I had seen the Grand Canyon El Tovar Hotel Chair in the December 2008 issue of Woodworkers Journal and thought that that could be a great project to undertake some day! My wife decided that my winter of 2008 project should be to build her a Farmer’s Table and I figured you can’t have a farmers table without some appropriate chairs. So along with her work assignment, I added a set of 6 chairs to the list. I was so pleased with the outcome and the fact that the idea for the chairs came from an article in Woodworkers Journal that I thought I should send a note of thanks for the article and a couple of pictures of the finished project.
All the joints in my set of chairs are mortise and tenon joinery as opposed to the dowel pin joinery used in the chair int he article. I just felt that although this is more time consuming it makes a stronger joint. Also the curved backs are bent laminates inplace of cutting them from thicker stock. Each section of the curved back is made up of 5 pieces of red oak. The chairs are red oak finished in early american stain with a wipe on satin finish.
I might add that I retired from the electric utility industry in 2003 and just then decided to get into woodworking. I have found so many ideas from your magazine issues and put them to use on several projects. – Dean Eddy
