Project Information
The story of this piece starts with the first guitar chair I built last year. Last spring I got an email from a guy in Chicago who found the first chair on this site and was wondering if it was for sale. I said, yes, it was in my apartment but I would certainly be interested in selling it.
It was a birthday present for his brother, so the timing was tight. I got in the shop the next day, built a crate out of particle board, padded the chair all around with cork and screwed the feet into the bottom of the crate. I dropped it off at UPS later that day, headed for Chicago. I got call from the guy a few days later that the package had arrived but he had to refuse delivery on it because the chair was "in several pieces". Looking back, the base of the chair was built with relatively thin stock (4/4) and it wasn't as study as it could have been, but I had the package insured and eventually I was paid my claim on the chair. The incident was kind of embarrassing and frustrating but the guy who ordered it was understanding. I'm not sure what they ended up getting his brother for his birthday…
After it was all over, I knew I would build another guitar chair and that this one would be much more solid. In the last year and change, I've also picked up plenty of more tools, skills and techniques, and used quite a few of them in this build.
The base has a compound angle splay of seven degrees and is made of 6/4 sapele, joined with 12mm dominoes and reinforced with screws plugged with hard maple. The seat and back rest are curly maple and sapele. To scoop out the seat, I started by highlighting three different areas with chalk to denote different depths I would drill to.
I then took it over to the drill press and using the depth stop, hogged away the majority of the material with a 1.5" carbide forstner bit. I've used other methods to scoop a seat before and this one seemed to be the easiest and quickest. From there, I used a angle grinder with a Lance-a-lot attachment, then a Holy Galahad. Next up was the Festool RO150 in rotary mode with 40 grit, 80 grit, random orbit mode, and so on. All in all, it took about two hours to go from flat to finish ready.
The back rest is coopered with 5 degree angles each side of the three large maple pieces. The back supports were extremely tricky since the compound-compound angles involved with attaching them to a leg that is tilting in and over to a back rest that is wrapping around. /head explodes
The finish is Odies Oil and Odies Wax, the first time that I have used their products. It was easy to apply and left a beautiful sheen.
Thanks for checking it out.
It was a birthday present for his brother, so the timing was tight. I got in the shop the next day, built a crate out of particle board, padded the chair all around with cork and screwed the feet into the bottom of the crate. I dropped it off at UPS later that day, headed for Chicago. I got call from the guy a few days later that the package had arrived but he had to refuse delivery on it because the chair was "in several pieces". Looking back, the base of the chair was built with relatively thin stock (4/4) and it wasn't as study as it could have been, but I had the package insured and eventually I was paid my claim on the chair. The incident was kind of embarrassing and frustrating but the guy who ordered it was understanding. I'm not sure what they ended up getting his brother for his birthday…
After it was all over, I knew I would build another guitar chair and that this one would be much more solid. In the last year and change, I've also picked up plenty of more tools, skills and techniques, and used quite a few of them in this build.
The base has a compound angle splay of seven degrees and is made of 6/4 sapele, joined with 12mm dominoes and reinforced with screws plugged with hard maple. The seat and back rest are curly maple and sapele. To scoop out the seat, I started by highlighting three different areas with chalk to denote different depths I would drill to.
I then took it over to the drill press and using the depth stop, hogged away the majority of the material with a 1.5" carbide forstner bit. I've used other methods to scoop a seat before and this one seemed to be the easiest and quickest. From there, I used a angle grinder with a Lance-a-lot attachment, then a Holy Galahad. Next up was the Festool RO150 in rotary mode with 40 grit, 80 grit, random orbit mode, and so on. All in all, it took about two hours to go from flat to finish ready.
The back rest is coopered with 5 degree angles each side of the three large maple pieces. The back supports were extremely tricky since the compound-compound angles involved with attaching them to a leg that is tilting in and over to a back rest that is wrapping around. /head explodes
The finish is Odies Oil and Odies Wax, the first time that I have used their products. It was easy to apply and left a beautiful sheen.
Thanks for checking it out.