Danish Chairbuilding Extravaganza 2018, day 22. Sack back nanny rocker completed.

I elegantly skipped blogging after the official DCBE part was over. There was just too much stuff to do - to be bothered with sitting in front of a computer.

As a side note, I didn't work full time in the nanny rocker every day after the DCBE, but I did try to put in a couple of hours whenever possible. I didn't keep track of the time used in the build, but I think I am well past 100 hours.

On the Friday (day 5), we had a visit from my dad, and Mikkel from the blog Haandkraft also paid us a visit.
It was nice to meet Mikkel and talk with him about woodworking in general and also about the challenges of blogging about woodworking in Danish.

Using the whitebeam (Sorbus Intermediare) for seat material seemed like a great idea since it is dense, incredibly split resistant and sms to be not porous at all. The problem with the material was that it was incredibly hard to work. traversing the grain only helped during scrub planing. Traversing during the hollowing of the seat didn't do anything to help.
I ended up doing all the saddling with a gouge and a mallet and two and a half full days of work.

The armcrest was assembled after I had test mounted all the short spindles, so I could assess how long the piece should be.
When the time came to dry mount it, it was something like 1.5" too short, and besides the glued part broke. I had expected some sort of challenges along those lines, so I had milled more wood than I needed of the same dimensions, so I just took a piece of the spare wood and made a new insert for the straight back part, which was also where the piece had failed.

Large complicated glue ups are definitely not my favourite thing, and I am certain gluing on the armcrest is the biggest and most complicated glue up I have tried so far. 28 short spindles, 7 long spindles and two end spindles (with tapered holes) all had to go together at the same time. In addition there was a bit of spring back int he arm crest, so it was definitely a task for liquid hide glue.

Mounting the back piece was not much easier despite only needing to receive 7 spindles, and perforating the armcrest two places. There was a bit more spring action in that piece, and the risk of breaking it all was nerve wrecking.
Originally one side was supposed to come approximately 5/4" further down, but it started binding and I didn't want to risk anything, so I stopped and decided that I could fill the small gap with some sort of putty instead.

I reasoned that the seat had to be level at stand still, to be as comfortable as possible for the child in the crib part of the nanny rocker. This will make the chair part slightly less comfortable and relaxing compared to a reclining rocker. But the nanny rocker is not intended to be a slouching chair for the nanny, but a place for the nanny to sit up straight and knit while soothing a baby at the same time!

So I leveled out the top part of the seat and marked the correct seat height on the legs.
The legs were sawed to length, and I marked out for the positions of the rockers. Mortises were made in legs, and the ends of the legs were terminated by sawing at an angle.
Finally each joint was secured with a peg.

The plan is to paint the nanny rocker in a shiny dark green. But given that I completed the piece the day before going back to sea, I thought that it was a wise decision to wait until I got home next time before attempting to paint it. Instead of experimenting with homemade milk paint or linseed oil based paint, I have purchased a standard paint from Jotun.
Those people who have seen the chair so far seem to be appalled to learn that I wish to paint it, but I think that the many different grain patterns and the visual difference between the elm, whitebeam and ash is kind of disturbing to the eye.

Thoughts about the build:
To someone like me with a very limited experience in building Windsor/stick chairs, the sack back nanny rocker is a huge challenge.
I am so glad that Ray Schwanenberger provided me with a set of plans, so I had the knowledge of building something that would actually work. That was a great comfort compared to building something of my own design that might not work or look good.
I haven't got much experience in steam bending, but so far I have learned that not rushing it - is a good thing.
There are a lot of individual parts that are not very difficult to make, but given that there are so many it still becomes a daunting task. I opted for uniformity rather than exact copies for all the spindles. My guess is that since there are so many of them, few people will never notice it they are not exactly the same, and even fewer people will care.
Assembling the individual pieces is just as intimidating as I remembered from the loop back settee I made four years ago. very step becomes more and more frightening because of the risk of messing up the accumulated hours of work.

Now I just have to wait for some grand children to emerge in the horizon... (Or lend out the nanny rocker to a friend who is a bit closer to becoming a grand parent).

Sack back nanny rocker.

Seat, turnings and rockers in whitebeam.

Backrest and spindles in ash.

Armcrest in elm.

Bertha inspecting the nanny rocker.

Danish Chairbuilding Extravaganza 2.

During my next home period, Brian Eve from Toolerable and me are going to host the 2nd Danish Chairbuilding Extravaganza.

We have invited a couple of more guys, so totally we should end up being 6 persons.
My shop isn't so large that 6 people can fit comfortably inside, so the plan is to move the workbenches into the stable, and then we'll use the workshop as a machine shop, since that happens to be where the machines are already positioned.
Last time I think we only used the band saw and the lathe, so I doubt that we are going to use much more machinery this time any. But the machines, the dust and the noise will be in a separate location which will probably please the horses, since they are going to be in the stable with us.

Before everyone arrives, I am going to empty all the boxes completely and make a new layer of bedding for the horses consisting of saw dust from the saw mill.
I also intend to whitewash all the walls at the same time.
This is actually something that I do every year, but this time it will coincide with using the stable as a workshop, so a bit of fresh lime on the walls and a fresh smell from new sawdust should be nice.

I have to start thinking of what type of chair I am going to try to build this time. So I'd better start drawing some sketches.

Welsh stick chair build day 3, 4 & 5

Day 3 we pretty much all worked on our legs. Off course there were a lot of other things such as planing, sanding and discussing which way the things should look.
My parents paid us a visit and my father brought along some old tools, so we took some time deciding which ones we couldn't live without. We both ended up with some chisels and various other stuff.

My mother made sure we didn't loose any weight, so we had late morning coffee with rolls followed about an hour later by a large lunch. At 3 o'clock coffee was served including apple cake and cookies and some delicious Panna Cotta that Olavs wife made.
Around 6 we had a large supper with wine etc.
Brian joked about Danes being like Hobbits employing the 2nd breakfast and more small meals spread out over the day.

I managed to put on the legs of my bench in the evening, but that was about it.

Sunday I finally collected enough courage to drill some holes for the loop back. And much to my surprise I managed to get them both pretty even.
After test mounting in the loop back, the whole contraption suddenly looked like a bench instead of looking like a shaped plank with four sticks in it.

I marked the position for the centre spindle for the loop back, and used a divider to step out the position for the remaining spindles from that point. The spindles are placed 4" apart.
The two front spindles are a little further away from the loop back than 4 inches, but it still looks OK.
I used a level to transfer the location of the spindles to the back so I would ave something to aim for when drilling the holes.

After remounting the loop back I drilled some 16 mm (5/8") holes in the seat eye balling the angle in relation to the back. the 2 front most holes in each side had to be drilled without the back to make room for the drilling machine.
I used a cordless drill and a spade bit. I tried to go very slow at the bottom of the hole, because it is difficult to drill from both sides when the hole is at an angle. I managed to get by with just a little bit if tear out.

The back went on again and I flipped the bench over. Aiming through the holes in the seat I now drilled the holes in the loop back. This was done from the underside of the loop. These holes were 12 mm.
Again a few of the holes near the front needed to be drilled with the loop back taken off.

The holes in the back were tapered using Brian's tapered reamer, and the spindles were tapered as well.
All the spindles were made by planing some square 16 mm (5/8") stock octagonal and then further rounded by an plane finishing with some sandpaper.

I inserted the spindles from the underside of the seat and hammered them all the way till they seated in the loop back. I used liquid hide glue for this operation because the hot hide glue stiffened up a bit too quick. The spindles were finally secured with a wedge in each end.
I started fitting the centre spindle and then worked in pairs on each side of it, each time leaving an open spot between the spindles. I have no idea if it is the preferred way, but it worked for me. I figured that it would prevent me from accidentally dislocate one side of the back by accident.
Once all the spindles were mounted I sawed of the protruding part of the all the wedges.

The entire settee was sanded up to grit 180.

I finished the piece by rubbing in Camelia oil wit a black scotch brite pad. Then I wiped all the chair over with a clean rag to remove any excess oil and the eventual slurry made from the scotch brite.

I got some bees wax and orange oil from Brian, so I decided to try out making my own paste wax finish.
I never measured the amount of ingredients I mixed, but I think it is 4 tablespoons of wax,  1.5 tablespoon of orange oil and half a tablespoon of camelia oil. The batch was heated up until the wax melted and then stirred and left to harden up.
The result is a very pleasant smelling wax that has a nice consistence.

Today I waxed the settee and finally buffed it off.

All there is left is to decide where to put it in the house.

Paring the end of a leg, Jensen senior in the background.

  

Brian's Moxon vice. Note the nice flower on the seat. 

Brian drilling holes for the legs. 

The legs are mounted.

Windsor settee with a loop back.

OK result for my first windsor type furniture.

Nice gentle curves.

Ash legs and spindles, elm seat and loop back

Even the weather is nice.

Welsh stick chair build day 2

Another day of the epic chair building arrangement has come to an end.

Today we worked on stuff that ended up looking like parts for a chair, which was a great leap forward compared to the various #$£% ups yesterday.

I started out trying to make a nice round dowel for my final attempt of steam bending. I had done some of the job yesterday with one of Brian's spokeshaves, but it needed some more work to look really nice.

After a short while I decided that it would probably be a great idea to make a dowel maker. So without consulting any books ore other sources of information, I ground an old plane iron and made a wooden holder for it.

At first it worked really fine, but it was a bit tight on the dowel, so I wanted to try to reset the iron. Then it went from fine to disastrous. I got a bit angry since I had made this special tool to make it easier. And with a bit of temper I decided that maybe it would be better to clamp the tool in the bench and turn the dowel instead. This really didn't help since the dowel wasn't completely straight, and the new setting of the iron was more aggressive. The result was the some heavy tear out and a not so round dowel.

I managed to cut my finger in the process too, so I resigned and went back to the spokeshave that had to be used even more now because I had to reduce the diameter of the entire dowel to 25 mm (1") from 30 mm (1.25"). The dowel is 2.4 meter long, so it took some time.

The finished dowel went into the steamer and sat there for about an hour and a half.

For some strange reason the bending actually worked OK. There was a bit of splitting, but not more than what could be glued once the piece had dried.

With such a huge success under my belt I was ready to start on the seat itself.

I planed the blank using a scrub plane and traversing the entire time. Much to my surprise the result was a nice flat surface without tear out. It didn't even look fuzzy. 

In the mean time Brian had finished planing his seat blank and he had started saddling it. He was happily chopping away with an adze and looked just as professional as he is. That did sort of put some pressure on me.

Having had success with the steam bending and the planing of the seat I decided that I was probably smarter than anyone out there who had ever built some sort of Welsh stick chair or Windsor chair. Therefore I would not use that old fashioned adze method for saddling my seat. First off it looked kind of difficult, secondly it also strongly resembled good old fashioned work!

I have seen Mario Rodriguez saddling a chair using a tablesaw, but I had to saddle the seat of a settee so I had to invent something else.

The logical step was to use a circular saw.

I attached a board under the base of the saw and started dragging the thing diagonally over the surface of the settee seat blank, using the saw as some sort of router.

This approach worked really well. 

In very short time I had saddled the seat and it looked good with a minimum of bumps and definitely better looking than what I could have made using an adze. Here's a link to a video of it.

Next I used my old compass plane to make the saddling a little more round in the bottom.

After that I used my belt sander to clean up the saddled parts of the seat.

Actually today was a great day with success pretty much all the time.

Tomorrow I'll probably start on the legs and the spindles for the back of the settee.

Remember to visit Brian's blog for even more pictures and yet another eye witness account of the day.

Scrub planing the blank for the seat.

The steam bending results of yesterday.

The successful bending.

The blade on the sawmill, compare size to the safety glasses.

Someone needs a haircut and a shaving..

Brain professionally adzing out a seat.

Ripping the seat blank for the settee.

Saddling freehand using a circular saw.

Using the compass plane.

Selfie while test sitting the settee seat.

The bending straight from the form.

Welsh stick chair build day 1

Brian arrived last night, and so did I. After a quick hello and a hug to my wife, we headed to the workshop for looking at the wood and each others tools.
We managed to stay in the shop until 1 o'clock testing out various tools and talking.

Today we started by bringing out the elm slabs and marking out where we could fit a sat blank. We cut those pieces out with a chainsaw. I have decided that I want to try to build a settee, so we made one blank for that too.

Next on the agenda was the procurement of some ash for steam bending. I had some old logs lying that we believed we could use.
We were a bit ahead on the schedule so we decided that we could try split the logs because we agreed that it would make the stock for bending even better.
The first log had some twisted grain, and I managed to break the handle of the sledge hammer..
We moved on to the next log and it looked better. The splitting went surprisingly easy but the grain wasn't straight on this one either.
For my settee I needed a piece of approximately 2.4 m. After some splitting with a froe that Brian brought, we broke his whacking stick.. I made a heavier model that looks like a cricket bat on steroids and we proceeded with the splitting. After spending some more time we decided that it didn't work as easy as it should and that Peter Follansbee probably had some secret trick that made his froe splitting sessions become a success. We sure didn't have that trick!
In order to be able to claim some sort of result by the entire splitting circus, we tried resawing the split piece on the bandsaw while following the grain. After some time even we couldn't pretend that this was the correct way to go and we stopped the show.
Instead we found some old boards of elm in the barn and quickly agreed that everyone knew that elm was the preferred wood for steam bending throughout the World.

In an effort to catch up on some of the lost time we started making leg blanks for everyone.
Soon after starting this another of the participants arrived: Lars Olav who is a carpenter that lives near by. He brought two really nice old workbenches with him so we totalled 3 workbenches in my shop.
We continued the leg blank work and we also made a steamer. This is made out of an old deep fat fryer and an old gutter pipe from our roof.

In the afternoon Brian started making some arm crests for his chair, Olav was considering which chair to build and I was trying to steam bend the back rail for my settee.
The first attempt broke, but we decided that the dimensions were probably too large to start with.
So I found another piece of elm that was even more straight than the first. This was squared up to 3 cm on each side (1.25"). The stick was steamed for an hour and a half. But while bringing it close to the bending form it also broke.
I still have one more piece of elm that I want to try steam bending tomorrow, and if that is not a success, I'll have to find some long piece of ash instead.

Please make sure to visit Brian's blog: toolerable.blogspot.dk where you will also find a description of today's build.

Lars Olav, yours truly, Brian.

Afternoon tea + coffee in the garden.

Jointing some ash on the edge

And jointing some ash on the side.

Removal of some old piece of barbed wire.

Stock preparation for chairbuilding extravaganza

The summer holiday is upon us with all that it means = not too much time for woodworking. Next time I get home from the ship the plan is to have a chairbuilding extracaganza meeting, where a couple of woodworkers will try to make a Welsh stick chair.
The meeting is going to be held at my place, and I am going to supply the elm for the seat blanks.

This means that for once I actually have a purpose for sawing with the mulesaw.

going through 24" of old elm isn't easy, so one plank takes more than 1 hour to saw. Yesterday I had to rearrange the motor for the mulesaw, because the flat belts kept slipping. Now I have made the setup, so there is no clutch between the electric motor and the saw, but still it is not a fast saw.
The good thing is, that the surface looks nice, and the board is flat.

Compare the size of the log to the standard barrel next to it.

Close up of the saw blade.

A look from the outfeed side.

A future Welsh stick chair (hopefully)

We managed to chop down the trunks of elm and transport it home. The crane on the truck was even able to lift the trunk onto the wagon of the mule saw.
So now there is no excuse for not getting started.. except finishing the roof etc.

The owner of the horse training centre didn't want any money for the trunks, but he would like me to help chop down some other old elms that were leaning over their house.
Those elms weren't as big and some of them were partly rotted. So I helped him and said that he could keep the wood for fire wood. He was really pleased, and so am I.

So without any further delay here is a small graphic description of a nice day.

Gustav next to one of the trunks.

Starting the cut.

The tree next to the trusty Volvo Valp.

Timber..

One of the branches was rotten inside.

The bottom of the trunk.

Getting the log onto the mule saw.