Kingston Library Chairs - Fitting Parts

Work is continuing on our chair project and we've been grinding away on fitting and faring the posts and back pieces.  There are a lot of parts!  Below are a few more action shots of the work in progress:


Here's a shot of Gary scraping the mill marks and faring the corners of the back splat pieces.

Here's a shot of Matt trimming shoulders and preparing the parts for glue-up.

Here's a shot of one of our new holdfasts in use holding down a chair post that needs faring of an inside curve.

Here's another shot of the holdfast during a critical chair manufacturing procedure.

Kingston Chair Crest Rails and Seats

Over the past few days, we've been working at making the parts for the Kingston Library chair backs and seats.  We've been shaping the curved back pieces on the shaper using a plywood pattern.  In the case of the crest rails, which need a slightly angled back surface in order to land flush with the tapering post, we've been using hand tools to adjust the surface off the shaper.  I've also finished up saddling a prototype for the slab seats.  We will send the prototype to our friend in Maine who has a duplicating router that he will use to rough out the remaining seats.  A few photos of the recent action in the shop are below.

Matt on the shaper with a crest rail part.

Gary and Matt sorting back pieces by color and grain pattern.

Tools in use for finish shaping the crest rails.

Using the old time tools for part of the seat shaping.

The finished seat to be used as the pattern for the duplicating router.

Chair Making - Paring Shoulders

Started cleaning up shoulders on all the back pieces for the Kingston Library chairs.  A few photos of the step by step process are below.

 

Chair Making Joinery Started

Parts are mostly milled for the Kingston Library chairs and we've started cutting and fitting joinery.  We've been trying to get the most out of the power tools to reduce the amount of handwork necessary later on and to create relatively simple setups on the tools that will give us repeatable and precise results.

While Matt was mortising the posts, I cut and fit the back seat rails to build our H's.  I made a wedge milled to the cant angle of the back posts for the sliding table saw cross cut fence.  I screwed the wedge to the cross cut fence and then we cut one end of all the crest rails, back splat rails, back seat rails and the back stretchers to the cant angle.  We then cut the back seat rails to length off the drawing using the same wedge on the fence.   I then ripped the cheeks on all the back seat rails with the table saw.   After fitting the cheeks, I cut the shoulders using the sliding table saw with the wedge on the cross cut fence and an L-fence attached to the rip fence of the saw to leave a space for the cut off piece to go without getting trapped.

Here is a photo of the table saw setup for cutting the tenon shoulders.

The back seat rails with tenons.

Here are a couple shots of Matt fitting story sticks on a few H's before cutting the crest rails to length

Chair Making Continued

We've been at it the last week or so milling and making parts for the Kingston Library chairs.  We've got a few big piles of milled parts and are gearing up to cut joinery in the next day or two.  Below is an action photo of Matt shaping the posts with our new corrugated head and spindle and a second photo of him cutting the mortises in the posts after shaping with our old 1/2" mortise chisel.