Been busy lately but managed to get some shop time.  Building a modified morris chair for my father-in-law so my wife can have hers back.

Dry fit went great, finished the sanding and detail work today and it is ready for final assembly.

I always have admired the Morris chair.  Is your design an original or who's plan are you following?   Danl

It is an original.  Looked at some pictures and designed from there.

Looking great!  A shop I worked for many years ago used to do Morris chairs and a lot of other A&C furniture.  I never got assigned one though, most of the guys in the shop had niches that they did, with one guy doing all the Morris chairs usually.  I did make him some glue laminated curved arms for one though, pushing the boss to try that since the pieces we needed to cut out the arms were scarce - thick and wide mesquite.  The shop manager liked the results, the boss didn't  

That looks great Static

Curved laminations are a new thing for me and putting tenons on them doubly so but they worked out pretty well in this case and I think it is something I can add to my list of, well, not skills exactly, but stuff I may have a bit of a clue about

Good to see you posting again Michael. That's some good looking chair and work.

Sapele modified morris chair finished with Osmo PolyX.

 

It needs proper cushions but upholstery isn’t my thing so I am going to have to order those but the chair itself is done.
Construction is full mortise and tenon.  Through tenons are pillowed as are the tops and bottoms of the back rails.

I kinda wanted to do the curved arms on this one but it is for my father in law and he wanted someplace “flat so I can put my coffee there”.
When I do one for me, I will employ the curved arms but not going to lie, I am sad to be giving this one away.

Most excellent Michael!

I can understand being sad to see that one go!

When you do curved, if you want to try laminating you can get 1/16" veneer here:

https://certainlywood.com/results-woodmenu.php?name=SAPELE&menu=1/16 in. quartered

 

They have a number of species in thick veneer if you're not going to use Sapele (given the results of the chair pictured here, I figured you would choose it again!)

 

I've also done this with laminations sawn from a board and tended to go a little thicker on the lams, maybe 3/32.  Never tried 1/8" but I would expect it to work ok for this with a vacuum bag since the curves are gentile.  I'm not sure I would try it with bar clamps (my normal method) but it's not out of the question, again because the curves for Morris arms are not so bad.  The other risk is breaking the laminations as you bend the thicker you go.

 

These days I just opt for doing everything easy and buy 1/16" veneer  

 

Really looking forward to seeing what you do next!

Edited October 24, 20241 yr by JWD

Very nicely done.   Thanks   Danl

Sweet! That looks great!

And I love the Sapele.

3 hours ago, JWD said:

When you do curved, if you want to try laminating you can get 1/16" veneer here:

https://certainlywood.com/results-woodmenu.php?name=SAPELE&menu=1/16 in. quartered

 

They have a number of species in thick veneer if you're not going to use Sapele (given the results of the chair pictured here, I figured you would choose it again!)

 

I've also done this with laminations sawn from a board and tended to go a little thicker on the lams, maybe 3/32.  Never tried 1/8" but I would expect it to work ok for this with a vacuum bag since the curves are gentile.  I'm not sure I would try it with bar clamps (my normal method) but it's not out of the question, again because the curves for Morris arms are not so bad.  The other risk is breaking the laminations as you bend the thicker you go.

 

These days I just opt for doing everything easy and buy 1/16" veneer  

 

Really looking forward to seeing what you do next!

For the curved pieces I just took a bandsaw to them and resawed them to a shade over 1/8” then hit them with a handplane to get them nice and flat for the glueup..
Glued them up like normal and tossed them in the clamping jig of doom and it seemed to work out pretty well.  I did take a look at those vacuum systems though and I might pursue that in the future as it looks like a really effective way to do these kind of laminations and you only have to worry about making one side of the form which is pretty nice.  Making both sides and getting them to match correctly was a bit tricky.

These are a pretty gentle curve, it is basically 1” over 24” which is something like a 72” radius circle or something silly like that.  I don’t remember what measurement I used in CAD, I just fiddled with it until the curve looked right to me   The nice thing is that it is a true arc so I didn’t have to mess around with making a progressive arc and then transferring it. The Shaper Origin was really useful for making all the king templates for this and I learned a ton about making these and forms.  I used the same template for the curves on the main stretchers as well.

Looks good to me, I didn't realize you had it all figured out already!

You cut the forms with an Origin?  Nice!  Way easier than old school with a router and radius jig.

Nice work Static, I can see why it was hard to let that one go.