Second Part, Chair Two

The first chair is very good for a first effort however I always said that I would make more.

The first photo I took

 I had just been given a very nice plank of Rimu be it very sun damaged on one side so it became a chair of NZ native woods, the back braces and rockers will be Tawa and the rockers will have a stripe of Matai in the lamination's.

Due to the sun damage of the plank of Rimu I decided the construction would be different to the instructions in fact there are now a few differences, the Rimu is a very different wood to work with than the Macrocarpa of the first chair.

When I started the first chair there was a lot of time spent making jigs and molds, as I started this chair I had forgotten what I had done so it was in some ways like starting all over again, I was so engrossed in what I was doing I forgot to take photos.

 This joint on the back end of the arm rest is probably the most visual difference I have made, the original instructions were for a butt joint with a long screw I think this is more in keeping with the theme of the chair, as there is very little wood left on either side of the tongue I have also put a dowel inside the joint.

 At this point the chair is loosely sat on the rockers and there are still packers to go between the leg ends and the rockers.

After this photo was taken I spent 4 days grinding and sanding, now I am looking at making a slight alteration to the seat front before I sand that area I then have to turn my attention to the rockers and on mounting them to the legs before I start the sanding again.

First Part Finished

 The first chair is finished, I am so pleased with the final result, as promised by the designer Hal Taylor it is very comfortable to sit in, the lumber support is the best I have ever experienced the braces at the back are free to move and are  flexible so will contour to suit whoever sits in the chair.

The wood I used was a park bench in its last life so had been outside for a long time this left it very damaged so it has been a challenge to work around all the defects some found there way into the finished chair just to add   character.

It is booked to appear in two exhibitions over the next few months until then I will have it to refer to as I start on a second chair, again due to the wood I have available there are going to be some changes but I hope the end result will be the same.

New Project

 I have been gathering wood and wondering what to do with it, the wood turning I do is too hard to sell not that a rocking chair is going to be easy however at the moment there is no intention to sell I would like one in the house, this chair is made from macrocarpa and in a previous life it was a park bench and had become very weathered, dirty with lots of splits and cracks so what I can rescue is is only a small part, this type of chair creates a lot of waste wood and is better suited to a harder type of wood however for a first time following some instructions it is a good exerciser before I get into a higher valued timber.

This is a take off of the Sam Maloof chair that was first made in the 1950s, then Hal Taylor took Sams look and developed it over a long time before making plans available for sale, so it is Hal Taylor drawing that I have bought and am following.

The plans lay it all out in detail, made for those with less experience, it is still a challenge and a good one to work through, the top picture is taken with the back braces just stood in place, the legs are just pushed into the joint and the whole thing is just sat on the rockers, it still needs some packers making that lifts the chair higher and are positioned on the bottom of the legs, there are also arm rests that need making and are quite a feature of the finished chair, all the corners have a big radius on them so the look is very slender and different to what is seen here.

The benefits of back ache

 I had done a few stretches but had not been for my morning walk then I went out and started painting a window it was too low and I was bent over trying to control the brush, by the time I came in I had back ache, in the possess of changing my shorts I bent over and the ache became something more serious, I knew I was in for a few days of pill popping and laying on the floor to get the muscle spasms to settle down, new years eve and I am in bed early unable to stand up any longer.

January 1st and it seems a good idea to sit and not do anything that puts too much strain on the back, I did manage a short walk.

This bowl has been saying colour me in ever since I made it, there were some muddy looking areas in the grain that needed to be hidden, ever since I bought my pyrogrophy machine I had wanted to try and bring some scales into the center of a bowl in an organized way, I had also promised myself I would try doing color over the osmo oil, today in the process I had to try do the burning over the color.

In my eyes, today, it is just the best, and on a day spent trying to do very little but recover I am particularly pleased with myself we will see what the people at the market say.

Working the mind

I thought it was difficult coming up with new designs for my pyrography given that I have only so many pen nibs, I think the truth is I got stuck on the first ones and just needed to stretch the mind.

Now that I have this one I can see two more developing from this one I also have to plan more on the bowl shape to accommodate the pattern, this small angled rim is an ideal place to show some embellishment but I do wonder what else is possible.

This bowl is Pohutukawa, its size is 240mm diameter and about 60mm high.

 


 

A whole new world

 This is my new adventure, I have rather a lot of Tawa (this bowl is Tawa) it is lovely in my eyes but it would be bland to many people and certainly improves with a little embellishment work you could say it is a blank canvas just ripe for some action, pyrography is one way to add embellishment, the world of pyrography is huge and here are just a smiggin as my ability is very limited at the moment.

With this pattern I have used 2 different size tips and a steady hand.

This pattern also used 2 different tips and some more of the steady hand.

A Dirty Lump of Wood

It started as a dirty piece of unrecognisable wood.

 I had already cut it in half and made one bowl so I knew it was end grain, it had a slight taper from one end to the other, I mounted it on the lathe and cleaned up both faces and in doing so made it parallel, it seemed all wrong to cut a piece off just to make a round bowl so it became a bigger bowl with 2 live edges.

The wood is kauri and very gummy kauri the dark streaks are the gum

there are 2 knots one of them is very gummy the other has no gum around it at all.

The first 2 photos of the top are of bare wood while the under side has an oil on it, it is an oil I use to sand it with, the oil has two purposes one is to stop the sandpaper clogging up with all the gum the by product is that it keeps the dust down.

I will leave it a few days for the oil to dry out before I put some finish

coats on it.

For a dirty old piece of wood that could have easily gone on the fire it is stunning now.