Might just be the coffee, but I don't need a rocking chair to rock.

I about drive my wife nuts when I start rocking on the couch. 

First layout scribed.

 

After a few blows and with my hands settled down, the first mortise went pretty good.

 

By the second one I feel the rythm.

 

And now I have the first leg fitted with its back slatss, and they really turned out well.

 

 

Time for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich! Then the second leg is up next.

Looking good John, better have a cup of coffee to go with that sandwich. 

Looking good! 

5 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

better have a cup of coffee to go with that sandwich.

Not yet Larry! After the last mortise is chopped, then I can celebrate with a nice hot cup o joe. Thanks @hatuffej and Larry!

4 hours ago, John Morris said:

I can celebrate with a nice hot cup o joe

No, no, no, no!!!  After the task is completed some alcoholic beverage is required.

 

It has been 13 hours since your last post... are you done yet?

Rally looking good John.  Glad you can finally pick this project back up and make progress with it.

Those hand cut mortises look great John, I haven't tried anything like that since JHS shop class.

That has to be at least 45 years ago,  Man doe's that realization make me feel old. 

28 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

Those hand cut mortises look great John, I haven't tried anything like that since JHS shop class.

That has to be at least 45 years ago,  Man doe's that realization make me feel old. 

Your just a spring chicken.  

39 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

Those hand cut mortises look great John, I haven't tried anything like that since JHS shop class.

That has to be at least 45 years ago,  Man doe's that realization make me feel old. 

Age ain't nuthin' but a number. I'm 27,176 days old today! Cluck, cluck, cluck. Cock-adoodle-doooo!! 

Edited May 18, 20196 yr by hatuffej

28,534 days for me. But, who's counting? 

1 hour ago, Gene Howe said:

28,534 days for me. But, who's counting? 

I count just to keep track of me, after I check the obit pages to see if I'm listed. If not, I know it will be a good day! 

 

 

2 hours ago, hatuffej said:

Age ain't nuthin' but a number. I'm 27,176 days old today! Cluck, cluck, cluck. Cock-adoodle-doooo!! 

 

2 hours ago, Gene Howe said:

28,534 days for me. But, who's counting? 

Sure Gene, and hatuffej make me do some math! 

2 minutes ago, hatuffej said:

 I check the obit pages to see if I'm listed. If not, I know it will be a good day! 

That's kind of weird, a few years back there used to be another Larry Buskirk (no relation) and his obit was in the paper. 

You wouldn't believe the reactions when people were calling to give the wife condolences, and I answered the phone! 

35 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

 

 

 

Sure Gene, and hatuffej make me do some math! 

That's kind of weird, a few years back there used to be another Larry Buskirk (no relation) and his obit was in the paper. 

You wouldn't believe the reactions when people were calling to give the wife condolences, and I answered the phone! 

I know! I googled my name once and found myself all over the country. No wonder I get so many unknown numbers calling me.  

I'll make it easier for ya.  4/3/2019, marked my 78th year on this earth. For this go round, anyway.

6 minutes ago, hatuffej said:

I know! I googled my name once and found myself all over the country. No wonder I get so many unknown numbers calling me.  

How many Hatuffej's do we have!

 

13 minutes ago, John Morris said:

How many Hatuffej's do we have!

 

We got the best one.

Headin out to the shop now to make a chair, look like a chair, progress pics coming later, thanks guys for your kind words encouragement!

Well here we are, catching up with things, last night after I chopped all but two mortises, I decided to take a break and call it the day, I brought my laptop out to my bench with a cup of coffee and celebrated a much needed day in my shop. I have not had this amount of time to focus on anything like this, literally in a couple years, this is one of those golden weekends that just seemed to pan out for the ol man, the family is happy, they are doing their thing, and our dogs are happy too. Here is Woody, or Lhasa Apso, he was hanging with me all day so I decided to put him up on the bench and give him a moment of fame. Our other dog Jessie is walking away in the back ground, she'd had enough.

 

Back to the project at hand. I chopped the last mortise this morning, the last three mortises I really felt good about this again, I became more comfortable with my RAY ILES English Mortising Chisel and just love it more and more. The last few mortises I was able to come up with the mortise and the depth I needed in just a matter of minutes, the first mortise I chopped yesterday took about 20 minutes, it has been that long since I have done this.

This last mortise took me around 5 minutes.

 

 

Now with the mortises chopped out, I started the final fitting of the slats, mainly the height of the slats had to be shaved down a tad to fit inside the mortises. Since the slats are sweeped up into an arch, they are higher than the mortise is long, so I fine fit the slats with my Veritas flat spokeshave. This tool is a joy to use.

 

 

With everything fitting well individually, I made a couple dry run assemblies. In this image you can actually see one of the slats is not sitting right, the geometry has it running out to the left further than the others. I am not too worried about it, I cut the mortises at an angle on both rear legs, so that the curved slats will meet the other chair leg opposite. The wild slat will just have to conform, it'll bend into place, with protest but it will and did.

 

 

Now that the dry runs are out of the way, I am ready for glue up. I have everything setting out, nothing that I need should be anywhere else but on my bench within reach. I have my one leg secured to the bench, the slats and the other leg are laid out appropriately, I have my two clamps I know I'll need to help bring home the two rear legs onto the rungs and slats, you never want to use a mallet on chairs when bringing parts together during glue up, you'll either crack something, and or you'll never get the parts to conform the way you want them too. You need the power of clamps to squeeze together chair parts.

I have my water and a rag, and one thing I left out but I retrieved after I took this image, is a toothbrush. I use the toothbrush to clean up the joints from glue.

I use Titebond III for my chairs because there are so many parts during a glue up, that I want the longer open time that TBIII provides. The only problem with TBIII on lighter wood, is if there is just a little glue inside a joint that can be seen, it really sticks out like a sore thumb because it dries so dark, thus the toothbrush I like to use to really clean up those joints.

 

 

One side of the chair back is glued up and ready for the other leg to get set up on it.

 

 

I don't have any images of the actual glue up of the other leg, things got dicey, the post rungs did freeze up even with the TBIII open end time, so I had to yell for my son for an extra hand and between the both of us we managed to get a few extra clamps on and squeeze the two legs together in order to close up the rungs into the legs. It's a catch 22 with the rungs, you want a snug fit but they should slide in and out with one twist, but, since the fit is so good, as soon as the glue hits the tenons of the rungs, the tenons are swelling and you have to work quickly, fortunately we were able to close up the rungs to the leg, with the help of a pair of channel locks on the bar clamp handle we brought it all into submission with a nice pop. Some chairs go easy, others like to fight, hey, it's hand made!

 

Not only are the rung tenons temperamental, but the whole back frame assembly is, with hand cut mortises at different angles nothing is perfect, they do fight.

You can tell where much of the resistance was, I have two clamps down on the rungs, when my son and I were fighting these I was laughing hard, ever since I was a kid I laughed when in stressful situations, even before playground bare knuckles, I'd laugh. It drives my wife crazy, but I hope that is one of my strange traits that my son picks up on, it'll serve him well as a man. I don't know why I just remembered that, but I did.

 

 

The back frame assembly came out of the clamps about an hour later, and it was racked as they typically are, there are many varying stresses going on with these chairs during assembly. So I set the frame feet down on the floor, and I held the top of the frame by the two top spindles and I put my weight into it and gave it a twist, the rack came out with a creak, and I then set the frame up on my bench, clamped it straight and even to the bench, and I'll let it set over night for the rack and twist to be eliminated from the frame.

 

 

Meanwhile, while the back frame is clamped up to the bench I may as well scrape the backside of the back slats. I have a Stewart_MacDonald scraper that @Gene Howe told me about, I purchased two of them, one is for mainly flat work and the other is for arched work, as in luthier work. In my humble opinion these far out perform the traditional sprung steel scrapers, I can go on with another topic about these scrapers, but they are wonderful and easy to use.

As I scraped the slats the grain came alive, scraping is my final process before the first coat of finish goes on, there is no need to sand after scraping.

Image below, you can see the three slats to the left, are scraped to final, note the curls popping in those slats, compared to the slat I just started at the far right.

 

 

Well that's it for tonight folks, it's been a fun day today, and I'll get back on it tomorrow, we'll actually start assembling the front frame to the rear frame and we are going to actually see something that looks like a chair!

Thank you for following me on my return to the shop!

Great essay. Gonna be another MM. (Morris Masterpiece) 

Dontcha just love watching those scraper shavings pile up?