Building my first Morris Chair #1: Bent Laminations

Published April 14, 2009 at 12:23 a.m.

Hello everyone. Ive been working on my first Morris Chair and I thought I would document some of this. Found the plans from a book “Wood Magazine Arts and Crafts Furniture”. I’m making some changes to the design of the spindles on the sides of the chair but the dimensions are essentially the same. It will be made from walnut

I started this project with plans on laminating stock for the legs and discovered the hard way that the glue was bad. I tried Weldwood plastic resin glue that had been in my shop for a long time and it didn’t set up correctly. So that led me to purchase Unibond 800 two part plastic resin glue I saw David Marks using on his show. I love this stuff. My stock was not thick enough for the stretchers so I glued 4/4 stock together to get the thickness I needed. In this picture you can see multiple stretchers stacked together to better distribute clamping pressure and save time.

This glue needs to sit for five hours in the clamps at a shop temperature of 70 degrees F. I put plastic wrap in between the laminations so the squeeze out would not glue stretchers together.

This picture shows some prized walnut stock I found at an estate sale. I managed to get all four legs for the chair and four legs for the ottoman from one slab of walnut.

The new skill I’m trying is a bent lamination for the arms of the chair. I made the master template from a 1/4 inch thick piece of hardboard. Once I had that shape I used it to template route 3/4 inch mdf for the bending form. After I had one piece of mdf in the shape I wanted I glued and screwed the next piece of mdf on. Band sawed most of the waste off. Then template routed the remainder of the waste off. I wound up with eight plies of 3/4 mdf for each half of the form. I lined each half with cork and covered it with plastic.

I used a small paint roller to apply the glue. Used packing tape to keep the laminations from sliding around in the form. I was surprised that the laminations didnt move very much at all during clamping.

This is what the first arm looked like when it came out of the form. The second arm is sitting right next to it on the assembly table.

In this picture you can see size of the ply’s before glue up.

I re sawed the ply’s on the band saw and removed the mill marks with my jointer. When using the jointer for this I double stick taped the remainder of the re sawn arm to the thin ply as a backer and then took light passes over the jointer. I will add that I replaced my straight knife cutter head with a carbide indexed head. I don’t think this would have worked as well with a straight knifed cutter head.

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