My wife got me the stick chair book for Christmas. I read it and studied it for a while, as there is a lot of information to take in, but it offered approachable techniques for beginners.
After reading all the chapters on construction, the first chair is an Irish-y stick chair. It is Christopher Schwarz modern interpretation of an Irish stick chair.
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I am not bashing/questioning Schwarz, but this chair I guess doesn't suit my taste. It looks too contemporary, maybe, for me.
This is an example of an antique Irish chair.
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I guess I am shooting for something between the two. I don't want to build an exact reproduction but I also don't want it to look too modern. I guess that is kind of the beauty of stick chairs, is there is no hard set rules. Windsor chairs, for example, have certain requirements that have to be met for it to be a Windsor chair. I feel like stick chairs have more creative potential, as they were all made from whatever wood was available and there are no hard fast rules per se.
My chair started out life as a 8/4 piece of poplar. The seat is two piece, jointed and glued and I trimmed it to width. I rounded the front where the thighs rest with a spokeshave, and chamfered the bottoms with a plane. The back top has just the edge shaved off.
I used the template from the book for the mortice placement and sight lines, but I backed off the rake and splay from the original plans. I have more than a surviving example of these chairs but less than the book called for. I drilled 1/2" pilot holes with the auger and then used my tapered reamer to adjust for the legs to get them as equal as possible.
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I was going to try and split the legs from a stump of oak, but my poplar board had really straight grain so I decided to rip that into 2x2 legs and then chamfer them into octagons. I have a Veritas tapered tenon cutter so I used that to cut the tenon's. I am not sure if this is the best construction as the book called for a 1-1/4 strut leg but when I sat on it, it felt very solid. The book called for tapered legs, but I guess maybe in fear of minimizing potential for error I left mine stout.
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So I guess right now I can't call it a chair, because it has no arms or back. I have essentially made a stool. However, as someone who has never built a chair, I am quite proud of my progress so far. I feel all the angles and construction has so far been a success. I am not sure if it will survive for centuries, but I hope it's better than a chair from Walmart.
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Originally Posted by John Keeton
