It's time to work on the seats. The seat tops need to be drilled to accept the spindles and the bow, and the leg holes, which go through the seat also need to be done. These all get drilled from the top.
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| The seat pattern gets traced and all holes marked |
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| The end result is pretty busy |
With the use of this jig, this is pretty easy to do well. But you need to be careful, and double check before drilling, as there's a lot of holes here and messing one up is painful to fix.
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| The jig is aligned and clamped onto the seat on the workbench, for each hole |
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| A regular cordless drill and good quality brad point drill bit are used |
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| The first three spindle holes |
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| All the spindles and the bow |
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| Plus the legs |
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| The bow and legs go all the way through the seat |
Each hole is drilled at a complex angle - angled in both X and Y dimensions with respect to the seat (the center spindle is the one exception). In practice this is made simple by what are called sight lines - these are lines that express both the parallel and perpendicular angles in a single line and angle. It's far too much for me to go into here, but suffice it to say that it is a brilliant invention, on par with the shavehorse which I raved about a few posts back. Easy to look up, or, if you want a great explanation, get the
book! :)
