A couple years ago I bought the plans for this chair from Curtis Buchanan. That year, I built a small, 2/3 scale chair (without arms) and it was great fun. But I used kiln-dried red alder, without any attempt to follow the grain of the wood. This time I'm using kiln-dried oak that I'll soak in water to soften it and make it workable with a drawknife - a technique I recently wrote about and learned from a Pete Galbert video. Hopefully I can get the parts to follow the grain to make a very stong chair.
 |
About 6-7 board-feet: that'll be $80 please ...
The grain on this face looked reasonable - not too heavy on the "cathedrals" |
 |
The edge grain looked fairly straight,
though Galbert warns not to trust a sawn edge |
 |
Cut off a 20" section to make the legs, but I
saw that the grain was in the direction of the ruler |
 |
| So I started a split to the right of center ... |
 |
... and sure enough it split along the slanted grain.
At least the split was straight. |
 |
| Here's the exposed edges of the split - fairly straight grain |
I referenced off the split edges to mark where to saw out the leg blanks. I might have split them off, but didn't want to risk the grain running away and getting parts that were too thin.
I split a second length of the board for two more legs and the split had a slight curve to it. I ended up planing it flattish and dealt with the consequences later. Spoiler: there was some tearout when shaping the legs. With stright grained wood, there's little chance of tearout (except at the bottom of a cove cut).
 |
| The initial split for the other two leg blanks |
 |
| Got quite a curve! |
The newly exposed edge also showed suboptimal grain runout. A sane person might scrap the piece and split another, but this wood ain't cheap, so I'll deal with it.
 |
| Pointing to a line I drew showing the edge grain runout |
After the leg blanks were ready I soaked the first one for three days. I only had room in the 3" ID PVC tube for one part at a time. (I did something about that later because not only could I only put one leg blank in at a time, but it also wasn't long enough for the posts!)
 |
| Three leg blanks next to the tube |
 |
| Look at that color right out of the water |
 |
And look how much it expanded - these were the same size before soaking.
The 1 1/2" wide blank grew about 3/32" - didn't expect so much. |
 |
| Surprisingly, it gained almost as much in the radial plane |
Shaving the soaked wood was unbelievable! The wood peeled off nicely, especially in the radial plane. The tangental plane (face of the original board) was a bit tougher. But the trick is to shave the radial plane first so that you have less bulk to take off on the tangental plane.
 |
| The first peel - sweet! |
 |
| What the floor looks like midway through shaping the leg |
 |
| A shaped leg next to a leg blank |
Still not sure what to do about drying the legs. I don't have a makeshift kiln. Curtis shows how to make a simple one in one of his videos. I just need to get a couple things - box, heat source, etc. But I'll need it to be disposable/recyclable because I just don't have room for more stuff. Speaking of which, I could use a steam box to bend the crest rail. But again, I don't have room to store it. Arrgh!
Next tiem I'l get into the posts. An interesting challenge for sure!
