Saddling the Seat v10.4

Part 6 of the chair-building series.

To secure the seat while saddling, I screw a chunk of 2x6 to the underside. Then clamp that 2x6 in a vise.

I am always experimenting with different methods to saddle the seats of my stick chairs. And for the first 15 years of my chairmaking, that was butt-tacular. It didn’t matter how I saddled the seat because it always came out fine in the end.

When I started to teach chairmaking, however, I had to stop that experimental nonsense and come up with a way to explain it to others that made sense and wasn’t just: Fart around with the tools until it looks like a bowl with a pointy tumor at the front.

What follows is how I teach it these days.

First, I write on the whiteboard these words: Be a Farmer Not a Mole.

What does that mean? Many beginning chairmakers get fixated on one area of the seat, then dig for the earth’s core at that location. That’s not g…