# Adirondack Chair



## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Mock Up*

My father-in-law has been a long-time builder of Adirondack chairs. He's retiring this year, so I decided to build him a custom Adirondack chair for his retirement. I looked around a bit for inspiration, and really liked this chair by Michael Brown:










The lines are nice, and I like the idea of the bentwood slats for the back and seat, to be more comfortable than the traditional Adirondack design. I posted a question about it on one of the forums, and Andrew Kopac of 24HourDesign.co was kind enough to contact me and offer to put together a design based on the photo:










Andrew did a couple of iterations with me to adjust some of the features and did a really great job. I recommend him if you're looking for someone to put together a design!

I had a general notion for the profiles of the chair and back slats, but I was a little concerned about the exact dimensions. I ended up ordering rocking chair plans (and the book) from Hal Taylor's Rocking Chair University. I was able to make a template for the back slates more-or-less directly from Hal's plans. Hal's rocking chairs have carved seats, so there isn't a profile in the plan, but I put one together based upon the general dimensions and it turned out to be very comfortable.

I originally intended to make laminated slats, but since I wasn't too confident in my ability to resaw a bunch of 1/8" plies I decided to try steam-bending the slats. I purchased a steam bending kit from Rockler and put together a steam box. Embedding videos doesn't seem to be working, but if you care to follow the link here it is, quietly percolating away:

Steam Box

As you might be able to tell from that video, I built the steam box out of 1/2" pine, which turned out to be a bad idea. The steam started warping and destroying the box pretty quickly. After a few uses I had to build a new box. This time I used 1/2" plywood and finished the inside with spar varnish. The second box has held up much better, although the plywood has started to delaminate at the door end where it is more exposed to the steam.

I also took a couple of tries to settle on workable bending jigs. I initially tried to create a jig with dowels at the key bending points. This actually worked very well, but the pressure on the dowels ended up denting the wood. So I ended up building more complete forms for the bending jigs. As it happens, they fit nicely on a standard 2×4:










As you might guess from that picture, I initially made the forms from 2×4 stock, but they turned out to not quite be tall enough for the slats I was using. (I used 1/2" craft slats I could get pre-cut at a Big Box Lumber Store. They are 2.5" wide. For the final chair, I'll probably do 2" slats.) So I had to add another layer of plywood to each of the bending blocks.

Pine is apparently not the best wood for steam bending, but after 8 seat slats and 8 back slats I got pretty good at bending. So steam bending looks like it will work for the final chair, but it's clear that it will be important to be very consistent, otherwise the slats don't match up well when placed side-by-side.

Based upon Andrew's design, some of the comments on the forums and some of my own ideas I put together a mock-up in pine. I wanted to do a mock up so that I could play around with the seat and backrest angles, the height of the chair, the geometry of the arm-rests and so on. This was a good idea, as my initial seat angle was too steep and the back had to be much more upright than I expected. Here's what the mock up looks like:










As you can see, the mock-up has adjustable arms. The back pivots on dowels at the bottom, and by changing holes on the front of each arm I can adjust the angle of the back. As you can see from the number of adjustment holes, my initial guess was pretty far off!

I'm pretty happy with the fit of the mock-up. I was a little worried that the back wouldn't be sturdy enough made out of 3/8" thick slats and anchored very low, but it turned out to be quite solid. It flexes enough to be very comfortable. It isn't obvious in the above picture, but both the seat and the back are dished. The seat is dished 1/2" over 22". The back starts the same and ends up dished 1" over 23" at the top. (The back fans out slightly.) For the final chair I may increase the amount of dish.

The next challenge will be to do the arms. They need to be flat at the front (i.e., to hold a drink), slant backwards for comfort, and then slant again to fit to the cross-piece on the back.


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## Loren (May 30, 2008)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up*
> 
> My father-in-law has been a long-time builder of Adirondack chairs. He's retiring this year, so I decided to build him a custom Adirondack chair for his retirement. I looked around a bit for inspiration, and really liked this chair by Michael Brown:
> 
> ...


Are you just muscling the steamed pine sideways into the forms 
to do the bending?

I've been doing a lot of steam bending lately, with a strap.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up*
> 
> My father-in-law has been a long-time builder of Adirondack chairs. He's retiring this year, so I decided to build him a custom Adirondack chair for his retirement. I looked around a bit for inspiration, and really liked this chair by Michael Brown:
> 
> ...


That's about right, Loren. This is thin enough (3/8") that I didn't think I would need a strap. I just clamp one end to the form and then bend the slat into the rest of the form. Pound it down as necessary with wood mallet and then clamp the opposite end. In pine there's a small amount of wrinkling on the backside of some of the bends but the test I did in walnut was smooth. The only time I had a little problem on the frontside of a bend it was because I hadn't steamed the wood adequately.


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## danoaz (Jun 16, 2012)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up*
> 
> My father-in-law has been a long-time builder of Adirondack chairs. He's retiring this year, so I decided to build him a custom Adirondack chair for his retirement. I looked around a bit for inspiration, and really liked this chair by Michael Brown:
> 
> ...


You had to go and pick an easy design didn't you? (wink, wink) Real interesting. I can't say that I am up to the skill or patience to do steaming but I am following you on this. Thanks.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Buying Wood*

Left work a little early today to go by Vienna Hardwoods (that's Virginia, not Austria) to pick up some African Mahogany for the Adirondack chair. I'd considered some other wood sources in the area (particularly Exotic Hardwoods over in Maryland) but Vienna Hardwoods had the best prices that I found and on an earlier scouting trip I'd seen plenty of acceptable boards.

If nothing else, Vienna Hardwoods is an adventure-a small warehouse space jammed with a jumble of wood of every type and size. Walking back to find the mahogany, I came across a pile of Honduras Mahogany (too expensive for this project) featuring a board that was 25" wide and almost 12 feet long. Wow. For a few moments I was tempted just to buy it then and there and worry about what to use it for later. But common sense prevailed.

As it happened, they had a brand new pallet of 4/4 African Mahogany out back. Every board 7 feet long and in widths from about 3 to 14 inches. I got someone to cut the bands off the pallet and quickly picked out five boards that will cover most of what I need for the chair. The 7 foot length turned out pretty handy. The rear door on our minivan is broken at the moment, so I was transporting the wood in my Camry, and 7 foot was close to the longest I could easily fit.

The boards are rough four sides, but later that night I found time to put one of the boards on the workbench and clean it up.










That's a #4 Groz hand plane that I picked up very cheaply when Woodcraft discontinued them. After tuning up the plane, I ground a radius on the blade to make it into a scrub plane. It actually works very well. Considering the investment, I couldn't be happier.










Vertical marks from the mill's bandsaw.










After flattening out the face, I took out the smoother and cleaned up a patch to get a good picture of the color and figure. It's hard to take good pictures of wood, but it's very lovely and has a much better color than I expected from African Mahogany. I hope it won't fade too badly over time.

This board is quite odd. It looks flatsawn, but the grain changes direction about in the middle of the board and the grain rings have islands on both halves of the board. I suppose it might have been cut from a tree with a big kink in the trunk or something.

Tomorrow's adventure will be going to the community woodshop to borrow a bandsaw and resaw this board and another to 3/8" for making seat and back slats.


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## NormG (Mar 5, 2010)

DrPain said:


> *Buying Wood*
> 
> Left work a little early today to go by Vienna Hardwoods (that's Virginia, not Austria) to pick up some African Mahogany for the Adirondack chair. I'd considered some other wood sources in the area (particularly Exotic Hardwoods over in Maryland) but Vienna Hardwoods had the best prices that I found and on an earlier scouting trip I'd seen plenty of acceptable boards.
> 
> ...


Can't wait to to see the completed chair


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## danoaz (Jun 16, 2012)

DrPain said:


> *Buying Wood*
> 
> Left work a little early today to go by Vienna Hardwoods (that's Virginia, not Austria) to pick up some African Mahogany for the Adirondack chair. I'd considered some other wood sources in the area (particularly Exotic Hardwoods over in Maryland) but Vienna Hardwoods had the best prices that I found and on an earlier scouting trip I'd seen plenty of acceptable boards.
> 
> ...


It is funny that you posted this because I was at Rockler two days ago and they had African Mahogany for some time and I saw that there were about eight pieces left that were seven feet long and at a cost of…2.99 per board foot. I cleaned them out. I have never worked with this wood and have no idea what I am going to build but man, I just could not pass that up. 
I haven't settled on a design yet but I was thinking of building some chairs for our patio to replace some torn up wicker things. Looking forward to see what you do. Thanks.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Buying Wood*
> 
> Left work a little early today to go by Vienna Hardwoods (that's Virginia, not Austria) to pick up some African Mahogany for the Adirondack chair. I'd considered some other wood sources in the area (particularly Exotic Hardwoods over in Maryland) but Vienna Hardwoods had the best prices that I found and on an earlier scouting trip I'd seen plenty of acceptable boards.
> 
> ...


Thanks for the thoughts. I wish I could stumble into some $2.99 mahogany! That never happens to me. Also, I never find a complete set of hollows & rounds at a garage sale for $25…


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Mock Up Done*

It's been a busy week, but I managed to find the time to bend the chair arms for the mock-up chair and see about attaching them. I also trimmed the back slats to a gentle arc. Here are a couple of views:










and










As you can see from the line of holes up near the top of the back, I had the top back brace too high and had to move it down. While I had the brace off, I also shaped it to the curve of the back. I did this with a drawknife and spokeshave. The drawknife is certainly a lot of fun, and you make such quick progress. The only real drawback is that the shavings are thick and long and tend to clog up my shop vacuum!

I'm generally very happy with how the mock-up turned out. The slats are a little irregular as I fine-tuned the bending process, and of course I took various short-cuts like screwing the slats on. But overall I have no complaints, and in fact will probably clean it up, paint it, and use it on our porch. It's very comfortable and surprisingly light-I'm used to Adirondack chairs that weigh a ton.

I also got a chance last weekend to spend an afternoon at the community woodshop, making use of their machines to prepare the mahogany for the real chair. I actually flattened and jointed one board by hand, but although I enjoy that work, it was just too much to do all the lumber. It was also my first attempt at resawing on the bandsaw. That went okay, but on one particularly long and tall board I ran into some problems and the bottom of the cut wandered all over. I'm going to try to make use of the slats nonetheless, but a couple of them are pretty thin in spots.

I also didn't pay enough attention to the layout of the cuts. The grain looked pretty regular and unassuming while I was working the boards but end up being more figured when it was cut into slats. The next time I do this, I'll layout the slats more intentionally, but here's what I ended up with:










with the color and contrast punched up a bit to give a sense of how it will look after being dyed and finished. The seat slats are to the left and the back slats to the right, and they're oriented how they will go onto the chair. There's a decent overall pattern and I'm hopeful it will look nice in the finished product.

Next step is to start bending the slats. I can only do one seat slat and one back slat an evening, so it will take a while to get through that. I'm (probably) going to be dyeing these with a water-based dye, so that has to wait until the steaming and bending is complete. I can also work on cutting out the seat/leg stock, the upright stock and the stretchers.


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## vcooney (Jan 4, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up Done*
> 
> It's been a busy week, but I managed to find the time to bend the chair arms for the mock-up chair and see about attaching them. I also trimmed the back slats to a gentle arc. Here are a couple of views:
> 
> ...


Wow that's a good looking chair nice work.


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## Ampeater (Feb 21, 2008)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up Done*
> 
> It's been a busy week, but I managed to find the time to bend the chair arms for the mock-up chair and see about attaching them. I also trimmed the back slats to a gentle arc. Here are a couple of views:
> 
> ...


That looks like it would be very comfortable.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Mock Up Done*
> 
> It's been a busy week, but I managed to find the time to bend the chair arms for the mock-up chair and see about attaching them. I also trimmed the back slats to a gentle arc. Here are a couple of views:
> 
> ...


It actually is very comfortable. I don't always love rocking chairs with this sort of back because they're usually spindles or narrow slats and they cut into my back. But the wide slats are very nice, and have enough flex in them to really conform.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Progress; Compass Rose Started*

I got less time in the workshop than I would have liked today-trivial life things like putting up the Christmas tree and watching Kansas City annihilate the Redskins (sob!) kept interfering. Still I got time in to work on a few things. I got the second set of slats steamed and bent. The first set came out of the steamer with some mysterious stains. I'm not sure why, but I read somewhere on the Internets that the minerals in tap water can sometimes stain. So for this set I used distilled water; I still got stains. This time I carefully placed the show face down in the steamer, and the stain is on the rear face. So apparently it is caused by water dripping off the top of the steamer. I finished the inside of the steamer with spar varnish, so maybe something is leaching off and causing the stains. I'll wrap the next set in cling wrap before steaming. That should keep the water off, and I'll be curious to see if the bending performance is the same or if the wrap interferes with the heat transfer.

I also got a shipment of dyes and made some test pieces. With the wife's input, we settled on a shade we liked and then I made up a full size piece and varnished it to get a good sense of the final color:










It's slightly too red for my taste, but I'm assuming that the mahogany will darken in the sunlight and the end result will be a little less red and a little darker and richer. We'll see. I'm also experimenting with Crystal Lac clear wood filler, which I've never used before but have heard good things about. So far it seems like it will take at least two applications to get a really smooth surface, but I'm still experimenting.

I also cut out, shaped, chamfered and rough-sanded the legs:










I had to lay this out a little oddly to avoid a flaw in the source board, so the grain doesn't match very well. But the legs are visually separated on the chair, so it isn't a big deal.

I've been going back forth about some sort of decoration or flair for the chair. Initially I was intending to do some decorative (non-representational) carving similar to this box:



but in the end I felt that wasn't in keeping with the style of the chair. My next thought was to do a reverse field cut-out at the top of the middle two back slats to create the silhouette of an island that is of special significance to my father-in-law (the recipient of the chair). However, because the slats splay towards the top there's going to be about a 1/2" gap or so between those slats, so the visual effect may not work. It's still a possibility, but in the end I've decided to make an inlay compass rose for each of the arms. I've never done any sort of inlay before, but it seems like a fun skill and reading up on how to make a compass rose I found the process very mathematically appealing. Sort of like the Drunken Cutting Boards, where it's really hard to intuit the process from the end result.

So I started working on a practice compass rose. First I made a 22.5 degree template, by bisecting a 45 degree angle. My high school math teacher would be proud that I remembered how to bisect an angle with just a compass and a straightedge! Then I tried to figure out how to cut the 16 triangles I needed. I wanted to cut them by hand, and played around with various approaches but couldn't come up with anything that was accurate enough and repeatable. So I relented and cut them on my chop saw, which took about 5 minutes 

A test layout showed that the template is very, very close to 22.5. A half rose is just slightly proud of 180 degrees, which is just what you want. I started glueing up the rose-these are just rub joints, which I'm hoping will be good enough.










This test rose will be walnut and some light poplar I had handy. These aren't quite the same thickness, which makes that photo look a little odd.

Assuming I can get the rose built, I'm starting to think about how to make the recess for the inlay. My carving tools might come in handy here! This would all be much easier working in veneer, that's for sure.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Legs, Rose and Resawing*

Made some good progress on the chair this weekend despite the usual competition for my time and attention. One task was to make the front leg supports and join them with the long runners. In a typical Adirondack chair these are just screwed together (and that's how I made the practice chair) but I decided to do a half-lap joint which I'll eventually decorate with some pegs. The layout of this isn't straightforward, since the long runners are at about a 20 degree angle to the ground where they join the front leg supports. Fortunately, the long geometry of the chair means that it isn't too fussy about the angles-as long as you're fairly close the chair will be steady and firm to the ground. Still, I wanted it to be as well crafted as could be, so I spent some time getting the angles correct and the two sides identical. Then I pulled out the chisels, saw and router plane and made the half laps.










That's a Record #71. I'm a little embarrassed by the handles but I'm not a woodturner. If anyone wants to make me a set of beautiful handles, let me know! 

The position of the lap required some ingenuity to rout-you can see in the above picture my kludgey setup. I had to make a sled for the router plane, and of course the first sled I made was *slightly* too thick to give me the required depth. So I had to make a second sled out of some thin oak I had handy. Afterwards I realized that I probably could have flipped the adjuster nut and gotten the depth I needed. Oh well!










Here are the two leg assemblies balancing by themselves. That's a sign of good workmanship! Or luck. My basement floor is uneven enough that I could probably find a spot to balance almost anything.

You'll notice the long runners are already stained. I probably should have waited on that, since I still have a lot of work to do on those parts.

I also had a chance to finish glueing up and then cutting and regluing my practice compass rose.










There are some obvious mistakes, but overall I'm very happy with how it came together and I'm moderately confident that I can make the real ones for the chair. The next step for the practice rose is to see if I can inlay it.

I'm also continuing to steam and bend the back slats and seat slats. I can only do two a day because they need to dry for 24 hours on the bending forms. Unfortunately, the two I bent today both cracked while being bent. The back slat had a flaw in the wood-likely an insect bore-and while other slats with similar flaws have bent fine, this one snapped. The seat slat just tore open on the most abrupt bend.

I don't have any spare slats, so I pulled out my saws and started making some new slats. I cut a 36" length of 4" wide 4/4 mahogany and ripped it into two 2" wide strips. Then I resawed one of the strips to 3/8" thickness. Hand resawing is not one of my best skills, but since the last time I tried it I acquired a Disston rip saw from Bad Axe Tool Works (actually last year's Christmas present to myself from my wife) and it makes a huge difference.










Straight down the line. Here's the finished cut.










You can see the alternating diagonals-I cut 6 inches down one side, reversed the board and cut an overlapping 6 inches down the other side, and so on.










"For Beauty, Finish and Utility, this Saw Cannot Be Excelled"


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Progress*

I've made a lot of progress on the chair in the last few days, although I'm at one of those points in the project where the progress isn't easily apparent. One thing I had to do was spend a few days re-bending or replacing a few of the seat and back slats because they either hadn't bent well the first time around, or had cracked too much. Fortunately with steam bending the effective is somewhat cumulative, so a second bending cured those ills.

I also cut and shaped the stretchers for the seat. The stretchers are mounted at an angle and are radiused to provide a comfortable seat, so shaping them is a bit of a challenge. After careful marking out the bias from the seat legs, I mark out the radius and then rough shape the whole thing with a drawknife. Then I go in with a spokeshave to clean it up and fine-tune the shape. That works pretty well, although this mahogany has a lot of reversing grain and other problems that make it somewhat challenging.

Here are a couple of shots of the progress so far.










The chair frame basically complete. You can see some of the decorative pegs in progress. They're maple with walnut wedges. They're all supposed to be clocked with the wedges parallel to the ground, but you can see I messed up one set and clocked them at some random angle. Not sure how that happened!










Here's a shot with the seat slats laid out. They'll be attached with smaller pegs to the front and back stretchers. I spent a little time today building a little jig to help get a consistent layout. You can also see the wings on the arm supports. Although it's not apparent, they share the same arc with the back of the long legs.

I also practiced inlaying the compass rose.










It wasn't a terrible effort, but I broke off some of the small corners trying to rout out the wood with my #71. (On the positive side, it gave me some practice on repairing!) I also used this to test how well Crystal-lac would fill larger gaps. It can be done, but I don't like the look. I decided to rout out the inlays in the chair with my Dremel tool, and got a fairly nifty router base for it from Stewart-MacDonald.










I haven't tried out yet, but the craftsmanship is excellent.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Compass Rose; Seat Slats*

Started off today by working on the two compass roses. I laid out the roses on the glued-up blanks and started cutting them out:










This makes interesting sawdust-a mix of walnut and holly. After lots of cutting and fitting, it was ready to glue up the secondary points:










My technique is to put blue tape on the back of the rose, glue in the points, and cover them with blue tape on the front. This is sufficient to get a tight joint, and since the rose isn't structural the lack of strength isn't an issue. All the cutting and paring and fitting is pretty hard on the eyes, so I just did one of the two roses today.

I also started installing the seat slats. I made a couple of quick jigs to help with this:










The jig in the front clamps to the seat stretcher and registers the front of the seat slat so that they'll be consistently placed. The second jig drops down over the stretcher to the side of the slat and locates the two pegs that will hold the slat to the stretcher. This jig is parallel to the stretcher (not the slat) and centers the two pegs in the stretcher. This jig is reversible, so I can work from both sides in to the middle. I'll have to place the pegs by hand in the last stretcher.

However, I can only do two stretchers at a time (one to either side) since I can't work on the next pair until the glue has set on the first pair. So it's going to take a few days to install all the stretchers.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Starting To Look Like A Chair*










Seats slats have been attached with maple pegs, and everything dyed and given a coat of linseed oil.










Compass stars from layout to inlay.


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## GrandpaLen (Mar 6, 2012)

DrPain said:


> *Starting To Look Like A Chair*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Scott,

That is is giong to be the classiest Adirondack chair I've seen to date, and I have seen quite a few designs in my 65 years of walking thru sawdust.

Adirondack meets Fine Furniture and takes Center Stage.

Best Regards. - Grandpa Len.

Work Safely and have Fun.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Starting To Look Like A Chair*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Thanks, Grandpa! It's looking good so far but I'm keeping my fingers crossed until it all comes together.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Progress Photos*










Making one of the back supports. The back gets deeper as it goes up, and I cut dadoes to capture the back slats and help even up the spacing. After the steam-bending, the slats are not entirely straight side-to-side. The flat side of this support gets shaped to a curve after it is dadoed and the peg holes are drilled.










The back slats attached to their supports. The bottom (far) support is heftier; it attaches to the legs with a single peg on each side so that it can pivot. This layout is a bit of a nightmare because the back slats splay out. Rather than try to get it exactly correct, I attached each slat at the bottom rail with a single dowel so that they could pivot. That let me position them into the upper support and use two pegs there. (To match that design detail in the seat.)










Gluing up the back slats. The bottom support is done first, then the upper support. There's enough space to slide clamps in between the back supports to glue the upper support. Keeping this square was a challenge.










Hey, I used up a can of linseed oil. That only took about ten years.










Once I got the back glue-up finished, I cut out and shaped the arms. These need to be bent before the compass roses are inlaid.


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## TreyAllen (Sep 24, 2013)

DrPain said:


> *Progress Photos*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


wow, your chairs are a lot fancier than the ones I build. Good job.


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## redryder (Nov 28, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Progress Photos*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Looking forward to seeing this masterpiece finished.
Wished you had showed the steam bending process.
I favorited that Dremel tool attachment for routing. Looks like it could have many applications…...................


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Progress Photos*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


I'm going to bend the arms today, so I can take some photos. Though there's not a terrible lot to see.


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## GrandpaLen (Mar 6, 2012)

DrPain said:


> *Progress Photos*
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Scott,

That chair is looking marvelous, ...the next 4 or 5 will probably go together much quicker. ;-)

Work Safely and have Fun. - Grandpa Len.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Bending the Arms*

Redryder asked about the steam-bending process. I've covered that a little bit earlier in the series, but I bent the arms (well, one so far) today, so I took some photos along the way.










Here's the basic set-up. The box is made out of plywood, dado-ed, glued together and caulked on the seams. It has held up fairly well but is starting to come apart in some places and I've had to reinforce it. The steamer is the standard Rockler kit. The kit comes with the brass fitting to hook the hose to the steam box.










Here's the bending jig for the arms. For this project, I found that I could use a one-sided form and I didn't need strapping. This jig has to be pretty tall because the arms are mirror images but bend the same way, so the jig has to accommodate an arm facing either way. Notice the rounding on the bending corners to reduce the stress when bending. For reference, here's an arm on the jig:










No action photos of this next part because it is time-critical. After the piece has been steaming sufficiently long (recommended 1 hour per inch) you pull it out of the steamer (with gloves!) and quickly bend it onto the jig. It ends up like this:










(The blue painter's tape is there to remind me which side is the top so that I bend it the right way!) What's key to the bending is the heat-it loosens the lignin bonds in the wood and let's it be reshaped. The fact that steam is wet is actually irrelevant-steam just happens to be a good way to move heat around.










This view shows that the arm ends up in a graceful curve. If I had wanted sharper bends and a flat middle section, I would have needed a more complex jig (like the one for the back slats).

I find that leaving the piece on the jig for 24 hours yields the most consistent results. If the result isn't quite right, I'll re-steam and re-bend. The wood is more pliable on subsequent steamings.


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## redryder (Nov 28, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Bending the Arms*
> 
> Redryder asked about the steam-bending process. I've covered that a little bit earlier in the series, but I bent the arms (well, one so far) today, so I took some photos along the way.
> 
> ...


Nicely done.
Certainly adds another dimension (literally) to wood….....................


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*More Arm Work*

It's been hard to get any long stretches in the workshop lately, but when I look back I've actually accomplished quite a bit.

After bending the arms for the chair, the next step was to inlay the compass roses. (In retrospect, I might have been better off fitting the arms to the chair and then inlaying the roses rather than the other order.) I marked a reference point on each arm and then taped down the stars to keep them from moving and carefully marked them onto the arm.










Then I sharpened my chisels and defined the edge of the inlay. I place the chisel just inside the marked edge, strike down, and then relieve the cut from the inside.










I go around twice to take this down to the approximate final depth. This is pretty finicky work and takes a while. I took a long break between the two arms to let my eyes recover!










For my practice rose I took out the interior waste with a router plane, but my router plane is far too big for this inlay, and I found it pretty hard not to damage the points. So for these inlays I got a router base for my Dremel tool from Stewart-Macdonald. I suppose I could have gotten a small router plane and maybe I will eventually, but this worked very well.










The inlay was about 3/16 of an inch deep. I still managed to ding some of the points.










For the first rose I repaired these dings after the rose was inlaid. On the second one I was smart enough to make repairs before the inlay.










It's pretty trivial to trim back any dinged point, glue in a little block, and then cut it to recreate the point. With a little care to match the grain the repair is invisible.

Before gluing in the rose, I took a sharp chisel and tapered back the edges so that it would wedge in. Then I slathered everything in glue and clamped it up.




























After the glue had set I sanded the roses flat to the surface of the arm. I wasn't too certain of my ability to hand plane them down without breaking off points or tearing the grain (which goes literally every direction in the rose!) so I stuck with the orbital sander.

The next step was to attach the arms to the chair. There's no photographic evidence, but this was a tense and aggravating process. I spent a lot of time with the sander trying to get the tops of the arm supports flat, without complete success. On one of the sides I had to glue in some shims after I had inadvertantly rounded off the side support. The T shape of the top of the arm supports just didn't lend itself to getting a consistent result. Eventually I got it close enough and quit, figuring that any additional work was only going to make things work. This isn't a joint that is visible, but I'm worried about getting a good solid join.

After that the challenge was to sink two dowels through the arms and into the supports. I had to do avoid the area of the inlay, and (since the dowels will show on the top of the arm) keep the dowels symmetric and in a please arrangement with the rose. Oh, and keep the arms consistent on both sides of the chair with how far forward they extend, how far inward, etc. I made a simple jig to help with that part and then did the dowel holes by blind (careful) measurement. I was really afraid I was going to end up having to make a new arm. Or two. But in the end it turned out fine.










You can see that it's close enough to be visually symmetric. Pfew! In these photos you can see that the roses got a center inlaid. I did this on the practice rose to cover some problems where all the wedges came together. These roses didn't have that problem, but my wife liked the center inlay so much that she wanted it on the real roses. This is fairly trivial-just drilling out a proper sized hole and inserting a dowel. Fortunately I have some walnut dowels on hand from a previous project. Since this is end grain, it looks darker when it is finished which is a nice touch.










Next up is putting the last support on the back-this is the one the arms will attach to, so it can't go in until the arms were done-and trimming the top of the back to a gentle arc. But it's starting to look like a chair!


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

*Lessons Learned*

This is a wrap-up posting to talk about some of the lessons I learned in making the chair. I like to retrospect a little at the finish of a project to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to apply those lessons to my craft.

This was the first time I'd done a project with steam-bending. For the most part that worked out fine. The actual process of steam-bending is not as daunting as it first seems. There were some challenges in building the forms-they need to be very sturdy to take the bending stresses, and have to be configured to accept clamps at places where clamps are needed. But the major challenge was cracking. I was bending kiln-dried wood without strapping, so even though I was bending fairly thin strips, there was still some cracking at the bends.










The cracking was random-some of the slats bent easily, others cracked. I think that's just a characteristic of using kiln-dried wood. For a future project, I'd try harder to source air-dried wood and/or use strapping. (Although using strapping would have been a challenge on these pieces.)

It was also difficult with steam-bending to get all the slats exactly the same profile. The differences weren't huge, so it wasn't a problem in this (rustic, casual) style furniture. But in a more formal piece it would have been problematic.










There was also some side-to-side warping of the bent slats. I'm not sure whether this was due to the steam bending or to something else-perhaps the release of tension within the wood when cut. But it resulted in the gaps between the slats being somewhat irregular.










Again, this would have been a bigger problem in a more formal piece. It also complicated assembly, which was already difficult enough thanks to the various bends and angles involved.

Another lesson-learned was to pay more attention to the cutting of the slats to preserve the grain figure. To be honest, the wood looked fairly pedestrian before I resawed and cut the slats. It wasn't until I'd done some sanding that I realized that there was a nice grain figure. By careful milling I could have preserved and book-matched the entire figure and kept it continuous across the back and down to the seat. As it was I ended up with a partial match.










With more attention to the wood I might have also noticed that a few of the boards had insect tracks or some other kind of flaw. They didn't seem to affect the strength of the wood, but became more obvious when the piece was finished:










The tracks and the bend cracks actually ended up giving the piece some character and more of an aged look, so I'm not entirely upset, but it could have turned out worse, and it's something I need to pay more attention to in the future.

Finally, the joinery on the chair is entirely dowels. I used maple dowels in two sizes to provide a contrast to the mahogany. For the larger sized dowels, I also wedged them with walnut to add an additional detail and to pick up the walnut from the compass roses. Unfortunately, walnut is considerably softer than maple, so it didn't work very well as a wedging wood. It tended to just mushroom out and look sloppy:










In the future I'd probably wedge maple with maple, and dye the wedge to a dark color for the contrast.


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## GrandpaLen (Mar 6, 2012)

DrPain said:


> *Lessons Learned*
> 
> This is a wrap-up posting to talk about some of the lessons I learned in making the chair. I like to retrospect a little at the finish of a project to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to apply those lessons to my craft.
> 
> ...


All in all, it's a Great looking chair, nicely done.

Fine 'Fit and Finish'.

Work Safely and have Fun. - Len


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## Brit (Aug 14, 2010)

DrPain said:


> *Lessons Learned*
> 
> This is a wrap-up posting to talk about some of the lessons I learned in making the chair. I like to retrospect a little at the finish of a project to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to apply those lessons to my craft.
> 
> ...


I think steam bending mahogany is always a hit and miss affair Scott. I remember trying to bend sapele (a type of mahongany). Out of the four piece I tried, two broke and the other two I managed to bend but even though I left them in the form for just over a week, when I took them out they both twisted and sprang back by different amounts. There are a lot of internal stresses in this kind of wood which makes it impossible to predict what will happen. If you had built it out of beech for example, it would probably be much more consistent in shape. However, it probably wouldn't have looked as nice IMO. You've built a lovely chair which exudes character and I love the inlays on the arms. Nice job.


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## DrPain (Sep 2, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Lessons Learned*
> 
> This is a wrap-up posting to talk about some of the lessons I learned in making the chair. I like to retrospect a little at the finish of a project to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to apply those lessons to my craft.
> 
> ...


Thanks for that thought, Brit. It hadn't really occurred to me that the wood choice might be part of the problem!

And thanks everyone for the nice words.


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## Mean_Dean (Oct 13, 2009)

DrPain said:


> *Lessons Learned*
> 
> This is a wrap-up posting to talk about some of the lessons I learned in making the chair. I like to retrospect a little at the finish of a project to understand what worked, what didn't work, and how to apply those lessons to my craft.
> 
> ...


I just now caught this blog series, and wanted to thank you for taking the time to document your project! The chair turned out beautifully, and you should be very proud of your work!


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