Perch Stool Part 4: Glue Up

You Did a Glue Up Live??

Hey who doesn’t like a little bit of danger and excitement in their life? Live streaming, talking and answering question while gluing up a project is the new pastime for the adrenalin junkie!

In this installment I went over how to bore the odd angled holes in the legs for the stretchers. I demonstrated a great technique that I’ve used for my last few Windsor chairs that was taught to me by Elia Bizzarri. This is the same technique you will see the other masters of the Windsor embracing as well. It involved imposing an arbitrary angle line onto the leg and then boring at that angle while positioning the layout line parallel to the bench top. It is highly effective and really precise.

but…

It is not how I built my first 2 Windsors. For those I bored everything by eye while the chair was assembled. In fact it was this total lack of layout and measuring that drew me to the style and largely to hand tools in the first place. So during the live broadcast when asked what advantages this boring in the vise approach offered I stumbled a bit and in hindsight I’m started to question whether going with this “more precise” route is just overcomplicating things. I know I know I’m questioning the wisdom of guys who have built hundreds and hundreds more Windsor chairs than I so I must be missing something right?

I don’t know…