Angles Matter.... But

So the Temple chair class got to the undercarriage assembly stage, and I thought I’d share the process for gluing it up. Glue ups are always the result, for better or worse, of all the work that preceded. It’s a leap of faith that all that work will simply go together to make something altogether new from a bunch of parts. Windsor chairs can be very forgiving in this stage. H stretcher assemblies, with two side stretchers and a single center stretcher that connects them, are very flexible. The rotation of the legs doesn’t affect the glue up and each part is free to stretch and pull to absorb any miss-drilled or poorly dimensioned parts. But the box stretcher assembly, where each leg is connected to the others by two stretchers is far more rigid and unforgiving, especially the closer the legs are to each other.

The Temple chair has just this set up. Since building my first chair, which had a box stretcher, I’ve been fascinated by this structure and wanted a way to make sure that it went together without over stressing the parts or having the undercarriage twist in relation to the seat. Chairs are notorious for involving angles, and accurately drilling the angles of the stretchers to the legs and the location of the mortises in each leg in relation to each other is very important. But nailing the length of the stretchers is an easily overlooked key to getting the box stretchers to go together correctly. Any errors in this aspect is likely to push all the joints out of whack. One long stretcher will push a leg a bit which will misalign all the parts that join into it and telescope throughout the structure. Here is a 15 minute video showing the glue up of my undercarriage. As I’ve mentioned before, I tend to judge my methods by my students success with them, so I’ve included a couple of short clips of students chairs going together.