The classic round back Windsor chair style creates an elegant look for any room. Building a Windsor chair starts with raw wood logs and requires advanced woodworking skills. An ambitious woodworker can tackle building of these chairs from scratch, while chair kits with pre-cut pieces allow novices to assemble and custom finish their chair without having to cut or shape any wood. Start with a 20"x20" piece of pine. Using a lightweight wood such as pine simplifies the carving process and reduces the finished weight of the chair. Cut the basic shape of the seat using a jigsaw or table saw. Carve out the gutter, the depressed portion in the center of the seat. Drill holes for your spindles, chair back, and chair legs. Finish the edges of the seat using a router. Make your chair legs from table leg blanks, choosing a wood such as maple if you're carving intricate details. Mount your wood on a lathe, and mark your pattern. Turn on your lathe at a low speed to start, using the formula 6000 divided by the diameter of your wood in inches to determine the RPM speed of the lathe.
Shape your chair legs using chisels. Repeat this process for your stretchers. Drill holes halfway through each chair leg to accommodate the stretchers. For the back and spindles, begin with logs of white oak or another hardwood. Oak provides the necessary strength for thin spindles. Begin by splitting your logs with a froe into a manageable size. Next, whittle the spindles using a draw knife. Heat another thin piece of the oak log using a steamer or heat gun until the wood begins to sweat. To form the chair back, bend this piece around a pre-made plywood form designed to your Windsor chair's specifications. Drill holes in the chair back for the spindles. Whether you carved your Windsor chair pieces yourself or bought a kit, the assembly process is the same. First assemble the base of the chair. Place a thin layer of glue inside the stretcher holes on the chair legs and insert the stretchers, then use a rubber mallet to drive the pieces together. Repeat this process to join the chair legs to the seat.
Measure the height of the chair at each corner. If the chair is not level, determine how much of which legs must be cut down to level it, and carefully cut the leg with a band saw. Once the chair is level, glue your spindles into place. Finally, put the rounded chair back into position, ensuring it fits over each spindle and into the pre-drilled holes on chair seat. Glue it into place. Sand the chair using progressively finer sandpaper, using at minimum 120-grit, 220-grit, and 400-grit sandpapers. You may continue to use finer sandpapers if you want a smoother finish. Stain your chair using a water or oil-based stain in any color of your choice. After the stain has fully dried, apply a wood finish. A penetrating finish such as tung oil gives a more natural look, while surface finishes such as polyurethane varnish provide a durable high-gloss finish. The search bar found at the top of every eBay page can help you find everything you need to build your own Windsor chair. Simply enter your search terms, such as "draw knife" or "lathe," and you'll see the full range of products available from eBay's sellers.
When you find something interesting, click on its listing in the search results to see more product and seller information, add it to your watch list, place a bid, or Buy It Now.About the brand: Ercol Furniture Ltd There are no products matching the selection.The David Phipp Price Promise At David Phipp we understand that you want the best product at the best price. If you do find a like-for-like item cheaper anywhere else within 50 miles of our showroom then please let us know. We believe in giving you the right price without compromising on service. WINTER SALE NOW ONThe farmhouse look is having a respectable resurgence in dining aesthetics, focusing on variations of the Windsor chair due to its smart-casual look and versatility. Here we offer a short history of the chair and introduce how Billiani’s ‘W’ range perfectly reinterprets a 290-year-old-design. Windsor chairs originated in England in the seventeenth century and were, as you may have guessed, made in Windsor, although they were also made throughout the country during the time.
By the mid-seventeenth century they were hugely popular in America, where many of the varieties came from the change in wood available which enabled stronger, often bolder designs. Generally, chairs which are grouped together as being ‘Windsor’ simply have their back and legs attached to their seat. More specifically they have a horizontal comb-back or scroll-back or they have a bentwood curved outline. Bracing-sticks (diagonal supports) are often used for extra support for the backs where as armchair variations incorporate an ingenious arm-bow; a semi-circular length of bentwood which creates two arms and connects the rails across the back. The legs are often turned (shaped by spinning against cutting tools) and connected by a ‘H’ stretcher. There are possibly hundreds of traditional variations on the Windsor chair and practically any modern ‘farmhouse’ or ‘country’ style chair will tend to be based on one of these designs. The Fan-back Windsor Chair, for instance, combines an arm-bow back with spindles topped with a connective piece of wood to support the spindles, it has a saddle seat and a H stretcher.
Ercol Furniture is still popular throughout homes of the world and the range is hailed for holding many timeless classics. Contract furniture has recently had a major overhaul, due to the ‘casual dining’ phenomenon. Diners now shun stuffy-dining rooms and instead seek good quality food in relaxed interiors. This has resulted in many traditions of eating-establishments being reinvented. Interior designers and contract furniture manufacturers have responded swiftly by adapting and reinventing traditional designs . The way in which Windsor chairs have been reinvented by contract furniture exprerts Billiani is a perfect example of this. Historically Windsor chairs have been painted due to the variegated nature of the wood, this lends itself perfectly to modern design where RAL colours can be used to produce bold and long lasting finishes. Billiani launched the ‘W range’ in 2014, designed by award-winning furniture expert and visionary Fabrizio Gallinaro, all of which was based on the Windsor.