Thread: What timber to use for chairs

I would go for Jarrah or Tasmanian Blackwood.

Rocker

I think you should be concerned with the quality of the timber rather than, or as well as, the variety.
There are a lot of chairs made from radiata which, by comparison with our native hardwoods, is quite a flimsy timber. By proper selection of the pieces and by good design, those chairs last well. On the other hand, a chair leg made from flawed jarrah will break, despite the general strength of that timber.
My suggestion is that you go with what you can get at a price you can afford, but that you be very selective, especially in respect of the high stress components.
Don't forget salvage places as a source of good timber. Some of the stuff cut and used for fencing, framing and exterior use 50 years ago was better quality timber than we can get for cabinet work today.
Good luck with the project. Chairs scare me. I have repaired quite a few and have built some rough, tough exterior stuff, but fine dining room chairs is out of my league.

If you are planning to dimension the timber yourself, kiln dried hardwood represents good value.
It is a up market structrual timber but is used in suficient volume to be reasonably priced.
It may be a number of spicies including spotted gum but will generally be reasonably consistent & straight grained.

appropriate finishing can make it look quite something.

Stick to hardwood for chairs.
Chairs have to cope with the highest stresses of any piece of furniture.
So chairs are the most difficult furniture to make.
Softwoods dont make good chairs, you wont find antique chairs made from softwoods.

Stains can color any timber. Tas oak can be stained to a jarra color and as the grain is open pored it is similar to jarra and far lighter.

Alix,

Think about the entire chair and within reason you can match your design, joints and variety of timber. I am sure (and again within reasonable limits) you could design and make a strong chair from any timber using appropriate joints and dimensions.

This means a chair with a slender profile would require something like jarrah but at the other extreme I am sure you could make a strong chair out of balsa however it's profile would probably be anything but slender.

Your design might also dictate the direction of grain, for example a chair with curved legs should have the grain as parallel to the edge as possible. Too much end grain and even jarrah will let go.

Not really a direct answer but perhaps some food for thought and comment from others.

- Wood Borer

The generic type of timber is less important than the specific nature of the selected pieces of timber you choose.

To put this argument at its most extreme: balsa is generically classified as a hardwood. (I wouldn't recommend that you use balsa to make your dining chairs).

Throughout Europe, chairs - and a great many other types of furniture - are routinely made from pine. It works perfectly well and will last as long as its owners need. It doesn't, in my opinion, look all that good but the Europeans have a serious problem in sourcing alternative timber at the prices we are accustomed to in Australia.

To put another perspective on this quite complex argument, consider this: hardwoods like jarrah are by their nature relatively brittle. This makes them very unforgiving in structural terms. In other words, if you get your design wrong and place too much stress on your chair components, you'll induce failure more quickly in a dense, relatively brittle hardwood than you will in a more flexible and ductile softwood. (Theoretically, that is. In reality, you are highly unlikely to put this to the test because to do so, you'd have to make 2 identical pieces from 2 different types of wood that both exhibited precisely the same characteristics of grain pattern, knot incidence etc).

Chairs are a serious challenge to the dedicated woodworker. They are placed under far greater loads (both static and dynamic) than tables, cabinets etc. Timber selection is therefore of paramount importance. Softwoods are OK, provided that they are knot-free, straight-grained and look good. Hardwoods are also OK - subject to precisely the same qualifications.

Good luck.

Col

OK, I knew that chair making was not going to be easy and I was intending to practise on making a couple in pine before committing to the real timber.

From the advice you guys appear to be giving it is the correct selection of the wood that will be used in the "stessed" parts of the chair, ie the joints and legs, that is the most important thing. If I select the timber so that as much straight grain as possible is used in these areas then there is a good chance that the chair will survive a reasonable amount of years of service. This is, of course, subject to my ability to make good, tight joints.

You are right about the colour of course, I can stain that to any shade desired. It was just that my wife thought it might be nice to have natural colour rather than artificial. However, I have been researching the cost of the darker timbers and have found that they can cost up to three times that of good old tassie oak so it looks like I will continue using that timber. One of the disadvantages of living out of the main capital cities or large population areas is the cost of having large things like timber delivered. This certainly ups the total cost significantly.

Thanks for your help. As I expect this to be a very long term project you may expect some more queries as I progress.

Thanks,
Allan

Alix
I have toyed with the idea of making chairs from redgum. They would look great BUT as its got a very short grain its totally unsuitable for the backlegs. Have thought that maybe red ironbark might work as the backlegs.

Sorry but I cant think of any other cheap dark wood.

Alix,

Making a set of dining chairs is not actually particularly difficult, if you have a thicknesser to dimension the parts, and precise jigs for cutting mortises and tenons. I will be happy to supply you with articles on making such jigs, if you e-mail me. Nevertheless, there is still a fair amount of work involved. I think that you may regret it in later years if you make your set of chairs out of an inferior timber. Compared to most furniture items, chairs require a minimal amount of wood, so that the saving you will make from buying a cheap timber will be relatively small, whereas the satisfaction you will get from a set of chairs made in a high-quality timber will be lifelong.

Rocker

Alan,

I agree with Rocker. Unlike with making a table, for example, the effort to make chairs, compared to the cost of the timber, is huge. So it is false economy to skimp on the timber for chairs that, unlike the table, are more prone to breaking and harder or impossible to fix if they do break.

Also, most (?) back legs of dining chairs are curved. If you laminate timber for the back legs you can get more strength with less thickness. And with 8 chairs (each with 4 legs) you have at least 96 mortice/tenons which I would always fashion some template or jig to do. If you are up for fashioning a jig/template then joining pieces at angles with such a jig is not much harder than joining at 90 deg.

I attach below a pic of bar stool I made last year where both front and back legs were laminated and although it is a tall stool is quite strong with 28mm x-section legs. For a dining chair I wouldn't curve the front legs and for the back legs I would only curve them in the front-back dimension.

I made 2 stools - this one in silver ash, and another in blackwood. I like working in the lighter colored timbers (tas oak, silver ash) but for a dining table it needs to look more formal so I would recommend blackwood. Also (if you follow my suggestion) the laminations are not as pronounced in darker timbers. If you are intending to stain then by all means go for tas oak, I guess, but for quality furniture I don't like staining, and blackwood has such nice character.

Hope this helps.

IanR

Ian
Sure there isnt much timber in a chair so higher priced timber isnt a major factor, UNLESS you want a matching table which can use a lot of timber.

Laminating the back legs sounds interesting. Would you laminate across the width of the chair or from the back to the front??

What glue would you laminate the legs with?

Alan,
Sugar gum is an attractive medium brown color and strong, could be worth thinking about especially as its native to SA. Its a bit heavy so you may consider slender members to keep the weight down.

All,

Thanks for all of your comments. The debate over what sort of timber to use was great reading. With your help I have managed to convince SWMBO that blackwood is the way to go and I am now chasing around for costs.

The chair design decided on has straight front legs and curved (very elongated S shape) back ones, curved in one dimension only.

As has been said that cost of the chairs is not so much, it is the cost of the solid (made from wide boards) toppped table that really makes the cost add up!!

As far as the M/T work goes I do have a Trend M/T jig to help me.

The really good part about this project is that I also have permission to buy a bandsaw so I can rough cut all of the curved bits. I am currently looking at the H&F BP16A.

Thanks for all your help
Allan

Timber Cost:
The timber for the table will be costly. But can I suggest that you save some money and DON'T buy wide boards. Buy narrower, quarter-sawn boards. Wide boards will invariably be plain sawn and much more prone to cupping. You will have to edge join boards to get the table width anyway, and is there any difference between (say) 4 wide boards edge-joined or 8 narrower boards. Even with plain sawn boards, 8 narrower boards is better. If you buy them (say) 1 ft longer than needed, then with a little positioning effort you will match them up so the join is hardly noticable. Exception to this recommendation: if you find some plain-sawn boards that have really beautiful grain. Then use them and take the risk .... but make sure the moisture content is stabilised first.
(Note: if you are used to Tas Oak you may not appreciate this cupping/grain problem because Tas Oak is nearly always quarter sawn)

Laminating Legs:
A gentle bend will allow wider laminates and lesser of them. A sharper bend requires thinner laminates, more of them, and longer glue-up time.
1) If I was on my own laminating I would use West Systems epoxy because it has a long open time and putting glue on both side of a dozen or so laminations takes time. I have had reasonable success with this glue but you have to pre-mix it (I don't like 2-part glues), the proportions are important, and it is messy.
2) For few laminates and/or with someone to help, I would probably use Titebond Poly which is good, only needs to be applied to one surface and comes in a squeeze bottle .... but it is expensive and it starts foaming after a pretty short time. Clean-up is a minor issue with this glue, but you would probably be putting the laminated leg through the thicknesser after glue-up so this wouldn't be a problem.

I have used U.F. glue with the powder hardener and apart from being a two-part glue and pretty messy to use my experience with it is that it is probably better than the epoxy. Another option: I recently made some laminated door handles using Techniglue that I borrowed from a boat-building friend. (Actually I only "borrowed" the glue containers and unused glue - I didn't return the glue I'd used). Techniglue is a two-part glue but is like a gel and not very messy nor does it seem to be sensitive to exact ratio of mixing. Also Queensland made and cheaper. (avail from CarbaTec).

Hope this helps