With the joinery complete, it's time for some serious shaping. This chair has a lot of curves, some of which are too sharp for my flat-bottomed spokeshave. I started using rasps and files more as I progressed - wish I had started with them earlier. There are a lot of photos in this post, so I'll try to let the pictures and captions do most of the talking.
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| Marking the legs with a template |
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| Easy clamping in the vise for the first side, but after that side is shaped ... |
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| ... it's tough to figure out a good clamping method. Using a bench dog wasn't good enough. |
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| Combination bench dog and end stop still not good enough ... |
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| Upper part of leg was still square and clamping that tightly to the bench worked well. |
With a clamping method worked out, I made some stop cuts and started chiseling. I got better and better at chiseling to the lines as the work progressed. Much less clean up work that way.
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| Chiseling to the lines |
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| Watch that grain direction - note the knot at left causing the grain to dive |
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| Planing where possible on convex curves |
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| Smoothing concave areas with spokeshave |
Very happy with how the front legs came out.
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| Original and new leg |
The front rail was a matter of stop cuts, chiseling, and cleaning up with rasps and files.
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| Old and new - still need to make the line detail |
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| And with that, the front leg assembly was dry fit and is looking good |
For the back legs, there is a broad sweeping curve on the back of each leg. I wanted to keep the off-cut to use as a clamping caul when working on the leg, so I got out the jigsaw. I know - hated to use a power tool. Wish I had a good bow saw to cut this.
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| Aliens visited my shop. The main reason I love using hand tools. |
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| Using the jigsaw on the saw bench |
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| Cleaning up with spokeshave |
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| Marking the shape with a template |
Shaping of the back legs began with sawing away the waste on the lower portion of the leg.
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| A long rip cut to remove some waste |
Then it was on to the stop cuts and chiseling to the curved layout lines. After removing the bulk of the waste, spokeshaves, rasps, files and scrapers finished it off.
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| Smoothing the curves with a scraper |
Didn't get many pictures on the leg shaping. Oh well, on to the backrest rails.
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| Chiseling away some waste |
I ran into a problem here. When I whacked the chisel above, a big chunk of waste came off that included some keeper material. It broke off at the level of the tenon. I glued the piece back on and got back to it later. The reason it broke off was that the chunk was unsupported behind the chisel cut. I was more careful taking much smaller bites with my chisel cuts and also used a plastic card in the kerf to help support the chunks.
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| Plastic card in kerf helps support the wood during chisel cuts |
The lower and upper backrest rails both get a mortise to house the backrest splat. I cut the mortises after having shaped the rails.
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| Lower backrest rail mortise laid out ... |
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| ... and competed. It's 6" long, 3/8" wide and 3/8" deep, but went reasonably quickly. |
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| Upper backrest rail shaped on its underside and mortise laid out |
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| Closer view of layout |
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| And the mortise completed |
The next part of shaping was to make a sort of cove on the inside front edges of the backrest rails and legs that make up the backrest frame. The cove is 1/8" deep and 1/2" wide.
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| Area to be "coved" marked out |
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| Started with a gouge and cut to the lines |
To clean up the cuts and make them more consistent all around, I made a small cutter for the scratch stock. Also had to modify the body of the scratch stock so it would work properly on curved surfaces.
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| Scratch stock and new cutter. Area of stock below cutter is now curved to fit concave work pieces. |
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| Close-up of cutter, it is sharpened similar to curved scrapers |
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| Eventually get this profile ... |
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| ... which adds nice shadow lines |
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| Shadow lines from cove on upper backrest rail |
With this done (and most of the shaping of the top of the upper backrest rail done), a test fit was done so that I could blend the backrest rails with the shaped legs.
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| Some work needed to finalize the outer junction of legs with upper backrest rail |
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| Spokeshave blends the two pieces together |
Last thing for shaping: need to make a panel for the back splat and shape it to suit.
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| Re-sawing a board to create panel. Worked great with a freshly sharpened saw. |
After squaring up the panel, it was clamped to the backrest and marked.
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| Marking the outline of the backrest, tenons will be added to the shape |
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| The tools used to generate the shape - plastic tubs make great curve templates |
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| Splat shaped and fitted |
And here is the back leg assembly. Very happy with this.
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| Back leg assembly shaped and dry fit |
Whew!
I actually have one more "shaping" step to do, but
I'm hoping anyone reading this blog can suggest a way to accomplish it. The front seat rail and the backrest splat each have a detail cut into it. I'm not sure what to call this detail, but it's a roughly 1/8" wide, 1/8" deep slot.
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| The details that need to be added |
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| Close-up on the front seat rail, where the detail follow the bottom shape |
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| Close-up at side of splat - detail extends all around the splat |
I need to get started on these things tomorrow, so if anyone out there has a suggestion ...
Anyone? ...
