E-16 Chair

This chair is heavily Influenced by the Danish Modern furniture movement. The chairs of that time had an elegant simplicity, aestheticizing what needed to be there.

I made a mock up of the chair, and sat in it for quite a while, thinking about, and feeling what needed to be changed. After that time, I went and made another mock up with some modifications. From the mock up I realized that the back angle needed some change, and that the arms needed to be wider.

The arm is where most of the work on my mock up went into. I went through about 6 shapes, and ended up with a nice shape, and a profile that I liked.

After finishing the mock up I started looking into woods. My first thought was white oak, but I ended up falling in love with a piece of elm. The elm had beautiful colors of deep browns with hints of purple and green. The plank was near full width of a tree, and had such nice straight grain all the way up.

there was a section in the middle where in the flat sawn, had some checking. Most of my parts I wanted to come from the rift parts of the board, so I laid out my parts, figured out where they were to come from, and started milling up. First step was to make this 7' board a little smaller.

And on with the cutting

so on

and so on

After milling, I checked the moisture content of the wood. It was about 15%, so I will let it rest and do it's thing until it is around 11 or 12%.

While the elm dried, I took my mockup apart and laid out the pieces

The first piece I started with was the cross brace in the back, I made a special chopping block so that the lap joint would meet right with the angle of the legs.

I then roughed out the front and back legs. The top of the back legs will remain chunky before I add the angle to meet the seat back.

I then made the mortises in the back legs to meet the stretchers. You can see all the practices I made in douglas fir there in the middle.

once the mortises were cut, I made the tenons in the stretchers. I cut the shoulders by hand.

the back rail fits onto the legs like this

The tenons I cut protrude from the back legs

I then cut the mortise and tenons for the front stretcher assembly.

I ended up remaking the front cross stretcher to have double mortise and tenons for more strength.

then glued the front assembly to the stretchers and back legs. The cross rail in the back is not glued on, but in place to hold everything square to where it will end up.

After the glue up, I made the joint for the arms.

and then the many hours of shaping the arms.

Roughing out a little twisted cove on the underside of the arm.

Once the arms were shaped, I glued them to the back rail. They are not glued onto the rest of the chair, but on it dry to make sure that everything will land home in the future.

After some final shaping and joint fitting, I glued everything together.

Now.... what color? After about 20 samples, these are the two in close contention for the real deal.

I decided to go with the green.

After multiple sample tests of finishes, I decided to go with an all wax finish. The elm seemed to fuzz up all over when shellacked, and would require pre-finishing. Oils made the grain really muddy looking, and had an orange hue that detracted from the purples actually in the wood. Clapham's furniture wax is a combination of beeswax and carnauba wax.

Two coats of wax later:

The through tenons in front:

Lift in front:

The arm to leg joint:

The tenons in back:

Lap joints:

The bridle Joints:

And the lift in back:

I then got it upholstered by Alex Miller. The fabric that I went with was a woven wool from Maharam.