Christmas Chairs

This Christmas, I decided to build a couple of youth chairs as presents. The chairs are modeled after a chair that was used for my mother's children, grand children and great-grand-children for the last 60 years. The original chair has been moved to the cape house, for more family members to use. I was going to build two chairs, but the finish on one of the chairs did not come out as well as I would like, so I ended up building three chairs.

I had purchased a new youth chair when my first grand child was born, and that chair had a shaker tape seat. The original chair had a "rush" seat. I liked the tape seat, so I finished two of the chairs with tape seats. Here I am working on the two tape seats.

Here is a picture of the two chairs that were presents and the chair that I purchased. The chair that I purchased (the one in the middle) is taller than the chairs that I made. The chair that I purchased was made to use at the kitchen counter and the chairs that I built were made to use at a normal table.

On the last chair I wove a "rush" seat. This is similar to the original chair. It turns out that doing a rush seat is a lot more work than a shaker tape seat. The weaving process took three nights, and my hands were sore.

Here is a picture of the rush seat completed.