In part one of the Funeral Chair video series, I rough dimensioned the stock and assembled my cut list. I used my saw bench and two vintage Disston hand saws for the job. One was filed cross cut and the other, rip. Depending on your sawing skills, ‘rough dimension‘ may mean leaving an extra 1/8-in. of material for waste. It could also mean 1/4-in. or even a 1/2. of extra width and length to allow for any twist or imperfections in the wood you’re using.

If the stock I’m using is rough, then I leave more material. You’ve probably heard something similar to, ” It’s easier to take more off than to put it back on.” This is the absolute truth with wood working so use your own judgement and leave a little extra waste when sawing out the cut list. The quarter sawn cherry I was using was really quite nice, so I only needed a little extra material. This made the planing and smoothing process that much easier.

REFERENCE PAGE

This second installment is a great example of the benefit of videos. If you look at page 31 in The Unplugged Woodshop, the short paragraph on the top of the page titled PREPARING THE STOCK, is all the space needed to say what takes place in the first two video clips of this series! One short paragraph.

Books have limited space so it feels great to be able to expand the process here and watch these techniques in action.

I began this clip showing the most important step of the entire process. Sharpening my plane iron. I’m not going to get into the specifics of sharpening here, but would like to start a conversation about sharpening and all of the other little details that are happening throughout these video series in later posts on my website. www.theUnpluggedWoodshop.com

What I will say is this video shows me preparing one leg of the chair. There are 17 more parts to the project and the process is pretty much the same for each one of them. I’ll post a video in a future series, breaking down the steps for rough dimensioning lumber by hand, but for today, I’ll let the clip speak for itself.

If you have any questions or comments on the techniques or tools I use in this video- leave a comment and have your opinion heard. Cheers!

The Funeral Chair