A grand version of our arm chair-making course. You get to do some steam bending, learn how to build a traditional post and rung chair and weave a seat from a range of patterns.
The high-back chair class lasts six days:
Day 1: Arrive in good time. Our first job is to get the back leg posts, spindle rails and slats into the steam box so that you can bend them before lunch. They need to sit in their formers for as long as possible.
With all of the steamed parts bent you will then start shaping the front legs. You start with square section stock and plane the timber eight sided and then shave and scrape it round. This means that you’ll learn techniques that don’t require you to buy thousands of pounds of lathe and turning tools when you go home and want to build another chair!
Day 2: A busy day of rounding all the remaining legs, rungs and rails. For the rungs and rails you’ll use a dowel maker and scrapers and then put the tenons on with a tenon former.
Day 3: Spindle back. We’ll get the curved spindle back rails out of the former and shape them with spokeshaves. Then we’ll cut and shape the spindles ready for tomorrow.
Day 4: The back posts come out of the formers and we drill the mortises for the rungs and rails. By lunchtime we should have the back panel together and then we can drill the spindle rails and fit the spindles. Before the end of the day we’ll have the whole chair assembled and glued together.
Day 5: Seat weaving. You’ll weave a seat from either paper rush, Danish cord or sea grass. You choose the pattern from a range of square weave designs.
Day 6: Drill the arm rest mortises, shape the arms and fit them to finish the chair!
£800