Welsh Style Stick Windsor Chair
I made this Welsh style stick Windsor chair fifteen or sixteen years ago for my wife when we were living at Cedar Grove, outside of Paynes Creek, California.
At the time, chair makers like Don Weber, Drew Langsner, etc., referred to these as Welsh style stick Windsors, and if you look at the research they did back in the late 1990's, early 2000's, you will see why they used that term. I had read all the available books and magazine articles on chair making, then I went out into the forest that was my backyard, selected and felled the trees that would become this chair.
The seat is ponderosa pine that I milled from a tree on our property with a Husky 385 chainsaw and a Granberg Alaskan mill attachment and carved out with a gutter adze, planes and spoke shaves. The spindles and arm rests are black oak (quercus kelloggii) from a tree on the property, the legs are red oak dowels my father acquired when he worked for Kimberly Clark paper company sometime around 1970.
California black oak has a tendency towards brash failures, and the support spindle on the left hand arm rest failed one day, not too long after my wife painted the chair. It has been broken for a long time.
A few days ago, I decided I needed to fix the chair. One concern was to make sure I maintained the arm rest's height above the seat. I drilled out the spindle tenon ends of the two supports, removed them and went to the lathe to make replacements.
The front support I made from a length of beech, the only non-tropical hardwood piece I had on hand that was wide enough, and the secondary support is turn from a piece of black oak that once help hold my work bench together.
I originally turned the spindles on a bungee cord lathe that I had made in 1995, I sure miss that thing, but a power lathe works pretty good. The new pieces measured out to match the old and every thing fit without too much pressure and wrestling.
Tenons were kerfed...
wedges were glued...
and driven home.
A little filler is needed around the tenons and everything is solid once again!
It is such a pretty chair, I am glad I fixed it!
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