This whole series have all the time evolved around making a set of dining chairs out of two large slabs of European elm that was saved at my mothers farm and stored, first in their barn, and then in my workshop.
 
 Having gotten the design (nearly) finished in the previous posts this is about making the final chairs.
 

 Cutting up the timber was quite a challenge. The trees had been felled because of an attack of Dutch Elm Disease and parts of it was rather soft due to the infection. Needed to cut around these parts, have enough materials left, and still get all the parts with parallel grain for strength. This style of chair relies on straight grain in order to be light and strong at the same time.
 

 More fiddling with where to place the different parts. The 4 back leg piezes needed to have the straightest grain and at the same time be rift or quarter sawn in order to have predictable grain pattern.
 

 All blanks cut
 

 Made myself a steadyrest. Works great and should have done this a long time ago
 

 Even worked for turning the ends of the front legs that are much exposed and needs to look perfect
 

 Like so
 

 And planed down the rails in order to be suited for weaving the seat
 

 Cut, finger tapped and glued up two back rests. Needed to be super carefull to get the grain running in the right direction, and making a nice pattern, as this glueup have 2 vertical and 2 horizontal piezes joined together.
 

 Cut the backs on the table saw using my simple jig. Finished the shape using handsaws, rasps chisels etc. but forgot to take pictures.
 
BREAK..

Here the story jumps forward nearly two years. I find that challenging projects takes a lot of time and are best done in the summer vacation. Now last summer i got an new apartment badly in need of work. So my summer vacation was, in large parts, spent painting, installign new kitchen etc and almost no shop time.

The chair parts sat half finished in storage and waited for my return.
 

 Then one lovely spring day this year I got out the lathe and made the last parts, here the stretchers. This time I gave them a slight barrel shape in order to better fit the rails
 

 And started drilling holes. This step is super critical and needs to be spot on accurate. Got myself an much nicer drill press from 1974 that are super accurate and runs like a dream
 

 Tons of holes..

 Looks neat
 

 Test fitting. Looks promising!
 

 And glueing up
 

 And the frame coming together.
 

 Here the observant reader will notice a break in time again. Spring have turned to summer and a got a new-old table saw
 

 A critical step is attaching the back rest to the legs. On my prototype chair the back rest have loosened and needed to be repaired. Did not want this to happen so did a lot of reading and research and found that a stepped tennon would be a good method.
 

 Cut up some fibre board to make a few jigs. The joints need to be accurate and at the right angle - and do NOT want to mess up at this stage. The new table saw has a sliding table that makes cutting boards and panels a breeze
 

 This works like so
 

 And, with the help of the saw guide and accurate marking out, makes tennons like so. Now just repeat 3 times
 

 And another jig in use to hold the back rest. This drill press is sturdy enough to use with router bits that makes for accurate holes with a flat bottom. Nice when there is not a lot of materials left..
 

 And fitting the mortices with chisels
 

 A little glue and the chairs are together
 

 4 layers of linseed oil/turpentine/varnish blend
 

 And we get this

ANOTHER BREAK..
 
 Now onto something else. On the prototype the seat was made from pallet straps. This material is super strong and wear resistant so for the right design the perfect material. But there were some challenges getting it to work on my chairs and have desided to abandon it in favor for traditional Danish paper yarn. Here my skills were about zero but found super help in this video series by skilled Calb James. If you are into Mid Century Modern he shares a lot of interesting stuff on Instagram as well.
 

 This comes wrapped in these lovely bundles and makes me want to order a whole lot more just to have the joy of opening the packages.
 

 Made myself some shuttles in maple
 

 The Workmate came in handy
 

 Getting the first rounds even is the most dificult part
 

 And the final first seat. Not perfect but ok'ish for a first. The next one turned out better
 

 And there you have it. Summer vacation ended and I am the happy owner of 2 very special dining chairs - and a whole load of experience. Love my cozy worksop and look forward to more time here soon
 

 And there they are in the new apartment together with a table I made later that summer.
 
Of course there are the tiny mistakes that only I see, but overall i could not be more pleased. A lot learned and feel ready for another challenging project.
 
Hope you anjoyed following along. Let me know if you have questions or coments!