And now for something completely different...

[Randy Roberts]

For a walk on the other side of the street, I traded in calipers, fingerplanes,cross dipoles, and jeweler’s saws, for table saws, jointers, knee deep piles of sawdust, and commiting mass mayhem on big chunks of innocent wood.
We fell in love with this chair at a local arts fair. In talking with the builder, a retired house builder, he said he would be glad to walk me through building one, and so for the past 7-8 months I’ve gone to his shop and finally ended up with this.

[Randy Roberts]

Talk about culture shock, it takes 65 to 80 board feet to make one (75 guitars?). After years of sweating thousandths of an inch I nearly went into shock watching this guy lay the whole thing out with a folding ruler and lumber pencil, and most of the shaping is done with an anglegrinder with a burr with ¼ inch prongs on it. It also filled my cup with enough sanding to last me a lifetime.
It was actually a wonderful experience trading techniques back and forth with him.

[Randy Roberts]

The back slats are 13 laminations of ash with cherry outer faces and they slide forward and back in slots in the seat and headrest, which has the combined effect of the slats literally wrapping themselves around your back as you sit in it. Altogether there are around 135 parts to the chair. All the proportions are customized for your particular body dimensions and it is without a doubt the most comfortable chair I’ve ever sat in.

[Jason Rodgers]

There it is! Nice! I'm going to have to be careful looking at these pictures, else the wife might walk by and put it on my summer honey-do list.

So, the back slats flex enough to conform (moreso than the set curve) to your back? Now that's a cool feature. What's the finish?

[Adam Savage]

Hi Randy ,
Very nice chair you have there. The colour of the cherry is beautiful, and I like the way you have blended all those compound curves. Can I assume that you have followed Hal Taylors plans? If so, then he is indeed a very helpful chap (via email), though I found the 'manual' to be in a little need of editing!
Here is a photo of my attempt which I made for my wife to feed our first child in (though by the time I had finished it......). It is, as you say, one of the most comfortable chairs Ive ever sat in. The wood I used was scottish walnut, ash and cherry. A bit of a mish mash, but I miscalcalculated the amount of walnut I needed!

Cheers,
Adam

[Chuck Tweedy]

Wow, that is a nice chair Randy!!
A huge amount of work, but certainly heirloom furniture. Beautiful.

Funny, I'm posting furniture as well - look in Jason's "What's on your bench" thread.

[Steve Senseney]

Nice work Randy and Adam!

They both look very comfortable!

[Bryan Bear]

Yowzas, that is a nice chair!

It is funny to see your thoughts on a different kind of woodworking. Instrument making is my only experience with woodworking and I just had an enlightening conversation this weekend. I was at my 20 year high school reunion and got talking with an old classmate who has taken to finish carpentry type of woodworking in his home. We were discussing what it was like to do both as a hobby and workshops and all. I was interested to note all the differences. For example how much wood he needs to buy to do a new project. Even though our basements are very similar in setup, our allowable space was useful for me but not him. He opted for garage space so he could handle long stock where I was more concerned about climate control.

People seem to be blown away when they see that I make instruments, they don't understand why I am totally intimidated by the thought of making cabinets or furniture.

[Randy Roberts]

Jason,
The slats obviously flex, but they also can rotate slightly and they move forward or backward a small amount due to the shafts (and the slots holding them) having a shape that’s kind of a rectangle with a semi-circle at each end, and the slots being longer than the shafts sitting in them. The slats are not glued in.
The finish is three coats of Deft oil, with the last coat having a little polyurethane mixed into it. The Deft oil was discontinued, but Klingspor (sp?) has apparently had a batch of about 300 gallons of it custom made for them and I think you should be able to get it in the future from them at least.

Adam,
That’s quite a looker of a chair you’ve got there yourself!
Thanks, and yes, this is Hal Taylor’s chair (By the way, he used to build classical guitars!). I believe he recently updated his book. I got the Kindle version because it was a little cheaper, but would not do so again. Like every Kindle version book I’ve bought, the pictures are terrible. When you go to enlarge the pictures, it’s like they are about ½ k in size, they are so blurry that you can’t tell a thing from them. I think this is whoever does the Kindle version of things, not Hal Taylor’s fault. If anyone is thinking of doing one of these, get the actual book, not the Kindle crap.
Chuck,
That’s really a gorgeous chunk of furniture you’ve got there. That looks like airdried rather than kiln to me, really beautiful, and I love the sapwood at the back.
Brian,
You would think “wood is wood”. Isn’t it amazing how different the carpentry,furniture, and luthiery worlds are?

[Ryan Mazzocco]

Very beautiful. But how does it sound?

[Bryan Bear]

Duh, it rocks. . .

[Chuck Tweedy]

Wow, I need to grow some facial hair!

[Tim Douglass]

Very nice chair. The techniques and concerns for furniture building are so very different from what is important in instrument construction, a fact that was hammered home to me many times in the first couple years I was building guitars. I came to instruments from being first a rough carpenter, then a finish carpenter and finally getting into furniture making.