Modern Wing-back Chair

March 31, 2025

When I replaced our bed last year, I ended up salvaging the old bed frame which was solid cherry. I cut up the usable parts and a friend from the woodworker’s guild I belong to helped me use his drum sander to remove the finish. I ended up with a respectable amount of usable material. What to make with it?

I’ve always liked wing-back chairs and I’ve always wanted a chair for our bedroom, so this turned out to be a good chance to make a wing-back chair for the bedroom. I didn’t want to make a fully upholstered wing-back chair like so many traditional ones are. I had an inspiration for a modern one that had minimal upholstery and a modern frame that would be exposed to show off the joinery.

I also wanted something with simplified lines that delivered the feel of a wing-back without the extra curves and embellishments of a traditional one. I drew up some sketches, see below:

I stole some critical dimensions from a set of dining room chairs that we own that are very comfortable. So the seat dimensions, leg lengths, back rake angle etc… I’d never built a chair like this before so I realized that I should probably prototype as many of the features as I could using some cheap material before I committed to the cherry.

The first thing I built a prototype of was the joint I intended to use between the legs and wings and the seat. I wanted a single joint that would lock into a mortise in the seat. The back rib of the chair would flow down into the back leg, the front arm support would flow down to the front leg and the wing would also use the same joint just without a leg below it. I planned to cut the mortises in the seat blank and the leg/wing blanks with a set of router templates.

See the prototype below:

It took two router templates per joint but the concept worked fine and was repeatable. Next I got some relatively straight, unblemished, pine boards from the local big box hardware store ( took some digging.) My plan was to build the whole chair at least to the point where I could explore all of the things I had questions about including an unconventional approach to the upholstery.

You can see the progression below:

Because of the relative angle of the back to the wings it wasn’t possible to put in panels to support the upholstery. So I opted to put in hidden framing that was compound mitered and fitted between the uprights at uniform intervals. I just screwed and glued the framing since every mortise and tenon would have been very difficult and time consuming for something that wasn’t going to be visible in the end result.

I would then cover the framing by stapling on burlap and then I would glue the covered cushions to the burlap using a contact adhesive made for doing upholstery.

See detail of the prototype below:

This approach worked great and I learned a couple of things in the process that would let me improve the final chair. In this cushion I glued the fabric to the front of the cushion as well as the back which caused any wrinkles to be glued in place. I realized that I only needed to glue the fabric that wrapped around the back so that the front could move and flatten as needed.

Having a full scale chair to test I also realized that I had made the joints larger than needed and they were impinging on the seat area. Also in general the seat was a little too small given the thickness of the cushions. So I reduced the size of the joints by 1/2” and I widened the seat by 2” and made it deeper by 1”. I was also able to measure the footprint of the chair in both floor space and air space and then make sure it would fit nicely where I intended to put it. I taped out the area on the floor to make sure.

This is where I made a process error. I remade the templates with the changes based on the prototype. I did not test them on another prototype joint. This was a mistake because in remaking them I had introduced an error which would affect the fit of the joints. I was far enough into making the final chair before I found out that I couldn’t really go back. Fortunately I was able to fabricate shims which when glued in filled the error completely and there was no structural compromise.

I also tested things like cutting tapers on the legs, rounding them over etc… The prototype was a good investment in time. I moved on to building the final chair using cherry.

I didn’t have enough material to make the seat blank out of solid cherry at the thickness that I wanted so I made the center out of 7/8” ash which was salvaged from the slats of the bed frame. I created a rabbit on the center section and a mirrored rabbit on the cherry border pieces so they would be nicely aligned. I used lap joints in the corners of the cherry border because I realized that I was going to be cutting into those joints to mount the legs and mortise and tenon joints would mostly disappear in that process.

See this sequence below:

I also rounded the front corners, cut scallops and tapers in the sides of the seat and rounded over the edges. The difference in the thickness of the center and the frame provides a nice recess for the seat cushion (which is mounted on a piece of 3/8” plywood) to drop into.

Because of the rake of the back support and the leg, I could not cut the back legs out of a single piece of material so I had to make an upper and lower section and glue them together with a lap joint to make the leg blank. Making accurate lap joints is more challenging than it seems and I had to fill them a bit to make up for some error. I used the band saw to cut them out of glued up material so that they would be 1 1/2” square. Because some of the salvaged wood was a little bigger than 3/4” thickness I had to cut those pieces to final thickness on the table saw. Fortunately this worked out OK with the blade set to full height.

After dry fitting everything, shimming all the joints, figuring out the stretchers and their mortises and tenons, trimming the legs to length, tapering the lower legs on the back and the inside, rounding over all the edges, and sanding everything to 320 grit… I was ready for assembly.

See sequence below:

I also fitted the arms and mortised them into the wing support and pinned them to the arm support with a 1/2” maple dowel.

Another process error I had was that I had to fill a bunch of the joints and I wasn’t neat enough in applying the filler. This made for a lot of remedial sanding in the end, I will be much more careful and use some masking and smaller spatulas for filling next time.

I used a combination of 60 grit sandpaper, micro-plane rasp, and Japanese saw-rasp to smooth and shape all of the joints so that they flowed with the legs, supports, and the seat. There was a lot of shaping to get nice transitions all around. I finished all the shaping with sanding up to 320 grit.

Now I had to put finish on the whole piece, two coats of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil which brought out the color and figure of the cherry very nicely.

After the finish was dry, I made paper templates of all of the sections that would be upholstered. I used the templates to cut the burlap to cover the inside and outside of the support framework. I stapled the burlap in place. The back would be covered with just fabric glued to batting, stapled on the inside and glued to the burlap.

The inside cushions are a layering of 1 1/2” Lux Foam and batting, the fabric is wrapped around the cushion and only glued on the back. The seat cushion is the same cushion glued to the 3/8” plywood blank and then the fabric is fitted and stapled on the back to the plywood. It just drops into the recess in the seat.

The other cushions are glued to the burlap and the support frame.

Here is that sequence:

And that is the final product. I learned a lot doing this project and I’ll improve many of my processes for the next one based on this. My upholstery is getting better. I’m very happy with the first chair that I designed myself. It delivers on all of my goals. It is also very comfortable to sit in…

The Clock

January 29, 2025

Since I retired nearly five years ago and started doing wood working projects I have been thinking of making a clock. Partly because I think clocks are cool and partly because one of my ancestors was a clock maker. Stephen Hasham ( 1764 - 1861) of Charlestown, NH is my 2nd great-grandfather and he was also a prolific clock maker, he made the movements and the cases. He made church clocks, and clocks for houses, several of his clocks are still in Charlestown, NH and I’ve been there to visit them. My work can’t hold a candle to his, but I am inspired by him and his exceptional craftsmanship.

When I started this project I was thinking about the style that I wanted to do and I was drawn to something that was Art Deco inspired, not a replica but influenced by strong geometric designs. I came up with an initial design and planned to make the case of the clock’s decoration using marquetry so I upgraded my band saw to one that could resaw hardwood stock so I could make the 1/8” stock for the marquetry. I also got a scroll saw so that I could cut out the decoration and the inserts in different woods.

This is the initial design:

The main body color was going to be Curly maple with the darker wood being Sapele and Wenge. The face would be 1/8” aluminum with the dial engraved and faux-engine-turned.

I cut all of the marquetry stock and transferred the design using carbon paper to the front blank and used the scroll saw to cut out the pattern and the matching infill sections.

It was about this point that I started having reservations about this design. It just wasn’t reading the way I wanted, the light wood and thin design elements weren’t doing it for me. I went forward on this front piece through gluing up the marquetry, sanding it and trying a couple of finishes that should have enhanced the curly maple figure. I learned a lot about process, order of operations, and those finishes but I didn’t like the result. I also realized that the scale of the clock was not right either so I scrapped that design and came up with a new version.

Here’s the new version:

I went with a bolder simpler geometric pattern ( click on the images above to expand). The dominant color is the dark Sapele with Curly Maple as the contrast. I also added a dark ring around the clock face made from wenge and instead of trying to inset the face into the marquetry I decided to apply it on top of it. The good thing about this design was that I was able to cut all the veneers on the band saw with a lot of precision and control which made the joints clean and consistent.

I rebuilt the case with new proportions and the new veneers leaving the sides oversize until I had applied the marquetry and then I cut them to size and mitered them.

The top of the clock is cut from a glue up of two pieces of 3/4” Sapele which I cut to a 1/4” overhang of the case body and then I did a double bevel of the top at 22 degrees and 45 degrees. The plinth is made from 3/4” Sapele and has a 45 degree bevel on the top. I also shaped the bottom of the top and the top of the bottom to have a 1/4” rabbet sized so that the resulting rectangle would fit inside the box. This worked to help keep the box square and to allow me to fix the top and the bottom to the body of case.

I had to do two scary operations next. First, I had to use a 4” hole saw to cut out the front of the case to accommodate the clock mechanism. I didn’t want this clock to have a battery powered quartz movement, I wanted a wind up mechanical movement. I got a German made one from a web site called Clockworks. It mounts inside the case behind the face on adjustable brackets that are screwed to the case.

This brings me to the second scary operation which was to cut out a door on the back of the case. I needed the door to be big enough so that I could install the clock mechanism after the case was glued up. I hid the entry hole for the scroll saw blade behind one of the hinges. I used the scroll saw to very carefully and slowly cut out the door.

Fortunately both operations came out great and the hole saw didn’t just tear the marquetry off the plywood backing…

I also realized that mechanical clocks like to be level and there was a good chance that the wooden base would change shape or the place that I was going to display the clock would be out of level. While I was looking around for tiny adjustable feet ( I didn’t find any ) I found these semi-spherical feet for handbags made from brass. The screws had a 3/8” flat head. I realized that if I glued these screws into the bottom of the case I could partially screw the feet on to get about 1/4” of adjustment in each corner. This worked out great using some CA glue to fix the screws into 1/16” recesses cut with a Forstner bit.

To make the face of the clock I bought an .SVG file on Etsy of an “Art Deco” clock face that I liked. I deleted a couple of elements from it and sized it for the 6” diameter dial that I wanted and printed it full size. I used carbon paper to transfer the design to the aluminum. I used my dremel tool with a small ball nose bit to engrave all of the numbers and markings into the aluminum. I did some sanding to remove burrs and then I painted all the engraved areas with black acrylic paint. I then sanded the face up to 7000 grit and polished it with a polishing wheel on the drill press and some polishing rouge. I then sprayed it with clear acrylic applying a couple of coats. I ended up improvising the design in the center because my attempt at doing a faux-engine-turning decoration wasn’t satisfactory. I like the hand made nature of the dial, it certainly reflects my current skill level.

Finally I glued up the case using many many clamps. I then did some touch up sanding and then I applied two coats ( over two days ) of General Finishes Hard Wax Oil.

Once the finish was done I roughed up the back of the clock face and used CA glue to attach it to the clock case. After that was solid I installed the clock mechanism into the clock.

I then had to spend a little time getting the chiming to be correct relative to where the hands are but it is working great now keeping good time.

I’m very very happy with the final result.

Building Project: Counter Organizer

January 29, 2024

For decades we’ve had a counter in the kitchen which due to it’s location near all the entrances to the kitchen collects a pile of papers, mail, receipts, keys, pens, letter openers, bills, etc… I’ve always found it somewhat upsetting to deal with but it hasn’t reached the top of the “do something about this” list… until now.

I wanted to make another small project and I was interested in using up some maple scraps and some “drops” of aluminum bar from the fire table project. Also I was curious about the Rockler bluetooth speaker/radio kit. So I decided to design an organizer for this corner. I was going for a sort of modernist abstract cityscape design ( that’s what I’m telling people ). I wanted dividers to organize the papers and envelopes and some cups to organize the small objects and pens, scissors, and mail openers. That counter was always dark because it didn’t have any undercabinet lighting so I made a tall tower to house the bluetooth speaker, a light, and on the back two AC outlets and two USB outlets.

I started the project with some problems and at some point I may end up remaking either parts of this project or the whole thing due to not really solving those problems. The first problem was that I didn’t have any 1/2” scrap stock and I wanted to make most of the features out of 1/2” material. I don’t have a jointer, or a thickness planer, or a bandsaw capable of accurately resawing anything. But I figured what the heck I’ll see how far I can get.

The stock that I did have was 1 1/16” thick so I cut it into two inch strips and attempted to slice them into 1/2” strips. This process was somewhat inaccurate ending up with some strips over 1/2” inch slightly and some under 1/2” slightly. Also I realized at this point that my table saw blade was dirty and dull from having cut a lot of crappy plywood for the shop cabinets recently.

Also, the one limitation of the Rockler Panel Clamps is that they don’t do anything less that 3/4” material. I thought I could just stack two panels together with some plastic film between them and clamp them up that way. Lets just say the glue ups were not great and not very flat. At this point I just decided that this was a prototype and I was going to use it to see if the thing worked for us and I just plowed ahead. Through some hand planing, sanding, and scraping I got the panels “flat adjacent” but they were of varying thickness so milling things like rabbets on the edges was also inaccurate. So, what were supposed to be 4” x 4” box tubes were off in one or more dimensions by as much as 1/16”. Some of these issues I reduced using the 50 grit belt on my sanding station to square up the sides but of course they were now not 4” x 4” boxes they were rectangular.

The base of counter organizer was made of a glue up of the full thickness 1 1/16” maple boards. I thought these were quite flat when I glued them up, but unfortunately after a couple of days in the heated and very dry part of my shop they had developed a pronounced cup. Worse than that is that this happened after I had routed the recesses to custom fit each of the towers and the dividers into the base.

So another round of hand planing, sanding, and scraping ensued to get at least one side of it flat so it could sit on the counter. I couldn’t do much for the top without also removing the features I’d already routed there so I had to just accept it for what it was and tweak the orientation of the dividers and the towers when I glued them up.

I fabricated the aluminum hardware out of the 1” x 1/2” aluminum flat bar “drops” that I had. I used the aluminum cutting table saw blade that I had acquired for the fire table project. I made some custom clamping fixtures out of plywood to hold onto the small pieces of aluminum so they wouldn’t become projectiles. This worked very well and the plywood fixtures were useful for multiple operations since they were sacrificial and I could cut a feature through the plywood and the aluminum with no problems. The key hooks were the most interesting to make but the techniques were very much the same as cutting dados or tenons out of wood on a table saw, just using aluminum. The aluminum chips were no joke though and I ended up wearing nitrile gloves because they were stinging my hands a bit.

I cleaned up the aluminum with files and deburring tools and sanded it to 320 grit and then sprayed them with a clear acrylic lacquer to prevent oxidation. The finish has a nice smooth sparkly appearance.

Another problem was the light fixture which seems simple in theory but is in practice quite challenging, especially when you’re using uneven stock and using the wrong tools to shape it. In the end I was able to create a cube with the top and the bottom mitered together with a 1/4” rabbet around the inside. The sides were four corner pieces with the same profile. All of the acrylic had to be inside the cube for the glue up which was awkward and I tried using silicone adhesive to hold the acrylic in the frames, don’t do that, it doesn’t adhere to acrylic well at all.

But in the end I came up with a cube light that is slightly wonky but functional.

I cut all the holes in the tower for the bluetooth audio and speakers and the outlet on the back and a switch for the light and the exit for the plug wire. After determining that everything was actually going to fit I had to glue up everything and put finish on it before I could install the electrical elements.

The glue up went fine. I had to shim the divider panels and in some cases bend them slightly to fit the dado’s in the base but they all got glued in. Before I glued them into the base I drilled holes down the center of the dados so I could add screws from the underside for additional strength. I squared everything up as I went and even though they were not 90 degrees to the surface of the base which was somewhat arched they appeared relatively perpendicular from a distance and if you don’t look too hard. As Jimmy Diresta says “If it looks straight, it is straight.”

The finish was a little bit of a nightmare, I used a golden danish oil, which I’d used before, which was the problem, the can apparently had been quietly evaporating the mineral spirits and I didn’t realize that it was not the right solution until I had a applied a lot of it. So there was a lot of diluting with mineral spirits, wiping sticky spots etc… I eventually got it to a decent place.

Finally I finished up and installed the wiring and the hardware and it has been deployed. It seems to be functioning well, the counter is a lot more organized now and I will never do many of the things I did on this project again. I may revisit this project sometime in the future and do everything better, but I’ve got another project that actually has a deadline so I’m on to that.

Next Project: Sewing Table with Machine Lift

June 26, 2022

My beautiful and talented wife frequently uses her sewing machine ( as well as the even more frightening Serger, multiple needles and blades). Right now she has to carry it down from her crafts cabinet upstairs and set it up on our kitchen table. The light isn’t the best in the kitchen and moving the machine every time is less than optimal. We have an old desk in our dining room that we never ever use and so we thought perhaps we should get rid of the desk and make a sewing table that could also store both machines and the sewing tool box. The dining room has much better light and there would be no carrying the machine any more. ROCKLER makes a sewing machine lift mechanism that can be put inside a desk or table to make the machine rise up through the top and then disappear inside when not in use.

I’m working on the design now and am iterating on a design that will look like a nice cherry colored ( to match or dining room table and chairs ) sideboard when it isn’t in use. And in fact it could provide a surface to serve food or drinks from in the future when it is closed up. The front will have doors that use 270 degree hinges ( and the big one a piano hinge in the middle ) to swing away to opposite sides of the case to allow the operator's knees to go under the surface. There will be a removable panel in the top that will reveal the sewing machine and allow it to rise up to be either flush with the top or be as if it were set on the top.

We’ll have an adjustable goose-neck lamp that can be stored under the table when not in use and installed in a bracket towards the back of the table when it is being used.

There will be two full extension slide out shelves on the left of the knee opening to store the Serger and the sewing tool box respectively.

It will be on brass ball casters to allow it to easily be pulled out from the wall to make space for fabric to flow through the machine and they will have locks to keep the table from moving around while there is sewing going on.

There will be a big out-feed space for the fabric on the left to make it easy to manage large or bulky pieces.

I’ve got a rough idea of the cut-list and hardware required and I’m waiting for the machine lift to get here from ROCKLER so I can look at it’s requirements and make sure I know how I’m going to accommodate it.

If you want to see a similar project this is the video that led me to the ROCKLER machine lift hardware.

I’m also looking to source the wood from a vendor closer to my home since shipping lumber across the country is slow and expensive.

Here are some design sketches so far:

I’ll post updates as things get going…

Building Project: Desk Lamp

April 22, 2022

I have been putting up with the fact that the left half of my desk is not well lit. When I do paperwork or a project on that half of the desk I’m always struggling to have enough light even with the overhead light and every other light on in the room. I found myself looking at buying a desk lamp similar to the one I have on the right side of the desk and then I though “I just made a lamp, why don’t I just make one, I have left over materials, how hard can it be…” I drew a very rudimentary sketch…

I had a brainwave about how to electrify the lamp: I would use LED under-cabinet puck lights! It turns out these come in packs of three with all the wiring, power supply, and even a switch and in the case of the one I bought a remote control.

So I built the following lamp…

The “shade” is a glue-up of white oak and strips of white oak and black mesquite to give it a striped effect on the top. I beveled the edges on the table saw and then rounded them on the sanding station. I mitered a thin frame around the base of the “shade” to hide the LED pucks. The “neck” is made by cutting a dado into to halves of the neck and then gluing them up to leave a void for the wiring to run through. The base and feet are white oak and the black mesquite brackets are actually the offcuts from the brackets on my floor lamp.

I just had to shorten and solder the wiring ( it was meant to reach across several kitchen cabinets ) and fish it through the neck and then stick the pucks to the underside of the “shade” It works great and lights my desk perfectly and the remote allows it to be turned on and off and dimmed from across the room.