Molded chair seat

whonea · Post by **whonea** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 5:50 pm

The wife just came up with a new "wish" - she wants some new kitchen chairs with the seats molded to "fit". She vetoed my first thought of gluing sandpaper to her fanny to get get a perfect fit, so has anyone made any of these? Every technique I come up with seems like a whole lot of work with unpredictable results.

curiousgeorge · Post by **curiousgeorge** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:12 pm

Will, not to rain on your parade, but there is no easy way to do what you want. Out of all the furniture pieces, chairs are the hardest to make. Especially the ones with the fitted seats. I have seen some videos on the net covering this, but I can't recall where. Try looking here...

http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/ ... orking.com

Good luck on your quest.

8iowa · Post by **8iowa** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:16 pm

Short of a three dimensional carving machine, It looks as if the old timer's method of gouges and templates is the method.

Some of us attended Nick's Shopsmith Week-end back in July. There he showed us, and demonstrated, the carving machine that he made to carve out aircraft propellers for his replica Wright Bros flyers. This was an amazing and complex tool.

a1gutterman · Post by **a1gutterman** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 6:20 pm

Tell her that the sandpaper idea is looking better all the time.

pinkiewerewolf · Post by **pinkiewerewolf** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 8:21 pm

Didn't Chuck recently made a shaped chair seat?

Chuck!:D

I'm no help, I'd get and adz out and start whacking chunks out of the wood.

Norm has highlighted some methods on The New Yankee Workshop, but I'd wager that it would be either hard or costly to find that episode.

tom_k/mo · Post by **tom_k/mo** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:06 pm

whonea wrote:The wife just came up with a new "wish" - she wants some new kitchen chairs with the seats molded to "fit". She vetoed my first thought of gluing sandpaper to her fanny to get get a perfect fit, so has anyone made any of these? Every technique I come up with seems like a whole lot of work with unpredictable results.

Boy, what an invitation to the dog house. I have seen a tutorial for modeling a Windsor chair seat in SketchUp, and the construction would follow the modeling methods. If you're interested I'll look up the tutorial...

rkh2 · Post by **rkh2** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 9:07 pm

Will

I have done a couple of Windsor Chairs and both were done the same method, cutting the shape out first from a 2" thick piece of popular then using a adze to rough it out, then a gouge to get more smooth cuts to hog out the remainder of the wood. We would periodically sit in it to get a "feel" what it felt like. Once we were satisfied with the feel, then we used a orbital sander to smooth out the work done by the gouge. Believe me, it was the hardest part of making the chair and everyone worked up a sweat doing the seat. I know this probably isn't what you were looking to hear. I would think that there are possibly some power carving tools that may work for this process, but not sure. I can say though that the satisfaction felt after finishing the chair was something that makes me feel good every time I look at the chairs.

charlese · Post by **charlese** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:01 pm

Yes, I shaped the seat of our recent phone chair, but my job was not as complete as the Windsor Chairs by Ron.

I used a pencil to mark out the approx area needing relief. Sitting on the seat (while it was still a board) I used a carpenter pencil and drew it around my backside (giving ample extra space

) and also marked out what i thought would be the raised space in the center. Using my largest woodcarving gouge I went to work from what would be the deepest part outward. Then, because I really didn't know what I was doing, stopped with the gouge, because didn't want to get too deep. The second step, and the hardest was to use a card scraper Over and Over again, until I could sit on the seat and feel the butt relief. Then the third step - sanding and sanding, until there were no more gouge marks.

This worked Okay for this chair, The relief is about the same as other kitchen chairs, but if (when) I do it again, I will first use some type of a heavier tool to do the hogging.

whonea · Post by **whonea** » Mon Dec 15, 2008 10:49 pm

tom_k/mo wrote:Boy, what an invitation to the dog house. I have seen a tutorial for modeling a Windsor chair seat in SketchUp, and the construction would follow the modeling methods. If you're interested I'll look up the tutorial...

I'd appreciate it if its' not too much trouble. Most of the replies have just affirmed my initial guess: it's a real chore to do. I've made injection molds and such but I didn't bring a CNC rig home so this looks like a labor of love - emphasis on the labor - if I ever get up the energy to start. It doesn't help that I did the rest of the kitchen cabinets and furniture with white oak and SWMBO would expect the same materials.

tom_k/mo · Post by **tom_k/mo** » Tue Dec 16, 2008 12:02 am

I'm sorry, but no matter how I tried, I can't get a link to the direct page, their navigation menu is all done dynamically through javascript, but...

Go to THIS page.

On the right side, down about 6 or 8 inches you'll see a section with a header named "Blog Entries" At the bottom of that section will be a link named "Archive >" Click on it.

In the August 2008 section is a link to "Sculpting A Windsor Seat" That's it.