Craftsmanship in Wood

Two recent blog posts worth your read

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... den-bench/

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... h-joinery/

G'Day Brian,
The garden bench is coming along very nicely, It's nice to see traditional Japanese joinery incorporated into furniture. But I wanted to say that I saw your tea house chair for the first time and it is a charming piece! I am a fan of American style windsor chairs and their various derivatives. A very innovative undercarriage design, I thought. Thanks for sharing it.

Regards

Derek

Thanks Derek,

I very much appreciate the thoughtful comments. The Tea House pieces have been very enjoyable to build and I'm lucky to have a client who has given me plenty of freedom to be creative.

It's very nice to have supportive client, both in terms of making the projects possible, and in allowing the artisan space to develop their ideas.

Absolutely, he enjoyed the look of the original version of this bench but when I mentioned making changes to eliminate many of the things I didn't like about the original bench he was all for it. I actually delivered the bench last friday and it was a really encouraging experience, he was very happy with the changes I made to the proportion of the bench and the joinery.

The Tea House Garden Bench is now completed, please have a read. I look forward to your comments.

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... -complete/

G'day Brian,

Brian wrote: ↑

Tue Jun 27, 2017 6:12 pm

The Tea House Garden Bench is now completed, please have a read. I look forward to your comments.

https://brianholcombewoodworker.com/201 ... -complete/

I commented there, but have a query here regarding the feet.

I was curious about the size of the feet. I would imagine that you would get quite a large amount of weight being transferred through quite a small surface area. Do you think there may be problems with this, not just to the feet, but perhaps to the surface it is resting on? Particularly if you have a few people sitting on it.

I guess making larger feet would be quite wasteful of the brass though.

Iain (not a metallurgist or expert in mechanical forces)

Thanks Ian, that is a good question. I made the bar stock 1/4" so you have a thread engagement of 1/4" or 5 threads in this case per foot. The threads are 1/4-20. Given that there are 6 feet in total each pair would be carrying a load of no more than 1.5 persons or maybe an extreme maximum of 500lbs so each bolt needs to carry a maximum of 250lbs each.

Given the kind of wimpy fasteners I see in chairs I thought I was going overkill.

Brian wrote: ↑

Wed Jun 28, 2017 8:02 am

Given that there are 6 feet in total each pair would be carrying a load of no more than 1.5 persons or maybe an extreme maximum of 500lbs so each bolt needs to carry a maximum of 250lbs each.

Given the kind of wimpy fasteners I see in chairs I thought I was going overkill.

I think what Iain was getting at wasn't fastener strength, but rather the force between the brass feet and the floor. It's hard to tell from the photo, but the brass leveler feet appear to have a small contact surface relative to most commercial leveler feet I've encountered. (But they are definitely gorgeous!)

Ah, I see. Yes, it's about 1/2" diameter on the feet. They're on the small side, but on stone and concrete they have been quite fine. I might want something bigger for a wooden floor, in fact I've used 3/4" plastic capped thumb screws for wooden floors.