Chair from a branch

There's a book out there by J. Alexander called Make a Chair from a Tree -- and I guess that's what I'm doing (incrementally) -- although I'm making it from a fallen branch, and the chair will look different from what they show in the book (and in fact, I'm taking a different approach from my understanding of what they teach in the book).

In mid-December a branch blew down in a storm.  It fell onto another tree:  luckily, there was no major damage to the other tree:  it only lost a small-ish branch.

The tree that lost a branch was a "volunteer":  we didn't plant it -- it grew by itself -- which is why it's so close to the "intentional" tree.

It's hard to tell the scale of the tree branch, but the base of the branch is -- well, a little smaller than my thigh.  That doesn't help you a whole lot -- but it gives you an approximate sense of scale (e.g. smaller than my torso; larger than my calf).

I salvaged most of the section that I outlined in red, and cut it into lengths that were as long as I could make them and still have that section of wood be reasonably straight.

I ended up with this (by the time I thought to take the picture, there are additional pieces that I've already rough-processed). 

The wood with the rough bark is wattle:  it's not a "lumber" tree because it doesn't grow big enough -- but it has a nice color (pink, which dries to brown, for the heartwood; a creamy yellow for the sapwood).  The longer, narrower pieces to the lower left are lagerstromia, which is the other tree that the large branch fell on.

My aim is to make a rustic-looking stick chair, using only the wood I've salvaged from these two fallen branches. I'm thinking something along the lines of this:

(Source:  A Lost Art Press blog entry)

I've been working on this project most weekends since I salvaged the tree branches on the 22nd of December.  But because I don't want the branches to dry out before I've split them (thus "freeing" the core, so that when they dry, and thus shrink, they're less likely to split and crack -- because the wood has "somewhere to go" rather than having tension encircling the core).  I've kept the wood that I haven't yet processed in a garbage can of water:  this keeps them wet until I have a chance to get to them.

My basic approach is to vaguely shape them with my hewing hatchet (check out all the chips of wood on the ground!!!, so that the billets (pieces of wood) are a little less asymmetrical when I put them on the lathe... 

...and then I turn them on my lathe... 

Until they look like this: 

The photo shows three of the pieces that will eventually become chair legs. As mentioned above, at the moment I'm just rough-turning them:  then I'll let they dry for a year or two, and then finish turning them.  The narrower pieces of wood, including the lagerstromia pieces, will be the spindles.  And I'll split the larger-diameter -- but shorter -- pieces into slabs, which will become the armrests and the seat.

I'm planning to make all the legs, and spindles, intentionally different:  it's more interesting that way.  Once I have all the pieces in their final shape (in about two years; see below), I'll lay them out and decide which ones would look best in which location -- e.g. the front legs should probably be thicker than the back legs.


The chair back will be made out of a branch that looked like this...

 ...and then I chopped the stub off, so that a curved section remained.

Then I used my hewing hatchet to rough-shape the rest of it, into an approximate seat-back shape:

And then:

 (The red flower pots are just there to hold it up, for the photo.)


In another few weekends, I'll have the parts collected. Then, as mentioned, I'll set them aside for a year or two, until the excess moisture content is gone -- and then come back to it.

--GG