One example, the front underside of the seat is concave and not convex. I added this, but need to do more ...
The seats need quite a bit more work, mainly refining details. For example, the sides need to be tapered more. For later.
For now I return to the legs.
I did make 8 legs when building Mark 1 of the chairs, but now I am about to re-make them completely. Why? Because the first set of legs were designed for a chair which was inspired by the DC 09 Chair, but now that I am attempting to get close to this design, the legs also need to be in keeping.
Step one was to create a template, and then mark out 8 legs. These were bandsawed close to the lines, and then cleaned up with spokeshaves ...
The second time around is always easier, and marking out the mortises was much more efficient by measuring the front of the legs ...
... and then dropping the verticals ...
This is made possible by ensuring all sides were kept square when the leg blanks were made.
As before, the Domino was used to mortice the through tenons. The legs are clamped to a mortising fixture.
The mortises are 30mm long and 10mm wide, and through the 30mm thick legs. Since the Domino 500 can only rout to a depth of 28mm, it was done by working half way from each side.
The mortise needed to be marked very accurately, and to do this I used a marking jig I developed and wrote about recently ...
The article is here: https://www.inthewoodshop.com/Powered%20Tools%20and%20Machinery/DominoDW500AsAMortiser.html
It was possible to be as accurate as this for both sides and all the legs ...
This ended with a pile of legs blanks plus mortises ..
Early on in the build of Mark 1, I attempted to use a half-round bit on a router table to round the legs. This was a disaster as the Rock Maple blew up, leaving me with wet trousers. Looking back on this sad experience, I realised that I had literally bitten off more than I should have chewed. So I was determined to try again, but this time rout in stages, little-by-little ...
The leg at the rear is one I attempted purely with spokeshaves. It was a miserable experience - Rock Maple is well named.
Here are 8 semi-finished legs. The corners have been rounded, but much of the leg is still square-ish owing to the tapered profile - the legs start at 35mm at the top, are 30mm by the mortise, and end at 22mm at the feet. Consequently, there is still a whole lot of shaping still to do.
Look closely and you can see the flats on the sides.
There followed a lot of spokeshaving.
A progress shot of 4 completed legs and 4 incompleted legs ...
"Completed" really means "done for now". There is constant refining. Slowly the square becomes less so, and then round, but with imperfections, and then eventually there are just fine tracks ...
I must admit that it is so tempting to leave it like this, where fingers can caress the tool marks ...
This would look better on a different style of chair, and the DC 09 is better suited to a sanded finish.
Here are two of the legs to gauge progress. Note the photo on the wall in the background for comparison (also recognise that the arm section of the legs has been left long at this stage)...
Until next time.