With the canoes all done and an unexpected summer drawing to a close it was time to return to the shop. Hey, long time no chair! I wandered out to the back of the house where a small pile of wood had been sequestered, slowly drying. There was enough garry oak there for a chair.

A while ago Kim mentioned that she kind of missed Chair Number 6 after it left the house. That took me by surprise, but it was a good looking chair. A shameless copy of a pretty cool chair by Rudy Everts, it looked a bit like an Irish chair but with weird proportions, an unusal comb and back sticks that tapered in an un-Irish way. So maybe I could try to recreate something like that. I gave Chair Number 6 away in 2021 and did not take detailed measurements. So there would be some guesswork and approximation involved. But this would be my 20th chair, so I’m a pro now, right?

Not exactly. Shaping the parts went smoothly and legs went into the seat reasonably well. But I messed-up the geometry above the seat. The long back sticks tapered inward too much and they were also too upgright. A friend said that the chair looked a bit tense. Worse still it was not very comfortable. There are no pictures of that mess so you’ll just have to take my word for it.

Being distracted by fences, canoes and paddles for the better part of a year it’s true that I was a bit out of practice for drilling those funny angles. But I was also, maybe, a bit too casual about the whole thing.

After a few days off I returned to the shop and proceeded to plug all the holes in the seat and arms, and try again. This time with a bit more care and attention. I still could not quite get the shape of the Rudy Everts chair but I did get to a decent, vaguely Irish shape. I could live with that.

And then it was time for more belligerent finishing: quebracho, iron acetate, burnish, pigmented oil, milk paint, wire brush and burnish, black linseed oil wax. Same as the last couple of chairs. Pretty good results overall.

Garry Oak, belligerence