Back to the Boot Bench… Part 1

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve written a fair bit about the maple component of the Autumn of Maple and Pine, but not much about the pine. Until now.

Making out dados while in the throws of Vesper Fever

As I mentioned previously, the pine is for a variation on the Policeman’s Boot Bench for our hall. Our shoe storage needs are slightly different to the client I built the original Boot Bench for, and so while I have retained the overall dimensions the interior will have a slightly different configuration. So instead of four full-length shelves, we have three shelves of greater depth which extend for three quarters of the length of the casework, and a vertical partition which leaves a full-height section for wellington boots. At the top of the partition is a drawer for post, house keys, and all of the usual clutter that accumulates beside the front door. The pine will be milk painted, most likely a sage green to compliment the yellow walls of our hall.

Laying out the dados with my Hamilton Tool Works small marking gauge

This is the first piece of furniture I have built for a communal area of the house, and I’m looking to solving the shoe storage problems which the Policeman discussed when collecting his boot bench. This will be a piece which we use every day, and which will be the first thing we see when we walk in the front door.

The Bad Axe Bayonet is still my favourite way of cutting dados

The construction methods of our piece will be the same as for the Policeman’s Boot Bench – dovetails, dados and rabbets abound. I will also be using cut nails to further secure the shelves to their dados. I wrote extensively about the process for making the Policeman’s Boot Bench at the time, so I don’t intend to go into the same level of detail this time around. But that is not to say that the blog will be silent on this project, instead I’m going to focus on the differences from the previous build, which I think will be quite interesting.

Laying out the foot detail with some pre-industrial geometry

So far I’ve been approaching this build in several discreet stages. The top, bottom shelf, and sides, form the main casework into which the partition and internal shelves will fit. I processed the outer components as a set, cut all of the rabbets and then laid out the foot detail. But before cutting the feet, I turned my attention to the dados for the shelves, divider, and drawer.

The underside of all of the shelves will be textured

 

Laying out the position of the shelves was causing me a headache until I abandoned numbers and used my dividers to step off proportionate locations. The bottom shelf is 3″ from the floor to allow space for the foot detail. I knew that the gap between the bottom and the middle shelf needed to be greater than the shelves in the Policeman’s Boot Bench to accomodate my Dr Marten boots, but laying the shelves out with numbers resulted in a clunky and awkward spacing. Instead, I divided the space between the bottom shelf and the top of the casework (less the thickness of the two higher shelves) into 9 equal units. The middle shelf was positioned four units above the bottom shelf, and the top shelf was positioned 3 units above the middle shelf.

Cleaning dados with a router plane

I have no idea what the measurement of those 9 units is, but it doesn’t matter. The resulting spacing looks a lot more pleasing than any configuration I could devise using fractions of inches, and will accomodate a wide range of footwear. There is also a single dado in the bottom shelf, and the underside of the top, to take the divider.

Dados and the foot detail

Once the dados were cut I cut the cyma reversa foot detail with a coping saw, cleaning up the curves with rasps. I fitted the bottom shelf by planing the underside with the scrub plane until the shelf was a snug, but not overtight, fit in the dados. The next task will be to dovetail the top and sides, and then start work on the internal fittings. This project is shaping up quite quickly, and I’m hoping to have it complete before our annual Christmas house party at the begining of December.

Test fitting the sides and bottom shelf.

The Autumn of Maple and Pine… Part 3

When the callipers slip over the middle of the tenon, you know you’re done.

The final piece of the puzzle for the Surprise Chair is the leg profile. I want this to add another texture and set of lines to contrast with the seat of the chair. For the Apprentice’s Stick Chair I used irregular facets and a hand-rounded process with the scrub plane and block planes. In the spirit of my last post, for this chair I wanted something different. As the maple takes crisp details really well I decided that a tapered octagon would work very nicely for the child-sized proportions. It’s also been a couple of weeks since I octagonalised anything, which in all honesty is far too long.

Tapering the square leg blank

As a first step I trimmed the leg blanks to length, allowing 10 1/2″length for the leg, and 2″ for the tenon. Previously when turning tenons at the lathe I’ve used the Easy Rougher tool for the whole job. This approach has been effective as bringing the tenons down to size, but it can take a while to hog off all of the waste and arrive at a completed tenon. I recently picked up the Easy Wood Parting Tool, and thought this would be a good opportunity to put it to use. I used the parting tool to define the shoulder of the tenon, going to final depth. The narrow cutter (1/8″) meant that the tool sank to the finished diameter of the tenon swiftly, but with a lot of control. I then used the shoulder as my guide to shape the rest of the tenon with the Easy Rougher. This also gave me an excuse to use the callipers from my Great-Great Uncle Bill’s Starrett layout kit, setting the callipers to the diameter of the tenon and working the blank down until they just slipped over the middle of the tenon.

Octagonalising the leg with the No.62

Once the tenon was defined, I tapered the square section of the leg down to 7/8″ at the foot, before laying out the octagonal facets. It was then a simple (and entirely familiar) matter of octagonalising the leg with the No.62 (still on test) until the facets were even all the way round the leg, and tapering smoothly.

Texture, facets, and chamfers as far as the eye can see

At present the octagon at the taper is a touch fatter than the legs for the Apprentice’s Stick Chair, and I am wondering whether I should thin down the dimensions at the top end a little (while keeping the foot at 7/8″). A test fit of the leg in the mortise will help to judge whether any adjustments are needed to the thicker end of the leg (and then it will be on to the remaining two legs). But otherwise I am pleased with how this leg looks, and the crisp facets of the octagon adds another dimension to the chamfers, and scalloped texture, of the underside of the seat. For the sticks I’m planning a soft, hand-rounded finish, as crisp edges on those would not make for a comfortable chair. This chair is coming on nicely, and I am looking forward to having it legged up soon.

The Autumn of Maple and Pine… part 2

Scrub plane in a mountain of maple shavings

One of the joys of revisiting a furniture form you have previously built is the opportunity to explore the effect of small changes to either (or both) the process of building the new version, and also the design of the finished piece. This can either be intentional changes in design or process, or prompted by the material at hand. When I broke the maple seat blank for the Surprise Chair out of the clamps I decided to try a slightly different process for the build than I had for the Apprentice’s Stick Chair, and also to take a different approach to some of the design aspects.

Laying out the leg positions using the pattern for the Apprentice’s Stick Chair

Fundamentally this chair will be to the same design as the Apprentice’s Stick Chair – the same leg and stick angles, dimensions, and seat shape. But what I want to achieve is a different feel for this chair. With the Apprentice’s Stick Chair I deliberately went for softened lines, irregular facets on the legs, and a slightly folk craft feel which leant itself well to the oak I was using. The maple I am using for the Surprise Chair suggests crisper lines, with regular facets and chamfers. This has in large part been an idea prompted by the seat material. The oak I had for the Apprentice’s Stick Chair was 1 1/8″ thick in the rough, and finished out at 1″ thick, which meant that I did not have any depth to play with for chamfers on the seat. The maple stock for the Surprise Chair was 2″ in the rough, which meant that I had plenty of spare material to play with when it came to chamfers.

Drilling the leg mortises.

 

After cleaning up the top surface of the seat, I thicknessed the seat to 1 5/8″ thick using the Lie-Nielsen Scrub plane before shaping the seat. The scrub is the perfect tool for this sort of operation – it removes material at a rapid (but controlled) rate, and also leaves a delightful scalloped surface texture. With the seat at final dimension and shape, I flipped it face down on the bench and laid out the location of the legs and sight lines using the pattern I made from the Apprentice’s Stick Chair. After clamping the seat to a sheet of sacrificial ply, I drilled the leg mortises using a 1 1/8″ Wood Owl bit in my 1923 North Bros brace. Previously I had drilled the stick mortises for the Apprentice’s Stick Chair once the chair was legged up, but I was in a drilling mood (brace and bit makes for a very addictive method of boring holes) so I turned the seat the right way up and laid out the stick positions using the same pattern before drilling them with a 1/2″ Jennings pattern bit in my brace. I won’t know for sure until I’ve made the sticks and fitted them to the seat, but it did feel like drilling to consistent angles was easier with the seat clamped to the workbench instead of being on it’s own legs. So this is a process change which I may adopt going forwards.

Chamfering the underside of the seat

Now came the fun bit – chamfering the underside of the seat. The historic chair I have based this build on had a seat of 1 5/8″ thickness in the middle, with edge chamfers down to 1 1/8″ at the edges, so I decided to follow that example. I laid the chamfers out with my Bern Billsberry pencil gauge, and planed the three straight chamfers with the Lie Nielsen No.62 . The curved chamfer on the rear edge of the seat was cut with a Veritas spokeshave. As a final touch, I then chamfered the two front corners of the seat.

My favourite element of the seat so far – intersecting chamfers and lines

As I mentioned earlier, this is fundamentally the same chair as the Apprentice’s Stick Chair. But already I am seeing how small design changes can have a significant impact on the overall form. Next for this build is making the legs, and while I will be using  the same leg dimension as for my previous chair, I am thinking of tapered octagonal legs instead of the hand-rounded approach I used last time. That should support the deliberate clean lines of this chair, and I am looking forward to seeing how the octagonal legs interface with the chamfers on the underside of the seat.

The contrast between the smooth chamfers, clean lines, and textured underside of the seat makes for a very tactile seat.