I got the tapered mortises cut in the seat blank (which I made in my home shop) for the legs, using a power drill with a tapering bit and a sliding bevel to sight the right angles.
I got the corresponding tapered tenons cut on the legs. The legs were made in my home shop using a table saw, then tapered with a homemade jig and jack plane, then the ends tapered further with a block plane. At the shop today, I used a Veritas tenon cutter (basically a large pencil sharpener) to get a matching taper on the tenons.
Finally, I designed a rather aggressive-looking seat scoop in Fusion 360, then cut it at the iQ CNC using a 1/2” bit for roughing followed by a 3/4” ball nose cutter for finishing. I’ll be smoothing out the shape more with a sander so it’s a little more butt-friendly, but getting this rough shape with hand tools would have been much more difficult and expensive (I don’t have a scorp or a travisher).
I already have most of the sticks (for the arm and back rest) cut to rough shape and will be making the arm rest, drilling the mortises for the sticks, as well as drilling the legs for the stretchers next.
Looking really great. That looks like the kind of chair my nine year old and his pals would change from a stick chair into a pile of sticks. We can’t have anything nice
I’m breaking some rules with some of my legs and sticks - the grain is all over the place when it really should be super straight grain. We’ll see what effect it has in the end on strength.
