I Made a Chair

It's better than Chairry

Unless something very surprising happens I’ll be talking about the chair in the next post. I hope for that to be before this month is over.

I claim victory by the skin of my teeth. Here it is.

This chair was hard to build. I want to write a step-by-step description of my effort. That might as well be a battle scene from a fantasy novel— I’m not here for it. Don’t always go with your gut or you’ll end up in jail again.

Enough navel gazing. It’s time.

The Wrong Tool for the Job

I built this whole chair with hand tools. I strive for 80/20 in all things. I maintain a relatively minimal set of tools that can be pressed to solve nearly all problems. This project showed me one of my missing tools. Consider how you might cut the curve in the back rest:

That part of the chair is made out of three pieces of 8/4 (that means nearly 2” thick) rock maple. I used my 12” long, 10TPI turning saw. The turning saw was one of the first projects I made and it had all kinds of mistakes, but even if it were perfect, it won’t cut this kind of curve nicely. There’s just too much wood!

Immediately after I finished the chair the first thing I did was start cutting a curve for my next project, with that same saw. I texted my brother about it, and then stopped.

Never again. I am making a bigger turning saw for thick curves (eggplant emoji) next.

Never Say Die

While building this chair I have:

• Broken an arm

• Broken one of the layers on the back

• Cracked the back

• Flipped the back over and cracked the back in the same way

• Ruined a short stick by making the tenon too loose

• Drilling slots for dowels at the wrong angle

• and other more subtle, silly mistakes¹

Mistakes were made

At each of these steps I could have given up in despair. For most of those mistakes, the right choice is to quickly, but carefully, fix the problem. Instead of wringing hands and feeling regret, simply do the next thing: glue the cracked pieces back together, clamp firmly, plug holes, etc.

Never Despair; Nothing Without Labour

Source: Lost Art Press

Mistakes will be made. Even with perfect knowledge of the craft, the wood grain bends against you and the piece breaks.

Agita is wasted energy. Let it go. Move on. Who do you want to be? The person stressed out because of a salvageable mistake, or the sage who is at peace when all is lost.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get back to work.

Finish

Better is the end of a thing than its beginning, and the patient in spirit is better than the proud in spirit.

(Eccl 7:8)

It’s always fun to start a new project. Just look at the tech scene to see what I mean. A new library, a new language, a new company. But if you want to be proud of something, starting doesn’t count. Completing counts. Coffee is for closers.

Painting this chair took two days, three if you include pre-paint prep. The results are dramatic. Beautiful. I took the recommendation of a friend (Dave Polaschek) and did three layers of one milk paint, three layers of another milk paint, and then added a few layers of soap finish to make it pop.

Friends, look at this before and after:

Last three pictures show close up of the undercoat showing through

We are Calm. We are Alert.

Never be overwhelmed by urgency. You can only control yourself and your own reactions. When I assembled the chair, I discovered at the last, worst, moment, that the posts ran into the tops of the legs. I had already loaded holes with glue and was about to pound the stick home. I would have either broken the stick, or broken the leg.

But I was aware. I decided to do the quickest thing that would address the problem and assembled my brace and bored “through” the top of the leg to make space for the post. It was very messy and chaotic, but it could have been much worse.

Measure Twice

…but it could have been much better². Had I done a dry fit of the chair with all the parts I would have discovered that the posts and the legs were touching before the urgent situation of “glue up.” I probably would have gently pared away bits of both the leg and the post. I definitely wouldn’t have risked totally cracking the leg.

It’s fun to make visible progress, but it’s not like making progress on the current chair will somehow make you faster at fixing the mistakes you made going too fast on the chair.

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1. Woodworkers: here are some stupid mistakes you can learn from:

1. Many parts can be made nice and smooth before assembly and are nearly impossible to tidy up after assembly. Assembly is fun, but if you want it to look good, tidy up those parts before it’s too late.

2. Be careful banging parts home! I dented the seat and the arms in places that were hard to fix and I could have avoided that by putting wood between the mallet and the chair during that process.

3. If you are going to paint a piece use wood filler on voids and gaps. Paint will highlight these mistakes without wood filler.

2. I can’t help but enumerate the ways this chair could be better.

1. The back part is not nearly as smooth as I wish.

2. The seat should have been smoothed before assembly, and it shows.

3. I didn’t fill some gaps and should have.

4. It took too long.

5. It cost too much.

6. I should have used thicker layers of the blue paint.

There’s more, but you’ll all roll your eyes. I am extremely proud of this chair and really enjoy seeing it in our living room, but it could be better and I aim to do better with every task.