Completing the main chair

I finally made some progress today!  I sanded the leg and arm joints (again).  Then I moved on to sanding the remaining spindles.  I did the gross shaping using 60 grit, then moved on to 120, 220, and 320.  Since I don’t have a spindle sander, I used a Dremel sanding drum on my cordless drill to better define the spindle shoulders.  I also made sure that the shoulders were aligned on each side.  On this chair I cut the spindles roughly thinking that I would shape and sand them later.  Now I realize that I could have saved time by cutting the spindles with more care earlier.  Next time, I will switch to a small bandsaw blade and cut the spindle shoulders exactly to the pattern.

After a lot of sanding, I dove in and glued the spindles in place.  This is like a point of no return and a bit scary.  Plan this glue-up carefully because there are seven spindles (two ends each) and the headrest to glue in place.  You need to work fairly quickly.  Brock suggests using a hide glue for the spindles.  This is in case a spindle breaks.  The hide glue can be heated (using a heat gun) to remove the spindle.  I chose to go all in and use the standard Titebond II.  If a spindle breaks now…

Here’s a picture of the chair just sitting on the rockers.

After getting the headrest glued and screwed, I started work on the screw plugs.  Brock uses the dowel makers to make his plugs from ebony.  Ebony is crazy expensive, so I opted to use some black wood I found at Woodcraft.  It’s quite hard and dark, so that’s good enough for me.  The piece of wood I had was perfectly sized to be cut into quarters and then turned to create the plugs.  I only needed one stick (about 12” long) to make all of the plugs.  I surprised myself by turning the piece to the perfect diameter on the first try!  The plugs were glued into place and then sawed off using a flexible pull saw.  Here’s a close picture of the headrest plug, and some shots from the side. 

I’m getting very excited as it really looks like a chair now.  The next step will be to finish shaping the headrest into the back legs with more sanding.  The last construction stage will be to install and shape the rockers. Then I can start the finishing.  The end is in sight!  I’m hoping I will only need a few more weekends.  Let me know if I can answer and questions for you.