Paul Sellers (Texas Chairmaker) has an article this month in one of the rags about a Stickley #360 chair with an odd design feature that I’ve heard of before.
Apparently, the front leg is angled or splayed forward, so the leg does not sit 90 degrees to the floor and instead the top is pointed toward the rear of the chair. So the angle at the floor is about 87 degrees. So the side view looks like this
The front leg/side rail mortise is at 90 degrees so the seat rail points down like this /. Thus the back of the seat is lower than the front.
Mr. Sellers claims that this provides stability for the chair. I guess the base of the chair is wider at the floor than it is at the chair.
Has anyone heard of such a thing?
My chair leg is also splayed at the back, but I just angle the leg backwards from the seat rail down, so the side seat rails all stay at 90 degrees. I assume since my chair bases are also wider at the floor than the seat, that provides the same stablility without having compound angles on the tenons all around. Of course, most chairs have a trapozodial seat so there are angles on the rails, just not compound.
Comments on the Stickley design?
Regards,
Scooter
“I may be drunk, but you’re crazy, and I’ll be sober tomorrow.” WC Fields, “Its a Gift” 1934
Replies
Scooter,
I've seen this on some (mostly production) chairs. It seems to me that the intent is to make a more comfortable seating position. That is, you are more inclined to slide out of the seat if it is parallel to the floor. Angling the seat rails slightly to the rear puts the sitter back in the chair. Angling the front leg is simply the result of dropping the rear of the side rails, and keeping the joint at the front leg simple at 90 degrees.
Ray
Scooter,
The same thing was done with the old hand-built windsor chairs in the 18th and 19th centuries. Here's a scan of Wallace Nutting's drawing of the base section of a classic windsor chair, from his two volumn book "Furniture Treasury ". The drawing shows the seat dropping 9/16 in the back, and the legs are strongly raked.
That design feature would be a compound tenon-fest. Every tenon would have two angles to them.
I think you could accomplish the same thing by simply shortening the rear leg a bit, correct? Jeff Miller talks about this in his book as well.Regards, Scooter"I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow." WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
Scooter,
You can simply shorten the back legs, for sure. Be aware though, that if your chair has stretchers near the floor, the fact that they aren't parallel to the floor will probably look "wrong".
If you are building chairs, best get used to the idea of tenons that are angled two directions at once. (Actually they all do anyway, just, one of them is 90 degrees.) It's part of the process, sooner or later. A full size drawing is a real help, along with marking everything left and right, inside and top.
Ray
Yeah, I've discovered the wonderful world of wedges to make tenons. And two sets of wedges for compound tenons. And side stretchers below the seat rail are almost always compound.
Sigh...Regards, Scooter"I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow." WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
Scooter,
Have you considered using double dowels instead of mortise and tenons? It's easier to shim a doweling jig to get the compound angle than to cut the mortises and tenons that way.
Jim
I'm not much a dowel fan, except for low impact casework. I have no scientific background here, but I believe that a mortise and tenon joint with all the flat grain is physically stronger than any joint. Add a pin to it, and its a multi-generational piece of furniture. I've owned cheap Ikea type chairs with dowell joints that failed. Paul Sellers introduced me to a dowel joint that I do like, and I forget what he called it but by tapering the dowell and making the hole to the second piece offset, the dowell actually draws the rail into the post. The technique was done in the 1700's before the advent of mechanical screw clamps.Regards, Scooter"I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow." WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
"and I forget what he called it but by tapering the dowell and making the hole to the second piece offset, the dowell actually draws the rail into the post"
Offset pin M&T. Most often used in timber framing. Sometimes in furniture, but not often since it's rare to need to use the pin to pull the joint tight -- clamps do that just fine. Actually, this trick works best if the pin is a bit green, so it deforms in the hole as it's pounded home, and then dries that way, with a hump in the middle around the hole in the tennon. Virtually imposible to remove once it dries.
Mike HennessyPittsburgh, PA
Scooter,
It's actually easier than it looks, unless you're pre-drilling a whole bunch for mass-production. On a round leg, anyway, the stretchers are perpendicular to the centerline of the leg, the only angle that of the leg rake, more or less. When I'm hand building a leg structure, I dry mount the legs in the seat blank, clamp a straight-edge between legs, and use the angle of the straight-edge-to-leg to drill the hole on the drill press. Put all drilled parts and stretcher back together dry, and repeat with the other side, then the same with any cross stretchers. Looks like this :
I've not made a windsor chair yet. All my stuff is mortise and tenon post and rail construction. The Leigh jig is fine for an angled tenon but can not handle a compound angle, so its back to basics with wedges.Regards, Scooter"I may be drunk, but you're crazy, and I'll be sober tomorrow." WC Fields, "Its a Gift" 1934
This doesn't apply directly to the angled front leg, tilted seat thing but is compound angle. Always excited to dig up this article. Is one of my favorite articles by one of my favorite wood workers:
http://www.taunton.com/finewoodworking/SkillsAndTechniques/SkillsAndTechniquesPDF.aspx?id=2657
I hope it is of interest
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