Designing a dining carver chair

[Daan Goense]

$179 bucks:

https://www.roveconcepts.com/wishbon...QcQAvD_BwE&aid[12]=173&aid[35]=445

$339 bucks:

https://www.roveconcepts.com/round-chair

These chairs are a masterpiece of industrial design as they were meant to be -- high style, but could be (and are being) produced in volume and thus made affordable. Designing the work flow and shop floor processes to produce dozens of these a day is the most remarkable thing about them, beyond the original design.

Logic is being turned a bit on its head when the hand-made article is being made to match the original, machine-made one, and one designed for machine manufacturing in the first place.

I'd love to see a virtuoso jig maker take a crack at these and knock out two dozen a week in his or her garage shop. Now THAT would be quite the accomplishment.

If you like the Wegner chairs, there are a number of options:

1) You buy a cheap imitation for a few hundred dollars. Made from wood robbed from the jungles of Africa or the Amazon, made by people who work under labor conditions that you can question. You are not annoyed by sloppily made connections and diverging dimensions. Moreover, you don't worry about the copyright on the design. 2) You have the budget and buy a chair made by the Danish copyright holder for thousands of dollars. Made from certified wood by professionals who work under controlled Scandinavian working conditions for a decent wage. You know how to appreciate quality. 3) you receive or inherit one for free from a relation who made it from wood of known origin. The parts of the wood have been carefully selected so that the pattern ends up in the right place on the chair. It was made with you in mind.

I am sure that the third option will be appreciated the most, especially if the quality matches that of the professional Danish craftsmen, but also if it shows some characteristics of an amateur.

Best wishes for 2024 from a frequent reader of this forum.

Daan

[Dean Arthur]

Would love to see this build develop so please keep us updated. Passed by some about a month ago, ones from Carl Hansen & Søn, and thought it would interesting and fun to build by hand. Are you going to go with the solid seat or danish cord?

[Derek Cohen]

Hi Dean

There is quite a bit of tweaking still to do. The height of the table is pretty standard, and the new chairs have been re-drawn a few times to ensure that they fit. For example, the centre of the new chairs is the same height as the bentwood chairs, and I played around with mock-ups of the arm rest to ensure this is at a comfortable height.

The seat will be solid wood. It will be curved with the rear dished. I have returned to the seat tilt, which will be made higher to take into account added carving out at the rear. Interestingly, it was Charlie who questioned the tilt. I based the seat height and tilt on a Wegner chair I built, and the original I have, along with the height of the bentwood chairs. The Wegner looks different as it has vertical legs. Difficult to judge from pictures.

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Larry Frank]

I will also follow the build. I could not build one myself but love watching Derek build.

Of course someone could buy something similar but the feeling of creating something is wonderful.

The comments by one person on this thread were completely unnecessary.

[Peter Mich]

I will follow along, too. You’ll be dealing with many issues and challenges along the way and I am eager to learn from your efforts to push forward. Go get ‘em. It was difficult to understand the rationale for the comments made by the other fellow…is that what they call trolling?

[Mark Rainey]

Perhaps one forum member got a bit irritable, but both members have a tremendous fund of knowledge and we need their expertise. Move on.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Derek,

I have always been fascinated with light, simple, but elegant chairs. Hans Wegner's 'round chair' is a particular favorite.
I've even dabbled at taking past designs and modifying to my own taste with varying success.
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....05#post3127205

I very much look forward to seeing what you come up with and the execution.

-Jeff

[Tony Wilkins]

Here, here! Says the guy that’s struggling along to make a simple table.

[Edward Weber]

Edward, Charlie and I have a love-hate relationship. It depends on the mood he is in, whether he is back on the sauce, or if he just wakes up grumpy and is feeling hormonal owing to the sex-change meds not kicking in. We have known each other about 20 years on the forums - he has been around with a multitude of names, as he likes to mess with people. Like Warren, Charlie offers critique and nothing more. But he does have some good insights, even though they likely are the result of snorting something.

His point about cost of equipment versus purchase of furniture is spurious. First of all, if you want to purchase cheaply made copies of Wegner (the pieces he linked to), then go ahead. The differences are obvious, and you take the sizing and wood choices that are given. Secondly, we are woodworkers, and capable of building anything, and doing so better than offered. I have furnished 90% of my home and working on my son's now. Building for oneself is worth more than the wood costs. Thirdly, I have been doing this for quite a number of decades, am a hobbiest, and the machines and tools I have purchased over the years reflect the pleasure I get from using them. I spent far more (much more!) on windsurfing equipment back when I raced on the National circuit. By now, all the furniture I have built would have cost several times the layout for the machines and tools I own.

Charlie only makes these points to pull your chain, which is why I am responding to you (since you raised them) and not he.

Regards from Perth

Derek

Thanks for clarifying.
I don't however need the whole building over buying spiel, I am a woodworker and I'm completely aware of what goes into a project. It's a personal decision to be sure, I can't always build what I need/want for various external factors, like time, money or space to name a few.

If you have the time to build your chairs, I'm sure there are plenty of people who will enjoy following along.

[Derek Cohen]

Derek,

I have always been fascinated with light, simple, but elegant chairs. Hans Wegner's 'round chair' is a particular favorite.
I've even dabbled at taking past designs and modifying to my own taste with varying success.
https://sawmillcreek.org/showthread....05#post3127205

I very much look forward to seeing what you come up with and the execution.

-Jeff

Jeff, I said then and I'll say again, that your chair is stunning. You may have set out with The Chair in mind, which is near-impossible to copy from photos, as a result of which your creation is quite different. Nevertheless it is beautiful. It has "movement", which defines for me a great composition.

One of the features of your chair, which is present in many chairs I see, is the use of rails, upon which the seat is attached. Even The Chair uses rails. In the chair I am building, the rails will be omitted, and the seat morticed to the legs. The aim is to create a "light" chair, pared down to the minimum of parts.

Will this be strong enough? The Rock Maple seat blank starts off at 50mm thick, and is carved back to 35mm. This allows for a mortice & tenon with a height of 30mm at most, and likely 25mm. If made integral to the seat, this will be 12mm wide. If a Domino is used, it will be 10mm (and made from Rock Maple).

The rigidity for the chair comes from connections at the seat and arms/back.

Thoughts for all on this?

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Charles Edward]

There's a risk they won't work well with a dining table with that deep an apron. The chairs you are contemplating and others of the same ilk (see link below) are more drawing room/smoking chairs. The armrests come all the way to the front of the chairs, though in your design inspiration they don't quite, and they also have a bit of a downward tilt. This may help. If you look at an English elbow chair, with the arms set back through cranked front legs, you'll see how designers turned a comfortable design to one that could be pulled all the way up to a table. If you can't get your chair close enough, food-in-the-lap results.

These chairs' arms bump into the tabletop (scroll down). No bueno as a dining chair at all and were never meant to be. The diner is forced to sit near the front edge of the seat to get close enough to his or her plate of food:

https://interioricons.com/products/t...h?gad_source=1

These are specifically designed to be able to be pulled up close enough, though obviously not in the style you prefer. Presented only to illustrate the point:

https://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.c...ogany-armchair

Obviously your design can be customized, up to a point, to solve the problem.

[Jeff Wittrock]

Jeff, I said then and I'll say again, that your chair is stunning. You may have set out with The Chair in mind, which is near-impossible to copy from photos, as a result of which your creation is quite different. Nevertheless it is beautiful. It has "movement", which defines for me a great composition.

One of the features of your chair, which is present in many chairs I see, is the use of rails, upon which the seat is attached. Even The Chair uses rails. In the chair I am building, the rails will be omitted, and the seat morticed to the legs. The aim is to create a "light" chair, pared down to the minimum of parts.

Will this be strong enough? The Rock Maple seat blank starts off at 50mm thick, and is carved back to 35mm. This allows for a mortice & tenon with a height of 30mm at most, and likely 25mm. If made integral to the seat, this will be 12mm wide. If a Domino is used, it will be 10mm (and made from Rock Maple).

The rigidity for the chair comes from connections at the seat and arms/back.

Thoughts for all on this?

Regards from Perth

Derek

Derek,

Yes I really like the simplicity of no rails. It think it will really give your chairs a light, lively feel to them.
I look forward to seeing things progress.

-Jeff

[Derek Cohen]

There's a risk they won't work well with a dining table with that deep an apron. The chairs you are contemplating and others of the same ilk (see link below) are more drawing room/smoking chairs. The armrests come all the way to the front of the chairs, though in your design inspiration they don't quite, and they also have a bit of a downward tilt. This may help. If you look at an English elbow chair, with the arms set back through cranked front legs, you'll see how designers turned a comfortable design to one that could be pulled all the way up to a table. If you can't get your chair close enough, food-in-the-lap results.

These chairs' arms bump into the tabletop (scroll down). No bueno as a dining chair at all and were never meant to be. The diner is forced to sit near the front edge of the seat to get close enough to his or her plate of food:

https://interioricons.com/products/t...h?gad_source=1

These are specifically designed to be able to be pulled up close enough, though obviously not in the style you prefer. Presented only to illustrate the point:

https://www.ronaldphillipsantiques.c...ogany-armchair

Obviously your design can be customized, up to a point, to solve the problem.

Hi Charles

That is a important observation. You and my wife said (a while back) the same thing!

This prompted one of the re-designs. You can see an earlier design behind a more current design (but not the last design), where the height of the arm rest has been lowered ...



On its own this will not get one as close up as the bentwood chairs, however the new table will deal with this issue; The table will have 6" breadboard ends, and the aprons will be around 3" (as opposed to the 6-7" the current table has).

Incidentally, the tilt of the seat will alter. Your earlier comment made me aware that, while the tilt was the same in the drawing as an original Wegner The Chair (which I used as a reference), it did not take into account the seat shaping to come. Consequently, the front M&T will be raised 1/2" and the rear M&T by 1". That will give the external appearance of the seat being close to horizontal. The internal curve of the seat will drop the height 1/2" and then the internal scoop at the rear of the seat will be around another 1/2" deep (this will need to be calculated). I'll post fresh drawings when I return from Canberra.

Thanks for your insights!

Regards from Perth

Derek

[Keegan Shields]

Thanks for taking the time to post this Derek. I look forward to following along through the process. Chairs are a great challenge to make both comfortable and beautiful.

[Keegan Shields]

Including arms that are connected to both front and back legs in your design will greatly increase the rigidity. You could likely reduce the amount of material in the seat to lighten the chairs up. Having the seat grain running side-to-side would also increase strength and allow even more material to be removed.