Windsor chair

F A I N A I A S E N

W I N D S O R C H A I R L A B B O O K

BHSAD, BA (Hons) Product Design Lvl. 4

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C O N T E N T S

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S H A V I N G H O R S E W I N D S O R C H A I R C H A I R R E D E S I G N

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SHAVING HORSE

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To start working on our chairs we needed to build our tools first. Our team was making a shaving horse. We worked with the other team (of Mark, Jenya and Ksyusha) and we did pretty amazingly :3 We watched numerous videos, did some planning and discussing and made two of them in somewhere about a week and a half.

SHAVING HORSE

S H A V I N G

preparing wood

research

planning

drilling holes

carving legs

P R O C E S S

constructing levers

attaching legs

T I M E L I N E

constructing bridge

H O R S E

finishing

W I N D S O R

C H A I R

P R E P A R I N G

W O O D

Axes, saw

Angus was very kind and provided us with some logs and planes from his dacha that he brought in his van, so we were able to start off.Â

S H A V I N G

S P L I T T I N G

W O O D

Axes

Angus taught us how to split wood using axes as splitters since we didn't have any in the workshop. It was a lot of physical work so we took turns doing it. We had to split wood for the shaving horses' legs first and then for the parts of the chair itself except for the back.Â

H O R S E

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C H A I R

C A R V I N G

L E G S

Axe, saw, drawknife

For the legs, we needed 4 logs roughly the same size and length. We didn't need them to be beautiful, just even and sturdy. So we took big logs, split them into 4 parts and made raw legs for the horses.

S H A V I N G

D R I L L I N G

H O L E S

Augor, bits

Before attaching anything to the body, we had to drill all the holes since it would be very inconvenient to do once other parts are attached.

H O R S E

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C H A I R

A T T A C H I N G

L E G S

Glue, mallet Then we put legs in the holes, filled them with glue and left it to dry.

After drying, we put our horse on an even surface and drew a line around legs, then evened them out by sawing down the line.

S H A V I N G

A T T A C H I N G B R I D G E A N D H A N D L E S S T R U C T U R E Glue, mallet The last step was to put together the bridge, handle and levers structure. We joined it all through the drilled holes and fixed with nails.Â

H O R S E

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S O M E O T H E R P R O C E S S P H O T O S I L I K E

S H A V I N G

I T

I S

F I N I S H E D ! Â

H O R S E

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C H A I R

WINDSOR CHAIR

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splitting wood

planing seat Â

PROCESS

carving legs

P R O C E S S

carving spindles

gluing seat

boiling wood to bend

planing glued seat

carving and sanding seat

carving back

P R O C E S S

sanding and waxing

attaching legs

drilling holes in seat and back

T I M E L I N E

attaching back

W I N D S O R

C H A I R

S P L I T T I N G

W O O D

Axes, machete, draw knife Angus taught us how to split wood using axes as splitters since we didn't have any in the workshop. It was a lot of physical work so we took turns doing it. We had to split wood for the shaving horses' legs first and then for the parts of the chair itself except for the back. Firstly, we only used axes, but then Angus was like: Uh, I wish we had a machete here. And the next day he brought a machete. A machete in school, Karl! Although I have to admit - it came in handy for splitting smaller parts.

P R O C E S S

C A R V I N G

L E G S

Shaving horse, draw knife, sand paper

For the legs, we needed 4 logs roughly the same size and length. We decided to make the,m plane, without any carved details because of our design. And also pretty short since we wanted the chair to be a bit small, nice and cosy.Â

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C A R V I N G Â S P I N D E L S Shaving horse, draw knife, vices, sand paper

P R O C E S S

For spindles, we used really young wood that was not more than 5 cm in diameter. We saw it in half and used those halves to carve back supporting sticks. We decided to make them flat in front and rounded in the back.

The shape came from the height of our back. Since we wanted to make it low we needed short spindles. Also, we wanted to give a bit of hominess and cosiness so we made them thinner on the ends and rounded in the middle. Since the wood was split right in the middle the heart of it was showing and this stripe of a darker colour gave our spindles a nice aesthetical touch. Since the diameter of the smaller or we had was 12 mm we decided to use it for the spindles and made them 12 mm on the edges. I used a piece of plywood with a hole of 12 mm drilled in it to make sure they would fit the holes.

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C H A I R

B E N D I N G

T H E

B A C K

Huge tank, cooking stove, some 40 liters of boiling water

P R O C E S S

For the back, we tried to band wood first. We did two moulds, One with sticks in it, the other one with parent and child moulds. We tried to boil two sticks first and bend them into these two moulds. The idea was, that out of two at least one will work. But it didn't we boiled them for 6 hours and then tried to bend it, but both of them broke along the grain. The mould with sticks worked better - the stick bent to the middle of it and only then started to break. So we thought that if we cut it in half, bend two parts separately and then join them, but it didn't work as well, so we gave it up as we didn't have much time left and the girls who tried to steam it failed too.Â

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C A R V I N G Â B A C K

S U P P O R T

Hammer, draw knife, vices, jigsaw

P R O C E S S

After all our unsuccessful attempts to bend the back, we decided to take it easy and rather carve this part out of a solid piece of wood. I took a huge thick plane that Angus brought from his dacha and drew a template on it according to the size of our seat and number of spindles. After that, I sawed big chunks of it off and then used the file to shape it more gentle.

To carve the inside part of it I used a saw, a drawing knife and a hammer. By removing parts of it I got a rough shape and then used a file to make it nice and smooth on the inside and a plane on the outside. Some mere 6 hours of sanding - and here goes our back part!

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T H E W A L K O F S H A M E

a.k.a. all of our failed attempts

P R O C E S S

P L A I N I N G

T H E

S E A T .

1 S T

A T T E M P T

Axe, plane, drawknife, hammer, chisel

When we were first carving the wood for our seat, we made several significant mistakes. The two main ones were that we made it too narrow to be a seat, and the second one it that we didn't make it perfectly flat which caused us a lot of problems later on.

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When we glued our seat for the first time we thought that this it and we're good. We left it to dry over the weekend and we're going to start working on it when we come back on Monday.

Ha, not that easy! When we were sawing everything was okay, but when started drawknifing it, it split into two parts.

G L U E I N G

T H E

S E A T .

1 S T

Augor, drawknife, vices, clamps

A T T E M P T

P R O C E S S

Well, we thought, it's not too bad, we still have time - we will just do it again, maybe we just left it for not long enough. So, right away we tried again and left it for 5 days this time. And guess what? The moment we started working on it, it split again. What happened? The wood was so wet that it just didn't absorb any glue. Also, we didn't plane it completely (we were going to do it after glueing) so when we clamped it down it would bend and split.

G L U E I N G

T H E

S E A T .

2 N D

Augor, drawknife, vices, clamps

A T T E M P T

W I N D S O R

C H A I R

For the 3rd attempt, we decided to cheat and use an industrial fan to try and dry at least the top layer of the wood for the glue to soak in better. After that, we also used the momentum glue mixed with wood shavings on the edges and the best clamps in all school (that we had to beg for). We were sure it worked this time.

But it didn't. At this stage, we also realised how small that seat is.Â

G L U E I N G

T H E

S E A T .

3 R D

A T T E M P T

Industrial fan, momentum glue, vices, awesome clamps

P R O C E S S

P L A I N I N G

T H E

S E A T .

2 N D

Plane, chisel, plane, aaaand... more plane

A T T E M P T

For the second time, we learned our lessons, so this time we took planes and worked for a day to make both parts perfectly plane and even from all the sides. So when it lies on the table, it doesn't bend even after clamping.

W I N D S O R

C H A I R

A D D I N G

T H E

3 R D

P A R T

Axe, saw, drawknife, plane

T O

T H E

S E A T

P R O C E S S

Also, this is the moment when we realised that our seat is way too small for a large Scotish man, but even for an average Russian girl. So we decided to add a third piece in the middle. We took a different type of wood so the colour would differ - for aesthetical purposes. I thought that it would go nicely with our striped spindles and give it a nice cosy touch.

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G L U E I N G T H E S E A T . 4 T H A T T E M P T A N D T H E L A S T O N E Glue, vices, clamps, patience

P R O C E S S

For the fourth time, we didn't use a fan nor momentum, glue. We just hoped for the best but prepared for the worst. We left our seat to dry for a week before starting.

Then took our three parts, all perfectly plane and glued them with ordinary PVA glue, not clamping it too hard.

And left it to set for the weekend. When we came back on Monday - Woala! We could work on it and not be afraid anymore. All this attempting was quite a setback and we had not much time left, so we needed to work fast. Luckily, the only things left to do was to shape the seat, drill the holes and join all the details together.

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SINCE NOW WE HAD ALL OF OUR PARTS READY IT WAS TIME TO ASSEMBLE THEM TOGETHER

REM ME started REM, finished AP made AP, remade ME

We worked simultaneously on all of the parts, so everyone kinda touched everything, but REM mostly did carving and sanding, I mostly did planning and sanding, Anton mostly did sanding

ME

REM

REM & ME REM & ME

H E R E

A R E

REM & ME

A L L

O F

And who did what

T H E

REM & ME

P A R T S

P R O C E S S

Step 1 - legs

Step 3 - sending and waxing

Step 2 - back

A S S E M B L Y

P L A N

All parts should be glued in their places

W I N D S O R

C H A I R

T R Y I N G

O N

B A C K Mallet, augor

S U P P O R T

P R O C E S S

When we first tried to attach spindles and back to see how they'll look together we were not sure if we are capable of figuring out the angles for each individual sticks. We also had to drill them with an augor which is not easy at all. So we decided that the main three ones that are in the middle will stand completely straight and only the 2 on the edges will be bent as there was no way to make them straight due to the different shapes of the seat and back part. We tried to count the angle by sight and it was approximately 12 degrees. Thi information didn't help us much as we drilled it relying on our luck anyway.

And it worked! It's alive!

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C H A I R

A T T A C H I N G

L E G S

Glue, shavings, mallet

A T T A C H I N G Glue, mallet, level

B A C K

P R O C E S S

We've already tried to fit all of the parts before and adjusted them to suit our chair, so now we only needed to assemble everything together. We attached legs first since we needed to even them out after, which would be impossible to do with the back attached. We used a lot of PVA glue and thin shave pieces of wood to fill the gaps as well as some tiny shavings from electric tools. Then we left it to set for a night. The next day we sanded all of the protruding parts with sanding paper and files. We also put our chair on an even surface and marked where to saw to level all the legs, then cut off those parts. After that, we did the same with the spindles and the back part. Firstly we attached the spindles, then added the back on top of them and used a mallet to hammer them down into their places. Left it for a day and the next day repeated the sanding and polishing process. Now everything was ready except for the finish.

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P O L I S H I N G

&

A P P L Y I N G

W A X

Sandpaper, files, wax, felt The last step in the making of our chair is finish and polishing. We used tons of sandpaper and several files to sand and polish it. And then were applying layers upon layers of wax using natural felt. We repeated the wax-send-wax process about 7 times and then left it be.Â

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WE'RE DONE WITH THE MAKING PART!

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Nov. 14th 2017

It's a chair!

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C H A I R

L A B B O O K

B H S A D , B A ( H o n s ) P r o d u c t D e s i g n L v l . 4