In our longer term plans, we want to build chairs for our dining table. Charlene and I like to work in the shop together, but I generally have a separate project going on because she doesn’t spend as much time in the shop as I do. So combining a need for a chair for my home office and me developing the skills to do some really nice chairs for the living room seemed like a good side project.
This one's ¾ birch, I had my doubts when I started but the chair seems plenty sturdy. To get that "Maloof" look I’ll definitely have to go for thicker wood so that I can put in more curves, but as a "what I had lying around" experiment with no planning, I think this worked fairly well.
The curves are all cut with a jig saw, clamped together and cleaned up with a router. The splay from the front legs to the back is about 7°, that miter was cut with a Festool saw on a rail. The joints are all loose tenons made with the Domino,
The slats are laminated recurves with 3 layers, they flex a little bit in their sockets, which is fine, but they make noise, so my next version will probably glue them in (although others have suggested that I just wax the mortices). That top rail with the knot in it is mitered together for the angle, worked fairly well given that I was working from scrap and thought I should highlight the knot, but the seams are pretty obvious.
All in all it worked fairly well, and I’ll be doing more of them, though I do want to do carved seats for my next one.