Kingston Library Chairs - Cafe Chairs & Upholstery

As I mentioned in our blog posting yesterday, the upholstered seats are finished for the Kingston Library chairs.  So we snapped a couple pictures this afternoon and have attached them below.  Matt also felt a little left out in the last posting, so we staged a shot of him, attached below, posing with one of his cafe chairs, which are coming along nicely.  We also started gluing up the birds-eye conference table and the wood looks great!

A nice spring joint in birds-eye maple.

Matt and one of his cafe chairs under construction.

Kingston Library Work Continued

Well, we're still working away on the Kingston Library project.  The chairs are 99% finished, except for a little more finishing work and the highly anticipated branding event using our new branding iron (see photo below).  The upholstery work is completed and the seats look nice.  We still need to get a photo with the upholstered seats in the chairs.  I'll try to get one and post again soon.  The table columns have been turned and the cutting and fitting of the legs are well underway.  The tops are all glued up and are now with CNC Router Solutions in Dover to get cut into circles and the edge profiles shaped.  We've also scoured northern New England and the great North Woods looking for some nice birds-eye maple to make the conference room table top.  Our normal suppliers didn't have what we needed, so we ended up searching elsewhere.  I travelled to Rumford, Maine last weekend and visited Premium Specialty Hardwoods.  Nice selection of figured maple and other domestic wood, but they just didn't have what we needed at the time.  So Gary and I went on a road trip to Vermont where we finally found what we wanted.  We picked up a number of nice boards at a reasonable price.  We missed our turn on our way back and ended up crisscrossing through south western New Hampshire on a nice afternoon.  Good road trip and we got to see a part of the state that we rarely visit.  Really pretty.  I didn't get a photo of the wood yet, but will have to post one soon.  It will be nice!  Action photos of our recent work are below!

Our "BRAND" on a test piece of maple.

Michael at the lathe finish sanding the table columns.

Gary and I building the jig to cut the flats on the columns for the table legs.

The jig in action of the shaper.

Another shot of the jig in action.

Cutting the joinery on the table legs.

Chairs in the finishing shop.

Michael cutting mortises in the cafe chair legs.

Gary vacuuming saw dust off me after sawing a few parts.
I had more hair up there before this operation.

Windfarm on a ridge somewhere near Acworth, NH, I think.
Google maps was a bit sketchy on the phone in this area.

Kingston Library Chairs - All glued up

We've still been at it the past couple weeks, working hard on the chairs for the Kingston Library.  The chairs glued up really nicely.  The joints are tight and the chairs generally came together fairly easily and square.  The sheer number of chairs has been challenging.  Gary and I have been joking that we get each step of gluing up or fitting parts down to a science by about the 25th chair.  The dovetailed center stretchers went in pretty quickly, but the finishing up with glue clean off and sanding has been slower going.  I've attached a few more photos of the building action below.

A detail shot of a side seat rail's wedged through tenon in the rear post.
  As Matt likes to call it, "the 200 year joint." 

Nice morning at the mill.  On the way to get donuts at Monkey Business!

Morning light on the glued up chairs.

Gary "Dubba" G. fairing the thumbnail on the top edge of a stretcher.

Sawing the dovetail socket for a center stretcher.

Center stretcher dovetail finished off.