These are the two seats. Both have been prepped with drilled holed to carve to depth. My plan is to work two seats alongside one another, completing a section on one and then duplicating it on the other, moving on, back-and-forth. The first stage is to power carve the rear of the seat using the Arbortech ...
Garage doors make for a handy white board to hang photos. These are the seats, and the angles provide the needed guidance.
First shaping ..
It's rougher than it looks. A travisher begins the process of smoothing the curves ..
Every now-and-then a scraper will refine the tear out ...
We begin the front section of the seat now, again using the Arbortech carver ...
And refine with a travisher ..
... always feeling the surface with a hand to detect any uinevenness ...
It is beginning to resemble the photos ...
At this stage it is time to cut out the seat surround, but before this can be done, the mortices (for the loose tenons) need to be preserved. This is not straight forward as they angle at 14 degrees. As a result, it is not possible to saw from end to end. The area around the tenon will require extra shaping.
My plan was to drill alongside the base, which would refine it and also create a curved root ...
Then as much as possible was sawn away with a jigsaw ...
Time to refine the front section and tenons. To do this, the underside of the seat needed to be made perfectly flat: this will provide a reference side to mark the boundaries at the front for carving to; also, taking down the bottom will define the bottom of the tenons ..
The shape of the underside is estimated using the templates for the top side ..
.. and refined with a rasp ..
Waste sawn away ...
.. and shaped ...
Again and again ...
Finally the front of the seat can be shaped as it flows from the end of the tenons ...
With raking light, the tear out and bumps are more easily seen, and now sanded down with 80 grit (more will be done much later on) ...
And that's it for today. Underside shaping to come.
Regards from Perth
Derek