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naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
(text post)
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Notes -
I finished my wife's birthday present. It's a desk chair
She has this desk she treasured that her father rescued from a dump and refinished. The problem is, no chair we own or have found fits under it. It has something like a 15-1/2" wide opening. To further complicate matters, it has this obnoxious wooden crossbeam adding some rigidity not in the back of the desk, but right in the fucking middle! So any hypothetical chair less than 15-1/2" wide would have it's front legs bang against that and not go more than maybe 8-10" under the desk.
Ok, just leave the chair out from under the desk, who gives a shit? Well, my wife refuses to do that. She has a bit of a thing about stuff taking up space. So currently there is no chair to go with that desk, and she either kneels in front of it to use her computer for a hot minute, or is constantly moving her laptop to sit in bed with it. She hates that she doesn't have any sort of functional work surface.
Well, last time I went to the lumber large, they had some reject planks of 6/4 red oak with some pretty gnarly cups and knots in them. But they were $3 each and I figured I could work around them. Then I had the idea of using them as the basis for a chair. Then specifically, a chair to solve this problem my wife has.
The afformentionted constraints in mind, I designed the chair. It's a hair less than 15" wide, so it's a little bit of a tight fit getting it under the desk, but any skinnier and you start to feel your ass cheeks falling off one side or the other. The front legs actually extend at a 30 degree angle from the back legs, circumventing that annoying ass plank in the middle of the desk. They are half-lap joints, further secured with 2, 1/2" oak dowels each. The seat supports are attached to the back with mortise and tenons. Theoretically these mortise and tenons should each support about 200 lbs, or so I'd read. However, I further supported them with some light supports joining them to the "front" legs. The seat is attached with some dowels in the back, and some panhead screws in the front that should allow the wood to move seasonally without splitting.
I uh, could have thought a bit more about how that would get assembled. There were so many angles involved, I wound up having to wiggle all 4 pieces, the back, front leg, seat support, and extra support piece all at once, slowly wiggling each joint closer together around and around. Glue got everywhere. It caused massive problems with the stain later, despite how much I tried to clean it up and sand it off.
In theory my wife doesn't know what I'm making, although I'm pretty sure she's playing dumb for my benefit. I told her it was going in the bedroom, and to pick out a stain. She picked dark walnut. So on that went. I thought it would be fun to involve my daughter, and to protect her from the fumes I set it all up outside with ample fresh air. This was a mistake. The sun dried the stain way too fast, and I had to aggressively remove the residue with some mineral spirits later. My daughter had fun though. Still, it was hella splotchy in a lot of areas where the glue got everywhere. Thankfully mostly under the chair, but in a few exposed areas as well.
Most frustrating was when the glue travelled through the wood, from a mortis, out the end gain. I don't even know what I could have done about that. I can't sand it off because it's coming from inside the wood.
I'm leaning towards staining and finishing my next project before assembling it next time, to completely avoid all these issues. Probably trading them off for different issues, but we'll see.
In retrospect, I could also have been more diligent about taping off joints so that the squeeze out doesn't get on the wood. I thought I had read you can easily clean up glue with a damp cloth, but apparently it's the exact opposite. A damp clothe just dilutes the glue and pushes it deeper into the grain. You are supposed to wait, remove the partially dried glue with a scraper of some sort, and then sand to remove any remainder. I imagine I will be struggling with this for a long time.
The stain being done, I put on a coat of shellac. Then I sanded it back down with some 320 grit sandpaper to knock down any raised grain. I was a little concerned at first, because it really left a cloudy, scratchy looking surface. But after that, I applied 2 more coats of shellac and it looked perfect once again. Then I hit it with some 0000 steel wool to smooth out any brush strokes, once again leaving some very light cloudiness to the finish. Lastly, using the same steel wool I worked in some furniture wax to bring the super glossy appearance of the shellac to a more subtle satin finish, and completely removing the previous marks. Buffed it with a clean cotton cloth to finish it.
I fucking love it.
Her birthday is on Tuesday, and it's been about 2 weeks designing, milling, cutting, assembling, staining and finishing it. Fingers crossed.
Nice work!
My dad taught me to remove excess wood glue using a little scoop thing. The name of which escapes me. Googling it seems some people using a drinking straw with a notch cut out (which is the same basic shape of that tool) to scoop up excess glue without pushing it into the grain or waiting for it to dry and dealing with removal then.
Not sure if that is any use for future projects!
So I have seen that trick. And it works for when there is light to even moderate squeeze out on some touch inside corners. Gets like, 95% of the glue, resulting in just the faintest lightness around a glue joint. It's not altogether an unattractive look.
However on this project I made a huge mess with those 4 way glue ups. The straw trick was utterly inadequate.
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That's a huge huge-ass workshop you've got there. And the chair is nice. Have you tried standing on it to test it?
Thanks. When we bought this property, all the husbands who came over for housewarming were jealous of it. The wives considered it wasted space, being detached from the house and not climate controlled.
I haven't tried standing on it yet. Not a bad idea.
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