Quick Note, A Spot Just Opened in the October Helix Chair class, email peter@petergalbert.com if you wish to claim it.
Here is the chair I made in last weeks Temple Chair class. It’s made from all kiln dried hardwood, with the bent parts and spindles soaked prior to bending. I didn’t think I needed to soak the crests before bending because I haven’t had to in the past. But I got 3 breaks in a row, so into the tub they went. It only took a day or two of soaking and the problem disappeared.
Here is a good example of the issue. The worst of the failures was when the growth rings were exposed, the grain just popped open. When stuff like this happens, I think of myself as though I’m in a cockpit and I have a bunch of dials in front of me. Each dial represents a variable I can control and change or examine to get a better result.
Here is a list of the dials:
What is the moisture content of the wood?
What is the thickness to radius of bend?
Is the surface parallel to the fibers and growth rings?
How hot is my kiln?
How long am I steaming for?
Have I soaked the wood?
Is the strap on my bending form doing it’s job?
In this case, I checked the length of the distance between the stops on my strap. Sure enough, there was a bit too much of a gap, which means the strap wasn’t putting the piece into as much compression as needed. I had also tried bending parts that had almost no growth rings exposed on the surface, and it didn’t help. So I also tightened the distance between the stops on the strap. Here is a video of the bends I got after those changes.
The spindles in the chair were split out as I showed in the last post. They were short enough and the board was so good that I used the hatchet to split them all out instead of sawing. The split sides are shown in the image below. I did saw along the split faces to reduce the dimension, follow the growth rings and reduce the amount of material soaking.
Here is another short video of that material being shaved into a rough spindle shape. I actually find soaked dried ash better to work than green ash from a log. The radial plane in green ash seems to “peck out” when shaving it, leaving little blemishes that are impossible to shave away. The soaked kiln dried doesn’t do that. Another check in the kiln dried column.
Pete, I continue to be astounded by the genius of what you do and how you do it. If I ever need something like a cardiac bypass or maybe a liver transplant, I want you to do it. I have told my dear wife that this is my sincere wish. I think she understands. Cheers.
One of the longstanding bars to chairmaking is the belief that only split green wood is suitable. But more and more, we see it isn't the only choice.
I've had great luck using kiln dried lumber in cherry, walnut, and curly maple for bending legs for Boggs chairs. I boil, rather than steam, and soak for four days or so before boiling.