I guess it is a hobby now.

[brad225]

Thank You for all of the supportive comments.

The wood for chairs arrived on Monday.

I am currently building a mock-up of my designs out of Poplar. A number of jigs are being built to make the process faster and saner.

The front legs have a curve on each side. I thought I could do it with one leg pattern but that quickly didn't work. Today I decided to build a different jig for each side of the leg. It will make the process much more accurate and faster.
Part of the decision was doing the math. 16 chairs x 2 front legs = 32 x 4 curves on each leg = 128 that need to be consistent. That is to say nothing of 64 mortices for seat rails.
Oh well, I knew it would challenge my alleged sanity. As long as Ibuprofen and wine don't disappear, I will hopefully be done by,------ Thanksgiving.

I'll post some pictures of the jigs and prototype parts soon.

 

[brad225]

In my spare time i built a house for my Grand-Nephew.

 

[brad225]

Well it was from the box for his new car seat.

 

[brad225]

Finally I have the prototype of the chair put together. It has taken 5 weeks working at least 4-6 hours most every day. Because of the curves in the design it took more jigs than I had first thought.
I guess that is what happens when you let the design develop as you build.

I'll post pictures of all of the jigs I built for the process. All of the mortise and tenon joints in these pictures were put together with screws rather than glue as they went together and came apart numerous times.

 

[Mikado463]

Looks superb Brad ! will the seat be all wood or upholstered ?

 

[brad225]

It will have an upholstered seat.
I tried it out with a 1/2" piece of plywood and 1 1/2" piece of Styrofoam and that was less than comfortable. I may make a slight adjustment in the 2 outside pieces of the back. Possibly a bit of shaping for back comfort though I am the only one that has said it was needed. Maybe just my personal chair.

 

[brad225]

My nephew is putting together a shop in his garage. We found him a Delta Unisaw at a very good price with the fence system missing.
I convinced him that IF, a 4' x 8' table on wheels, with a 400 lb saw built in was going to last long, he needed a steel base structure.
This is what we came up with this week.

 

[brad225]

He found some really nice wheels with pads that unscrew to make it solidly attached to the floor from Castor HQ on Amazon.

The wooden frame will be altered a bit to fit the saw and base structure.

 

[brad225]

As for chairs this week. I at least have a pile of walnut with 34 legs drawn on them. I can rough cut these into smaller pieces and mill them flat before a final cut to fit the jigs.

 

[Mikado463]

amazing...........and to think I'm happy if I can pound a nail in straight !

 

[bzr]

Thanks for sharing. I love working with wood, although I have no skill or talent with it. Was absolutely awesome to see someone that is obviously gifted document their progress & share it this way. I have a fondness for New Zealand Kauri, Rimu & Macrocarpa, of the last I believe it is native to California.

 

[brad225]

Next step is rough cutting the Walnut to pieces with 1-3 legs. This prevents milling a lot of unnecessary wood.

 

[brad225]

Then it is the same process.
Straighten and flatten one face then plane each piece to make them the same thickness.

 

[brad225]

Next draw the leg pattern on the newly milled wood and cut 1/8" larger than the finished size.

 

[brad225]

I had never cut this much Walnut on the bandsaw and realized how some of the sawdust is almost a powder and floats everywhere. Even with an N-95 dust mask my sinuses were not happy.

I upgraded my shop vac connections and connected the duct work from my central vac to the enclosed area where the wheels of the band saw are. This ended picking up about 99% of the dust that had previously escaped.

The dust you see on the saw table and floor is the accumulation after cutting 34 back legs.

 

[brad225]

Now the easy part of putting the rough cut legs in the jig patterns to cut the finished shape on the serial cutting head on the shaper.

Once the first side is done I could put a leg in each side and the process speeds up.

Sorry for extra posts the pictures won't load in the proper order.

 

[brad225]

Jig with 2 legs at the shaper.

First finished leg.

34 back legs.

 

[brad225]

We had family over diner a week+ ago. I had everyone spend time in the prototype chair and give thoughts on comfort. A few said the seat was a bit to high but over all everyone was fine sitting in the chair and eating the dinner I make for them .

I decided to lengthen the chair seat 1 3/4" front to back. It was an easy change as it only meant making side and front aprons and seems much more comfortable for me. After all why not make me comfortable.

I mocked up a seat and covered it with scrap material.



Family will be back Saturday for another dinner. We will see what the comments bring.

 

[jadedavid]

Looking good.
Very nice workmanship.
Do you still have any time for listening to music?

 

[brad225]

Funny you should ask about listening to music.

At the time you posted I was just going into my music room for the first time in 3 weeks.

I did add to my ability to listen to music in the shop by installing an unused laptop with Roon and Qobuz on it. That made not being in by listening room a bit easier.