Morris chair construction, building

	The first thing I do in making a Morris chair is to select wood. I buy all my wood from Atlantic Hardwoods in Portland Maine. It is a great place to do business and I feel that I am among friends when I am there. All the wood I buy is rough sawn. In my shop I plane it to the various thicknesses needed to build a chair
	The pieces of wood are planed to thickness and cut to size. Next the outlines of all the curved pieces are traced on with patterns and the curves are roughly sawn out on the bandsaw, to remove excess material.
	Next, the curves receive a second cut on the shaper. The wood is clamped onto a jig. The curved edge of the jig rolls against a bearing on the shaper. The spinning cutters duplicate the curved edge onto the chair part. After this, each edge and surface is refined by careful hand sanding.
	In total, there are 20 jigs required to make a Morris chair and an ottoman.
	I make the spindles by hand on a lathe. The goal is to make them so similar that they appear to be identical.
	The sides of the chair are put together with long tenons and deep mortises. Once glued, they make a very strong joint.
	I mortise bed iron hooks and hook plates into the sides of the chair and the front and rear stretchers. These permit the chair to come apart for moving or shipping by simply tapping the stretchers upwards
	The back racks on my chair are cast for me at the nearby Auburn Stove Foundry. The back racks are a reproduction of one of my favourite back racks from an antique chair. When I get them from the foundry, they still have some flash from the mold and I grind that off. I smooth the back but I leave the underside with the texture from the sand mold. That was the procedure with the antique original. Here are two new castings with the original. By having these parts custom cast, I can retain control of the appearance of metal work on my chair.
	To support the seat cushion, I make a rigid oak-framed box spring with steel zig zag springs. I cover the springs with specialized dacron padding as well as denim deck cloth.