Dining Room Chairs

Last Easter at family dinner, someone sat on a dining room chair and almost broke it when leaning back. They are so old the joints are all separating and when I try to repair them with additional screws, the wood just cracks. After a constructing a couple of test chairs and much thought into which style I prefer, I’ve finalized the design for new chairs

This weekend, I went to the Wood Source with my brother and bought the wood to start building them. I was able to buy most of the wood from off-cuts of oak to keep the cost down. There was not enough off-cuts to use for all the back rails, so I will have to go back for another couple of boards.

Once I had the wood, I started with construction of the front legs. They taper down on 2 sides, so I build a jig for my table saw to keep them consistent. It is set at an angle just under 3 degrees and has a stop to allow for the proper length of the straight part at the top of the leg.

I managed to cut one tapered side each, for all 16 front legs

And now we know: the jig is finicky to set up properly, but well worth the effort as it is much more efficient when doing the actual cuts