After months of Chair #2 sitting in the shop, forlorn and dusty, I pulled it out last week and began to finish it up. Honestly, there's not much work left, but as soon as I saw that I was in the home stretch, my mind started to wander off to other projects. Some wood-related, some not.
For instance, (warning: gloat ahead!) I went to a Craigslist tool sale a few weeks ago and made a $300 offer on a pile of wood under a tarp. I could see some Mahogany sticking out from the ends of the decent-sized pile. The guy said there was almost 200 bf under there of stuff. He accepted the offer, and I couldn't give him the cash for that (and $100 for the Powermatic Model 14 oscillating spindle sander - yahoo!) fast enough. After lots of loading and other guys at the sale getting grumpy ("Hey, I didn't know the wood was for sale!" "Why'd you sell it to that guy?" "I'll give you $400 for it right now!" "I'll buy half!"), I headed for home with the F-250 overflowing with nice lumber and a couple of boxes of exotics. (Camphor burl, honduran rosewood, tulipwood, Macassar ebony, etc) The guy was a retiring guitar maker.
Turned out, after organizing and counting it and finding that each piece was individually labeled and numbered, that I was left with 180 feet of 5/4 10' straight-grained mahogany, 140 feet of 4/4 8' maple (so-so quality, some nice flecking and grain), and 220 feet of slip-matched (3-5 boards per flitch set) 8' 4/4 Oregon Myrtle. I've never worked with myrtle at all. Looking forward to it, but don't want to break up the slipmatching, so will have to find some big projects.
So...that's what? 540 feet of lumber at about $.55 per foot. I'm not sure, but I *think* I did ok. But then I started to feel bad, so I did the neighborly thing and gave the guy a call back and left him a voicemail. I told him there was more wood there than he'd said, and if he wanted it back, to give me a call and I'd return it for the $300 back and he could re-sell it, keep it, keep some, whatever. But, he was moving, I'd remembered, and trying to clean everything up.
I let it sit two weeks in the shop to get acclimated, and to give the guy a chance to call me back. Never heard from him, and can only assume it's mine, now. So I finally cut into a piece of myrtle to get some idea of what it would look like, and made a few pens/pencils for friends. BEAUTIFUL stuff. I really like it. And, a guitar is on the horizon for me, so this may be just the stuff. Unfortunately, though, the shop is even crowded-er than it was, and it WAS. But I don't mind so much, stepping over stacks of wood is infinitely better than stepping over scraps, cutoffs, or piles of boxes. So, I guess I'll deal with the horrible injustice.
Anyhow. I got the chair up on the bench the other day. Turns out several months in the shop is not so good for an unfinished Alder Morris chair. Some time steaming out dents, cleaning and touch-up sanding to just repair it to the shape it was in when I stopped. But it's all set, and ready for the pegs holes to be drilled in the arms, pegs to be turned on the lathe, and the seat to be installed. This time, I made the back with the stiles in the correct orientation, so this chair may turn out slightly nicer than the first.
One thing I should stress that was a really poor decision on my part with regards to the two chairs. I basically cut doubles of everything, labeled them all A-1, A-2 and B-1, B-2 for chairs 1 and 2. Unfortunately, I built #1 first, and chose the nicest lumber for that one. While it turned out fine, I did make some mistakes that needed correcting and Chair #2 went together much more smoothly, and I used some tips you guys mentioned here. So, I've got a better-built, more square, more stable chair, but the grain isn't as pleasing, and the color matching isn't quite perfect. There are some knots. Nothing horrendous, but enough that I notice it.
So, in the future, lesson learned. If you plan on making two of somehting, make the first with the "seconds" and the second with the "firsts". I love building two of anything, but I've never ironed out this point.
Lastly. I should be done with this second and have a finish on it within a couple of weeks. Not much left, really. Just some finish sanding, and application of the finish after the loose ends like the pins, seat supports, etc. THEN, I finally get to decide once and for all how to make or purchase cushions for it. The only concrete decision I've made is: no leather. That's it.
Do we have some roundup photos somewhere? Is there going to be a mini gallery of the finished chairs so that we can see the differences and details?
How's everyone else coming along?
(And, I can't resist. Here's a pic of some of the myrtle-matching!)