Roland's chair

In August I decided to make a garden chair to celebrate my friend Roland’s coming of age. First task was to select the tree for the back legs as I wanted a natural curve rather than steam bending the legs as I have done in other chairs. I also wanted to use a cleave and shave technique rather than the pole-lathe, for no other reason than I’m enjoying that approach at the moment and I like the slightly faceted resulting look. It took a long time to find a tree with a stem of the right diameter and the correct curve in two dimensions for the back legs. You can't see the tree for the woods in this picture but its somewhere off to the left.

Having cut the pole for the legs, the rungs were easy as they came from wood that had been felled 9 months earlier. Although still green I hoped that this would make the rungs drier than the legs, which is important for joint stability. The green wood shrinks more than the dry wood and so clamps the joint in place. In the end that didn't work so well as the wood that had been cut and laid out to dry was still very wet when sawed and so I dried the rungs in the oven for a few hours instead. Before I got to that point though, the poles were split. Chestnut cleaves beautifully – the larger poles using wedges …..

…..and the smaller poles using a froe and mallet.

In all a chair uses a fair amount of wood and after a day of hunting the right pieces and cleaving, I had a fair old collection

Then the cleaved poles are axed to an approximate size and then, on the shaving horse, shaved using a drawknife. Here is my first attempt at the arms on the shaving horse at home. The arm in front has been axed and the one behind shaved. 

But I didn't like the curve in the end so these were rejected and I started again. I went back to the wood and searched another piece with a better curve and it split very nicely

Some of the shaving was done in the wood and some at home. It generates a fair amount of waste wood as you can see behind the half finished chair and that lot (its only about a half of the total) should see us through much of the winter in kindling.

Once the tree is felled and the wood on the ground, not many tools are needed. In addition to the wedges and bowsaw that I use in the wood and a hand drill with auger bit for the mortices, this is pretty much it. From left to right - mallet (which take a real punishing so just as well I make them myself), froe, japanese saw, axe and on the arm rest from the back, draw knife, gouge and knife. Other than the tools here, the tenons are made using a Veritas tenon cutter which is a great device but gives a minor problem in that it is made in Canada and so is in Imperial sizing whereas my auger bits are metric. So there is a mm or so give on the outer, visible, edges of the joints. That's my excuse anyway. Having said that, as it is made green the mortice should shrink onto the tenon, the perpendicular tenons are partly overlapping and so locked and are also blind wedged which is a neat little trick for making internal doevetails in the round. These, and a probably unnecessary but belt-and-braces application of exterior glue, mean the chair should last until Roland’s next birthday at least.  

And below is the completed chair; a bit wonky but it functions well enough. The back rest spindles are newly coppiced branches, de-barked. All of the wood is chestnut other than the wedges in the visible joint in the arms. These are made from a bit of red cedar I had left over from a previous project as I liked the colour contrast. 

Finally, as it is made from Chestnut it should last a good while as the wood is resistant to rotting. It needs no treatments and with time should gracefully age, becoming a faded grey colour, with some splits appearing and with a little warping and wandering of its legs. 

Same as with all of us really. Happy Birthday Roland.