The curves and angles of chairs can be confusing!

We’re just about finished with all 13 Slat-Back chairs at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. Monday was an intense day of form building (for the slat laminations) and learning to shape and smooth the back legs. Tuesday we jumped into the joinery fray, but with straight mortise and tenon joints. Wednesday, the real fun began, and we cut and fit the slats to their mortises, and we started to tackle the angled joinery on the side rails. This chair has particularly interesting joinery there; compound angled mortise and tenons. Today the chairs started coming together, but not before a little bit of confusion set in. Everything got straightened out in the end, but not before we discovered that the back can actually go on four different ways, and only one of them is correct. Tomorrow, we’ll talk about fitting the seat, how to deal with making a set of chairs, and various other details before we finish up.