Bar-stool multiplication (phase 4: Surface treatments)

This time with the outside temperature pretty much voiding any possibility of car works, I decided to finally take a bit time for my more ambitious project, that involves quite a few pieces of furniture.

 

One main piece is a bar-stool of sorts, that needs to be to a certain spec.

 

So this morning started out with cutting up a prototype with the closest measurements I could come up with.

 

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This time it came pretty darn close, and visually it is quite close to what it is based on, however with DD's the proportions need a little more massaging.

 

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Considering it is a bar-stool the seating height with the mock-pillow is about what I would have wanted, and the length of the seat-base is about right for a DD also..

 

However..

 

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The width seems a bit much, and also the seat back while very nicely coming up to around the neck might also be a bit too tall if wanting to use it for creative posing.

 

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I'm actually a bit unwilling to narrow the seat since I already messed with the proportions of what its based on, but suppose the DD thighs require their sacrifice...

 

Part 2 - Woodstocking

Since there wasn't that much wrong with the actual measurements, it was time to start cutting up the pieces for the multiples.

 

The main material from which to make the pieces is the same old boring 18mm thick glue-board.

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Out of this two types of square sticks were sawed with a table saw. 12x12mm, and 10x10mm.

 

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For one chair the pieces would be four 24,5cm long legs out of the thicker rods, and four 9cm, and four 11cm long pieces for the side links out of the thinner one.

 

Naturally since it was meant to make more than one, repeating the cutting process as many times as feeling necessary, plus some spares:

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The seat base was made out of a profile, made by first notching the end of the 18mm glue board by about 6x12mm with a table router, and then cutting it off at 10 width:

 

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the pieces lined up before any notching of the corners:

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Starting to put together the main legs of the chair meant marking out the spots for the 3mm wholes in the centers of the legs at 5mm from the top, and 50mm from the bottom, in neighbouring corners.

 

also the attaching beams, got drilled in the center, as best as could:

 

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Putting the pieces together, was a matter of using wood glue, and my usual choise of peg, the XL.sized matches. also taking note to glue the pieces so that the free holes are facing the same way.

 

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and if all went well, and the pieces got glued together in a semi aligned fashion we should have a base on which to continue from:

 

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Next up is creating the back-rest.

 

For this I made up a piece of the 18mm glue board by routing the sides as much as needed, and then shaping the top round as per plan. the first one is going to be used as a routing template for the rest of the chairs.

 

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After making a few more "blanks" to shape, it was time to swap the routing bit on the machine to a follower type, screw on the template onto the blank, and...

 

Before:

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After:

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Repeated as needed, and we have seemingly identical pieces to use:

 

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The inside line was a bit more tricky and required a bit of eyeballing and patience by putting on a thin routing bit, and a block of wood at a 10mm distance from it, and then just using the outer shape as a guide, carefully trying to keep the round bit even.

 

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Repeatable results:

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Next is attaching it to the rest of the frame, which is more or less the same technique as used so far in my joints, except the holes in the frame are at an angle, and the ends of the hoop were sanded a bit to give the back rest some rake, and also instead of wood glue I used Epoxy here for added strength.

 

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After this its time for the seat base, and notching the side pieces up:

 

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Whats missing was the extra seat base cutouts, but after those, and somehow managing to glue them to the frame it should look a bit like this:

 

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Compared to the prototype I was surprised that the changes in size didn't affect the look as much as I thought it would, and am semi happy with the current, if how-ever semi wonky look.

 

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the progress so far has been hampered by me being either busy with work, or being sick, so I am a bit behind schedule, if I ever had one... But progress is still progress:

 

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So, even though that at the point of writing this update (20-2-16), Lulu had already previewed one of the cushioned chairs, its time to exploit one of the benefits of having multiple items in the making and showing the how to bit to this..

 

P3: cushy cushy bang bang

 

First off we need some thin, but firm cardboard for the bases of the cushions, and beauty panel.

 

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The piece for the back cushion was still as long as the beauty panel one, because it would be trimmed to length after the seat cushion was made. Forming them was just a matter of putting the pieces of cardboard against the hoop, and drawing a line in the inside shape.

 

Next, suitable pieces of fabric was needed, I had some denim like black fabric at hand that fit the bill pretty much perfectly, and for the hidden side of the cushions I used plain old white cotton. The strip that would set the height of the cushion was measured at 25mm high, so with a 5mm allowance that would make the thing about 15mm thick when completed.

 

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After sewing the pieces together, and making a hole in the bottom fabric piece, it was about time to wrestle the thing together. I used two slices of the padded blanket I had gotten and already partially requisioned for previous project.

 

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Now that the seat base was complete, it was ready to trip the back cushion to size, and make the same for that:

 

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The beauty panel had the fabric just glued on to it, and the cushions were wrestled the right way around:

 

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Some folk might have noted the great big void inside the back hoop, but the solution for this would be small metal eyelet screws here I could tie the back cushion if needed, and glue the beauty panel to.

 

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And so this is how you apply cushions to the this project:

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P4: Surface treatments

 

So now that we have the frames more or less sorted, and have a way of putting on cushions onto them, its time to think of coloring.

 

Again since I had a specific look in mind, I didn't want to go too crazy with the stain this time.

 

So the color of choice this time around was Beech out of the maston stain variety.

 

After this was my now usual koktail of the water based stain, a layer of urethane varnish, wet sanding, and a second layer of varnish:

 

As neatly demostrated by the benefits of having multiple chairs in the works in various phases:

Wood works surface treatment time.

 

As far as prep went from left to right, I used a exacto knife and 80-grit sandpaper to finalize the shapes and edges, after which a quick rubdown with 320 grit paper before applying the stain.

 

Letting it dry over night, ontop of that went the first layer of varnish, that also was let to dry over night.

 

800-grit wet and dry paper was used with water to flatten the varnish taking care of not going too deep, and the frame was let to try off before applying the final coat of varnish.

 

Wood works surface treatment time.

 

So as it stands, I now have six chairs to finish off completely, and after that comes the choice of either going ahead with the "big project" or not...

 

Next: so whats the big deal...?