The Hundred-Year Chair · a chapter

Old Wood, New Chair

By late September I was sitting every day in a plywood mock-up of the thousand-year chair. The oak was still to come. Plywood let me change the chair while I was deciding what kind of chair I wanted.

I had started toward a lounge chair, then added upholstery, head support, and an ottoman. My favorite recliner was the reference. A tall back on the mock-up supported my head, but I found it comfortable in only one position. To lean farther back and sleep, I wanted the movement of the recliner itself. I did not want to build that mechanism into this chair. I settled on an armchair for conversation and work, with a lower back and level arms that could carry a board for a laptop.

The back height needed sitting to resolve too. I had calculated it from shoulder height, then found that my upper back stopped touching the flat support below that point. I was measuring a body dimension when I needed to know where my body met the chair. For the back angle I used pieces of eighteen-millimeter plywood as shims. After fussing with the mock-up, I wanted the back brought forward by about four degrees. The drawing could record the angle after I chose it.

Plywood armchair mock-up with dark seat and back cushions, temporary boards, blue tape, and clamps at the top of the back.
The plywood mock-up during the back and cushion trials. The tape, clamps, and temporary boards belong to a chair still being adjusted, not to the proposed oak construction.

The cushion made those dimensions harder to keep straight. The top of the seat with me sitting on it was not the face of the panel beneath it, nor the surface of the unoccupied cushion. The drawing needed to distinguish all three. Otherwise I could specify the right angle for the wrong surface and discover the error only after making the frame.

The cushion could also change shape under me. If it compressed more beneath my pelvis than beneath my thighs, a level pad would become a wedge, changing the effective seat angle as well as its height. Its thickness in a catalog would not tell me that shape. The foam's firmness, the distribution of my weight, and the support beneath it would all matter. A back cushion would move me forward relative to the arms too. I needed to judge the frame and cushions together, with me sitting in them.

I built the seat on a plywood frame with four sinuous springs, the familiar zigzag wires, connected by two rows of ties. Over them went an insulating layer, firm foam, and batting. This was something I could sit on while the oak frame remained a drawing. The back would have foam without springs. I was still choosing the final covering.

Four zigzag springs spanning a rectangular plywood seat frame, with two transverse rows of ties.
The spring seat before its insulating layer and foam. The plywood frame and upholstery form a module intended to come away from the oak chair.

The proposed oak frame had become a refinement of Kratstoel: flat boards, square ends, and visible connections. The current drawing uses boards 88 millimeters wide and 21 thick, overlapping in three layers at each side. The angled boards project beyond their crossings. I could keep the square cuts without trying to make every end finish flush against a sloping neighbor. The cushions extend beyond the oak at the front of the seat and the top of the back.

Side profile of the proposed oak armchair, showing square-ended overlapping boards, wooden pegs, and separate dark seat and back cushions.
The proposed armchair in profile, October 2, 2026. Eight peg positions are shown on this side. The cushions project beyond the oak; the drawing is not a photograph of a finished chair.

I had considered closing the frame joints with copper rivets. What bothered me was the repair: someone would need to recognize the fastening, obtain the pieces, and know how to close a new rivet. I preferred wooden pegs for this frame. The drawing shows eight per side, including those holding the extra pieces that thicken the arm and seat rails. The peg material and fit still needed to be settled in wood.

The cushion attachments would be different. My plan called for four bolts per module, passing through the oak into threaded fittings in the replaceable seat or back. I wanted the threads in the part likely to be renewed, leaving plain holes in the frame. Bronze sleeves in those holes were part of the proposal. I still needed to make the connections, check how the panels braced the two sides, and take them apart again.

For the frame I had ordered a hundred board feet of reclaimed timber, sold as white oak. This shipment was from Ohio, not Minnesota. The history supplied with it describes the John Walling log house, built in the 1830s, dismantled in 1972, and rebuilt in Highland County, Ohio. A separate shipment was coming from Minnesota. I had initially confused the two and would need to keep their histories, and the boards I used from each, separate.

I thought the Ohio lot might yield enough wood for three or four chairs. That depended on what remained after preparing it. I still needed to inspect the timber, confirm the wood identification, and see which parts of the hewn logs could become sound chair members. A hundred board feet of old building was not yet a stack of boards I could cut to the drawing.

I estimated that the trees might have been a hundred to two hundred years old when felled. If they were cut for the cabin in the 1830s, some of the wood might reach back three or four centuries. I wanted to investigate the rings, partly because I found the prospect fascinating. The house history could tell me about a building; it could not date each ring or show what had been lost when a log was hewn. I would like to mill some of the oak and keep a record of where the boards came from.

FPO · A4/C3/C5 continuation. Record arrival and lot identity, species confirmation, ring examination or dendrochronology, and the actual milling choices. Show how the hewn faces and growth rings affect the rift- or quarter-sawn boards selected, preparation losses, and usable yield. Then record oak joinery, assembly, cushion attachment and removal, use, and consequential revisions. These outcomes remain unwritten.

For now, the chair I used was still plywood. The seat assembly was built, and I had revised the drawing after the sitting trials. The oak, the pegs, and the removable panels still had to work together. There was also the question of what information I could leave with them, and where to put it.

Notes

A chapter of The Hundred-Year Chair, drafted and refined in public. The same text lives in the book; the interactive tools and the fully-sourced technical notes live here. home · the book · the technical notes · hundredyearchair.com