I made some good progress on the bench today despite some setbacks caused by inaccurate plans. I do a mix of projects, some from plans, some from my head. For something traditional like this I like to go with a set of plans because there are decades of knowledge that go into a design like this. There's no need to reinvent the wheel. The issue with this plan was the height listed for the front post. It was one inch higher that what I've done here. There were two things that clued me into something being wrong. The first was the location of the mortise on the angled seat back. It was too low. The other was the detail on the front leg. It didn't seem to match what was in the finished product photo. Everything seemed to point to the leg being too tall. After doing a bit of assembly and doing a test sit, I decided it had to be an error and dropped the height. This turned out to have the added benefit of allowing me to recut the tenon on the top which I had made a bit to thin.
These plans are quite good but there wasn't much of drawing to go off to create the arm rest shape. The main part is just a mirror of the seat curve but the front of the arm required a bit of artistry. I have a set of French Curves which provided the basic shape but my test sit with the example to the right felt not quite right. The arm rest invites you to wrap your fingers around the front but the bottom was much to sharp. I'm sure most people wouldn't even notice but I've sat in these benches before and there is a big difference in a good arm rest and a bad one.
My modified attempt involved increasing the curve just slightly on the bottom. I still have to clean these up but it made a world of difference. A few more hours of shaping, sanding and fitting the tenons and I'll be ready to assemble the sides. I plan to take full advantage of my square hole machine and will be using square pegs instead of round ones. I'll likely be using some ebony to create a nice contrast with the white oak.
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