With construction on the chair finished and the cushions being made at Privette's Upholstery in Monroe, NC, I had time to focus on building the footstool. While I don't have the sewing skills to make the cushions for the chair, I do know how to make a footstool cushion, so I asked the folks at Privette's to hold back a yard or so of the leather they used for the chair cushions, so I could match the footstool to the chair.

Here, I've dimensioned and prepared all the parts for the footstool. Building the footstool is somewhat easier than the chair, being smaller and having fewer pieces. It took me almost a year to build the chair, working a few hours at a time mostly on weekends and after getting home from work. The footstool was built in two days.

RICK BUILDS A MORRIS CHAIR

PART V:  Building the Footstool and Finishing the Chair!

You may be able to see here that I did not make quadrilinear legs for the footstool. The legs for the footstool are only an inch and three quarters thick, and making quad legs would have been quite a chore. In the end, I decided to go with laminated legs, with just two quartersawn faces. I probably could have veneered the non-quartered faces, but I decided to take a pass on it. With the finish applied, it wouldn't be very noticeable.

As I did with the chair, I constructed the footstool using entirely pinned mortise and tenon joints. There isn't an ounce of metal in this entire project--no screws, no nails, no brads. Both the chair and the footstool are all wood.  

The process for building the footstool was exactly the same as for the chair, so I'll spare you the details, and just show the completed stool.

The next step is to make the cushion. I cut a piece of half-inch plywood to form the base, and bought a piece of four-inch thick high density upholstery foam off eBay, along with some dacron batting. In order to keep the foam from sliding around on the plywood as I fitted the leather, I decided to glue the foam to the backer board. To do this, I mixed some Titebond glue with a little water, and wiped it around on the backer board. The middle pic shows the backer board and the foam. After letting the glue get tacky, I placed the foam on the glue, and put some tool boxes on top to put pressure on the center. I let it dry for an hour before proceeding.
After the glue dried, I covered the foam with two or three layers of dacron batting, and then cut the leather to size and draped it over the foam and backer board to make sure I had enough to get a good stapling edge on the bottom.
The rest of the process is a lot like wrapping a present, except that you're using leather instead of paper, and staples instead of tape.

Here, I've folded the leather around the backer board, and using a stapler I anchor it in place.

By using lots of staples, you distribute the holding power over the entire length of the side, and reduce the chance that the leather will weaken or tear at the stapling sites.
After the first two sides are tacked down, I fold the edges in and tack them, and--as if wrapping a present--I fold the middle portion under and fasten it to the backer board.

Then I use my fingers to stuff any leather poking out under the center fold, and tighten the whole she-bang before doing the final stapling.

To the left is how the folded edge looks after stapling, and below is the completed cushion! Now all I have to do is apply the finish to the wood, and I'm done!!!
Fumed, Quarter Sawn White Oak
The traditional finish for Arts and Crafts style oak furniture is a combination of ammonia fuming and some kind of sealer such as shellac or lacquer.

Nobody is exactly certain where the ammonia fuming process started, but most theories point to the use of oak for framing horse barns on eighteenth and nineteenth century farms. Over time, because of the ammonia in the atmosphere arising from horse and cow urine, the wood would darken and the quartersawn ray fleck patterns would be accentuated. This is because the ammonia interacts with the tannic acids in the wood, which occurs in different levels in the flecked and non-flecked portions of the wood. The picture to the left is of a piece of oak that has been ammonia fumed.

Gus Stickley and his brothers knew about this phenomenon, and developed a process to artificially fume their wood using anydrous ammonia in an enclosed space. 

Several years ago, I built an Arts and Crafts Stickley-style bookrack out of quartersawn white oak. I had a dead refrigerator in the garage that we hadn't arranged to have hauled off yet, so I decided to use it as an ammonia-fuming chamber. I acquired some anhydrous ammonia from a chemical supply house in town, arranged the bookrack parts in the refrigerator, poured the ammonia into a bowl which I placed on the floor of the fridge, and shut the door.

A piece of advice: NEVER NEVER TRY THIS AT HOME!! Sure, the wood darkened. It looked great. On the other hand, I nearly lost the ability to appreciate its appearance when I opened the door to the refrigerator after several days. I wore a respirator, but forgot to protect my eyes. Ammonia fumes can easily cloud the cornea of your eye and render you blind. I felt my eyes stinging, and I ran from the garage before any serious harm was done. If I had not worn a respirator, I could easily have incurred extreme corrosive damage to my lungs. Plus it stunk to high heaven and it took weeks to get the smell out of the garage completely.

Please let me state this again: FUMING WITH ANHYDROUS AMMONIA IS VERY DANGEROUS, AND POTENTIALLY DEADLY!!! I don't do it anymore. You shouldn't either.

The question is, how can we get that same ammonia fumed look in our Arts and Crafts oak furniture, without actually using ammonia?

There are a couple of ways. One is to use an ammonia solution and wipe it onto the wood over and over, for several days or weeks. The liquid ammonia will interact with the wood as well as the fumes will. Problem? It still stinks, and you're still dealing with some of the potential health risks of concentrated ammonia.

Another method, and the one I used on this project, is to use a combination of dyes and stains to mimic the traditional Arts and Crafts ammonia-fumed finish.

There are all kinds of finishing materials you can use out there, from Minwax to Homer Formby, among others.

I've had a lot of success with General Finishes' dyes, stains, and topcoats, and I use them a lot.

Here are the three components I used on the Morris chair project. Amber water-based dye, brown mahogany gel stain, and a clear satin gel poly topcoat.

 

The first step is to cover the chair and the footstool with the amber water-based dye. As I did with most of the finishing process, I apply the dye with a foam brush and some lint-free rags. Old sheets make good rags, if you can locate them.

Being water-based, the dye does raise the grain a little bit, and leave the wood a little feathered. So, after it dries I go over the wood with some very fine grained (800 grit) sandpaper to level the wood. Below is a pic of the chair after dyeing.

Like ammonia, the dye is absorbed differently into flecked and non-flecked oak, leaving a nicely contrasted base for the dark gel stain I'll use in the next step.
Here, I'm ragging on the brown mahogany gel stain. Gel stain is kind of controversial in furniture-building circles. Unlike typical stain, it doesn't soak very deeply into the wood. Instead, it mostly sits on top of the wood, a little like paint (though it never peels like paint). The advantage is that you can control the depth of the color by limiting the amount of stain you use, or adding more if you want a darker shade.

Also, gel stain contains polyester acrylic ingredients which cure as the stain dries. The traditional finish for furniture is varnish, shellac, or lacquer. Some people think poly is a cheat and--being petroleum-based chemicals--not that great for the wood. The fact is that poly cures harder and more durable than most other finishes. It's a 21st century finish, and we live in that century, so I use it for furniture.

While finishing the chair, I also apply finish to the pegs I turned on my mini-lathe, and the wooden washers that go between with pegs and the seat back stiles.

Yeah, that's right. I turned wooden washers. Everything on this chair is hand-fabricated.

I don't have a picture of me applying the gel poly satin topcoat, but I basically did it the same way I did the other coats--slap it on with a foam brush and then wipe it down with a lint-free rag.

After two or three coats of the poly coat (depending on the use the part was intended to get), I got the following results. Compare this finish to the traditional ammonia fumed finish Gus Stickley used a hundred years ago. I think it stands up pretty well.

And, after applying the finish to the footstool, this project is finished!

I can check one major project off my woodworking bucket list, and I still have all my templates and forms available if one of the kids or (someday, after I retire) a customer wants one of his/her own and I decide to make another one.

I installed the chair in my home office, where I write my books and short stories, and keep my personal library (and a small HDTV for watching football and races). I'm looking forward to spending a lot of time this winter lounging and reading in complete Arts and Crafts comfort!

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