While looking through the October 2020 issue of Fine
Woodworking I came across a fairly long and involved article on how to weave a
chair seat using twisted Danish Cord.
It’s something I had never done and the process looked interesting. It’s not that we really need any more chairs
but I thought that I could make a case for a short seat in the bedroom to set
on while putting my socks and sandals on.
I know it’s a pretty thin excuse to justify the project but it won’t
take up too much space and I have all the materials on hand except for the
Danish Cord itself. That’s my reasoning
(excuse) and I’m sticking to it. 😊 Below is what the finished project in the
Fine Woodworking article looked like.
Almost all of my projects have a clear finish or maybe a little stain on oak. Pieces made out of cherry, walnut, mahogany and the like are never stained. However, in this case I thought about trying something different. From what I can see the Danish Cord and finished unstained oak will be about the same color. Since the seat weave is what I want to showcase some contrast is desired. I suppose if the oak frame were painted a bright screaming pink or fluorescent green that would provide contrast but not in a good way.
On a few projects I have ebonized wood by either dyeing or using a chemical reaction with the tannins found in oak and cherry. Neither method has completely satisfied me so in doing some research I came across another method using alcohol colorfast black India ink and decided to try it out on red oak. The selection of the oak works since it’s a nice strong hardwood and because the pores are pretty pronounced, I hoped that would provide some texture to the surface.
When ebonizing cherry, it ends up looking like featureless lump of
wood. The same is true of the few pieces
of Ebony that I have used although when finished they look almost like
plastic. That’s OK when used as a plug
where the black color provides the accent but it’s not what I wanted here. Below is one of the sample oak pieces I used
along with the India ink and a piece of t-shirt to be used for application.
The application of the ink went pretty well except I did
have to rub it into the surface to make sure all the pores got covered. The first pass ended up with a good number of
undyed little specks at the bottom of the pores. As you can see the oak pores are still quite
visible.
Next is to spray on a couple of coats of satin lacquer
which seals the surface and gives a slight sheen to the surface. I am really happy with the result and plan on
using it on the project.
With the finish and material decided on going through the
stack of oak looking for 1 ½” thick pieces for the legs and 1” thick pieces for
the stretchers is next. Here is the
stack of stock to be used. You may not
be able to clearly see the writing on the pieces but they are all marked out
with chalk as to what comes out of each board.
When I checked the raw stock to see if they were
straight, flat and true they were close but not there. Fortunately, none of them had any twist which
is a pain to correct and most are close to being flat but all do not have a
straight edge. Here after the raw stock
has been cut into rough lengths you can see the gap between the boards edge and
my level. This is typical of what needs
to be straightened.
To straighten the curve out an 8’ level is clamped to the
rip fence on the table saw then the piece is set against it so the center high
point is facing the blade. The fence is
then adjusted to just skim the initial point of contact so when the cut is made
is the convex curve is removed. The
board is then flipped over so the straight edge is against the level, the fence
adjusted so when cut that edge of the board gets its concave curved edge
straightened. The long level has to be
used so the heels of the piece are always against a straight edge during the
cut. If they aren’t then the cut won’t
be straight.
After the two passes through the table saw the piece has
straight parallel edges. When set back
on the level no light is visible between it and the piece confirming a straight
edge. 
From here the pieces can be cut to their rough length and
run through the thickness sander to flatten.
The same logic is used for this face as with the edges. The high face goes through facing up until
the entire face has been sanded then the piece is flipped over and the other
side flattened. Side note, this only works with pieces thick enough to resist
the flattening pressure of the rollers.
Once flat, straight and square the pieces are labeled as
to what they will be used for and the edges marked showing which ones get
trimmed to make the final blanks.
Here are the blanks all trimmed to their final width and
thickness. Cutting to length will come
later.
Next Up – Shaping & Mortising the Legs
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