Ross Leidy

I've had a plan to stain these chairs from the start of the project.   Red oak looks very 80's-furniture with just a clear finish, which wasn't the...

I decided to try my hand at making custom pivot hardware that's similar to what's on the original chair.   I started with a small 150x150x2 plate o...

With all the major shaping and sanding completed, I had one last task before glue-up, and that was to pre-drill the seat frame for all the L-nails....

I used a 1/8" radius round-over bit in a palm router to ease the edges of the weaving slots.   Nesting the rails together provided a stable platfor...

While the edges of the backrest parts were still square, I cut the mortises for the dominos.  Ganging the rails together made a self-supporting str...

Now that the main chair frame is nearly done, I can move on to the independent backrest frame.  I started by creating another template to define th...

Because my seat frame components are probably not quite as thick as those in the original, I compensated by making mine slightly wider an limiting ...

Now that all of the main chair components are fitted (minus the free-floating backrest), I can begin shaping the pieces to their final form.  I sta...

The secondary stretchers separate the main front and back stretchers and complete the seat frame.  The next step in the project is to get those sec...

I still need to do some shaping and sanding of the legs and arms before they'll be ready for glue-up, but I took some time to work out how to clamp...

With all the tenons cut on the stretcher blanks, I used a router template to cut them to final shape.  I used the test front stretcher as my templa...

I completed the remaining stretcher mortises in the two pair of front legs and trimmed the outline on the test stretcher.    [20241124-IMG_9577.jpg...