Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

It was at this stage of the project that the excitement in my shop was so heavy it couldn’t be cut in two with a new chain saw.

We’ve come a very long way…from boxes of parts…to a full set of chairs.

I now had 10 assembled chairs scattered about my shop just waiting for their final parts. YeeHaw!! Wait a minute…that’s not how a true Minnesotan shows his excitement. “Hey Dale…are you happy right now?!!” You betcha!!

As far as assembly goes, there are only two more parts to fabricate. The corner blocks and the seat base. Once they were complete, it’s on to the finishing stage.

The Corner Blocks:

The corner blocks serve two purposes. They give you a nice anchoring system for the chair seat, but more importantly, they give much more strength to the overall structure of your chair.

My corner blocks were made from leftover 1 1/8” thick cherry stock roughly 2 1/4- 2 1/2 inches wide. (You can certainly get by with smaller stock.)

A couple tips to keep in mind while making your corner blocks:

The two rear corner blocks are basically identical to each other, and your two front blocks are identical to each other. (However, they are not identical to each other from front to rear.)

The two rear corner blocks will have a 45 degree angle touching the rear rail and a 49.5 degree “open” angle (or more than 45 degrees) touching the side rails. The two front corner blocks will have a 45 degree angle touching the front rail and a 49.5 degree “closed” angle (or less than a 45 degree angle) touching the side rails.

So here is how I whipped out a pile of rear corner blocks.

I set my chop saw to 49.5 degrees right. (My chop saw will not go beyond 45 degrees left.)

Then I’d cut that 49.5 degree angle on both ends of my stock.

Next, I’d swing my chop saw in the opposite direction to 45 degrees left, and chop a corner block off of both ends of my stock.

After cutting the two corner blocks in the photo above, you’ll end up with 45’s on both ends of your stock. Next I moved my saw back to the 49.5 degree mark right, then flipped the board over, and finally I slid the stock to the right side of my blade to make those 49.5 degree cuts. And so on…

For the front corner blocks you’ll have to take into account that the 49.5 degree cut will be a closed cut…or less than a 45 degree cut. But the process is basically the same. In no time at all, you’ll have a pile of rear and front corner blocks.

On my first couple corner blocks, I cut a notch out of the inside corner allowing the block to fit in around the inside corner of each leg. (You can see those notches in the corner block photos above.) Later I found that it was much easier (and quicker) to just grind down that same corner on the disc sander.

Normally one would pre-drill and countersink two holes into each block, add glue, and then finally screw the corner blocks to each corner. However, I tried something new this time. I glued and “tightly” clamped all of my blocks into place, let them dry, and then predrilled and countersunk my two screw holes into each corner block. Once done, I screwed two sheetrock screws into each block and into each rail.

Very important note: Please be sure to choose a drill bit and screw length that won’t allow you to go though the outside surface of your rails!!

From there I drilled a 1/4” hole down through the top of each corner block on just one chair. (More on why just one chair later.) This hole will be for the 1/4” bolt that comes up through the bottom of each corner block and into the seat base’s t-nut.

Note: I went back and enlarged the hole in each corner block giving me a little more fudge room for the four seat base bolts. If I recall correctly I think I enlarged each hole to 1/2 inch.

The Seat Base:

I built one seat base (or seat frame) according to Kevin Rodel’s plans.

Enter our local upholsterer.

My wife and I have a very good friend who lives about 6 blocks away that has been doing professional upholstery work for many, many years. She’s such a treasure to have living so close to our home.

When I brought the seat frame over to her house, she told me that this type of seat frame tends to stretch the webbing over time…eventually giving the seat a “sinking” feeling. So she talked me into making a very simple 1/2” thick plywood seat base. And I must say, it worked out great. Plus it took a lot less time to make.

I started out by making a seat base template out of 1/4” plywood. She told me to leave about an 1/8” space all the way around the edge. This would give her plenty of room for the fabric.

Take your time on this part. It’s really important to get this part just right.

Once I had the template done, I placed the template in place, and then stuck a pencil up through the hole in all four corner blocks of my first chair…making a mark on the underside of the template. This would mark the exact position for all four holes on the template.

Next I drilled a 1/4” hole at all four marks on the seat template.

With all four holes drilled in the seat template, I set the template in place and marked a pencil mark on the top sides of all corner blocks on the remaining 9 chairs. This assured me that the holes on all 10 chairs were identically located in relation to the seat template.

Now it’s on to making the actual seat bases.

Taking the exact front to back measurement of the seat template, and a “strong” side to side measurement, I cut a pile of seat base blanks from 1/2” birch plywood.

Next I placed the seat base blanks up against my table saw fence one at a time, and then traced the outline of the template to the blanks.

By cutting away the pencil mark with a straight edge and circular saw, your seat base should come out identical to your template.

Note: My upholsterer and I thought that it would be a wise decision to create one complete upholstered seat to see if it fits OK before upholstering all 10 seats. Good thing we did, because it was just a bit too large side to side between the leg areas.

Now you can transfer your template hole markings to your seat base blanks, and drill the bolt holes.

Placing t-nuts into the four seat base holes from the top gives you a strong anchor for the four bolts that will eventually be threaded up through your corner blocks. To make sure that the t-nuts wouldn’t fall out during upholstery time, I covered each t-nut with a small chunk of duct tape.

Here’s what things look like once you have all of your seat bases complete.

Well, if you’ve made it this far…it’s time to start thinking about adding your “finishing” touches to the chairs.

Seeing that I completed my 10 chairs in December (in Minnesota), using my HVLP sprayer was out of the question. Spraying 3 coats of poly outdoors with 3 feet of snow and temps hovering around 20 above Fahrenheit just wouldn’t cut it.

So all finish work had to be done indoors via brush. Brushing on one coat of Zinsser’s Bulls Eye Shellac to even out the cherry grain, then cherry stain to help match the chairs to our existing cherry furniture, 1 coat of gloss polyurethane, and 2 coats of satin polyurethane was what it took to complete my set of 10 side chairs.

And yes…at this stage of the game…a cocktail just might be in order. :)

Note chair plans hanging in the background.

Once everything has had a chance to dry, I installed the upholstered seats, applied chair pads to the bottoms of all legs, and of course added my final “brand” to each chair.

The following photos are just a quick glimpse at how things turned out:

The following two shots show you how the laminated rear legs turned out on two different chairs. One chair the grain was hardly noticeable, and the other turned out quite wild. I actually don’t have an issue with the way either one turned out. So I wouldn’t let “leg lamination” hold you back if you can’t find thick enough stock for your legs.

Here are two shots (of the same chair) showing what the two completely different grains look like on the laminated front leg. Kind of interesting look. Again, I can certainly live with this look.

The next two shots show an interesting and very wild grain on the upper crest rail of one chair. At first I though that maybe I should have had the grain going in the opposite direction, like a smiling face…but I kind of like how it turned out nonetheless.

(It gives you a good idea how grain direction can really affect the looks of a chair.)

Here is a shot of another chair with the grain running in the opposite direction compared to the chair in the photos above.

During the very first chair assembly, I came across an upper crest rail that had a huge hole in it. (Originally it was just a spare “practice” part.) I was about to throw this upper crest rail into the cull box when my wife said that she wanted it installed into her chair. And so it is indeed a part of her chair.

Going back to the “Lower Stretchers” chapter, I mentioned that I wanted the two opposing lower stretchers to stand out from each other in relation to their grain flow. The following two photos show what I meant when I mentioned that small detail.

Here are a couple close ups of the pyramids on top of the front and rear legs.

Here I’m showing you how flash photography can drastically change the appearance for the same chair. (First shot is with flash, second is without.)

Our chairs turned out looking more like the non-flash version without the higher gloss look. All chairs ended up somewhere between satin and semi-gloss. Which is exactly what we wanted.

Just a couple more photos showing the beautiful grain of cherry.

And my very final photo for this class…thank goodness the chairs have been “shop foreman” approved.

A final note about finishing. Seeing that I had to brush on all finish coats indoors, I ended up with ever so tiny chunks of dust in my finish…as usual. Even with having a fairly nice air filtration system and walking about my fairly clean shop with very light steps, I still end up with lots of airborne crud.

Here’s a great tip to help solve the issue of “dried in” dust:

Cut up some brown paper grocery bags and hand the pieces out to your guests at your first “chair party”. If they feel a part of the chair that needs attention, have them rub that part of the chair with the piece of grocery bag about 6-8 times. Think of it as free 2000 grit sandpaper. Works wonders!!

That’s pretty much the end of this class on Kevin Rodel’s Side Chair. I hope you’ve enjoyed the journey.

I also hope that you’ve learned how to use at least one or two chair-building tips, and can now use them in your shop while building these really nice…and I might add…very comfortable chairs.

If you ever decide to build this chair and have any questions that I might be able to help you with, please feel free to ask. I’ll do my best to help you along.

And one final note. Again I would like to thank Marc Rosen (a member of LumberJocks) for his extremely helpful tips during my “pyramid shaping” days!!

Until next time…happy and safe woodworking everyone.

Dale “Grampa Doodie” Peterson
Stillwater, MN

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

Final Assembly, the second from the last chapter in my “Kevin Rodel Side Chair” class. The final assembly is the stage I’ve been waiting a very, very long time to reach in my chair building project.

Looking back I can’t even imagine how many hours I have invested in these wonderful chairs. And you know what? It really doesn’t matter. Over a year has passed from start to finish. I’m excited. My wife is doubly excited. Plus, I’ve learned an unbelievable amount of woodworking skills as well.

I can smell an open wood-glue bottle in my ever so close future.

If you recall way back in the second chapter titled “Back Splats”, we had already assembled the two main back splat parts…the “thinnies” and “thickies”. So that subassembly is pretty much done. You might have to finish-sand that assembly a bit, and maybe even shave down the tenons to make them fit into your upper and lower crest rails.

(More on tweaking tenons later.)

I glued up my chair parts into two main subassemblies.

The Rear Subassembly: This subassembly includes every part that falls behind your butt as you’re sitting in the chair. This would be the two rear legs, connected by the upper and lower crest rails, the back splat subassembly, and the rear rail that runs along the back side of the chair seat.

The rear subassembly should look something like this once assembled.

The Front Subassembly: This subassembly includes 3 small parts (and their tenons) that sit just below your knees as you’re sitting in the chair. That would be the two front legs, along with the front rail.

The front subassembly should look something like this once assembled.

So let’s get started on the rear subassembly first.

My main goal was to make the assembly process as easy as possible. There’s nothing worse than have 67 parts full of glue and things are drying way too quickly. We’ve all been there…right?

So making one more subassembly before making the rear subassembly was first on my list. This subassembly consists of our initial back splat subassembly and the upper and lower crest rails. Having these 3 parts glued together will add at least 8 years to your life. I guaranty you that!!

This subassembly is really not all that difficult to glue up.

Time to perform a test fit. Grab both rear legs and lay them out on your work bench. Now take your back splat subassembly (that’s already glued up) and connect it to your upper and lower crest rails. It should slip in nicely seeing that we glued that subassembly together with the help of the upper and lower crest rails earlier.

Now assemble both rear legs onto this subassembly just to make sure things come out just right. Clamp all parts together and check for nice joints. At this point, all of your joints should be nice and tight.

If you’re happy with what you have, it’s time to get out the glue bottle.

After cutting away maybe half of the bristles on an acid brush (making it easier to fit the brush into the mortises), I then dabbed some glue down into each of the eight mortises on both the upper and the lower crest rails. Next I married those two parts with the back splat subassembly, and clamped them in place. See next photo.

Very important note: Make sure you assemble the upper crest rail on the top side of the back splat subassembly, and the lower down low. Now is not a good time to get your crest rails glued up in reverse order.

No glue touches the rear legs at this point!!

When you’re done glueing up this subassembly, it should look something like this.

Once your two crest rails and back splat subassembly has had time to dry overnight, it’s time to fully assemble the entire rear subassembly.

As always, it’s very important to run through an entire “dry fit” first. So grab your newly glued up subassembly of crest rails and back splats, both rear legs, and finally your rear rail (the part that goes behind and below your butt as you’re sitting in the chair).

If you should find that your tenons are a bit snug, then investing in a nice little shoulder plane is a wonderful idea. This tool is worth its weight in gold.

This part of your glue up really isn’t all that difficult as well as long as you have all of your clamps, parts, and glue bottle and brush prepared for the process.

Note: Now would be a good time to lightly sand off all pencil marks. Especially anything on the inside faces of each rear leg.

There are 6 mortises to deal with…3 on the inside face of each rear leg. You also have 4 fixed tenons on the ends of both upper and lower crest rails to be thinking about. And finally, you’ll have two haunched tenons (whether you chose to go floating or fixed) at the rear rail location.

It’s time to lay out the plan of attack.

After successfully dry fitting all parts and having my 3 clamps right where I wanted them, I laid one rear leg on top of my clamps with the mortises facing up. I then applied glued inside each mortise, and also to their corresponding tenons.

Next I inserted the upper and lower crest rail/back splat subassembly and the rear rail into place. Then I quickly applied glue to all areas on the opposite side of the chair. Once done, I laid everything down onto my 3 clamps, and tightened them down…checking to make sure that all joints are OK.

Your entire rear subassembly is now done. Pat yourself on the back!! One very major stage is now complete.

On to the front leg subassembly.

There’s really not much to say about this assembly process. If you made it through the rear leg subassembly with no issues, then the next part will be a breeze.

Again, dry fit everything to make sure things are OK. If you discover that something isn’t right, now’s the time to correct it.

Note: Pick out the nicest face of the front rail and make sure it’s facing the front of the chair. It’s always nice to show off that nice grain as opposed to burying it.

Another important thing to keep in mind during this glue up is that you’ll obviously want to make sure things dry up square. You could make up a spacer that’s the same length as your front rail, and then place that spacer near the lower ends of the front legs during clamp up time. But I found that by clamping these parts together with just one clamp…everything turned out just fine.

Here’s a photo of just some of my front leg subassemblies. Note that I marked each one with a letter reminding me which chair they’re a part of. I later transferred those letters to the bottoms of all four legs with a pencil seeing that I found little blue chunks of tape laying all over my shop floor one morning.

I think my shop foreman (the cat) snuck down at night and pulled them all off. :)

Before you know it, you’ll have stacks of front and rear subassemblies stacked up in your shop.

Now that I have all 9 rear leg and front leg subassemblies completely glued up, its time to bring those two assemblies together with all of the “in between” parts.

There are way too many glue up areas in this stage of the chair assembly, so I came up with a plan to make things go just a bit smoother. I chose to glue the two side rails (the two parts that run from front to back just under your butt while sitting in the chair) to the entire rear leg subassembly first. See next photo below.

After successfully doing this on just one chair, I proceeded to do the same on the remaining 8 chairs. This not only turned out to be a huge timesaver, but more importantly, it simplified the final glue up stage a lot!!

Here is what a few of the rear subassemblies looked like once they were done.

Now it’s just a matter of dry fitting your front leg subassembly to your rear subassembly with your lower stretchers in place. If all joints look good…again…it’s time to get your clamps and glue bottle out.

Your chair should look something like this once it’s completely glued together.

And before you know it, you’ll have a shop full of what looks like adult potty chairs.

(Pretend that the corner braces are not in this photo. Those parts are coming up in the next/final chapter.)

As mentioned, the next chapter of this class will be the final chapter. I’ll go over the creation of the corner braces and seat frame. And touch just a bit on finishing.

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

As you’ve most likely noticed by now, I opted to go with “rounded over” mortise and tenon joinery as opposed to Mr. Rodel’s “squared” mortise and tenon joinery. The only reason I went this route was because I wanted to put my new Leigh Mortise and Tenon Jig to good use.

I also decided to have “floating” tenons at all four corners the chair. The tenons that will eventually be part of the structural bond between the two front legs, the two rear legs, and the front, rear, and two side stretchers.

Seeing that all tenons would be buried and unseen forever, my first move would be to pick out a bunch of scrap cherry pieces for the parts.

It’s hard to tell from the photo below, but most of these pieces have at least one flaw…if not many flaws. So they’re perfect candidates for becoming my future floating tenons.

My Leigh Mortise and Tenon Jig did a really nice job of keeping all of my mortises to their proper length of 2 inches.

Once I had all cherry strips ripped close to their final 2 inches wide, it was off to the surface sander to bring them down to just barely under 2 inches in width. This would give me just the right amount of room to slip the floating tenons into the mortises.

Note: Of course you can certainly rip your tenon stock down to just under 2 inches on the table saw and call it a day, but I like to use all of my shop’s tools from time to time just to keep them limber. :)

A couple more passes, and we’ll have them down to a hair under 2 inches wide.

I ran all of my tenon stock through my surface planer to bring them “close” to their final thickness. Once I have the edges rounded over, I would then test fit them to get them down to their very final dimensions.

So it’s off to the router table. A 1/4 inch round-over bit will create the rounded edges just fine.

I must admit that the widths of my mortises ended up with varying dimensions. Some were a perfect 1/2 inch, others were a bit larger, and some were a bit smaller. I wish I could have blamed this on the jig, my router, the router bit, the sun was in my eyes, the cat just bit me…but I cannot.

As we say in the tech support field, it was PEBCAK. (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair.)

(I obviously should have chalked up many more hours at mortise and tenon making before trying to hone my skills during my chair building days.)

So this is where those three famous words consistency, consistency, consistency come into play most critically…at least during my chair building process. It really came back to bite me this time. Lots of wasted hours trying to fit inconsistently shaped tenons into inconsistently created mortises.

In a perfect world all of my tenons would have/should have slid into each of my mortises with that ultimate friction fit during the final assembly stages. But they did not. So I found that by leaving my tenon sticks long, testing their fit, and then sanding them with my palm sander to their final shape..they would eventually get to the point where they would fit nicely. It was at that point that I would chop them down to their final length.

Way too much work!!

In the next photo you’ll see that I had to create some of my tenon sticks thicker (or thinner) than others. I also made a couple test tenons out of MDF. Sorry…can’t remember why. :)

Once I had all of my tenons sticks chopped down to their final dimensions, I added a small chamfer to the ends. This not only made them slip into and out of the mortises a little easier during “test fitting” time, but it also left just a little more room for glue.

Another optical illusion…thankfully, I still do have all of my fingers. :)

Seeing that a lot of my chair parts were not consistent, it was fairly important for me to mark every single part. So all parts marked with an “A” ended up being a part that went into my “A” chair. If a tenon was created to properly fit into a “B” chair, then it too got marked with a corresponding letter.

You can’t see it in this final photo below, but I would also mark each floating tenon with a RF, LF, RR, and LR.

This assured me that my “inconsistent” pile of floating tenons would end up at the right front, left front, right rear, or left rear in relation to where their final home may be.

A very critical step when it comes time to glue all parts together.

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

Well ladies and gentlemen, I do believe we’re nearing the home stretch.

The lower stretchers consist of 4 parts. Two stretchers that run from “front-to-back” between the front and rear legs, and then two stretchers that run in opposite direction “side-to-side” between those first two lower stretchers.

Mr. Rodel’s chair plans call for a half-lap dovetail joint where the side-to-side lower stretchers meet the front-to-back lower stretchers.

Shortly after diving into the creation of the lower stretchers, I found myself stepping into the confessional once again.

I’ll be right upfront…I’m horrible at making half-lap dovetails. Especially “angled” half-lap dovetails. Let me go on record by saying that I tried…I really tried. But after many less than adequate attempts, I opted to go with just good ol’ half-lap joints.

That doesn’t say that I won’t learn how some day…I just didn’t have the time nor patience at this stage of the game.

Now that I’m out of the confessional and back into the shop, let’s dig in.

An important decision for me was to decide on how the grain would be viewed between these two different parts.

I liked the look of having the side grain on the front-to-back lower stretcher match that of the side grain of the front and rear legs. Then I decided that where the side-to-side lower stretcher meets the front-to-back lower stretcher, I wanted the grain to mismatch…showing off that joint just a bit more.

So in other words, the grain on the top of the front-to-back lower stretchers matches that of the front face of the rear legs and the back face of the front legs. Looking at the photo below, you’ll see that the side-to-side lower stretchers were rotated 90 degrees (in regards to their grain), forcing a nice grain mismatch at the half-lap joint.

Next it’s off to the table saw to rip plenty of long strips that will eventually turn into these stretchers. If you should decide to follow my grain suggestion above, make sure you take this into account while creating the two different lower stretchers strips on your table saw.

Once you have enough strips cut for the grain orientation for the front-to-back lower stretchers and the grain orientation for the side-to-side lower stretchers, it’s off to the chop saw.

Need I say that you should leave your lower stretchers plenty long? :)

Make sure you make plenty of spares. Seeing that I was making 9 more chairs, I whipped out at least a couple dozen of each type of lower stretchers.

The next step probably isn’t all that important, but I wanted to make sure that the nicest grain was facing “out” on the two front-to-back lower stretchers. A minor detail…but a simple task to complete at this stage.

(When someone eventually points at your lower stretchers and compliments you on the gorgeous grain, you can secretively say under your breath, “Yah…I know…I planned it that way.”)

Choosing the grain for the side-to-side lower stretchers wasn’t all that important to me seeing that you never know which side would be in view more…front or back. But you’ll always be looking at the outside surface of the front-to-back stretchers.

At this point I now have two piles of front-to-back stretchers (lefts and rights), and one huge pile of side-to-side lower stretchers.

As mentioned at the beginning of each of my chapters, all parts are marked as if I was sitting in the chair. So now it’s time to place an “L” and an “R” on the top side of all front-to-back lower stretchers. This assures me that they will eventually end up attached to my completed chair in the correct orientation.

Next I concentrated on the compound angle at the rear end of the front-to-back lower stretchers. As you’ll recall, the rear leg’s front surface goes down and back towards the floor at about a 2 degree angle. The front-to-back lower stretcher also runs between the rear and front leg at an 85.5 (or 4.5) degree angle, giving you your compound cut at the very rear end of the front-to-back lower stretcher.

It was so much easier for me to keep track of all the different cuts by actually marking the angles on the rear ends of each of the front-to-back lower stretchers.

(Don’t forget…the cuts will be “mirrored” for the left and right sides!!)

The photo below shows you how I marked the rear ends of the right side front-to-back stretchers with a “2” and a “4.5” for their respective angles.

This compound mitre cut can me made very easily at your table saw by using your mitre gauge and an angled table saw blade. My SawStop is a “left” tilting saw, so if you get oriented correctly as to how this cut is going to come out, I do believe this lower stretcher will end up being a “right” side lower stretcher. I agree…it’s a bit confusing.

The bottom line is…make one cut, check it to make sure it orients correctly with your chair, and then proceed with your mass production of either your left or right lower stretchers. Once done, you can then reset your equipment to make the opposite lower stretcher’s compound cuts.

Note: For those of you who are really paying close attention to the photo above, you’ll find one major mistake. (This is a very poor example of a staged photo.) I have the “outside grain” side of my lower stretcher facing in the wrong direction. It should be rotated 90 degrees with the nice grain facing my table saw blade…I think. :)

For those of you who noticed…you get a gold star for the day.

Before I move on to sharing more photos with you, I must mention one thing. I’ve discovered that it’s a bit difficult to create a woodworking class without showing photos slightly out of order at some point in time. So I have some explaining to do before you view the next photo.

When I took this next photo, I was quite a ways through my assembly stages. When it comes to creating the lower stretchers, you almost have to be at this same stage. Otherwise your parts just might not end up being their correct length.

So in the next photo, please keep in mind that the entire rear assembly (every part that falls behind your butt while sitting in the chair) is completely glued up. Plus the front assembly parts (the two front legs and the front rail) are also all glued together. And all parts in between are not glued up as of yet.

With all that said, you’ll notice in the photo below that I have now made a spacer that fits nicely between the rear and front leg. This 15 1/16 inch plywood spacer holds the legs exactly at where I want them to be while I cut my lower front-to-back stretchers to their proper length.

The compound mitre cuts are all done at this point, so all I need to do is sneak up on their final lengths by cutting another 4.5 degree cut at the front end of each stick.

Tip: You’ll know right away whether or not your spacer is correctly cut by looking for gaps in the joint where the upper side stretcher meets the rear and front leg. (Right where you see my web clamp in the photo below.)

And, once again, I must repeat those 3 famous words…consistency, consistency, consistency!! My rear legs were not all created equal, so my lower front-to-back stretchers all had to be made on a “per chair” basis. Aaarrgghh!!

Here is how I snuck up on the final length of my front-to-back stretchers:

1. I placed a light pencil mark on the outside surface of each rear and front leg marking the very center of my round mortise. (The mortise that will eventually take the dowel for each lower front-to-back stretcher.)
2. Then I placed another pencil mark on each front-to-back stretcher indicating where the center of the mortise would be on each stick.
3. Now I slowly snuck up on that final stretcher length by cutting just a little bit at a time at a 4.5 degree angle from the front end of each stretcher.

As you can see in the photo below, I have just a little more cutting to do before my mortises line up properly.

As the stretcher got shorter and shorter, I’d simply move the part up into place until the pencil marks all lined up. Once they lined up, I knew that the stretchers were at their perfect length and final home.

Remember back in the “Rear Legs” chapter I mentioned that I marked each pair of rear legs with a letter? Now’s the time that I also mark the front-to-back stretchers with that same letter.

This was an important step to perform in my case…making sure I had parts paired up correctly at glue up time.

One of the final steps for the front-to-back lower stretchers is the mortise. As mentioned earlier, I decided to drill a mortise in each end of the stretchers as opposed to a square mortise. Drilling the mortise in the front and rear legs at the proper 4.5 degree angle meant that I could drill “straight in” mortises on each end of the stretchers.

A simple jig is all it takes to perform this task. In the photo below you’ll see that I have the stretcher tightly clamped in and parallel to my 5/8 inch Forstner bit. I went just a hair deeper than 1 inch allowing me to use a 2 inch oak dowel at glue up time.

Note: If you decide to make your side-to-side stretchers with the dovetail half-lap joint, then you can most likely skip the next section.

This step was rather fun for me. I really enjoyed making the half-lap joints not only because I knew I could, but also because I especially enjoy doing assembly line work in my shop. A very gratifying stage in the chair making for me. Plus knowing that I’m nearly done with the creation of all parts is quite satisfying as well.

To assist in creating the two side-to-side stretchers, I made some spacers that allowed me to make pencil marks on both the top surface of the front-to-back stretchers, and on the bottom surface of each side-to-side stretcher. The pencil marks will assist in the making of the half-lap joints.

In the next two photos below you’ll see that I made two spacers for each side of the chair. All four spacers receive the famous 4.5 degree cut on each of their ends.

To keep things organized, I marked the each pair of spacers with an “R” and an “L”.

Note: In the photos below, the longer, front spacer is bumped up against the front legs.

With the chair dry clamped together, and your spacers and side-to-side stretchers in place, it’s time to make some pencil marks.

As mentioned above, the longer spacer is bumped up against the front legs. Next in line is the forward-most side-to-side stretcher, then the short spacer, finally followed by the rear side-to-side stretcher.

Important: Make sure your grain selection is oriented the correct way.

With the chair up on a work surface and while standing behind the chair, I pushed all 6 sticks tight up against the front legs.

With a nice, sharp pencil I now make marks on the undersides of both side-to-side stretchers. Eight marks in all.

Next I put downward pressure on the two side-to-side stretchers (making sure they don’t budge a bit) while removing all spacers. This gives me the room needed to mark the 8 pencil marks on the top surface of both front-to-back stretchers.

In the photos below I’ve flipped the side-to-side stretchers over to reveal all pencil marks.

The side-to-side stretchers can now be cut to length. I left my mine just a bit long as you’ll see in a photo later in this chapter.

Note that the two side-to-side stretchers will eventually be a little different in length from each other. The front one will be just a little longer than the back one.

To create the half-lap joints I return to my table saw and stacked dado blade set. Experiment with getting the exact width and height of your dado blades by testing it on a couple scrap pieces of stretchers. Once your side-to-side stretcher fits into your test piece, you know you’ll have a great looking joint.

Note: When I did a test fit on the half-lap joint on my test pieces, I left the side-to-side stretchers just a bit proud…or “high” in addition to being a bit long. This seemed to work out better for me as opposed to having them accidentally falling too low into the joint. Sanding them down to be perfectly flush with the front-to-back stretchers was a simple task.

You should be able to see what I mean by taking a look at the photo below.

As long as the chair is still clamped together, I decided to work on the half-lap part of the side-to-side stretchers first. I did this by setting my mitre gauge to 4.5 degrees, and then slowly whittling away the half-lap until I just barely snuck up on the pencil mark on the underside of the side-to-side stretcher. I did this identical end cut on the same ends all side-to-side stretchers.

Next I moved my mitre gauge to the opposite side of my dado blade, and then kicked the mitre gauge 4.5 degrees into the opposite direction to make the half-lap joint on the opposite end of all side-to-side stretchers.

While sneaking up on the pencil mark on the side-to-side stretchers, I would take the part over to the chair to make sure it fits snugly into place between the two front-to-back stretchers. Before you know it, you’ll have the half-laps completed on all of your side-to-side stretchers.

Once you’re sure your side-to-side stretchers fit nicely between the other stretchers, it’s time to remove your front-to-back stretchers from your chair, and take them to the table saw.

In the photo below you’ll see how I have my mitre gauge and dado blade set up for the half-lap cuts on the front-to-back stretchers.

Important note: I experienced some chip out during these cuts, so make sure that the chip out ends up on the inside face of your front-to-back stretchers. This way the chip out will be buried in your half-lap joint.

I first set the mitre gauge up with a stop block that allowed me to cut the rear-most dado. If you stay between your pencil marks, you’re good to go. I would repeat this same cut on all right side front-to-back lower stretchers. Then I’d move my stop block to make the cut that is closer to the front leg of the chair. Again repeating that cut on all right side pieces.

A look from the other side of the table saw.

Here’s where I step back into the confessional. Let me set up this wood shop story with a bit of info. My SawStop is fairly new to me, The $190.00 Freud Stacked Dado Blade and $80.00 SawStop braking cartridge were both about 4 hours old. I had just taken delivery of both parts from Amazon. (Can you see where I’m headed?)

My next move in woodworking history will NEVER be forgotten. When I swung my “metal” mitre gauge 4.5 degrees into the opposite direction to make the second set of cuts, I did not realize that I had now placed the ever so tiny corner of the mitre gauge directly into the path of the dada blade set. And unfortunately, I did not have the computerized braking system turned off on my new SawStop table saw.

Long story short…in 1/5000th of a second, I had not only lost nearly $300.00 in brand new woodworking equipment, but I think I may have also created a few new words. Trust me, the braking system on this thing really works…along with an extremely loud BANG!!

Now, where did I put those clean trousers? :)

Here’s a photo of my “reminder trophy” that hangs directly above my saw.

Off to the tool store for a new dada blade set and 8 inch SawStop braking cartridge. :(

Jumping ahead to assembly time, you’ll see in the photos below how my side-to-side stretchers were left a little long, and what they looked like after a very short meeting with my orbital sander.

(The chair is laying on its side in both photos.)

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

Out of all of the chair’s parts, I won’t say the rear legs were the most difficult to create, however they were certainly the most involved. There are so many different things you’ll need to perform in order to complete these two very important parts.

The very first thing I did was to trace and cut out a paper copy of the full-sized rear leg pattern found on Mr. Rodel’s plans. Once done, I then transferred that paper copy to a scrap piece of half inch plywood. This would be my final template for all rear leg blanks.

Make sure you make your plywood template at least 2 or 3 inches long on each end!! That extra length comes in handy later when you screw the template down to your rear leg blank. Plus you’ll want to make sure that your template is as close to perfect as possible.

One very important note. There’s an area on the front edge of the rear leg that needs to stay extremely flat throughout the entire creation of the rear leg. This area is where the side stretcher meets the front of the rear leg. The side stretcher comes straight out from the front face of the rear leg parallel to the floor, so it’s extremely important to remember to keep that area very, very flat and (eventually) perpendicular to the floor. I call this flat spot the “stay away zone”. You’ll see in the photo below that I’ve marked the “stay away zone” with upper and lower pencil marks on the rear leg template. These same two marks then get transferred to each of the rear legs.

As mentioned in the “Introduction” part of this class, I chose to laminate two fairly wide pieces of cherry for the rear legs. Each piece was approximately 8 inches wide and 50 inches long.

If I happened to have a strip of yellow sap wood running down the full length of two pieces, I made sure to butt those sappy areas together before glue up…giving me more “good looking” cherry to lay out my rear leg pattern outlines.

Before tracing out the rear leg patterns onto my wide blanks, I created one straight edge on the blanks using my table saw and/or edge jointer. This created a great place for me to lay the pattern for the “stay away zone”.

(I never touched the “stay away zone” again until it was time to lightly sand the blade marks off just before final assembly time.)

Once the pattern was traced onto the blank, it was off to the band saw to cut the first rear leg from the blank. I simply stayed just outside my pencil marks. You can faintly see my “stay away zone” marks in the photo below.

After cutting out that very first leg, it was back to the table saw to create yet another “stay away zone” on the remaining part of the rear leg blank. And so on…

Now’s the time to ask yourself a very important question. How are you planning on finalizing the shape of your rear legs…on the router table, or sanding your way down to the final pencil line with an oscillating spindle sander?

Originally, I decided that I was going to finalize the shape of my rear legs on the router table using a very tall top-bearing straight bit along with the plywood pattern affixed to the rear leg.

Keep in mind that my rear legs were made from two pieces of cherry glued together. This introduced the problem of wood grain running in all sorts of directions. On two or three of my legs I was unpleasantly shown what a very tall router bit can do to wood grain going in two different directions. Not a pretty site. Off to the scrap pile they went. :(

I also quickly discovered the horrible aftermaths of what happens when your template is not affixed to the rear leg blank in a secure fashion. See photo below.

So the bottom line is…if you’re using solid cherry for your rear legs, then the router table way is probably your best bet. It sure makes a beautiful, clean rear leg once you’re done. (Just make darn sure that your template is not only screwed down, but also taped down in many places with double-sided carpet tape.) In the photo below, this was not quite good enough. I should have used more tape.

If you’re going to laminate two parts of wood together for your rear legs, then I’d highly recommend that you choose not to go the router table way. I ended up finishing my rear leg blanks on the oscillating spindle sander. See “Caution” below.

Caution: Remember back when I mentioned those three famous words? Consistency, consistency, consistency. This is NOT a consistent way to complete your rear legs. I found out the hard way that no matter how careful I was on the oscillating sander, I do believe I ended up with at least 10-15 different sized rear legs out of the 40 needed. Not much of a difference…but enough to bite you in the rear later.

My remedy? I laid out all 40 legs and then did my best to match them up with a twin as far as size and shape. Once done, I’d mark each pair with a matching letter. (See photos below.)

And the pile of rear legs grows… (You can really see those “stay away zones” now.)

Once all of your rear legs are shaped to their final outline, it’s time to start thinking about making your mortises…and there are a few. Three on the inside face and two on the front face.

To help layout the upper two inside face mortises, I laid out my subassembly consisting of upper and lower back stretchers and the back splat assembly. I positioned this subassembly onto my rear legs, and then marked the exact centers of each tenon onto the rear leg. This step assured me that this subassembly would drop right into place at glue up time.

(If you’re not quite ready to glue up that subassembly, you can cheat a little by marking your mortise locations like I did in the 2nd photo below.)

Seeing that I have one of Leigh’s mortise and tenoning jigs, it was a no-brainer as to how I was going to create my mortises. I did, however, have to make a crude clamping jig for the rear legs. The two wimpy little clamps normally used on the Leigh were far from adequate. You have to keep in mind how much wood you’re plowing out for these fairly large mortises. (In the next photo you’ll notice that I now have 3 very strong clamps instead of two wimpy ones that came with the Leigh jig.)

The following two photos show my mortising setup. Note the wedges used behind the rear leg in the second photo. This is a “must do” step to keep things safe during the creation of your 3 inside face mortises.

This is what happens when you don’t have your legs securely clamped. I actually had a much worse episode than what you see in the photo below. This leg was salvageable. The other one was not. Very, very dangerous things can happen if you don’t have things securely in place!!

And, of course, what shop would be complete without a new toy. Obviously you’ll want to make your mortises just a bit deeper than the length of your tenons, so this one has just a little ways to go.

I won’t go into any more detail about how to create the mortises. This is just something that you have to sit down and plot out very carefully. Don’t be afraid to write notes near each mortise reminding you which mortise is this deep and that wide. It really helped me keep things straight throughout the mortising stages.

As for the little mortise for the lower stretchers, (the one on the front face of the rear leg near the floor), go back to my “Front Legs” chapter to see how that mortise is created.

It’s time now to move on to tapering the outside face of each rear leg. For this I once again built a very crude jig. You can find many different variations by Googling “leg taper jig”. They all work great. I built mine to accommodate both left and rear leg taper cuts.

I started out with a scrap piece of MDF. I glued and screwed a runner to the bottom of the MDF, and then ran it through my saw cut the blade edge of the jig on both sides of the table saw blade.

From there I mounted two pieces of scrap plywood that I used to hold my two clamps.

And finally I mounted two moveable chunks of MDF that allowed me to move the leg to where it precisely needs to be during the cut.

Make sure you orient the leg in your jig so that the inside mortises face the center of the jig. See photo below.

In the photo below, note that the top of the rear leg is positioned closest to your body. It sits in the notch made in the piece of MDF closest to your body revealing a 1/4 inch hanging over the outside edge of the jig. At the far end of the jig is the second moveable piece of MDF that allows you to set the exact “starting point” of the cut on the outside face of the leg. So the tapered cut starts just above the “stay away zone”. This jig worked fantastic for me!!

I’ve since had to build another taper jig seeing that I replaced my old Delta 10” Contractor’s saw with a 3HP 220V SawStop. (Very Sweet…with a capital “S”.)

The last step to the rear legs is the creation of the pyramid-shaped tops of the rear legs. I must admit that on my very first chair, I chickened out and bypassed this step. So yes…I have an oddball in the family of 10 chairs.

An important note to know is that all four faces do not meet the top of rear leg at a 90 degree angle. During the creation of the pyramid top on the front legs, things were quite simple seeing that the four faces meet the top at a 90. This easily centers the peak on the top of each front leg. Not so on the rear legs.

Enter my savior. There is a gentleman who happens to be a member in this fine LumberJocks.com family who was so very kind to share his steps on how to create the pyramids on top of the rear legs. I owe such a huge “thank you” to a Mr. Marc Rosen. Marc emailed me simple steps and great photos showing exactly how to perform these steps.

Up to this point, you have a whole lot of hours invested into your rear legs, and by chopping the tops of the rear legs off flat is an easy task to perform to move things along much more quickly. However, please don’t make that horrible mistake. Go for the pyramids. I cannot tell you how many people comment on that wonderful bit of detail. Marc…thank you so much for sharing your talents!! I owe you big time.

With that said, please allow me to pass Marc’s wonderful and easy tips on to you.

Note: Before I start, I must mention that I made one minor change to the pyramids on our chairs. The plans call for a 22.5 degree pitch. As mentioned in my “Front Legs” chapter, I chose to go with a lesser degree angle of 11 degrees.

This final step of creating the pyramid tops to each rear leg is the part that I lost many, many nights of sleep over. I tend to over-think things way too much, so here goes.

As mentioned earlier, not all four faces of the rear leg are at a 90 degree angle to the very top surface. The inside face is definitely 90 degrees to the top of the leg. The front face is either 90 or very darned close. The outside face we know quite well is not 90 degrees seeing that we shaved some of that face off in an earlier step. And finally, I discovered that the back face is about 2 degrees off at approx. 88 degrees.

Before receiving Marc’s great notes and photos, I laid awake countless hours thinking about how in the world I was going to get that peak to meet in the very middle of that pyramid with all of the mentioned variables.

(I’m hoping that Marc will jump in with some comments in regards to the next steps below to clarify whether or not I needed to do what I did differently compared to his pyramid creation. Plus, the more I look at his photos, I think he just might have done the same thing that I did. Just not too sure at this point.)

Confused yet? It should become clearer in a moment.

Set your table saw blade at the angle you desire (11 or 22.5 degrees) and at a height that is high enough to make the cut. In my case the blade was set to 11 degrees. Make sure you’re using a sacrificial fence!!

Set up your miter gauge at 2 degrees clockwise. See next photo. (This is where Marc’s notes and mine just might differ. But once again, I’m not too sure about this. Marc???)

Place the rear left leg onto your miter gauge so that the outside face is facing down (inside face with mortises facing up) and the back face is up against your miter fence. The bent part of the lower leg should be pointing towards your body. This should put the very top of the rear leg “flat or square” up against your sacrificial fence.

The next photo shows that 2 degree clockwise setting in a little better fashion.

Make your cut. (Take it very slow to eliminate tear out.) This cut should start your pyramid cuts by cutting the outer quadrant of the pyramid. That would be the 1/4 of the pyramid facing the left outside edge of your left rear leg…as you’re sitting in the chair.

Once you’re done with the first cut, reposition your miter gauge back to zero degrees and flop your left rear leg over onto its opposite face so that the bent portion is now facing away from your body.

Make your cut. (Again, take it nice and slow.)

You should now have your first two pyramid cuts complete. One on the outside edge of the top and one on the inside edge of the top.

I apologize for not having photos of the next two cuts, but they’re fairly simple.

Return your table saw blade to 90 degrees straight up and down. Leave your leg right where it is for now, but turn your miter gauge at 11 degrees clockwise. (Or 22.5 if you choose to do so.)

This next cut will create the part of the pyramid found on the front of the leg top. Once done, simply rotate your miter gauge to 11 degrees in the opposite direction (or 22.5) to complete the final side of the pyramid. No need to move or reposition the leg. Leave it right where it is.

IMPORTANT NOTE: You may want to sneak up on these two cuts. I found that I couldn’t rely 100% on my table saw fence any more.

As always, try all of the above steps on a bad leg. And yes, I know you just might have one. :)

And as mentioned in the “Front Leg” chapter, a little 400 grit sandpaper takes away any minor boo-boos.

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

As mentioned in the previous class, the front legs just might be the easiest major part of the chair to create.

I also mentioned in the “Introduction” part of this class that I chose to laminate two pieces of cherry for the front legs. So once I had my cherry stock laminated, all I needed to do was to bring that laminated stock down to 1 1/2 inches thick via the thickness planer, and also down to a “strong” 1 1/2 inches wide via the table saw.

My planer does a really nice job of dimensioning the thickness of any stock. (I hardly have to sand it once it comes out the far side of the planer.) I like to leave my stock a bit “strong” as far as widths go, giving me a little fudge room to run the stock through my surface sander to bring it down to final dimensions. (See photo below.) The surface sander does a nice job at removing any table saw blade marks.

(I have since taken delivery of an 8” Grizzly jointer, so that big boy will most likely take over at least some of the duties of my surface sander. No more wood burning!!)

One can debate on whether it’s best to first cut your leg stock down to rough length before dimensioning the thickness and widths, or to run your long laminated stock through your thickness planer first, then cut to rough width on the table saw, and then finally cut to rough length.

Seeing that my Performax surface sander tends to load the sander drum up with unwanted packed, burnt dust coming off of the stock, my general rule of thumb in my shop while using that tool is to run as little amounts of stock through the machine as possible. I’ve had this tool for many years and have tried all the tricks in the book for keeping the drum clean, and it just doesn’t work. Especially with cherry.

So here is what works for me with any project in my shop:

Laminate the stock if that’s in the plan.
Run it through the thickness planer to bring it down to final thickness.
Joint one edge to make sure it’s nice and straight.
Rip the parts to “near” final width via the table saw.
Take those long pieces to my mitre saw station to cut down to “near” final length. I left them about 19-20 inches long for now. Final length is 17 3/4.
Then run these smaller parts through the surface sander to remove table saw blade marks. (I like using the surface sander over the planer or jointer for this process seeing that it eliminates chip-out.)

So this is what I end up with.

The next step I took was to mark an “X” on the ends that will eventually be the bottoms of the legs. (The worst looking end of the leg.) I wanted to make sure that I not only had no defects on the top end of the leg, but I also wanted nice grain markings. The top, or pyramid end of the front leg, will be seen by guests for many years to come.

Now the fun part. Creating the pyramid tops on the front legs. Mr. Rodel’s plans call for a much steeper pyramid than I wanted. I opted for an 11 degree pyramid. So it’s off to the mitre saw.

If your front legs are exactly square, then the pyramids should come out perfectly centered on the tops of all of your legs. I set my mitre saw to 11 degrees left, set my stop at a distance far enough away so that I wouldn’t be taking too much off on this first cut, and then started my cuts. Make your cuts slow…let the saw blade do its job properly. I rushed it a bit, and experienced a little bit of chip out.

Make sure you make your front leg parts plenty long. You never know when you may need that extra length due to mucked up cuts.

Note: In the photo below it appears that my mitre saw blade is also pitched to the right as if I was making a compound mitre cut. This is an optical illusion.

If you look at the leg on the far left in this photo, you’ll notice that my pyramid came out a bit shy of being a perfect peak. If this happens to you, don’t lose too much sleep over this. I discovered that by hitting them with some 400 grit during assembly time, minor flaws like that completely disappear.

It doesn’t take long at the mitre saw station to whip out a nice pile of these chair parts.

This next step is a very important one. Important to me that is. I wanted to make sure that the front and outer face of the front legs had no ugly marks. So after a quick visual check, I’d mark the bottoms of each leg with an “F” for front, and an “R” or “L” for right or left. My markings also made it very easy to layout the mortises that need to made on the inside and rear face of all front legs.

As mentioned in the very first line of each class, I mark my parts as if I was sitting in the chair.

I also made sure that my laminate/glue line was on the front and back face of all front (and rear) legs.

The photo below gives you a better understanding as to how my markings helped with laying out the mortises on their correct surfaces. Note the “F” (front) and “L” (left) on the bottom of this leg, and then note where my mortise (blue tape) markings are located near the top of this leg.

And here are the nine left and right front legs marked with their “front” and “outside” surface markings. (It’s kind of hard to see all of the “F’s”, “R’s”, and “L’s” in this photo…but you get the idea.)

In the next photo you’re looking at the front leg laying on its front surface with the pyramid (top) of the leg to your right. The surface facing you is the inside surface (or right side of the left front leg. (In other words, this is the opposite end of the same leg in the photo 2 photos above.)

The 16 1/2 inch line is where the very top edge of the front rail will be located. (The part that goes under your legs while sitting in the chair.) The cross hash mark at the 15 inch area designates the “center” of the mortise for that front rail. The 16 inch cross hash mark is where the center of the mortise is located for the left side rail. (The part that goes from front leg to rear leg along the left side of your butt while sitting in the chair.)

To make sure that I had all of these marks in their correct locations, I made up some very simple jigs that are exactly 15”, 16”, and 16 1/2” long.

Next I’d place the front leg with its bottom against a solid object, and then place the pencil mark in its correct location for each of the 3 markings.

This photo basically shows what the front “right” leg looks like once it’s marked. A mirror image of the left leg above.

And here are the stacks of my 9 left and right front legs ready to head to the mortising machine. (I also made 3 spares just in case.)

I quickly discovered that my Leigh mortise and tenoning jig didn’t have the ability to clamp down the front leg in a fashion that would allow me to make a safe mortise. These mortises are fairly wide and deep, so you really need to have your part clamped down extremely solid while plowing out this much material with your router. (As you’ll see in the next chapter on “rear legs”, I learned about this the hard way.)

So I whipped up a very crude auxiliary clamping system that got clamped onto my Leigh jig. This gave me a much stronger set up for clamping the workpiece to my jig…making it much safer to rout the two mortises.

Once you have the two major mortises done near the top ends of your front legs, it’s time for one last step. This would be to make the little mortise that holds the tenon for the lower side stretcher.

The lower side stretchers connect to the front and rear leg at an 85.5 degree (or 4.5 degree) angle. I chose to make my floating tenons out of 1/2 inch red oak dowels, so I needed to place a 1/2 inch round mortise in its correct location at its correct angle. Off to the drill press I go.

In the photo below you’ll see a very simple fence/jig made from MDF that was clamped onto my existing drill press table. You’re looking at that table from the left side of my drill press, so I would have been standing on the right in this photo.

The chair leg is up against a rigid MDF fence and is not clamped down in any way. Near each clamp that’s holding my homemade fence system down, you’ll see two stacks of plastic shims marked with “4.5 degrees”. Each stack of plastic shims has 3 shims taped together with “just the right amount” of duct tape. (Hey…what’s a shop without duct tape!!??)

When I placed these two stacks of plastic shims under the leg, the leg was then pitched at an exact 4.5 degree angle. (Of course I zeroed out my “angle toy”…I mean my “Wixey strategically calibrated digital angle-ometer”.)

So here’s the view from my end of things.

The following two photos shows you the non-business end of the leg, and the end that gets the round mortise. Note in the second photo that I placed a clamp on the fence to act as a stop-gauge. This allowed me to make fairly quick repetitive mortises in the legs.

Moving things around just a bit allowed me to make repetitive mortises on the other set of front legs.

Here’s a neat little tip. With the drill press turned off, I’d drop the Forstner bit down onto the leg just far enough to make a dimple. If the dimple was in the correct spot, I’d continue on with drilling the mortise.

By holding the leg down and up against your fence, you’re ready to hit the “On” button. With a little luck, and keeping everything correct, you should end up with a nice little mortise facing in the right direction.

And, it should be at the proper depth.

I just LOVE seeing those piles of parts stacking up all over my shop. :)

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

I would have to say that the front, rear, and side rails were probably the second easiest set of parts to make…second only to the front legs. And that still might be a toss up. You just might find them to be the simplest “major” part of the chair to build.

Before I get into the creation of the rails, I have to admit something right up front. For some strange and forgotten reason, I decided to change these parts up just a bit.

Kevin’s plans call for fixed tenons on both ends of the front and rear rails. I guess I was thinking that it might be easier and quicker to have floating tenons for all four rails…front, rear, and both sides.

To be honest, I believe it not only created more work for me (I’ll cover why I think this in my “Floating Tenons” chapter.), but it also introduced a possibly weaker joint. Granted, I highly doubt these chairs are going to fall apart in my lifetime. But just the same, I don’t think I’d do it my way if I were to do it all over again.

So you’ll notice that all four of my rails have mortises in each end, and then floating tenons were used at all four corners. Again…I would not recommend this at all!!

So here is what my 36 rails looked like once they were done.

As mentioned earlier, these parts aren’t very difficult to whip out. Eventually all four rails will have a curved cut made on their underside…similar to the cut on the top side of the upper crest rail.

In my particular case, the front and rear rails were easily cut to final length seeing that I did not choose to have fixed tenons.

The left and right side rails are mirror images of each other. Each end gets an 85.5 degree cut. (This is what gives you a wider chair at the front compared to the narrower width at the back of the chair.)

Once cut to rough length, I stacked both of my left and right side rails into separate piles. Then I marked each end with pencil marks showing me which angle goes onto each end.

Here’s another step I took that helped while thinking about the curved cuts on each rail. I’d inspect each piece, and then place an “X” on the worst edge. This is the edge that I would eventually cut away with the curve cut.

After all parts are cut to final dimensions, I’d stack and label them just to keep them straight.

To get my mortises dead center, I marked each end with a “corner to corner” pencil mark.

One very nice tool (Or should I say toy?) that I use a lot in my wood shop is my digital angle gauge. The two mortises made in both side rails were cut at an 85.5 (or 4.5) degree angle. By “zeroing” out my Leigh Mortise and Tenon Jig, I can then move the front plate of the jig to the desired 85.5 degree angle with ease.

This photo shows my front and rear rails nearly done.

The final step was to make a simple template for drawing out the curves on the four side rails. Once done, I traced the outlines, and moved on to the band saw.

It sure is nice to see the boxes of parts filling up. :)

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

Now that you’ve completed your back splats, it’s time to create their future home. And that’s where the crest rails come into play.

Seeing that these two parts are going to be readily seen from both front or back, I wanted to make sure that I picked out some really nice blocks of cherry with exceptionally beautiful grain. And I’m so glad I did. It seems as if this is the part that your guest’s eyes will gravitate to right away. Plus, the upper crest rail is the very first piece your friends and relatives will touch.

My dad used to tell my brother and me, “If someone walks up to your woodworking project and you see them rubbing and touching the wood with a smile on their face…then that’s the best compliment you can ever witness.”

The very first thing I did to these parts (once the wood was picked out) was to cut them to final dimensions. That is…in block form. No curves yet.

Important note: Remember to include the length of the fixed tenons on each end of each piece.

Now make yourself a nice template to use to draw the outline onto either the top or bottom of each upper and lower crest rail blank. I made mine out of a scrap piece of 1/4 inch plywood.

Once your template lines are marked on each piece, it’s off to the band saw to cut just the backside convex curve. Why just one curve? Because to make the tenons on each end, I needed to keep one face flat in order to clamp the part into my Leigh mortise/tenoning jig.

Seeing that this cut is a fairly tall cut, especially on the taller upper crest rail, I decided to make sure that my band saw blade and band saw tabletop were perfectly perpendicular with each other.

After getting your band saw set properly, go ahead and cut out all convex curves on all upper and lower crest rails. Take your time and stay just outside your pencil marks. (Using the proper width blade will help with sanding these parts later.) I would suggest at least a 1/2 inch blade.

Once you get the hang of it and you’ve got your rhythm down, they’ll start stacking up like cord wood.

Upon the completion of all rear convex cuts on the upper and lower crest rails, I chose to sand those fresh cuts down to a near finished stage. I’m not so sure gang-clamping them together saved me time or created more time…but it was fun nonetheless.

As I moved through this fairly large project, I quickly discovered that by stacking and labeling each part, it was easier for me to keep track of how many of which part I had done. Note that I also marked the “top” of each piece. I did this because I wanted to make sure that I ended up with the nicest edge facing up. If there happened to be a minor flaw, I’d make sure that the flaw was on the underside of the crest rail.

Next I created yet another template that allowed me to easily mark the locations of the “centers” of the four small mortises that will eventually be the home for the small tenons on each end of the back splats.

Unfortunately I sold my dedicated mortiser just before I decided to build these chairs. I actually did purchase yet another one, but it showed up damaged, so I sent it back…and never did order another. This tool would have made the crest rail mortisers a fairly easy task.

By using the template shown in the photos above, all I had to do is mark the center of each mortise, and then drill out most of the waste with a 3/8 inch Forstner bit.

I went one step further (probably a waste of time…but it worked for me) and made another template to mark the four sides of all four of the crest rail mortises. Once marked, a little chisel work…and your four mortises are complete.

The next step for your upper and lower rails is to cut away the concave front face of each upper and lower crest rail. So, it’s back to the band saw. Staying just outside my pencil mark allows me to finish sand up to that line.

The last couple steps involve cutting the curve on the top side of the upper crest rail, and face sanding all parts down to their final finish. I used my orbital disc sander with 220 and then 320 grit paper. Take your time with the sanding of these parts. There just might be some dips and bumps created while cutting them out with your band saw. Use your hands. Feel the surface. Plus, the curved cut on the top of the upper crest rail needs lots of TLC with sanding. Now that my chairs are done, I can see a few ripples in that area that I missed. Hey…they’re homemade!! :)

Lastly, I’m throwing this photo in just in case I forget to somewhere down the road. I found that this Stanley shoulder plane does a really nice job at making your tenons just the right thickness.

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Note: When I talk about the many parts of this chair, I name them as if I were sitting in the chair.

Just to let you know where this class will be heading. I won’t be going into “great” detail on how to set up this tool or that tool. I also won’t be going too deep into the creation of each and every part. If I did…I’d be taking way too much of your precious time. Look at this class as a “tips and tricks that will hopefully make your chair building just a bit easier and fun” class.

Before you start any project in your wood shop, it’s very helpful to have a “shop foreman” nearby. Why, you ask? Because if you happen to do something drastically wrong with a particular cut, you’ll know about it right away by the look on her face.

As mentioned in the previous “Intro” chapter, I made one chair from start to finish. My wife and I decided to have 10 chairs total, so from this point forward…I’ll be making the remaining 9 chairs.

With that said, let’s dive in…

The order in which you create the many parts of this chair isn’t all that important, however I have laid out the chapters in what I think “might” be the best sequence. Use your own judgement.

So now that you’ve decided to tackle this side chair project, let’s jump right into making some of the more fun, yet challenging parts. The back splats. The back splats are the parts that touch your entire back as you’re sitting in the chair.

The 7 back splat parts are glued up in a “curved” fashion to better fit your back.

There are two different parts to the back splats. I’ll call them the “thickies (4)” and the “thinnies (3)” from this point forward.

The thickies: (Or larger more intricate part of the two parts.)

After locating the nicest cherry in my pile of lumber, I planed the thickies down to their near final thickness, and then cut them a bit long and a bit wide for now. Why? I’m fortunate enough to have a surface sander in my shop, so I always leave parts a bit on the “large” side. The surface sander is a great tool for bringing parts down to their final dimensions.

Once I had 11 or 12 chunks roughed out for the 9 remaining chairs (it never hurts to have a few spares), I then cut the thickies to final length. A quick trip to my table saw set up with my stacked dado blade and sacrificial fence…and the tenons on each end of the thickies were all cut to their final thickness. This is also a good time to hit the blank with an orbital sander to take out any imperfections. (See photo below.)

One fairly important thing to keep in mind while making your back splats. Label each part so that when you go to put them back together they’ll all end up in the correct orientation. This assures you that their grain direction will look somewhat normal and not mish-mashed.

It’s not important “how” you label your back splat parts. Just make sure you’re comfortable with your labeling system. Seeing that I was making 9 more chairs, I had the need to keep things organized.

Some woodworkers draw a triangle across the face of all parts in hopes of matching them up later. With 11 or 12 piles of thickies, that just wasn’t going to fly. So I chose a much more reliable labeling system. (See photo below.)

Next you’ll want to rip each of your thickie blanks into 4 strips according to plans. Cherry tends to burn easily, so a couple gentle passes through the surface sander not only takes those burn marks away, but it also brings my thickies down to their final width. (See photos below.)

Now that the thickies are down to their final width, it’s time to plow out the “stopped” grooves on both sides of the two middle thickies and just the inside edges of both outside thickies. Confused yet? You’ll be making 6 grooves for each full set of back splats. The following photo should clarify things. (Note shop foreman in the background still inspecting my work.)

In the next set of photos you’ll see how I plowed out the “stopped” grooves to make room for the thinnies. You’ll also see how I used two different types of push sticks to safely rout the thickies…a homemade plywood push stick and the Gripper. Both methods worked exceptionally well. Remember, don’t plow out the two very outside edges of the two outside thickies!!

The photo below shows the “stopping device” at the end of my router table fence. Once the thickie was routed to that stopping point, I’d shut the router off with my foot pedal switch, wait for the bit to come to a complete stop, and then gently remove the routed thickie from my router table. (WARNING: You need both hands on deck for this process. NEVER let go without first stopping your router!!) Invest in a foot/floor switch. You’ll never regret it.

This is what your routed edges should look like once you’re done.

Could this process be done on the table saw with a stacked dado blade? As we Minnesnowtans say…you betcha.

It’s pretty obvious that we’re not quite done with the thickies yet. All of those rounded over grooves need to be squared up. I’m not very good with your typical chisel, so I chose to purchase the square 3/8 inch mortising chisel from Rockler shown in the photo above.

Once I learned just how hard to hit this chisel with a hammer, things went very well. Drawing a pencil mark across the very tops of the squared off grooves really helps as well. Note in the photo below how I butted all of the thickies up against a clamp, and then finally drew my pencil mark in its proper spot with a straight edge.

(Don’t forget those three magic words. Consistency, consistency, consistency.)

The photos below show 2 groups of 4 of the nearly finalized thickies. The first photo is one side of the 8 thickies, and the second photo shows the opposite sides of the same 8 thickies.

The final step you’ll need to take to complete the thickies is to cut the little tenons on both ends down to their final width. I did this on my table saw with a stacked dado blade and my Incra miter gauge.

Note: The bottom tenon on each of your thickies is most likely already done for you seeing that the router bit plowed out that part of the lower tenon. (Except for the two outer edges of the two outer thickies where there are no grooves.)

Important note: This is another place where those 3 famous words come into play. Consistency, consistency, consistency. Make sure that you have your table saw, dado blades, and whatever “stop” system set up properly. To this day I’m still not too sure what happened on a few of my thickies. Those few were ruined due to my dado blade going beyond the base of the tenon and into the meat of the thickie. This is where I’m very thankful I made lots of extra thickies. More cherry scraps for my smoker. :)

Next stage of the back splats, the thinnies: (The shorter, thinner back splat part.)

The thinnie is fairly simple to create. I built a very crude sled to take my thin cherry stock through my thickness planer safely. (See photos below.)

I like to keep these thin slabs a bit thick, and then finish sand them with either my orbital sander or my surface sander…constantly checking their fit on one of my thickies. (You may find this step easier to do after you rip the thinnies to their final width in the step below.)

Once the thinnie slabs are planed, you can then rip the thinnies to width. Next you’ll need to create a 2 degree bevel on both sides of all thinnies as mentioned in Kevin’s plans. (I did this on my jointer.)

This 2 degrees is what makes the entire back splat assembly curve around your back. Sand and dry fit all thinnies and thickies, and get ready to glue all 7 parts together.

To make the back splat subassembly process an easy task, use an upper and lower crest rail to hold the parts in their proper orientation while the glue dries. See photo below.

(No glue on the tenons at this point…just on the edges of the thickies and thinnies. Keep the glue to a minimum. Glue squeeze out is NOT something you want to deal with on these parts.)

So you’re probably asking yourself, “Which comes first…the back splat subassembly or the upper and lower crest rails?” Great question.

Here’s what I did. I created one set of upper and lower crest rails along with their mortises first. (See next chapter.) Then I used that one set of crest rails to help glue up just one set of back splat subassemblies. This single glued up back splat subassembly came in handy while making a permanent template for laying out the 4 mortises in all future upper and lower crest rails. I know…it doesn’t make much sense…but it worked for me.

By using that 3/8 inch mortising chisel from Rockler mentioned above, I had to resort to making some of my crest rail mortises a bit larger than normal to accept a couple of “out of line” back splat subassembly tenons.

You may run into the same problem I had with a couple of the back splat tenons just not lining up properly with the crest rail mortises. Don’t worry about making your mortises a bit larger than normal…the thickies are large enough to cover those extra large mortises. Remember, this is not a structural glue up joint.

When the back splat assemblies are all glued up and dried, I like to hit them with some 180 and then 320 or 400 grit sandpaper just to clean them up. Don’t push too hard though…remember there’s not much glue in those joints. (See final photo below.)

See you at the next chapter…

Dale “Gramps” Peterson.

Here’s a photo of just some of my chairs sitting around our kitchen table.

I’ll be sharing several good things (and a few bad things) that evolved down in my shop while building ten of these gorgeous chairs. Hopefully you will walk away with a handful of tips that will make your chair building session a much more pleasant experience.

I learned an unbelievable amount of woodworking skills while building these chairs, and would love to share them with you over the next several class chapters.

Future eBook:

Above and beyond this class, I also hope to some day put together an eBook for this project. (For those of you who don’t know what an eBook is, it’s a very cool interactive digital book that you can copy to your computer for viewing. It will have photos and live links that make this class even easier to follow.)

If and when I get permission to post my eBook, I’ll certainly let everyone know where they can go to retrieve your free copy.

My woodworking background:

Woodworking came somewhat naturally for me. My dad and his dad were woodworkers/carpenters. For many, many years those two guys, along with my grandpa’s brother, built several houses in our little town of Stillwater, MN. (My wife and I currently live in the very first house my dad built when he was a very young man in 1948.) I learned a lot by not only watching them, but also by attending wood shop classes throughout high school.

If I were to give myself a skill rating on a 1 to 10 scale, I’d have to give myself a 6 on an average day in the shop. Like most woodworkers, I have my good days and of course those days where I end up with lots of scraps that end up in my smoker. I’ve spent days in my shop where I’ve “felt” as if I were a 7, along with many, many days where I was actually a 4 or 5.

Now that I’ve successfully completed these 10 chairs, I think I can safely move myself up to a solid 7. This project is a great “confidence building” project, and I’m extremely pleased with the outcome.

Thorns amongst the roses:

This “dining room/kitchen chair” project took flight long before I built our dining room and kitchen table. Our dining room table had no plans. It was pretty much developed out of lots of sketches and a wee bit of brainstorming. The kitchen table however, was built from plans that nicely compliment this chair design.

The horrible mishmash of chairs that currently go around those two tables were in deep need of being replaced by something not only more pleasing to look at, but much more importantly, comfy enough to sit our butts upon.

Enter Kevin Rodel’s beautiful mission-style side chair. Once my wife and I decided to go with a mission style kitchen table, then choosing to build Mr. Rodel’s chairs became a very simple decision. Plus prior to building our kitchen table, I had decided to implement the details found on the backs of Mr Rodel’s chairs into each end of our kitchen table. A perfect marriage indeed!

Note: Mr. Rodel’s side chair was featured in Fine Woodworking’s magazine issue #190. You can also purchase full-sized plans at the link below. (Highly recommended.)

http://tinyurl.com/9joywmq

Choice of wood species:

Seeing that nearly every piece of woodworking in our house is made from cherry, it was yet another simple decision to stay with that species of wood for our ten chairs.

This leads me to problem #1. I’ve always had great difficulty finding nice, clean (read…knot free) thick cherry in my part of Minnesota and Wisconsin. There’s a very nice lumber mill near Spring Valley, WI that I’ve dealt with for decades, but they deal with 4/4 stock only. I found another wonderful lumber mill in Courtland, MN that also has beautiful cherry, however their 8/4 cherry has lots of sap wood in it. Plus it was hard finding wide enough boards that would yield more than one rear leg per board. (The rear leg layout tends to produce lots of waste due to their bent shape.)

Decisions, decisions:

After probably way too much thought, I decided to glue up both the front and rear legs with very nice, clean and planed 5/4 cherry. The disadvantages? Much longer build times, and the “change in grain” between the two laminated boards is, at times, very visible. Not a deal breaker for me. The contrasting grains on the front and rear faces of both sets of legs have now turned out to be quite interesting, and pleasant to look at.

Here’s my theory. If anyone complains about their appearance…they can sit on the floor. :)

My strategy:

Now that I have the plans taped to the wall of my shop and a truck load of cherry stacked high on my workbench, it’s time to dive in and fire up the planer.

I decided to build one chair from start to finish…for two main reasons. The most important reason? I had to prove to myself that my skill level was up to par to take on this fairly large (and difficult for me) project. Second reason? It’s always nice to have something to glance over at (and take measurements from) during the several stages of creating nine more chairs.

Without a doubt the most important thing I learned from this project boils down to three very simple words. Consistency, consistency, consistency!!

You’ll hear me preach a whole lot more about these three words in later chapters.

This class:

Creating and sharing a woodworking class is new to me, so please bear with me. My intent is to bring you several sessions (or chapters) that will deal with the creation of every single part that make up this great chair. (And there are many, many parts!!) In my particular version of this chair, I believe there are 38 parts made from wood.

I took many, many photos throughout this project that will hopefully help you understand how I built my set of 10 chairs.

I’ll try my very best not to be too long-winded. (Something that comes very naturally to me while sitting at the keyboard.) Hopefully each session will be short and sweet. Much shorter than this one. :)

Sessions: (or Chapters)

And finally, the following will most likely be the titles of my upcoming chair-building sessions. (Not necessarily in this order.)

Rear Legs
Front Legs
Front, Rear, & Side Seat Rails
Back Slats
Upper & Lower Crest Rails
Lower Stretchers
Floating Tenons
Seat Base & Corner Braces
Final Assembly & Finishing Steps

I hope you enjoy the ride…

Dale “Grampa Doodie” Peterson