Winter Project – Gragg Chair Drawings

One of my many projects for this winter is creating of a set of full-scale construction drawings of the Gragg Chair to sell in the Barn Store (not cheap), and provide to last year’s workshop students.

I have a number of full-scale drawings and tracings from the Smithsonian chair, in my opinion the best condition of the extant chairs, but these are just working drawings for me to use.  I need to create a set that would inform the craftsman out in Topeka or Peoria or even, heaven forbid, California.

I’ve got the roll of drawing paper, I located a shop over the mountains to replicate them (in the old days these were known as “blueprint shops,” but like film photography this is an extinct technology; it’s all bitmap imaging/printing, now), and I’ve got a big flat space up in the barn attic on which to work.  At this point I’m just waiting on some warmer, sunny days to heat the space enough to work there for more than five minutes.  Were I less of a Luddite I would probably try to learn SketchUp for the task but at this point I am just trying not to forget the compewder stuff I already know.

An ancillary project that excites me is creating a half-scale version of the chair for my soon-to-arrive grandson to use once he becomes a toddler.  That will require a whole new set of drawings and bending forms.  I cannot wait to get that up to speed, by my calculation I’ve got about 24 months to get that done.