A bad day of chairmaking

and a recovery from it

“It don’t hurt me none, It don’t hurt my pride, ‘cuz I got my little lady right by my side...”

That’s probably not true but I include this quote for my friend M. Rogen - we’ve never met but it’s a game we play now & then. 

I’ve told this story many times, can’t remember if I wrote it down. Back when I worked in the living history museum demonstrating woodworking, I was in a room with other artisans, among them some potters. One day the potter was throwing a new-to-her form and clearly having a bit of a struggle. A lone high-school-age kid watched her a while and then said “I thought you were supposed to be good at this...” I just about fell down laughing. In the years since that happened I’m reminded of it time and time again, usually when someone is bungling their job. And of course, sometimes that someone is me. 

Mistakes. We all make them. But then there’s instances when I get a day where it seems all craft skills have left me. Had one last week and this ladderback story is one part of it. I had bored and tenoned another of my Jennie Alexander ladderback chairs. Cooked up some hide glue to do the assembly. First two sections went together fine. Bored the next sets of mortises, formed the tenons and got ready to do the final assembly. In that final assembly, the glue seized on the middle front rung - those joints wouldn’t budge. There was still an inch to go to bring the posts together - way beyond “good enough.” I tried a heavier mallet, a clamp, more pounding. Nothing moved, the rung bowed way up. I pulled it back in line, tried to hold it there while clamping - nothing was making those tenons move further into their mortises. 

the middle front rung = a bad day

So now I had to admit that it needed some radical fix. When I’ve run into chair assembly problems while teaching at Galbert’s shop, he’s got a heat gun to soften the glue, take the thing back apart and work on fixing it. I don’t have a heat gun. And 5 of the 6 rungs in play were in fine shape and doing just what they were supposed to do. I knew how to fix this, had done it with a student chair once and an earlier chair of mine for a different reason. At first it seems extreme but it’s pretty easy and works just fine. 

First, admit defeat and cut out the bent, seized rung. Some shaving and scraping where the rung met the posts, to bring that post surface back to round, etc. Next task is to bore a hole from outside one post aimed to go directly through the mortise and head toward the other post’s mortise. My joints on these chairs are 5/8” in diameter. This through-mortise I’m making is 11/16”. Most of this is boring end grain (of the embedded tenon) so it can be slow-going. 

11/16” auger bit

Then switch to the 5/8” bit and an extender - run the extender through the 11/16” mortise, fit the brace on it and re-bore the other mortise. 

5/8” mortise