The Woodworker & Woodturner – August 2019

(Ann) #1

PROJECT


54 The Woodworker & Good Woodworking August 2019 http://www.getwoodworking.com

Oak kitchen bar chairs


THE BAR

RAISING


Realising a pair of
folding kitchen ‘bar’
chairs no longer fit the
bill, Robert Couldwell
takes to the workshop
and goes about making
a replacement set in oak

2 Perfect components

1 The problem – the original chairs

Fig.1 Oak kitchen bar chair dimensions

I


n my previous articles for this magazine,
I worked on the premise that an amateur
with no formal training and little in the way
of machinery could produce reasonable
pieces of furniture. My first project was a
softwood slatted vegetable drawer-unit copied
slavishly from an article in The Woodworker, which
certainly satisfied my wife (not easy) and is now
in regular use in the larder.
My daughter, seeing this, asked if I could make
a desk needed for her new work-from-home job.
Initially thinking I would make this from softwood
and MDF and providing her with a sketch which
she approved, I suddenly thought I should be
more ambitious and make it in oak. The result
was, surprisingly, a success and featured in the
April 2013 issue. It also resulted in several other
commissions (unfortunately for love not money),
until pressure of work gave me no time for
anything but essential (DIY) woodworking.

The problem
Recently things changed and a new project was
born. We’ve long had a pair of folding kitchen
‘bar’ chairs in use, but when used in our current
house, the protruding metal legs were a constant
source of annoyance as it was very easy to trip
over them. It came to the point where my wife
insisted I do something about them (photo 1).
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