Wegner inspired dining chair series #4: Much more prototyping

325
1
Summer is over and work, my business and life in gerneral have taken almost all my time. And my chair project have slowed down considerable. But in shorter periods i have had time in the workshop and done as much as possible. This is a compilation of 6 weeks:
 
 Last time we left about here: 


 
 This looked cool but i was not totally satisfied. Things i wanted to improve was:
 - The back rest. It is too low and somehow just not´right´ 
 - The general feel of the chair. Is it a little too static?
 - The seat is somehow missing something
 - There is some issues regarding the seating comfort. Not much but when making a chair from scratch can as well make it perfect for me to sit on!
 - It is just gennerealy a bit too ´normal´and is lacking a some edge
 


 Went back to make another template for the back. This time carefully measuring out the different curves to make them repeateable
 


 Making another set of legs. I desided to try to make the legs indifferent angles so that the chair would "lean forward" a little and have a sense of direction. This gave 3 different angles to drill and keeping track of those became an issue
 


 Made a series of wedges for the different angles
 


 Despite all the marking and planning i mannaged to drill a hole to the wrong angle anyway. This was quickly fixed with a plug and some glue
 


 
 Here gluing up the one side of the chair. In the earlier prototype getting the angles prezice was an issue. Thought about how to solve this without having to make a full scale glue jig i realized that my tablesaw has a sliding table extension that is perfect for the purpose. Just clamped on two boards at the right angles and adding few wedges to keep the end of the tapered legs at the right height. Worked perfect!
 


 Made another back rest. Wanted something that was taller at the back and had more curves on the top. Here compared to the last one. The curve is not totally right but getting closer..
 


 Here from the top. Much nicer curves on the inside and i like how it is thinner at the back
 


 The narrower shape gave a new challenge: The back legs was too fat to fit.
 


 Decided to make two flat sides on the top part of the legs and make a mortice in the back rest insead of a round hole. A whole chair is not easy to clamp in the workbench..
 


 For the inside of the leg the japanese plane worked best. Nice. After learning how to top tune my old European planes i have not used it that much.
 


 Tennons like so
 


 And the finished new prototype beside the old one.
 


 Definitely an improvement! Much, much more ´drive´ in the side view and a nice curve on the back rest.
 


 This day the summer ended and i had to clean out the shop and pack up and go to town for work, school and other booring stuff. Realy didnt want to leave my garden that day!
 
 Used the chair for some time and it was nice but just not ´right´. The top of the back rest lacked elegancy, the seat was boring and there was something about the front legs.
 At this point i had a bit of artist's crisis and could not solve what was wrong. Searched the web for other chairs for inspiration witout result. Then it dawned om me: When making something Wegner inspired you got to ask yourself "what would Wegner have done?"
 
 Of course! How could i have missed it? Back to the museum for more drawings and inspiration. Had a great afternoon there and the nice staff allowed me to take measurements of some of the chairs. Not so much to copy the work but to get the proportions right.
 
While i sat there with all my gear a lot of people came to chat and a lot of them were architects, designers, cabitetmakers etc that used wegner as an inspiration in their work. Had a lot of interesting talks and left filled with a sense of being back on track again.
 
Fun how the way you look at things can change. Last time i was there i thought that i got all that i needed with me and had taken with me what was possible. And then, this second time i was there, there was 1000 things and details i had overseen or simply was not aware could be important. Guess i had a zen moment there…
 
Came home with a lot of sketches and usefull stuff. Allso inspiration for at least 2 more chairs, a cabinet and a table.
 


 Next time i was in the workshop my son Viggo came along and built a boat. He is slowly getting used to chisels and, despite insisting on using oak for the hull, made a quite nice boat. And was rather proud afterwards.
 Did not get much work done that weekend but had a great time.
 


 Then this week i had a few days off and finally made som serious progress. One part i wanted to improve was the rails. In the last prototype i had used double tapering rails. This looked ok but was a bit clumsy and did not have the sideways strength i hoped. Allso i wanted the sides of the seat to curve outwards slightly. So turned much fatter double tapers (or, more correctly, a curve) and flattened with a plane
 


 Then rounded over at the router table
 


 The back rest had some issues and the first was the finger joints. Too large and too unprezice. So spent a day doing something i wanted to do a long time: built my own, slightly simplifyed, version of Matthias Wandel box joint jig. I wanted rather narrow joints for this project and have a 2,5mm saw blade. With a 6mm threaded rod this gives 1mm per turn and so exactly 5 turns per joint. Perfect. So did not bother to make all the gears and stuff Mathias has on his jig.
 


 This gives crisp and prezice joints. And they are easily repeatable. Cool!
 


 For the center part of the back rest i need rather wide joints that, sinse it is a end-to-end joint, need to have super accurate depth. Used sandpaper as a shim for allignment
 


 The side parts is even wider. No problem!
 


 And a test before glueing on the side parts
 


 Turned a new set of legs as well
 


 The Nerf gun drill described earlier in the blog was fun to make but newer worked as accurate as i wanted. Despite having a realy small shop i gave in and bought an (old) real drill pres and a good quality German forstner bit (they are super expensive in this part of the world - but wow they makes a nice cut)
 


 Wanted the angles of the front legs to be less pronounced. Here a test to compare to the old prototype
 


 So far the seat has been 90 degrees in the corners. I wanted it to be wider at the front and this meant double angled holes to be drilled. Made this angle guide for accuracy
 


 A quick dry assemble before glueup. Looking good!
 


 Nicer legs as well
 


 Mannaged to get the grain to flow on the back rest.
 


 And glued together. The back rest is just placed on top for a test. This is how it looked this afternoon with the glue still wet.
 
 This is as far as i have gotten for now. Looks promising and i feel that these adjustments have made a great difference. Cant wait to see the whole thing assembled.
 
 The introduction of an angled seat have made using the plastic strapping material a problem. One of the first steps is to try to make a diagonal weave of some kind in order to allow for the stiff material. Otherwise ill need to look around for other materials. Any ideas?
 
 As always thanks for reading. Please share thoughts or questions!

"The good chair is a task one is never completely done with" Hans Wegner

It took me a while to get back to reading this blog. The design has progressed nicely at this point.