close-up view

This worked nicely, but I realized that just as the original backrest panel was not symmetric, the detail that I'm trying to reproduce was also not symmetric. So I ended up generating the curve myself. I used a compass to scribe a "parallel" curve along the sides 5/8" in from the side. At the bottom I had to adjust the setting of the compass to account for the tenon. At the top I had to wing it. After getting the corners to look right, I marked points 1/8" outside of this shape and connected the dots.

Generating the shape of the recess

Now it was time to knife the lines. I experimented with making a twin blade cutter, but abandoned the idea.

Thought about making a double bladed cutter, the blades set just over 1/8" apart

I tried cutting freehand the lines for the front seat rail on a piece of scrap. The freehand cutting was OK, but trying to chisel out the waste was horrible.

First attempt on scrap

This morning I bought a set of French curves, something I've thought about getting many times. I needed something to guide my knife when cutting the outline of the details.

Using a plastic French curve to knife the lines

This worked well, but was slow as I really didn't want to mess up the parts at this stage. With the lines knifed in, I needed some way to remove the waste accurately and to consistent depth. Jonas had commented about making a mini router plane from a block of wood and a screw. This got me to thinking and this morning I had an idea,

I took a squared-up 1 1/2" x 3" and marked, sawed, and planed a 45° angle on the end. Then I marked a 1/8" slot on that face.

45° end on a 2x4 with 1/8" (strong) slot marked out

After sawing and chiseling out the waste, a 1/8" chisel fit in the slot so that the body of the chisel was proud of the surface by 1/16" or so. Then I screwed another piece onto the angled face to lock the chisel in place.