The book’s engine room · the series
Technical Notes: the register
The weedy details of the hundred year chair, kept out of the narrative and in the open. Each note owns one question and carries the same skeleton: the claim in one sentence, the evidence and the numbers, sources with their verification status stated plainly, open questions, and a revision date. Notes are public from their first draft and are refined iteratively, forever. The book's chapters argue and cite the notes; the Keel pattern stays the buildable one and cites the notes for rationale; the build log stays the diary that notes distill.
Source discipline, stated once and inherited by every note: a claim is either VERIFIED (checked against the cited source on a stated date), STANDARD (textbook-level fact, source named), DERIVED (computed here, assumptions shown), or UNVERIFIED (flagged, and not repeatable in print until checked).
| Note | Title | Owns | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| TN-1 | The Panel Problem | Flat panels for the millennium chair: movement, lamination, adhesives, the replacement doctrine | Drafted 17 Aug 2026 |
| TN-2 | Adhesives and Reversibility | What glue does and whether a compression-fastened chair needs it (often not); hide glue against modern adhesives on century timescales; reversibility as the repairability spec | Drafted 19 Aug 2026 |
| TN-3 | Hardware Metallurgy | Bronze, brass, zinc's slither, oak and iron; quarried from the bronze memo of 6 Aug 2026 | Planned |
| TN-4 | Fastening Systems Survey | Screw versus preloaded bolt for a century: the drawbored peg and bronze screw are proven, the bolt-sleeve-spring is not, and the frame solve says where each belongs; barrel nuts, cross dowels, and the Lamello P-System still to fold in | Drafted 19 Aug 2026 |
| TN-5 | Finishes and Moisture | Whether to finish at all (dry sheltered wood needs none); the thin-renewable-not-thick-film doctrine and what really separates the finishes; breathable against film; end grain; the maintenance covenant | Drafted 19 Aug 2026 |
| TN-6 | The Conformance Cohort | The twelve printed rings, the frame test, and what the chair votes settle | Planned, awaits the frame test |
| TN-7 | Why Joints Go Slack | Creep, moisture and thermal movement against preload; the strategies that answer them | Drafted 17 Aug 2026 |
| TN-8 | CAD by Conversation | Doing mechanical CAD with a language model: the protocol, the costs, and the failure modes | Drafted 17 Aug 2026 |
| TN-9 | The Keel | The member that encodes the chair: one datum, every hard joint, and what that means for templates and net shape | Drafted 17 Aug 2026 |
| TN-10 | Millimeters | The millimeter as the quantum of human-scale making: resolution, integer arithmetic, and the one imperial holdout | Drafted 18 Aug 2026 |
| TN-11 | The Mark | Signing the chair so the signature survives: the institutional glyph, the maker and restorer ciphers, the transferable bronze relic, the self-documenting register | Drafted 19 Aug 2026 |
| TN-15 | Colors and Finishes, the Red and Blue Palette | Working color spec for a Rietveld Red-and-Blue production version: the Cassina 635 estimates in hex, Pantone, and RAL, the historical chrome-yellow-vermilion-ultramarine palette, and the spray-out doctrine; archived research, unverified | Archived 24 Aug 2026 |
| TN-16 | Comfort: Pressure, Contour, and Cushion | Why the seat wants redistribution and the back wants geometry: sit-bone pressure, contour versus cushion versus mesh, foam bottoming, the layered stack (closed-cell under open-cell), and the comfort-tournament protocol | Drafted 24 Aug 2026 |
The name of the chair
The Keel Chair. The name is the member every version shares: two congruent triangles meeting along one raking spine. Under it are two lines, Keel Panel and Keel Truss, divided by whether the members are plates or sticks pinned at the ends, and then posture, dining where the triangles meet at the seat and lounge where they meet at the arm.
Two earlier names are retired. Drawings before 18 August 2026 call the chair 2T. From 18 August the working name was K2: the K chairs came first, drawn out of a Vilbert, the double triangle made the second of them, and the 2 did double duty for the two triangles. K2 and K3 stay in the book and in the build log, where they name particular prototypes on particular days. Everywhere else the chair is a Keel Chair. The descriptive phrase "two triangles" stays, because it describes the geometry rather than naming the object.
The names of the parts
Standardized 17 Aug 2026 and used from here on, in every sheet, note and normative clause: back, seat, keel, front, tie. The keel was called the leg or the rear leg; the front was called the strut. TN-9 says why the keel earned a name of its own. Older drawings and chapter drafts carry the old words until they are next regenerated.
The five threads
Named 18 Aug 2026. The project runs one chair through five lenses, and every note serves at least one of them. The threads: scrap, how to use Makerstock and salvage stock; longevity, the hundred year chair and the thousand year discipline; process, how designing actually happens, recorded honestly; bits and atoms, what travels as information and what must travel as material; democratization, Rietveld's move a century later, designs anyone can build from anyone's stock. By note: TN-1 longevity; TN-2 longevity and process; TN-3 longevity; TN-4 longevity, process, and democratization; TN-5 longevity and process; TN-6 process; TN-7 longevity and bits and atoms; TN-8 process and bits and atoms; TN-9 process, bits and atoms, and democratization; TN-10 process and bits and atoms; TN-11 democratization, longevity, and bits and atoms. The lineage exhibit draws the family tree the threads run through.
Where the current material lives until its note absorbs it
The longevity artifact survey (k-chair-longevity-survey-04Aug2026) feeds TN-1 and the timeline. The bronze memo (k-bracket-bronze-memo-06Aug2026) is most of TN-3. The Lamello P-System note still sits in the joints chapter outline and folds into TN-4 (now drafted) on its next pass. The verification ledger consolidates every open item from the chapter drafts and outlines into one place: the ledger.
Technical Notes of the Hundred-Year Chair: public from first draft, refined iteratively, forever. A claim is VERIFIED, STANDARD, DERIVED, or UNVERIFIED, and says which. The register · the verification ledger · hundredyearchair.com