By John A. Dumergue

Art comes in many forms, not just in painting and sculpture but also in furniture making, and in particular chair making.

Once while looking for employment, I read an advert for a Chair Maker so I applied for the job. The first question I was asked at the interview was. “Could you make a chair? To which I replied, I think so because I built my own home after completing a 10,000 hour carpentry apprenticeship.

The next question asked was, “When can you start?

This was a wood turning company that supplied chairs and turned table legs for a furniture manufacturer. The original owner’s name was Art, ( I smile about this now) and his son had taken over the business, and Art stayed on as one of the workers.

I soon became skilled at making chairs, there were two types, solid seats and drop in seats. The latter was upholstered. The chairs and turned table legs were made for a furniture manufacturer who had a retail shop in one of the suburbs. They did their own upholstery work.

The back legs of the chairs were marked out using a template then shaped using a bandsaw followed by using a sanding machine. The front legs were turned and sanded. The rails were fitted into the legs using glue and dowels.

The most difficult part was forming the larger of the two backs. These were band sawn from 150 m 75 timber, then shaped using a spoke shave plane, and finally sanded.

All the timber used was Rimu and was plentiful at the time. For the drop in upholstered seat MDF was used as the base.