momentum

 My crazy, hectic schedule has left little time for the shop
but I manage, nonetheless, to find a few moments here and there

I've discovered that my new travisher makes a great scrub plane for curved surfaces
with it I can hog away material at a phenomenal rate 

this walnut splinters and tears out so fast when paring
I have to be very careful as these joints will be highly visible

tenons; not so much
but it is exciting to split the pencil line on such a small piece!

I'll keep the crest rail solid till after glue-up then finish cutting the hole when there's less chance for failure



and just for giggles, I put together this little video to hone (start learning) the process of video shooting and editing with my new GoPro HD
enjoy:)

harvest

oh bless you holy band saw
oh slicer of endless curves
wherefore would I be without you

morticing; you've seen this before

I'd still be sawing those friggin legs
that's where I'd be

cutting tennons; you've seen this too

in addition to all the cuts for the legs I forgot entirely about the crests
and the back slats

ok, so this is new

so much resawing
and none of it straight

instead I am creating the crest rails
each one has to be fitted to its individual chair
every blurb in the geometry amplifies by the time it reaches this point
so I had to devise a way to measure and translate each chair at critical points

a metal ruler slipped through the mortices makes a great curved straight edge
and a platform to begin all the measurements
because the tennons are in plane with the slats I could also fine tune the mortices with a chisel and rasp

with this many compound angles and gentle curves and abrupt directional changes
I don't even know how you would lay this out from a drawing alone
there are steps that can only occur in the midst of the process

transferring those observations onto a curved rail  presents yet another challenge

when that tennon slides home and the opposite falls into place and the legs are slowly drawn into their sockets and there's no weird popping or creaking
all those hours of layout become gold

all that's left is to join the back slats to both the seats and the crests

and just in time; Peter Galbert's hand made travisher has arrived

this little gem is exquisite!

I took a couple quick passes on the first seat

wanting to add some interest to what was previously rather blah

and I really like the major change to the saddling