Solo Chair

Stuart Ablett

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Tokyo Japan
OK I'm finally getting some time to make the last of the three chairs for the Tightwire act.

I have some wood left over from the first two chairs but I need more wood, so I'm breaking down long boards and getting them from rough lumber into usable pieces.

This is all Beech wood.

First I cut the pieces to a rough length, then I jointed the face of each board flat, next I used my track saw to give me one straight edge.

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I know that the edge is not exactly square to the face that I jointed but for running it through the tablesaw it will be close enough.


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Next I ran the boards through the tablesaw to cut off the wain edge and then flipped them end for end so that I ran the tracksaw edge through the table saw to make sure I have a face that is jointed flat with two edges that are square to that face.

I'll spark up the thickness planer tomorrow and plane them then cut them up into the final sizes etc.

I need to get this done and done soon, I did about six hours in the shop today, after getting my stitches out and the doctor told me not to work for another week, yeah, like that was going to happen, but I figure six hours back at it will be enough for today, besides that thickness planer is heavy and noisy so I'll wait until tomorrow.

Cheers!
 
Survivor has a nice ring to it.:thumb:

Well I got lucky the doctors when they first saw my tumor on my back thought I was dead for sure, if that kind of cancer had metastasized I had about a 5% chance to survive, but for some reason, it had not, which they were very surprised at, given the size, shape and color of the tumor. Now they don't mess around, if they see a freckle they don't like, out come the knives LOL :)
 
Back to the chair, yes I've been busy with some other things too.

I've just finished a quick (as in a phone call on Monday afternoon, can I pick it up on Wednesday morning) for designing a fence for a temp school yard that a playground will be built inside of in October. They need the fence put up like this weekend, my playground group have never built a fence before, and they have to build one that is a 150 meters (164 yards) in total length, a rectangle that is 35 by 40 meters (38 x 44 yards). It's for a temp school that should only be used for 2 years, but we all know how that goes. The area is Kumamoto that was hit a while back by a large earthquake.

I had to design it for them, make a cut list, figure out how many of what they need and such, then at the last minute we find out that the simple gate we were planning on (that I'd designed and made a cut list for) now has to be 3 meters wide so they can drive a fire truck through it. I welded up some scafolding pipe into two rectangles to make the frame of the two gates, long and short, that is what I've been doing for the past two days. Oh well, it is a worthy cause, so I did not mind donating some knowledge and time to the project.

Like I said, back to the chair.

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All the prototype pieces cut and this time they all fit together, mostly, into what I can call a chair base.

Now I have to refine this a bit, but I can start making the real parts out of beech.
Onward and upward!

Cheers!
 
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I ended up having to totally rebuild the bending jig. The other two chairs the back legs splayed out 3° and back 7°, this third chair the legs splay out 7° and back 10°. The blanks also have to be a lot wider, from about 7 cm to 15 cm to allow for the 7° splay to each side.

This one chair is taking a long time, but it will be done right, getting this jig done is a big step.



Tomorrow out comes the steam box and I get to bend stuff.

Cheers!
 
Chipping away at this.

Next up I realized the pond that I used to soak the wood for 24 hours was too small, time to make a new pond.

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There it is with two sets of laminations soaking.


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I put these extra bits on the jig, to try and stop the movable portion of the jig from twisting up, well the problem is I made the jig a good 2mm wider than the boards.... the dry unsteamed boards... :doh:

Yes my steamed boards will not fit in the jig.


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The board in the back is soaked and steamed it is 156 mm wide, the one in the front is dry at 150mm wide, yeah it grew that much.


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In the steam box I put spacers between each board so that I'm not trying to steam a solid piece 40mm thick, I guess it worked.


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First set in the jig, seems to have worked out well. That will sit for 24 hours then the next set will go in, then they will dry for a few days and then get glued up.

Cheers!
 
Well the cool thing about this project is you get to have the opportunity to keep your hand in on steam bending. Not everyday that a client job is going to provide that opportunity in woodworking.

Thanks for showing the detail, its enlightening to see the evidence of how much the wood swelled up.

What did you coat the inside of your pond with?

I believe you will see the returns from this effort, not just in monetary sense but it could potentially lead the client to asking for new things they never thought possible with prior supplier. Who knows where this can lead. Dont give up now.
 
Well the cool thing about this project is you get to have the opportunity to keep your hand in on steam bending. Not everyday that a client job is going to provide that opportunity in woodworking.

Thanks for showing the detail, its enlightening to see the evidence of how much the wood swelled up.

What did you coat the inside of your pond with?

I believe you will see the returns from this effort, not just in monetary sense but it could potentially lead the client to asking for new things they never thought possible with prior supplier. Who knows where this can lead. Dont give up now.
I

The pond is made from some 9mm thick plywood that was painted black for another project. For all of the butt joints I put an ample coating of silicone caulking on them then used my air stapler to knock things together, it did not leak in over 48 hour of use.

Yeah this project will not be a money maker, I really underestimated the time needed to prototype etc, but I do think you are correct that I need to look at it in more than monetary terms.

Cheers!
 
OK the next issue I'm dealing with, the rear leg is bent back 10 degrees and bent out to the side 7 degrees.

I steam bent the 10 degree part and I'll cut out the 7 degree part.

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I'm a bit worried that the straight grain in the laminate might crack due to the angle of the cut.
The black lines are the outline of the part the red lines are the grain.
The leg is made up of 6 laminates, so I think I'll beef up the structure with two sheets of carbon fiber in epoxy, this should mitigate any cracking along the short grain, I hope.
Wish me luck, I've never done carbon fiber before.
 
I'm doing some test glue ups of the carbon fiber epoxy solution for the rear chair legs.

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The one on the left is a laminate with just regular PVA glue.
The one on the right is the same wood with carbon fiber cloth and epoxy.
I'll give it 24 hours then do a strength test to see how they differ.

Fingers crossed this works.
 
Here it is out of the glue up...

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Not a significant line I think, it will not add much at all to the thickness, maybe 1mm, I can hand plane that off easily.

Video of the destructive testing coming soon.
 
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