Probably the most fun day of the 5. It had a bit of everything- working rungs on the shave horse with drawknife and spokeshave, steambending extra slats, fine tuning the slat tenons, packing up our kits, assembling the chair, and the unexpected pleasure of hickory bark weaving.

Friday was a bit of a whirlwind, Andy opened the shop at 7 am (normal opening was 8 am with a 9 am class start time) so anyone who wanted could have some extra time to work on whatever they wanted. I still needed to put the taper on my side rungs and rails so was there for opening.

(More) Side Rungs and Rails

This chair has 4 hickory rails and 9 red oak rungs so plenty of time on the shave horse with the drawknife and spokeshave. I’m okay with that. The first rungs I worked with the drawknife on Day 1 of the class were pretty bad. Never a great feeling but that’s just how it is with anything for the first time. More time on the horse meant more practice. By Day 5, my rungs weren’t anywhere near ladder back perfect but I was very happy with the progress. I can’t remember if I’ve already written out the process for tapering them so I’ll put it again here:

1. Start with your octagonal rung.
2. Put pencil marks all the way around at the half-way point of the rung.
3. Sub-divide each half into thirds with pencil marks.
4. Using the drawknife only, first take a shaving from the first mark to the tenon shoulder.
5. Now take a shaving starting just before your line at the second mark, this shaving should come all the way to the tenon shoulder.
6. Repeat 4 and 5 until you have just a hair of material left at the tenon shoulder.
7. Go all the way around the rung with steps 4-6.
8. Using the spokeshave, start at the centerline removing material all the way to the tenon shoulder.

The goal is to end up with a straight taper from center of the rung to the tenon shoulder, blending it seamlessly. Some things I also do to help me achieve a symmetrical rung: try to have the lines on each facet running straight along the facet, try to maintain consistent widths on each facet (although the width should decrease as you move from center to shoulder), and use a routine when shaving these.

For my routine, I would start on the radial face then flip the part 180 degrees to work the other radial face. Next, flip the part 90 degrees to work one of the tangential faces, this is harder work but I like being able to look at the symmetry of the radial faces I just cut. After the tangential faces are cut, just finish up the remaining faces flipping as you work to keep everything symmetrical as you look down from above.

By the time I got to my 8th and 9th rungs, I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Fine Tuning the Slat Tenons

Even with all the care we took to measure the mortise size and cut the slat tenons to size, there was still some fussing to get them to fit. After a few attempts, I found a routine that seemed to work well.

1. Mark a line on the top and bottom of the tenon (on the thin faces) where the “shoulder” would be. This will help us see when the mortise hits full depth.
2. Work each tenon one at a time. Once you have one fully seated, trust that it will fit when you go for the dry-fit.
3. Use a spokeshave set to take a light cut or card scraper to slowly remove material as you work.
4. In some cases, you may have to cut some length off one of the corners to get the tenon to fit if it won’t bottom out.

After you get everything to fit on its own, do a dry-run with the dummy tenons.

Once you know it will all fit, make preparations for the rear-assembly glue-up. You’ll need, glue, brushes, a dead-blow hammer (or other way to drive home the tenons without marring the posts), your rear rung, rear rail, and slats.

Working in pairs we fully seated all the tenons in one of the rear posts before working the second one. Partner A applied glue to the tenons while Partner B applied glue to the mortises. After glue was applied, A would hold the post steady while B drove the rail and rung into place first. Hammer until the rail/rung won’t move a millimeter. Next, drive your slats in one by one, these should seat with little more than hand pressure.

After one side of the chair has all its mortises filled, set up for the other side. Using the same approach as before, A applies glue to the tenons, B applies glue to the mortises. Once ready, A holds the post with all the mortises filled steady on the bench while B lines up the empty post from above. Once you have them lined up, gently tap on the post from above until all the tenons have a good hold of the mortises. Now drive everything home hard. Be careful not to blunt any of your crisp facets. In many cases, we went with the pipe clamps to pull everything tight. We used pads to prevent damaging the posts and made sure to line the clamps parallel to the rail and rung. Sometimes the slats needed a clamp as well if the action of clamping below forced a slat out of its mortise.

Boring the Side Rung/Rail Mortises

The front assembly is wider than the rear, so the rails/rungs that run from front to back can’t come out of the rear assembly and into the front assembly at 90 degree angles. The angle between the side rail/rung and rear rail/rung has to be slightly larger than 90 degrees and the angle between the side rail/rung and the front rail/rung has to be slightly smaller than 90 degrees by the same amount (because math).

To accomplish this we placed a block under certain parts of the post while boring a mortise on the drill press (the pictures will make it make sense). ***I believe the block was 1.25″ square***. Locate the mortise location with the story-stick.

Front post mortises:

Rear post mortises:

Assembling the Chair

After boring the remaining mortises, assembly was a breeze. Working in partners we worked similar to how we assembled the rear. Apply glue to tenons and mortises, hammer rails/rungs home, apply glue to remaining tenons and mortises, hammer everything home, and clamp if needed to pull everything fully seated. Given the green wood method of building this chair, keeping the chair clamped while the glue dries is not necessary.

Pin the Slats

Before weaving, we pinned the slats with bamboo skewers. We drilled a pilot hole 1/4′ – 3/8″ in and centered on the slat over each tenon deep enough to just go through the slat without coming out the back. Dab a little glue on the skewer and hammer home. After the glue dries, you can cut flush or leave slightly proud and dome.

Weaving the Hickory Bark

Weaving this hickory seat was a lot of fun but frustrating. While I didn’t think it would be, keeping the pattern without making a mistake was difficult. There must have been at least 5 times I got to a point where I realized I had made a mistake 1 or 2 rows ago. Given the how obvious a mistake here would have been, the only choice was to undo everything back to the mistake and start over.

I can’t really remember the process so I’m just going to say Google this part and post some pictures of the tool kit, Andy working, and my finished seat.

A Reluctant Departure

Despite really missing my family, I had a hard time saying goodbye to everyone. Getting to know everyone on top of everything we learned was such an unexpected pleasure. Evan, Jonathan, George, Nathan, and Andy were such a great group of people to be around. I can only hope we cross paths again someday.

I’ll be honest, this day was so busy that I only had the energy to write out some bullets the evening after we finished this day. Coming back to look at it now (2.5 weeks later) I’m sure I forgot a lot of what we did. Thankfully I did take some pictures on top of the bullet points.

Skim/match posts

Just like the front posts, we gave the back posts a few days to allow for surface drying before cleaning up. To the best of my recollection, we just took some time this morning to straighten out the lines as best we could with spokeshaves, then smoothed them out with card scrapers. To me, this is one of those tasks that you need to set a quitting time for, otherwise you could find yourself at it all day chasing perfection.

Layout and Cut Slat Mortises

Each rear post needed 3 mortises for the back slats. We marked them using the story stick as a guide. The story stick referenced from the bottom of the foot was easy to lay out the bottom two mortises. We used a marking gauge or square to layout the inside wall (3/8″ or 1/4″ from the flat face of the rear post); the width of our chisel defined the back wall (in this case 1/4″). The top mortise sits at or near the bend so it’s a little more challenging to lay it out with an inflexible stick. We accomplished the task by referencing off the top of the post for the top mortise. Using the story stick we marked the top and bottom of the mortise, used a marking gauge or square to mark the walls but only at the top and bottom of the mortise. Again, as this mortise sits near the bend, if we used a marking gauge or square to try to mark the walls, they would end up curved. To layout straight walls, we used a ruler, referencing the points where the walls met the top and bottom of the mortise.

Cutting the mortise was done with either a hollow chisel mortiser or a drill and chisel. The hollow chisel mortiser was quick and easy once the tool was set up; I cut 4 of the 6 mortises on it with ease.

The drill and chisel method took a little more time but left good results as well. We marked brad-point bits with tape to keep from boring too deep. I believe we bored somewhere between 3/4″ to 1″ deep but I can’t recall for sure (I hope it’s on the story stick or plans!). After boring with the bit, we came back with the chisel and cleaned it up.

Drill for Rung/Rail

In order to determine the length of the slats, we need to temporarily assemble the back part of the chair. If we used the actual rungs/rails, we might not be able to get the back posts apart again. So we build 2 extra rungs but shaved a little bit off each of the tenons to ease things back out.

Laying out and drilling the mortises was a lot easier thanks to a jig Andy developed. The jig, pictured below, allowed us to drill the mortise on the drill press without concern that the post might rotate or move. The jig is essentially a cradle with some pads that held the posts in place via carriage bolts and wing nuts.

Using a bevel gauge set to an angle from the plans (20-25 degrees?), we rotated the legs until the bevel gauge sat flush with the flat face of the back post. This identified the correct orientation of the posts to have the mortise pointing straight up. We used the story stick again to locate the center of the mortise vertically. The mortise was located horizontally on the post visually, just eye-balling the post and finding the center (side note: I might have cheated by using a square here…).

Insert “Dummy” Rung -> Measure for Slats

After boring the 2 rail/rung mortises on the drill press and paring down the dummy tenons, we fit the back together. We inserted the dummy rails into both back posts as far as they would go. Next we placed the back rail assembly into a vice so we could work with both hands. Using a tape measure, we measured the length of between each mortise (at the bottom of the mortise), writing down the length and calculated half of that length on our plans.

It gets a little complicated to describe here but the technique is actually really easy. For some background, when we bent the back-slats to their final curve, we also drew a center-line on the slats. Using the plans Andy gave us, we placed our slats on the plans, matching our center-line with a marked line on his plans. ***This is where I can’t remember the exact technique. We somehow used the divided calculation to mark the length of the back slat so that each side had an equivalent length from the center-line.*** After we marked the length of the on each slat, we added an additional 3/4″* (maybe more?) to each side for the tenon.

As the posts flare out, the tenons need to be flared to get the best fit we can in the mortises. To find the angle, we clamped a straight edge to just below the bottom of the lowest mortise and used that to help us capture the flare with a bevel gauge. The picture below explains it way better than I’ll ever be able to.

We transferred the bevel we got off the bottom mortise to all three of the back slats as shown below. The line you can barely see running nearly parallel to the bottom of the slat is actually a gradual 1/4″ curve. The slat is at it’s fullest at the center-line before tapering up by 1/4″ from the bottom. The top also tapers down, however it was left up to us to draw whatever design we liked best. I cheated and copied the designs from one of Andy’s chairs.

Cut and Fit Slats

After getting the top tapers, bottom tapers, and full length of the slat to include flare on the tenons we cut them out on the band saw. Most of us didn’t get any more work done on our slats Thursday but I’ll go ahead and describe what we did Friday morning.

After cutting them to shape, we did some rough cleaning with spokeshaves and scrapers. Before we could fit them we had to bring the tenon down to final thickness. With the back slats at 3/8″ and the mortise only 1/4″, we had to remove roughly 1/8″ of material. Andy showed us how to do this with the drawknife by eye. Not being one to trust my eye just yet, I marked the final thickness along the sides and endgrain using a pencil, square set to 1/4″, and referencing off the back of the slat. The bulk of the 1/8″ material removal was done with a drawknife using a scooping motion. This leaves a nice sharp transition from the slat to the tenon.

From here it was lots of back and forth between testing the fit then removing minimal material (with spokeshave, drawknife, or scraper) before testing again. This had to be done on all six joints until each tenon seated all the way.

Once they were seated, if we had time we could add additional features to the slats. I tried to bevel mine along the top and bottom the same way Andy did his. Mine didn’t come out nearly as nice as his but I was still pleased. I’d really like to add some carving to the slats on a future chair.

Make Side Rungs/Rails

During any downtime, we set to making more rungs and rails. We needed another 2 rails and 4 rungs for each side.

Bend Slats

Just like the additional rungs/rails, we took turns bending more slats during the breaks.

pass out…

More shaving, some steam bending, and finishing up with some assembly.

The day started out with shaving more octagonal rungs for the front of our chairs. However we quickly moved into cleaning up front posts and shaving down the front rails the hickory bark will be woven into. With the goal of ending the day with our chair fronts assembled, Andy had us focus on ensuring we had enough glue-ready parts (1 hickory rail and 2 red oak rungs) by the end of the day.

Rails

To handle the extra stress imposed by the seat and the likelihood someone will stand on the chair rails, the rails were split out of hickory not red oak. Why not make the entire chair out of hickory if it’s stronger than oak? Because it’s a huge pain in the ass to shave. Hickory certainly is strong, but I could have shaved 2 or 3 oak rungs in the time it took me to shave the hickory rail.

The hickory rails were already oval shaped and cut to length for us. We only had to shave the tenon close to it’s final 5/8″ size so it could be run through the tenon cutter. Once the tenons were formed, we removed/feathered the excess material leading up to the tenon so there wouldn’t be any shoulder. We began with the drawknife, removing material carefully so that we wouldn’t remove any from the tenon on accident. Once we reached the point of diminishing returns with the drawknife, we switched over to the spokeshave, rounding out all the sharp-ish edges. Since the rail would hold the hickory bark seat, we don’t want any sharp edges that might dig into the hickory bark.

Front Post clean-up

After having given the front posts a day or two to dry their exterior some, we worked on getting them glue-up ready. That started by straightening and evening up all the lines on the 8 faces of the post. We used a spokeshave and block plane set to take a light cut to get facets as even and straight as we could on the legs. While mine still had some bend to the legs and low spots on the faces I couldn’t even out, I was pretty happy with how they turned out.

Lunch break and history lesson

Again one of the unexpected treats of this course came not from making anything but from learning something new. Andy gave us a quick history lesson via slide-show of various ladder back chairs in the Appalachian style. We heard about makers both long ago and modern that have contributed to the world of ladder back chairs. It was fascinating to hear about the evolution of these chairs through the years as well as Andy’s thoughts on where they might be headed.

Steam Bending the slats and back posts

At some point in the afternoon, we broke from shaving to go do some steam bending. This chair has 3 slats (~3.75″ x 3/8″) and 2 back posts (bent near the middle slat) that all have to be steam bent. The rule of thumb found in a lot of literature regarding steam bending, is that wood needs to steam for 1 hour per inch of thickness. Andy said he found this to be far to short and usually went up to twice or three times as long for his bends. He said the extra time helps get everything limbered up and while there can be issues with burning if you left parts in the steam box too long, he had yet to encounter that.

Bending Slats

Split out to start with quarter-sawn stock before getting band-sawn then run through a planer for final thicknessing (to 3/8″). The slats are thin enough that they shouldn’t require much effort to bend. The process:

1. After carefully removing from the steam box, the slats get slowly bent over the form by hand. First they are bent backwards i.e. the side that will eventually face out, gets bent so that it is on the inside of the curve.
2. After it is slowly bent backwards, we flipped the part around and bent it over the form in its final configuration holding it there for 30 seconds or so.
3. Move the bent part to the drying rack (fit it into the drying rack by hand if you can)

For Andy’s chairs, he just bends it by hand and holds it there for a few seconds before transferring it to his drying rack. The part didn’t stay bent during the transition, so you have to muscle the slat into the drying rack or clamp the concave side of the slat to a curved wooden block to ease it into the rack. The parts can stay here a couple of days. You want the slats to be dry enough to retain the curve but not so dry that you can’t manipulate the over bend back out of them.

Bending the Back Legs

Also after carefully removing 2 back legs from the steam box (they steamed for close to 3 hours), the legs were driven into the bending form, making sure the tops of the legs were wedged in all the way (not wedging them in all the way will end up with back legs that are bent at different locations. This job was best done by two people, one would line the legs up and stand-by with the clamp while the second one would slowly bend the legs in to the form (if only 1 person could be present for the bends, Andy recommended using a squeeze-type clamp that could pull the legs together). Once the legs were carefully bent, some cauls were held in place while the first person clamped the legs over the cauls. Out of the 6 legs we bent (3 sets), only 1 leg hand any evidence of fiber failure on the outside of the grain. I was pretty impressed considering the thickness of the legs. Even in the case of the 1 failure, the fibers lifting away from the bend did not go very deep so the leg might be salvageable.

Mortising the Front Posts and Assembly

After the steam bending, we went to work getting our fronts ready for assembly. Andy gave us a primer on how to orient your posts for maximum efficiency of wood movement. The short version is, you want to orient the growth rings of all 4 posts as if they were still in the tree and the pith is in the middle of the seat.

Once identified, we marked a line on the top of each from one to the other that represented which side the rail and rungs would be mortised into on both. We also drew a “F” or wrote the word “front” on the face that would be facing outward. Documentation and organization help a lot when it comes time to glue. The line of the top of the legs was carried straight down the leg, running through the middle of the face. We used the story stick to layout the mortise location, using the bottom of the foot as the reference point.

The mortising was done with a 5/8″ brad point on a drill press with the goal being a mortise slightly deeper than 1″ into the front post. Since everyone’s legs were slightly different in width we couldn’t trust a depth stop on the drill press. Instead, we drew a line on the drill bit at 1″ then drilled down until we couldn’t see the line. We also drilled a test hole at the top of the post, in excess material, to ensure our mortise depth was accurate.

Once we had the mortises complete, we were ready to assemble. We did some final marking on the rungs and rail to ensure everything glued up in the correct orientation (I marked the outside face on all my parts with blue tape). The fat side of the hickory rail should face inward and just slightly down. Using a partner to help glue and verify assembly depth, we took turns gluing things together. One person applied glue to the tenons, the other applied glue to the mortise. Once ready, the chair part owner would drive the three tenons fully into one post. Then using the partner to help line things up, drive the post with the tenons wedged in, into the post with none. Once they stopped moving, you were set.

Verify the assembly is straight by using a tape measure or rule to measure the distance between the posts at the top rail and the bottom rung. Ideally they should be 15.5″ apart in both locations but as long as they are both the same distance (to 1/16″) and close to 15.5″, everything will work out fine. Also, counter any twist with hand pressure and/or vise assisted counter-twisting. You want the front assembly to sit flat on the bench.

After another long but fun day, take a moment to appreciate everything you got to work on today.