White oak and walnut green wood chair

This chair is made from parts split from a chunk of white oak from my father in law’s property, with walnut from a large trunk section given to me by a coworker. The white oak was slightly twisted, so didn’t work very well for the back, but the walnut I had in hand was perfectly straight! I actually previously posted a rocking chair made almost entirely from that walnut tree.

I kind of got the general idea of how to build this chair from a book, and then rushed into the building process because I was kind of excited about it! Ended up only having 2 rungs per side, when the book I read (skimmed) called for 3 rungs on the sides.

Anyway, I ended up adding a third rung to the assembled chair by making it fit the whole way through a 3/4” mortise in the back legs, and then wedging the tenon.

I did pay attention to the part about oversized, oval shaped tenons – the chair took some force to put together, and I’m pretty confident that the rungs will break before they ever come out of the mortises! I actually introduced some twist into the chair that I couldn’t get out because of how tight the tenons were. Next time I’ll be more careful during assembly.

I really enjoyed the process, and I think that the next chair I build will be much better! This one is replacing a really large rolling desk chair in my office/fly tying room. I love that it’s smaller and lighter, with no arms getting in the way. Plus, I made it!