Now its time to start putting the final parts of the chair together. First job is to get the arm rest to fit, this is again done with the pencil sharpener.
The get the required height we used some high tech equipment here, it was a thin stick 8 ½ inches long, with these in place we are now able to fit the continuous arm.
Now comes the bit I wasn't looking forward to, drilling the continuous arm for the spindles, I didn't take any photo's of the actual drilling, I think everyone was too tense, get this bit wrong and the arm is ruined and guess what there were no spares made.
Let me try and explain, on the seat of the chair we had marked out where we were going to drill the seat, where the X marks the spot we punched a slight indentation. We now lined up the indentation with the top and the back of the drill over the spot and drilled. I know I didn't understand it either.
It must have worked because we all came out with hole roughly in the right place.
Drilling the holes in the seat was a lot easier, we looked through the hole in the arm and lined up the frill through the holes and drilled.
Now having the holes in all fine and dandy, but will it all go together with the spindles and arm, good question.
Now its time to place the spindles in the seat.
As I put these in I was getting a bit worried, I was expecting them to be in a nice row that would match up nicely with the arm. It looked to me a little like Stonehenge, definitely not uniform.
Oh well onwards and upwards, not much we can do now, perhaps I didn't get the holes as lined up as I thought.
With all the spindles in place, it's time to see if the arm fits.
Panic over, the arm has pulled everything into line, I really a happy bunny at this point.
Got to remove the arm once more and put some glue in the holes.
This done all that remains is to insert the wedges into the splines on the arm and trim everything off.
Now at the beginning of the thread I posted a picture of a continuous arm chair that James had made, now I've taken a photo of mine next to James's. Mines the one that doesn't have any finished on it.
What I haven't mention is the lunches that are supplied with the course, hard to explain so here's a photo.
Trust me there was more than enough to fill up six hungry chair makers.
I guess the question is, did I get out of the course what I was expecting. Well, everything exceeded my expectations and I came away with something that I thought was beyond my skill level. This was all down to James's excellent form of teaching.
Was it worth the money, yes without a doubt, and I think I speak for everyone who attended.
Would I go again, yes most certainly, but I've got to save up first.
I hope you've all enjoyed my week in the Windsor Workshop.
