Scoop a Chair Seat on the Table Saw with Mario Rodriguez

Mario Rodriguez of the Philadelphia Furniture Workshop has an article in our August 2013 issue that shows you how to build a clever table saw jig he uses to carve the chair seat for his contemporary chairs; it’s a jig he first encountered two decades ago in a book by Robert Marquis, “Making the Classic Windsor Chair.”

While Mario is an accomplished maker of traditional Windsor chairs (on which he uses scorps, inshaves and other traditional tools for saddling the seat), lately he’s been interested in mid-century modern design, and he’s adapted 20th-century tooling to match the style – including this jig that (along with the table saw of course) quickly turns a seat blank into an evenly scooped chair seat that looks great for contemporary chair designs.

In the video below, Mario tells you a little about his chair and seat designs, introduces the jig (at about the 4-minute mark) then shows you how to use it. Note that in the article, he recommends that at the end of a full pass over the table saw blade, you stop the saw, raise the blade for the second pass, then start over from the beginning. With a little practice, however, you’ll be able to move the jig and workpiece over the blade in both directions, as Mario demonstrates after the initial passes.

— Megan Fitzpatrick

• Just getting into chairmaking? You might like “No-fear Chairmaking,” a video by Christopher Schwarz. Or perhaps you’d like to “Build a Welsh Stick Chair,” with Don Weber (and friends).