Yesterday I completed a learning piece, this staked sawbench.
The seat is glued up Douglas Fir leftover from something or other. The legs are Red Oak. Also, two pieces as all I had was 4/4 at the time. They taper from 1-3/4″ at the floor to a little under 1-1/4″ where they transition to the tenon.
It’s about 20″ tall. And since it has angles in both planes, it’s really hard to compose a good shot of it. These are the best I could do yesterday.
The learning part was that it employs tapered mortises that are angled out in both directions (called splay and rake). This is a fundamental joint for chairmaking and a little tricky, but with careful layout and taking it slow, it came out fine.
I won’t get into the layout method for locating and angling the mortises. But I did have to purchase a tapered reamer and a matching tenoning jig (think large handheld pencil sharpener). You drill a regular 5/8″ hole at the correct angle and then use the reamer to taper it. The taper is 12.8 deg (I don’t know why), so in a seat of this thickness, the wide end is about 1-1/4″.
The tenons were roughly formed on the lathe. Which was the other learning component. I have done almost no turning and I was very nervous about turning the tenons since I had a significant time investment in hand planing a tapered octagon. So I did a couple of practice pieces and then the real ones. Only one has wood missing where it shouldn’t, the first one, so I guess that’s a success.
Once I was close to the right shape I took it to the pencil sharpener to tune it. Rinse and repeat.
As I said, this is a gateway drug to not only Welsh stick chairs and early Windsor chairs, but a bunch of medieval furniture was also constructed this way.
The defining characteristic of staked furniture is a fat plank as the core, with the other components mortised into it. A “regular” chair uses the rear leg frame as the core of the chair and the seat frame with the front legs is hung off that.
