This week I've been making a new base for an Italian-made office chair, as the original legs are splitting. (Bad hardware design.)
The base is made of four saber legs, joined in the center with some really funky nonsense. Basically, two opposing legs butt-jointed, end to end, but at 30 degrees to horizontal, I'm presuming with dowels inside to hold everything together. (That's how I'm gonna do it, anyway...)
And then two more coming into the side, with a weird half-miter, again at 30 degrees.
So, the drill is, mill the blanks, and cut mating surfaces while there are still reference surfaces to use, drill for joinery (dowels) and then shape.
It's taken the better part of a day and a half to get the mitered surfaces cut...
Oy.
Shaping starts next week.
2 comments:
James:
Not for me to tell you how to do things, but the government thinks that five legs on a rolling office chair are safer than four. They feel chairs with four legs are prone to tipping. If this is going into an environment where OSHA comes prowling, you may want to have kept this in mind. (The only reason that I know this is because I used to work in the chemical industry - a seriously regulated industry).
That aside, it looks like you have a cool solution in your last post about tracing a pattern - I'll keep that jig in mind.
Hope the shaping goes well, that's something that I really enjoy. It is always cool to feel and watch how the rasp interacts and sculpts the wood; I feel it is one of the most basic, intimate and rewarding parts of woodworking.
Best regards,
Robert
Thanks for the heads up...
Thankfully it's a home office, and I'm only repairing an existing chair, not designing or selling a new one.
Post a Comment