Assembling the upper carriage

Assembly of the upper carriage is not nearly as difficult as the lower. The process is pretty straightforward: Glue the spindles into the seat, add glue to the spindle tenons and mortises in the bow and the bow tenons and seat mortises, and fit the bow onto the spindles and into the seat. A technique I use from the book, is to leave the center spindle significantly longer than the others, which means it is well in place before any of the other spindles make contact, which stabilizes things. Then I do one side most of the way, and then the other. Then a few taps with a mallet seats everything nicely. The spindle tenons then get split and wedged, and the bow tenons, which have already been sawn also get wedged. Then we have a chair!

Sawing the kerf in the bow tenon

Dry fitting the bow, to make sure everything is ready to go

Spindles glued in!

The spindles have marks which orient them as I want them in the seat

Each spindle gets split and wedged immediately after assembly

Center spindle shortened and wedged - wedges go across the grain of the bow to avoid splitting it

The kerf in the bow tenon can close - a chisel will open it enough to start the wedge

Everything wedged - assembly is finished

It's a very satisfying feeling, after all of the time and effort involved, to finally see the chair fully assembled. The risky parts are now all behind me, and all that is left now is to clean up all of the tenons, and then paint the chair. I'm definitely in the home stretch now.