r/Chairmaking

New to this group! I recently made two of Chris Schwarz chairs over the winter here in Maine. I made the chair from bullshit and I made his Irish-y style chair. I work in a wood / cabinet shop and was able to scrounge up tons of scraps to make these. The Irish chair is made from scrap quarter and rift white oak. The green comb back is made from scrap poplar. I opted to use hand tools where I could, but with access to nice equipment it made the overall process very smooth. They’re both extremely sturdy and very comfortable.

These are my first ever chairs and I’m very proud of them and it felt like such a nice accomplishment! I wanted to add something to each that made it feel like mine so I cut out a whale shape on the bandsaw and painted a cartoony blue whale for the comb! It was very fun painting it. I also painted a loon on the backrest of the Irish chair. Both felt like little nods to living here in Maine (moved from KY). Currently working on the Irish-American design from him so I’ll post that when I’m done in the future’

I love looking at everyone’s chairs!

Must be stool day...

Finished this stool off this afternoon. Needed a stool for playing - guitar, mandolin, ukulele - so kind of sussed this out. Haven't made any seating type implement in, geez, over 15 years. Took a class with Jim Rendi in the early 2000s, was really into it for a while, but kind of walked away for (apparently) a long bit. Wanted a staked stool, like the contrast between the mahogany and ash. Ash finished in water based poly (I don't like polyurethane at all, but seems appropriate for this, and will keep the ash as light as possible). Mahogany had a very light coat of BLO, then a bunch of coats of cut oil based gloss poly. In a week or so, will knock down the sheen with some 0000 steel wool.

Not sure why, but the mahogany blotched pretty bad when finished. It seems to be figure in the board, but have never seen mahogany do that. Have an order for one of these; will probably give it a spit coat of shellac and forego the oil on the next one. Hoping that, as the mahogany darkens, the contrast lessens.

Was fun designing and prototyping this. Very comfortable; looking forward to actually using it!

Made a shop stool out of hardware store yellow pine. This is my first attempt at anything with leg stretchers and I’m pretty happy with it.

I chose Schwarz' medieval-looking saw benches as my first go. Should be good to have kicking around in the shop. Poplar top and white oak legs.

Went way overboard on the finishing (arm-r-seal) only because I'm trying to learn that stuff as well, so no reason to leave anything unfinished. I'm about to throw a tool or two at them to break them in.

Made these stools. All hand tools and hand planed without a lathe. Was a challenge for sure because they were my first stool projects.

The top is pine and the base is Indian mahogany. I stained them with walnut.

Both took me about six days to make

What do your guys think?

All hand made from ash wood. Sticks are rived.

Threw this together in a couple of afternoons. Its not going to win any awards, but it works great for our back yard and as a saw bench. It has a 1-3/4" sycamore top with 1-3/4" walnut legs. Just scraps from other projects. I just need to throw some oil and wax on it and im calling it done.

This is the first of a set of six for a customer in New York.

Saw the post on Mr Rogers’ model chairs and it reminded me of Wegner’s.

A stick chair on the left!

We got our hands on a set of 4 Danish Erik Buch teak chairs at an estate sale. We negotiated and got them fairly cheap and our budget is tight (first couples adult apartment) so we said we’d fix them up ourselves.

However, this is our first project like this. The extent of our knowledge is making some cutting boards (lol).

That said, the chairs are in decent shape. Here’s what we think they need: re-gluing the joinery on 2 of them and sanding, oiling, and reupholstering all 4. We’re planning to do the backs a chartreuse knit and the seats in a dark brown leather.

To all the wonderfully talented people on here: how the help do we even start? Taking the chair apart to tackle the joinery and gluing concerns me the most.

Any and all help is greatly appreciated!