Cherry Dowel Low Back Chair

This cherry chair is one of my favorite builds to date. I first sketched out the design on paper and then refined the exact dimensions in Sketchup and AutoCAD. All of the dowels were turned by hand on my lathe using carbide turning tools. The diameters of the dowels range from 1” all the way up to 2.5”. Only the 2.5” dowels had to be laminated while the other sizes could be had from 8/4 stock.

The seat was scultped using a carbide abrasive dish made by Kutzall. It attaches to an angle grinder and chews through the wood pretty fast. After that, there is a ton of sanding to be done to get the seat super smooth. The shape of the seat was determined through various sources online including other scultped chair videos on Youtube.

The legs are attached into perfectly sized mortises in the seats and reinforced with a screw. The screw holes are then covered with some very nice looking cocobolo plugs. The chair received two coats of danish oil applied with #0000 steel wool. It’s pertty comfortable and matches the dowel bench I made perfectly!