I’ve completed my most ambitious dream as a woodworker so far – I have designed and built my own chair exactly as I wanted it! I consider it quite an achievement and I’m both proud and a little bit amazed that I actually made it.

My girlfriend has almost taken over the Safari chair and uses it in our living room. So when I want to listen quietly to LP’s in our bedroom I’m out of options – or was. Now I have my own chair – made of oak like the other furniture in the bedroom that I did a long time ago.

When I started woodworking we started joking about me doing a chair and while looking through a magazine I stumbled upon one I really liked. The original idea was to make a copy but as time went on the chair became part of a bigger plan: If I am to be able to make a living, designing and making furniture I need to work systematically and I need to draw my works up on paper before building them.

So the chair is the first piece that I’ve done that is initially sketched up on paper and then drawn in 1:10 and 1:5 scale before building it.

I call it my “grounding with my Macbook chair” as it is low (close to the ground) and with a pretty straight up seat so its not a chair for falling a sleep.

Yesterday and today I have been working on the footrest to accompany the chair. I’ve been in a bad mood and been feeling that it is kind of pointless, but its not – its a passion – and as I wrote yesterday, there is much work to be done and many lessons to be learned.

The making of

I’ve actually decided to make another post with the making of the chair. I’ve selected around 20 images – but I wont cheat you – below you can see a couple of selected images from the proces.

The chair was built mostly during my easter vacation and my guess is that I’ve used 50-60 hours on it.

I simply love it even though its a prototype for the “real one” that is to have much softer edges on all sides and seat made of another fabric.

Clamping on the legs to test overall appearance

Rounding of pieces of wood

I’m very satisfied with the extended jaws that I did to complete these pieces. The problem is that its hard to get around with a plane in the regular vice jaws. These ones can be mounted in the “dog” on the workbench and takes the pieces up around 10 cm and lets me use the plane much more freely.

Angled joint

Inner dovetails while applying oil

Done weaving and gluing on the back legs