Conoid Chair

I took some instruction and advice today so I'm may be changing from an ignorant old geezer to just the latter.  The person said "the things that you think about and do every day are things that some people  are interested in knowing about."  To me, it's what I do, and there is nothing really special about it.  I get great satisfaction in turning rough sawn lumber into beautiful, functional furniture but I really don't see that you couldn't do it as well, if you decided that you wanted to.  You just need to pay close attention to details.   We'll see............ 

Anyway, the title of the blog is an attention grabber, because every one who is serious about furniture knows about George Nakashima's conoid chair.  I've decided to build my take on the conoid chair as one of my next projects.  It will be Sam Maloof meets George Nakashima. It's going to be a low backed chair with a highly carved seat and crest rail, a photo of the preliminary drawings are above.  Instead of a simple bridle joint, the main joint will be a double shouldered bridle joint (one of my favorites) set at 3 degrees.  

Progress and techniques are in later blogs as is the finished chair.  The finished chair is also on the Chairs page of this website.

 

Sliding dovetails to fasten a table top

I frequently find myself lying in bed half awake at 5AM and to amuse myself, I start running through my current project and what I would like to happen that day.  Of course, I never get the amount of work done that I think I will, and it sometimes goes in a completely different direction than what I've thought out, but it does give a chance to do some creative thinking.  I've built a number of tables, recently, and they present challenges that are their own.  A solid wood table top 3 feet wide will move almost 1/2 " seasonally.  Holding it down flat and fastening it to the legs while accomodating this movement is always a challenge.  I started building the top around a sliding dovetail to do this job.  The dovetailed rail gets screwed down to the legs, then the top gets slid onto the rail and glued together.  With the dovetail slot cut 1/2" longer than the rail, there is plenty of room for movement and the dovetail holds the top flat.