Someone was giving away this chair, and I thought it could help me design and make my own version. The chair had a note taped to the bottom of the seat indicating that it could be from 1930.
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| Child's Sunday school chair |
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| Note on seat bottom |
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| Front view (center spindle is broken) |
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| Side view |
Many of the joints were loose and it took only a little persuasion to get the chair apart.
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| The undercarriage |
The legs are joined by a square (-ish) structure of stretchers, each about 11/16" diameter, with 5/8" tenons at the ends. The front stretcher bulges in the middle to about 7/8" diameter. The front and back stretchers are 5" to 5 1/2" down from the seat bottom and the side stretchers are about 2" lower than that.
The legs are 1 5/16" diameter in the joinery area, tapering at top to 3/4" tenons and at the bottom to about 1 1/16" feet. I measured the rake and splay angles of the front and back legs using a bevel gauge and protractor. The front legs have 2° rake and 4° splay, while back legs have 14° rake and 6° splay. These were measured with the back feet propped up about 3/8" to make the seat level with the floor.
The back is formed from one bent-wood piece and three spindles.
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| The back |
The arched piece is about 7/8" diameter, with 3/4" tenons at each end. These had been fitted and wedged into through holes in the seat.
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| A large wedge in the arched rail tenon |
At its maximum width, the arched back is 13 1/2" wide. The top of the arch is about 15" above the seat. Coming out of the seat, the arched piece angles back about 19°. But you can see from the side view picture that it does not stay at that angle - the upper section curves further back after about 6"-8" of the straight lower section.
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| Arched back of chair, shows the backwards curve |
The spindles fit into 1/2" mortises in the seat and 3/8" mortises in the arched piece. The diameter of the spindles is about 1/2", and they bulge to about 11/16" about 4 1/2" up from the lower tenons. The spindles angle back at 12-13° and the outer two also splayed to the sides about 3-4°.
The seat is about 1 1/16" thick, just under 13" wide and 12 1/4" front to back. Grain direction is front to back. The legs do not extend through the seat - the 3/4" diameter mortises on the underside are about 7/8" deep. The underside of the seat is about 11" off the floor at the front and about 1/4" to 3/8" lower at the back.
The seat had a clean break front to back that had been "repaired" with two metal plates and screws.
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| Seat bottom |
I drew the outline of the seat on paper and marked where the important features were.
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| Seat outline - both bottom (leg mortises) and top layouts shown (drawing not complete) |
As far as materials are concerned, I'm guessing on most of it. But I planed the surfaces of the seat where it had broken apart and it was a close-grained wood with a nice creamy light brown color. Maybe cherry?
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| Seat pieces planed together in vise |
I scraped some finish off a leg to see what it is made of. Judging from the color and the ray flecks, it appears to be beech.
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| Leg material |
The arched piece was of unknown wood. As far as I know, oak and ash have been used historically for bending - maybe hickory, too. I've never worked with ash or hickory, so I can't say for sure, but from what I've seen in pictures, this could be hickory.
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| Arched rail scraped to raw wood |
The stretchers and spindles had a color similar to the legs, but I didn't see the typical ray flecks of beech, so I don't know what they were made of.
I'm making my own version of this chair. Without wood bending capability I'll change the design to one with a crest rail. I've been wanting to try some chair-making techniques that I've learned about (and have made some tools for). I'll post about that next time.
