14 – The Form Bent Laminated Crest

  1. A Walnut Windsor Chair – Introduction
  2. The Log
  3. Transport
  4. Rough Lumber
  5. Seat Blanks
  6. Legs
  7. Arm Posts and Tapered Holes
  8. Carve the Seat
  9. Turn the Undercarriage
  10. Assembling the Seat and Undercarriage
  11. Spindles
  12. Arms
  13. Assembling the Spindles and Arms
  14. Crest Version 1 — The Form Bent Laminated Crest
  15. Crest Version 2 — The Steam Bent Crest
  16. Final Assembly
  17. Detailing
  18. Finishing a Walnut Windsor Chair
  19. Final Notes

Entry 14

Crest Version 1

The Form Bent Laminated Crest  –  1/12/2008

The traditional crest is a steam bent piece of wood.  The crest shown here is a form bent lamination.  Definitely not traditional, but why a form bent lamination?

In a word, weather.  I make my crests using one of two techniques: steam bending or a form-bent lamination.  For the chairs shown in this blog, the crests are form-bent laminations.  I do my steam bending outdoors.  That limits the times that I can bend a crest since I am not fond of standing around and watching water boil in the winter.  A form bent lamination can be done at any time.  These were done in the late fall.  In western New York, late fall can be mild (occasionally) or cold and snowy (a bit more common).  We have been known to get 2 feet of snow in October or about 7 feet over a few days in late December.  Great for outdoor winter sports.  Not so great for steam bending.

There is one additional benefit of a form bent lamination.  It can be used with woods that do not steam bend.  Walnut and maple both steam bend very nicely but mahogany has a reputation for not being steam bendable.  The one mahogany crest that I have done was a form bent lamination.

The process started with a piece of walnut (from the same board as the arms) that I re-sawed into thin strips.  These were run through my thickness sander to leave me with 4 strips that were each 1/8 inch thick.  Glued up, the four strips used in each crest  yields a 1/2 inch thick blank for the crest.

The picture at top shows the lamination pieces ready for glue and assembly.  The form is made of MDF and the pieces on the left (cauls) have the same curve as the form and will be clamped to the form to pull the laminations into position on the form.  The glue is epoxy.  PVA maintains a flexible bond but might allow creep.  That is, the laminations would slide against one another over time.  The other glue that I could use is urea formaldehyde (sometimes called plastic resin).  I use epoxy because I have it in the shop for other uses and it does the job.  The picture to the right shows a crest blank after glue up and a second blank clamped into the form, curing.  When the blank comes out of the form, I plane one edge flat and straight and then rip the blank to width on the table saw.

You might ask, quite reasonably, how I keep the glue from sticking to the form.  My method is to cover the face of the form and the clamping cauls with plastic packaging tape (2 inch wide).  Epoxy does not adhere to this tape.

At the center of the crest blank, I drill a 3/8 inch hole in the bottom edge.  This will fit over the center long spindle.  After trimming the center long spindle to length, I put the crest blank on it.  The other spindles are then moved to their position (leaning against the face of the crest blank) and clamped.  I can then mark the crest blank on both the bottom and top for where the center of each spindle is.  This will be used to establish the angle for drilling each spindle hole in the bottom of the crest.  Now the holes are drilled in the crest for each spindle.  I use my angle table on the drill press.  I clamp a block to the crest blank to make it easy to hold the blank in place on the drill press.  The holes (other than the center hole) are drilled at an angle because the spindles splay outward.

With the holes drilled, I use a template to draw the outline of the crest on the blank and then cut it out on the bandsaw.  I use the belt sander and drum sander (on the drill press) to sand to the saw line.  Next, I mark the outline of the detail (a scroll or comma-like relief) to carve in each ear of the crest.  After doing this free-hand a number of times, I made a template from thin plastic.  Easier than drawing free-hand.  I put a hand screw clamp in my bench vise.  This can hold the crest while I carve the ear.  I do not do a lot of carving in the furniture that I make.  In fact, the only furniture that I make with any carvings are these chairs.  So, all of the carving tools that I have were chosen to be used in carving the seat, arms and crest.

After carving the crest, I do some shaping (to make the top back of the crest a bit thinner and taper the thickness on the back side) at the belt sander.  Then, I hand sand the crest, relieving the edges and rounding over the top.  This is the last part to fabricate.  Put it in position on the center spindle and mark the remaining spindles for length.  Cut and finish sand the spindles and we are ready for the last assembly step.  (July 2007 to January 2008)