That's all she wrote

I'm happy to announce the chair is (mostly) complete! I put on a couple of coats of Watco Danish Oil, and let it dry all day. You have to keep wiping the oil off, as it seeps out over a few hours before it's dry enough to sit on. Over the next few weeks I will apply a few more coats of the oil, and do a wet sanding with 400 then 600 grit sandpaper, for a nicer, deeper finish. The finish looks beautiful- a nice satin appearance, and it really shows off the characteristics of the wood.


Whenever I build a project I have an appreciation of just how much work goes into the original. This chair sells for approx. $4,000 US / 2840 EURO. That seems like a lot, and it is, but after building this chair I understand it. I spent about $250 / 177 EURO on the wood and milling, and another $25 or so on the oil, dowels, and sandpaper. The cost of the chair comes in the labor. My estimate is around 40 hours of work on this. All the filing, sanding, finishing, takes a long time, and can be very tiring.

I wouldn't necessarily recommend this project to the novice woodworker. The investment in materials is not inexpensive, and you cannot afford to make a mistake. That means every angle has to be exact, and every measurement correct. It would also be good if you had experience working with dowel points and felt confident to do some heavy duty routing to make the mortise & tenon joints. I got lucky building this, as there were no measurement errors, and nothing went terribly wrong. Some of the angles are a hair off, but other than that it came out nice.

I hope you enjoyed watching, and drop me an e-mail if you have any questions!