Chair Seat Subcontract

[Jim_in_PA]

I recently landed the opportunity to cut chair seats for a local maker as he moves more to "production" from a couple years of design, prototyping and making by hand. (he does use machines, but is an exquisite Japanese style hand tool user) Brady scanned one of the prototype seats and then took that into VCarve Pro to work things out while cutting a bunch of test pieces from blanks made from cheap construction timber. The maker and I worked out a material holding jig so things stayed aligned while the seats were cut both sides.



Once that was all worked out, the initial run of seven "chair butt parts" were run in maple; two in highly figured tiger maple to use in some shows and the remaining five for a customer.



To give you an idea what the finished chairs look like, here's a photo from the maker's website.



I'm very pleased and excited to be helping him with these attractive chairs and look forward to both the next batch and also starting to cut some of the arm parts for him, too.

[drummerjg]

Wow, very nice Jim! I love the tiger maple.

[guitarwes]

Nice work. That center ridge looks like it would do some damage to a coccyx if you come down on it wrong.
Tiger maple is sweet.

[Ger21]

That just looks like quartersawn maple to me?

[Jim_in_PA]

Originally Posted by Ger21

That just looks like quartersawn maple to me?

The seat visible on the top isn't the tiger maple and it does have some QS figure, as do the next four in the stack. The bottom two are beautiful tiger maple.

The contour is actually pretty comfortable to sit in. The ridge stops well before the bottom of the tail bone...the photo is deceiving.

[customsigns@teknology.net]

Looks good.
What size ball nose bit do you use?

[Jim_in_PA]

Originally Posted by customsigns@teknology.net

Looks good.
What size ball nose bit do you use?

.375 for both the end mill used to rough and the ball nose used to run the finish cuts. Shorter ones, too, because of the combination of the jig and the material thickness. Amazon and EBay came through nicely for the cutters...all HTC and USA made.

[customsigns@teknology.net]

Thanks for sharing Jim.

[Rlee1972]

Happy for you Jim! Just goes to prove...."do quality work and the customers will come!"

[Jim_in_PA]

Thanks, Ron...so true. I think that Brian, my partner-in-crime here, is relieved that he has a solution for hogging out the seats since interest in his chairs is gaining ground. Next step will be some of the arm parts which are tedious for him to rough cut and then pattern route to dimension.