I have recently completed this desk and chair set for my son's room. The desk was made to fit in a relatively tight space hence the open design. It's fashioned on an old school desk but is essentially my own design. The chair, whilst also my own design, uses inspiration from many existing designs in books and actual chairs. The back rest is at 6 degrees rather than the typical 7 for this type of chair and the splay of the seat is around 5 degrees.
The desk base uses mortice and tenon joints cut using a table saw tenoning jig and morticer. The top attaches to the base with both a sliding dovetail and cleat. I couldn't get a tight enough sliding dovetail fit so ended using the cleat to firm up the whole structure. The top was edge jointed and, being predominantly close to quarter sawn, should remain flat.
The chair uses dominos for all joints. I chose this over traditional mortice and tenons for my first chair so that I could concentrate on getting the simple and compound angles right on all the components without the added complexity of trying to master tight fitting mortice and tenon joinery. I plan to use mortice and tenons (hopefully hand cut) on a future chair(s) now that I've got a design I am happy with. The infill pieces in the lower rails are there to make feature of my mistake where I cut the dominos on the wrong side of one of the rails. The three curved back rest pieces have been tapered at the rear so that they tend to follow the taper of the rear legs. The fronts have an equal offset to the front of the legs. All aris's (if that is spelt correctly) have been rounded over with a 3mm radius. The chair base is made with a plywood base covered with firm 2" foam, wadding and chocolate brown faux leather vinyl. The edges need more work to prevent them from being ruffled but that is something for me to practice on future chairs.
Both items are finished on gloss Osmo Poly X and have a coat of Fiddes light wax on top.
I'm pleased with the way both pieces have turned out. I found the desk was a challenge to design in a way that got the proportions right and remained stiff to prevent racking of the legs. With the chair, I also had to get it's proportions right to match the desk whilst remaining comfortable. In future, I plan to make chairs for a dining table and for these, I will recline the back to a more traditional 7 degrees and increase the length and width of the base by an inch.
Incidentally, I had intended to make a work in progress series of this project, but I fell at the first hurdle of actually taking pictures as I went along. I'd appreciate any tips and suggestions from others to see how they do it - do you take lots of pictures as you go or do you plan to take pictures at certain points?
Desk and chair set:
The cleat securing the top to the base:
The "mistake" feature and the most difficult compound angle of the chair on the rear of the lower rail:
And finally, the set in my son's room:
The desk base uses mortice and tenon joints cut using a table saw tenoning jig and morticer. The top attaches to the base with both a sliding dovetail and cleat. I couldn't get a tight enough sliding dovetail fit so ended using the cleat to firm up the whole structure. The top was edge jointed and, being predominantly close to quarter sawn, should remain flat.
The chair uses dominos for all joints. I chose this over traditional mortice and tenons for my first chair so that I could concentrate on getting the simple and compound angles right on all the components without the added complexity of trying to master tight fitting mortice and tenon joinery. I plan to use mortice and tenons (hopefully hand cut) on a future chair(s) now that I've got a design I am happy with. The infill pieces in the lower rails are there to make feature of my mistake where I cut the dominos on the wrong side of one of the rails. The three curved back rest pieces have been tapered at the rear so that they tend to follow the taper of the rear legs. The fronts have an equal offset to the front of the legs. All aris's (if that is spelt correctly) have been rounded over with a 3mm radius. The chair base is made with a plywood base covered with firm 2" foam, wadding and chocolate brown faux leather vinyl. The edges need more work to prevent them from being ruffled but that is something for me to practice on future chairs.
Both items are finished on gloss Osmo Poly X and have a coat of Fiddes light wax on top.
I'm pleased with the way both pieces have turned out. I found the desk was a challenge to design in a way that got the proportions right and remained stiff to prevent racking of the legs. With the chair, I also had to get it's proportions right to match the desk whilst remaining comfortable. In future, I plan to make chairs for a dining table and for these, I will recline the back to a more traditional 7 degrees and increase the length and width of the base by an inch.
Incidentally, I had intended to make a work in progress series of this project, but I fell at the first hurdle of actually taking pictures as I went along. I'd appreciate any tips and suggestions from others to see how they do it - do you take lots of pictures as you go or do you plan to take pictures at certain points?
Desk and chair set:
The cleat securing the top to the base:
The "mistake" feature and the most difficult compound angle of the chair on the rear of the lower rail:
And finally, the set in my son's room:
