- A Walnut Windsor Chair – Introduction
- The Log
- Transport
- Rough Lumber
- Seat Blanks
- Legs
- Arm Posts and Tapered Holes
- Carve the Seat
- Turn the Undercarriage
- Assembling the Seat and Undercarriage
- Spindles
- Arms
- Assembling the Spindles and Arms
- Crest Version 1 — The Form Bent Laminated Crest
- Crest Version 2 — The Steam Bent Crest
- Final Assembly
- Detailing
- Finishing a Walnut Windsor Chair
- Final Notes
Entry 10
Some Assembly Required – Part 1
Assembling the Seat and Undercarriage – 1/1/2008
This is the first of three assembly steps. The lower part of the chair is assembled. The photo at left shows the parts, ready for assembly: seat, four legs, two side stretchers and one middle stretcher and four wedges. Glue and the persuader are in the background.
The title used here consists of three of the most dreaded words in the English language – “some assembly required”. I assemble the lower part of the chair at this point for two reasons. First, it is really rewarding to see the assembled product. It looks like I’m making progress. Second, by putting the parts together, it is easier to store this assembly out of the way and not ding or dent the parts.
The assembly process goes as follows. First, glue the H-stretcher together. Then, glue each of the legs to the H-stretcher. The third step is to spread glue in each of the tapered holes in the seat that the legs will fit into. Then, slide the seat onto the leg assembly.
The final step is to fully seat each leg into it’s hole in the seat. Basically, with the assembly upside down and the seat up on some pine blocks, I rap the end of each leg with a hammer to make sure that it is snug. Then, flip the chair over and put some glue on each wedge and drive it into the slot on the end of the chair leg. The middle photo shows the assembled lower chair with the wedges into the legs.
The glue is PVA. I’ve also used epoxy. The epoxy gives me a longer open time to assemble everything. However, the undercarriage assembly time is only about 8 minutes (not including the wedges), so the PVA glue works fine.
The last picture shows the legs being trimmed to length. Wedges are used under the legs on a flat surface to get the seat level from side to side and slightly angled from front to back. The flat surface is the top of my table saw. I use a flat, 1/2 inch thick spacer to guide the saw and put small spacers under each leg after the cut. Doing this on a flat surface yields a set of lets that do not rock. (April & May, 2007)
The time taken in making these two chairs thus far is about 45 hours. That includes some of the time needed to sharpen chisels and turning tools, but not other shop maintenance and cleanup.
Spare Time 