The furniture is delivered. The deadline has passed (delivery was on schedule and photos taken before the work left the shop…I’ve already improved upon 2024).
During the final push of chairmaking, I realized that this chair was following many of the same steps as previous work. That’s not surprising…I’m drawing from my past approach, my experiences, and my chairmaking tool bag. Except - I thought this chair would require a new approach. I thought I’d designed something that required new skills and a different method. Not because I designed something purposefully novel…only that I wasn’t sure how I would make the chair until I started working. I thought I’d need to create new techniques. That was not the case.*
Once the familiarity with the needed techniques to make this chair was apparent, a John Prine Grammy video came to mind. (It’s a great four song set). In it, John shares how he got his start as a stage musician. He played before the same small crowd at a bar. About the third week, he thought he needed something new, so he wrote a song with a jazz melody. As he played through it in the bathroom before going on, John realized “it was the same three chords he always used.”
I know how he felt.
*The one exception to the familiar path…adding the bent lamination wings to the chair form. I’ve stayed away from bent laminations for the past 10 years or so. I prefer bending green wood whenever possible. Laminations *sometime* look stripy. I do not want stripes. I needed to risk it. The wings didn’t allow for greenwood, so I ordered Unibond and put on the dust mask.
And here’s the sweet piece. The bend looks “right” to my eye. My fears were not realized. I think it’s because I bent the tangential face, and it’s the radial (quartersawn) face that shows the glue lines. The radial face of red oak, on a bent piece, shows the lines of the growth rings. The glue lines here are quiet. They don’t grab attention. The wings don’t read as a bent piece of green wood, but they also don’t scream out “BENT LAM!” (I think the arm bend on my next stick chair will be a lamination.) The dark tung oil helped unify the tones (the laminations, along with the bent green parts and the kiln dried arms).
The fun was in scribing and fitting the wings to the bent greenwood posts. This was a first for me. Those wings are attached by floating tenons, pinned to the posts and the wing.
I’m already daydreaming about the next one….
Beautiful chair. Nicely done. Just wondering did you use a wide belt sander on the laminations?
This is a cool looking chair.
Out of curiosity have you ever worked with that funny bending wood that Chris has written about on the LAP in the past? I have not, nor have I tried bent laminations for that matter, but just wondering if it would be able to do the same without laminations.