Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
These were my first chairs. So I approached this project slowly and methodically. I followed fairly closely a pattern published in Fine Woodworking by Kevin Rodel in 2007. And, before I cut any white oak I made a practice chair from construction grade 2×4s.
I bandsawed the parts roughly and then brought them to final shape using an MDF pattern and a bearing-guided spiral router bit. I had to be careful with grain direction, which meant I could rout half the workpiece with the pattern taped to one side and then I had to affix the pattern to the opposite side to finish shaping it. I still needed to use hand tools (spokeshave, hand plane) to remove tool marks and to refine the final shape.
I made use of my milling machine to cut the angled mortises. I also used it to trim the tenons for the mortise and tenon joints. It was the first time I had used the milling machine to bring the tenons to final thickness but it worked really well. There were a lot of mortise and tenon joints.
I prefinished the pieces before assembly so that I could color the pieces to match the dining room table. I taped the mortises and tenons to prevent contamination with finish. Then, I applied shellac, General finishes brown mahogany gel stain (wiped on and then immediately wiped off), some more shellac, followed by several coats of an oil-varnish blend.
I added some ebony pegs on either side of the crest rail and chiseled them into pyramids using a sheet of stainless steel to prevent the chisel from marring the finished surface of the chair back.
I upholstered the chairs myself, following a video workshop on upholstery for woodworkers on the Fine Woodworking Magazine web site. That video series alone made my annual fee for web access worth the money.
When I built the dining table, I had this chair design in mind so I built the trestles to match the chair backsplat. The German shepherd seems to approve of the match.