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Morley Mortiser Build
Being comfortable with hand tools and using machines for basic dimensioning of materials has not translated to a quick and easy bar stool project. Mistakes have been made, lessons learned and in some cases re-learned and the project is far from complete. One area of woodworking that I have avoided is the use of routers for mortise and tenons and pattern routing. That’s partly what this project is about pushing new skills.
Reviewing the project videos it became clear that I would need some jigs for the mortises. Fine Woodworking had an article in Feb 2023 edition showing the Morley Jig and it was clear that this had probably been used when Morley made the original stools. The videos used alternate methods but the jig worked well and I can see its use in the future.
No need for me to show any more build details since fine woodworking did an excellent job in their article.
Morley Bar Stool – Seat Rails
Chairs have angles and in the case of this stool the angle of the front legs is 6.5 degrees from the back legs. The design of the stool actually means that as long as you are consistent the angle could vary slightly.
I spent the morning dimensioning and cutting to size for the rails two for each chair (8 total). Generally things went smooth with a small problem.
As I finished up some of the lumber dimensioning a couple of fun things happened. The first was the movement in some of the off cuts I had set aside. Walked out of the shop for a few hours and these slits had opened up considerably. The second item is less enjoyable. Saw Stop blade struck what remained of a staple in the end of board, another blade damaged. If I had trimmed the end a few mm further up the board would have saved a lot of money.
It was necessary at this point to take a walk!
Morley Bar Stool – Make another seat
When last we visited the seat construction was going well and i was going to finish the blog with a quick view into cutting the seat to final dimensions. That did not go as planned so I got to make one more seat blank and repeat!
Here’s what happened and several lessons that followed. The blanks needed to be smoothed and I did this using a belt sander for their concave curves and I hand plane and sander for the convex curves. Yeah I know the hand tools keep sneaking into the process. No pictures of the smoothing but I think you can imagine it. Once the curve was smooth the seat blank (curved needed to be trimmed to size and shaped. You can see the template in the picture below.
I mounted the template onto the first three blanks and trimmed it on the bandsaw and used the router table to bring out to final shape. Blank number three…Don’t tell anyone but I screwed the template on in the wrong direction! The bandsaw was very efficient as it cut off the wrong end and I had a seat without enough depth…firewood! I took the other blanks and all went well until the last one where the router ate part of the blank. Puzzled I learned that the router bit was too low since the mounting bolt had loosened. Two mistakes and I leave the shop. No sense i risking injuries when I am frustrated with myself.
Later I returned to the lumber yard picked up a new board and made two more seat blanks. This also brought about a new lesson, I could not cut the curve smoothly on the blank. After several minutes I remembered changing to the wider bandsaw blade and realized that it was preventing the blade to match the desired curve. As I mention I am relatively new to the bandsaw and curved jigs. A narrower blade and everything worked well.
Jig Building – Morley Bar Stools
There are four stools to be made as part of this project and repetitive tasks lend themselves to power tools and jigs. Not being a frequent jig builder, I found this a challenge and in particular the instructions were not as clear as I hoped. I’ll share a few photos and a brief description of the method I came up with after watching the videos of the jigs in action.
The seat consists of three boards with a curved front and back. Each curve requires a separate jig. Let’s take a look at the concave cut first
The Jig consists of two curves made of plywood. One piece fixed to the band saw with a clamp and a second that rides alongt the edge of the first piece of plywood like a turn table. On these pieces I glued up a couple of pieces of 2×4 to ma end support structure for the seat blanks and a third that will allow a clamp to be placed to hold the blank secure. The two support strucures required a couple of cuts on the table saw to securely first the blank at the correct angle
In the pictures below you can see how the two pieces of plywood interact.
I think you can scroll through the pictures and see that the second jig is similar to the first but I placed the saw on the inside of the clamped pieces at the interaction of the two curves.
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