Now that the knockdown fittings are in place I’ll turn my attention to the seat and back assemblies. The seat assembly is made of 1″ x 2 5/8″ pieces of Birch and joined with mortise and tenons. The seat is 46″ wide so a brace was added at the center, it’s lowered so the webbing will lay across it. Webbing is installed with clips (from House2Home) and I learned that the “professional” way to do this is to remove a 1/8″ area so the clips and webbing lay flat in the frame. You can see better pictures of it in this my previous blog. It’s now ready to go and the next step on it will be to radius the edges, finish sand, and then rub in at least 2 coats of Osmo 3043. After that the webbing will be installed.

The seat back was built next. At this point the uprights for this are straight so that I have a reference point for the mortises. Once it’s complete they will be tapered and I plan to do some spokeshave work to sculpt them. The slats are 5/8″ x 1 1/2″ wide and will fit between the top and bottom pieces in 1/4″ x 3/4″ mortises. Figuring the spacing was first done on masking tape using dividers and a 1 1/2″ shim; took some time but much easier than trying to do the math required. One important consideration was that I needed at least 2″ of space at the ends to install the connecting hardware. There are 13 slats so that meant 26 mortises and 26 tenons — hollow chisel mortiser and dado head on the tablesaw made this go much quicker. For these, the slats won’t be glued in; matter of fact I think it’s better that there is some allowance so they can move freely with seasonal changes in humidity.

It’s been a hot summer so far in the desert so finishing is probably best done in the morning, by early afternoon it’s been as high as 104° in the shop! The Osmo should be fine at those temps but the Old Brown Glue I like to use may set up before I can get it clamped. Pre-finishing all of the slats makes sense, it’s always a hassle trying to dry the finish around all of those. I’ll tape off the tenons and wait to apply the finish to the sides of the backrest until it’s been assembled. It’s taken quite a bit of time to make all of these parts from 8/4 Birch but I’m sure it’ll be worth it when done.