High Chair

This is what happens when you don't
have the right tools for the job.

When my son was about 6 months old we decided that we needed a high chair.  My wife asked how long it would take to finish it and of course I said, "Oh, maybe a few days..."
He was 9 months old by the time I finished. I usually underestimate my timeline by about three months on average :)

I looked at current designs of wooden high chairs and decided that I really liked the design of a European made highchair as it is very easy to adjust and looks sturdy.  What I didn't like is that the chair is made partly of plywood and that it was out of our price range.

So it should not be surprising that I went about planning to build my own.  I wanted to make the chair two tone to give it an interesting look and decided to use some fasteners that I found at Lee Valley tools.  The wood that I used was walnut and dogwood.  Dogwood is an endangered wood and not available for sale in stores.  I stumbled on a local guy that picks up wood blown down from the street trees in our area and mills them up.  He introduced me to the dogwood that he had rescued.  I discovered that it is a very dense wood and very heavy which was great for the chair since I don't want my son tipping it over backwards.

The seat back was laminated up from pieces of walnut that were steam bent.  This was a poorly laminated piece because I have limited knowledge of steam bending principles.  The seat back turned out pretty good in the end though.  I used epoxy for gluing and tung oil for a finish because it is an edible oil and I figured that my son would chew on it at some point.

So where are the photocopier parts? If you look at the middle and lower part of the chair you will see a couple of black rods.  These are roller rods from the copier and just happen to be a width that seemed good for the chair.  The width of the chair is actually based on these rods.  I was able to tap threads into the ends of the rods.  I built this chair before I had a drill press and did not want to just drill the holes with a hand drill so I built a portable drill press which you can see here.

Created April 2012