Mid-century Armchair

Comfort and style combined

While you’ll admire this gorgeous cherry pair for their echoes of sleek mid-century modern style, lounging in the chair and putting your feet up reveals their most winning quality: comfort.

Rounded corners and sculpted rails add a bit of complexity, but our instructions and full-size patterns help you build this pair easily. And ready-made cushions [Source] make upholstery a cinch.

The corner joinery, with inset corner reinforcing blocks, makes the side frames for the chair and footstool the most involved aspect of construction. We cut and machined parts for both the chair and footstool sides at the same time because they employ the same setups. Then, we set aside the footstool parts to assemble later.

1 Cut to size parts A–D for the chair sides and O–R for the footstool sides [Drawings 1 and 2, Materials List].

2 Miter-cut at 45° both ends of the chair arms (A) and footstool tops (O), and the top ends of the front and back legs (B, C, P, Q) [Drawings 1 and 2]. Miter-cut the leg bottom ends and both ends of the feet (D, R) at 10°.

Cut the corner blocks (E–G) to shape

3

[Full-size Patterns, Photo A] from overlength blanks. (We made three 13⁄4×33⁄4×15" blanks.

After cutting, trim the top edges of blocks F and G to 90° with the back.

Dry-assemble the 90° corners (A/B, A/C,

4

O/P, O/Q) and scribe the 90° corner blocks (E) onto them [Photos B and C]. 5 Rabbet the 45° miter-cut ends of parts A–C and O–Q where marked [Drawings 1

and 2, Skill Builder].

Tip! With the blade already tilted to 10° for bevel-cutting parts D and R, cut the 80° corner blocks (F) on the left side of the blade and the 100° blocks (G) on the right (assuming a left-tilting blade). Return the blade to 0° to cut the 90° blocks (E).

6 Scribe the 80° corner blocks (F) to legs B and Q and the 100° blocks (G) to legs C and P [Drawings 1 and 2, Photo D]. Rabbet the leg ends on their inside faces. 7 Dry-assemble a foot (D) and leg (B) and scribe the location of block F on the foot [Photos E and F]. Similarly, dry-assemble and mark the other B/F/D joint and the C/G/D, Q/F/R, and P/G/R joints. Rabbet the foot (D, R) ends [Drawings 1 and 2], and drill pocket holes in the underside of the feet. 8 Glue together the 90° corners (A/B/E and A/C/E) for each chair frame. After those joints dry, glue the leg/foot joints (B/F/D and C/G/D). After the glue dries, drive pocket screws into the foot/leg joints. 9 Bandsaw and sand the radius on each outside corner [Drawings 1 and 2], and chamfer the inside edges [Exploded View]. Finish-sand the sides to 220 grit.

Note: To create a continuous grain pattern over the legs and arms/tops, cut parts from one board for each chair and footstool side in B, A, C and Q, O, P order. You can cut the feet (D, R) from any board.

Tip! Tape the dry-assembled joints together while fitting the corner blocks.

A Bandsaw the corner curves, sand each curve to 220 grit, then crosscut the corner blocks to length on the tablesaw.

Note: After this step, set aside the footstool tops, legs, and feet (O–R), four E blocks, two F blocks, and two G blocks to assemble the footstool later.