For this chair, I was lucky enough to locate some 20 year old, air dried cherry. Aged cherry is one of my favorite woods for furniture. The patina that cherry acquires is second to none.
Here I am trying to layout the cuts for each piece of the chair. You will notice the large board to the rear. I had planned to use that board as the source for most of the pieces for this chair as that would guarantee similar color and grain throughout.
I was quite surprised however, when I started cutting out my pieces. Outwardly, this board showed very minor bug damage. Unfortunately, appearances can be deceiving as shown by the following images. This board was so riddled by worm holes that the entire board was nearly rendered useless. There were so many holes, that the structural integrity of the legs would have been in question.
Here you can see the layout for the pieces that make up the headrest. These pieces must be from the same board to guarantee grain and color matching. The pieces will be coopered and glued to provide the curved headrest required for the finished chair.
Continue to Cutting / Preparing the Blanks