Side chair templates galore – FineWoodworking

We are currently reproducing the challenging things Side Chair by Thomas Seymour, c.1810. I’ve never built a piece that required so many full-sized templates. A chair has no vertical straight lines. All components are shaped, curved, sculpted, rounded and beveled. I think there was a template in the Seymour family store. With a chair template hanging on the wall, he has seen paintings and sketches from the 18th century. Also, I’m sure they used thin wood to make the template. It’s a stiff material, much different than the one I use.

Here is a photo of the original chair in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Of course, I have another advantage over Seymour. It’s SketchUp. Using museum photos, I created his 3D model of the chair from which a full-size template can be extracted.

Here is my SketchUp model.

Here is a photo of the template I extracted from the model to make a rough unglued duplicate.

I counted over 20 templates and know there are many more for engraving details and other missing pieces. On the floor on the right is a thick poster board I bought at an art supply store. It’s much thicker and stronger than regular poster board, but it’s easy to cut with an X-acto knife. Using this method, templates can be created quickly without having to be sawed or smoothed with a file. Print your SketchUp template on 8 1/2 x 11 paper (for larger pieces, tape multiple sheets together as needed). These sheets are then affixed to poster board with standard glue sticks.

Many of the molded components for this chair required three full-size templates that included not only the front view, but also the top and end views. It also produces a full size SketchUp output of him in X-ray style. That way you can see what’s happening on the other side of the component.

Below is an example of half templates (top, side, front view) of a curved back splat section.

If I needed a long template to account for the curvature of the component (like hind legs) I could use the SketchUp Flattening Extension which creates a flattened full length template.

I love how quick and easy it is to create a template. This allows us to spend more time building the actual store.

Here is a photo of the finished work.

Tim

Killenwood

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