Come to Life

It's always fun to see a project from drawing to completion, and this week with Alan Gensamer, we did just that. The drawing above is scaled so that 3/16" equals 1". Below is the finished piece.



Other than a mishap with drilling the arm (I foolishly veered from the drawing and paid the price of bending another arm!), the piece went very smoothly. Here's Alan getting it all together.


I haven't forgotten the curved stretchers, their drying in their forms. Below is a new (to me) bending method. I was getting some trouble with separation where the turnings narrow and expose endgrain, so I thought that I'd finally found a place to use a strap.



Not only did the strap work nicely controlling the separation (just a little in the center), but it pulled the piece to the form very evenly. My handy Irwin clamp (spreader) put so much force on the piece that the texture of the strap is embedded in the surface of the stretcher!

I've been asked about a million times about using straps in bending, and honestly, I've never found the need. I know that some very tight radii or thick bends could call for a strap, but the "normal" bends in my chairs have always bent just fine. I attribute this mostly to using straight grain white oak and hickory and shaving carefully along the fibers. I'll be knocking this piece together this week (hopefully), but today will be slow, Alan and I put in 7 days and I'm whipped!

Drawing in Steps

As I waited this morning for my student to arrive, I couldn't resist this photo.


















Alan asked if he could do his comb back rocker with a shield seat instead of the oval that I usually use and I thought the redesign required would be a good way to show the drawing process step by step.
I began by designing the seat pattern full scale. I used other chairs and just a basic sense of what I wanted to locate the legs and proportions.


















The first step in the drafting/design process is to block out the seat in the 3 views.






















Then I located the legs by measuring the pattern that I made.























Next the seat shape can be drawn from the pattern. The location of the coves cut into the side are very helpful.






















This is where I leave the pattern and start designing on the page. These are the leg angles. On a rocker, it's important that the locations of the front and rear legs will give a nice looking taper effect to the rockers as they exit the rear legs. Notice that because the seat is drawn parallel to the floor line that the rockers unnaturally pitch up at the back, I'll correct this later by redrawing the floor below the side view.























Below, the armposts and rail set in place. I used the same curve from my normal comb back to get a lot of these measurements but I did lengthen the arm 1 inch to account for the deeper shield seat.





















Next come the spindles and spindle spacing on the seat, arm and crest. Once again, each drawing informs the others.






















Finally, I add some details to help the overall feel and proportion. We'll have a chance to see the finished chair at the end of the week!

Fall Day

Here is a little birds nest that Sue spotted in the sugar maple that we planted near the goat barn.


















It's made out of my shaving pile. I can't tell you how many times folks have commented that I should find a use for my shavings (I do mulch and burn them), and I assure them that my market research has come down heavily on the side of chairs being the more valuable outcome of my labors. But leave it to this little bird to prove me wrong, as far as a housing material, what a jackpot.


Below is an orthographic projection of a chair that I am designing for a class next year. It's a more realistic view of the actual look and process that I follow.























I start with "stick" drawings, like the one that you see in the front view and then use the various views to inform my design. Once I like the basic skeleton, I'll add some thickness to some of the parts to get a better feel for the proportion, like in the side view. I didn't know how to draw orthographic projection until Dave Sawyer showed me how, so don't mind if I back up to explain it a bit, figuring that maybe you didn't arrive with this info either.

Basically, it's a means of taking information from one view and mapping it onto another. The creepy looking floating eyes show how the views relate.

For me, it becomes a game of give and take, playing what looks right in one view against how it affects another. On the given drawing, you'll notice a large square that connects the same point on each drawing. Notice that by "refracting" the side view at the 45 degree line, the information from the side view can flow correctly to the overhead view. This is a vital piece of info for the techniques that I am moving towards showing.

I generally begin with the seat shape, of course I draw it as a large block and then later create the actual seat shape. I really suggest giving the drawing board some time, it may not become your process, but it will definitely help cement the chairs elements in your head.

This is a pretty easy drawing because the only curve (the bow) is parallel to one of the sides. Later I'll go into what happens when a curve follows a sightline off the square axis.

For those of you who have been following the progess of my goats etc... here is the finished goat barn!


















Here is the milking room, which for now is where I am storing the hay for easy access to the built in manger.























The manger is in the wall that separates the milking room from their "loafing" area.
The hay that they love to pull out and then disregard forms a bed that they can enjoy while laying in the sun coming through the front door, we should all have it so good!























It looks like we've found a proper suitor for our Maggie and hope to get her in "the family way" in the next few weeks.