Slow Progress

Over the last two days, not a whole lot of action has occurred regarding progress in my chair. There has been a lot of work, to be sure. Just no real forward movement. It has been necessary to do a number of dry runs in order to make sure that when I do the mold for real, there is little room for error. But let me catch you up.

The first step, as you remember, was to cut this veneer down to size. This is my pile of veneer.










This is the note my professor left on my wood that I mentioned in the last post.







After the wood was cut to the correct lengths, it was necessary to do the first dry run. I had to put giant rocks on the smaller block because the veneer has enough force to push it away.






At the end of the day yesterday, I felt as if I had made little progress. I had done a dry run to figure out where I needed to place clamps which is why there are now holes and grooves in my forms. But all in all, the day just flew by.





First thing this morning, I had to trim down all of my veneer to a uniform 18 cm width. This is the width of my mold and the width of both the chair's legs placed together with 2 extra cm wiggle room. This way, I can mold the legs as one, divide them and finish sand the edges.




Here it is this morning with the first clamped dry run. You can see how much force is required to bend the wood to my will. This has been a complicated process. Not many people are using the strap method and have shapes that can be easily vacuum molded. I get to do that too for the seat pan and backrest so you'll see that later.




After the clamped dry run, I attached pieces of MDF to the metal straps. This way, when they are clamped, the MDF will act as a uniform pressure over the curve of the arches in my rocker creating a smooth arc.





Step one in the molding process (still dry, no glue) where we begin to bend the veneer.










We then pull the veneer up and around while we place clamps as we go. You can see that further cuts were made into the form to allow for more pressure to be applied.






Ran out of time, dammit. Well, here are my forms, resting amongst friends. Tomorrow morning, I believe I will be finally gluing this beast together. And I am ready.






I let you know how it goes.