A Windsor Chair in France sessions 1-4

[xy mosian]

Some time ago my brother asked if I could make a 'comfortable' windsor style chair on my next visit to his summer home in France. His workshop is for genetral use and not equipt with many woodworking tools. I have never made a Windosr chair before but relished the challenge. The limitations of weight on low cost air travel was the first hurdle, some tools went by road with my brother when he went over to Roussines, in the Charente, at the beginning of April. I did as much research as possible before leaving, one of the attractions of his French house is the lack of internet, but then that often serves to confuse so it was perhpas as well not being available.

On to the Chair.
In the final picture turned front legs are evident. A slowly degrading lathe, and my lack of turning skill put paid to the idea that legs and spindles would be turned. The original intention was to turn all relavent parts on a 'barn find' Fermi lathe. It was not really up to the job, firstly there was the matter of the vibration, I'm not skilled enough to get around that, then the off switch on the NVR stopped working, and finally the start capacitor gave up. After that all nominally round parts were planed and spokeshaved.

I decided not to finish the surface of the seat blank untill all joints and shaping had been done. I'm lazy, I was keeping the amount of work required down. Still a little bulk removal was done with a Skil electric hand plane. Very light cuts in random directions left a finish which was easily smoothed off with the 4 1/2 later.

 

[xy mosian]

To continue:-

All the curved cuts were made with a small Bosch jigsaw, even with rip blades it left a very reasonable finish both in the 50mm and the 30mm stock.

Once cut the back supports were mortice and tenonned to the seat, the laths were tool finished with the spokeshave before the joints were cut. I would do the latter t'other way around next time. My excuse is that I wanted to see the effect of the front surface being curved.

 

[xy mosian]

To Continue:-

 

[xy mosian]

Last Part:-

There are areas where this chair is less than very good, fewer areas where it is better than very good. That does not really matter, I enjoyed the process of thinking on my feet and learnt a lot. What is even more important is that my brother, and his wife, both like the finished result. Now and again it is nice to realise that, when asked, you can do something you always felt that you could.

Comments please,
xy

 

[Racers]

Hi, xy

Well done, it shows you that you can do good work with only a few tools, but I will not be giving up most of mine soon!
In the old days I only had a hand drill a record No4 two chisels and an electric drill, so I know you can get by with a small tool kit.

Pete

 

[AndyT]

Brilliant!

I would guess that one of the (many) pleasures in making that chair would have been in the practical problem solving of how to do without some tools and make good enough versions of others.

 

[xy mosian]

Thanks guys.
Pete, it was an interesting exercise in tool minimalism. The only tool I really felt to be short of was a back saw, that JCB was a little unwieldly cutting tenons. It is good to get back to a wider variety of kit though.
Andy, You are absolutely right, the problem solving was about the best part, other than sitting down when finished of course. I suppose the revelation on the tool making side was the little plane. The blade/wedge housing was cut with one or two standard chisels and a mallet, not quite as tricky as I expected.
The area I need to look at, if I ever make another, is how to stop the bit sliding downhill when freehand drilling into a slope. The arm to back support angled hole was a right pain. I thought that the long lead on a flat bit would handle that, it didn't really although other types of drill might be considerably worse.
xy