Starting to look like a chair

After a whole lot of final fitting, rounding-over and scraping, I assembled the back of the chair.  As I wrote earlier, I wanted to do this because I want to fit the remaining pieces rather than measure them, especially because of the compound angles of the side seat rails.  All of the joints on the chair are pegged but I chose not to drawbore them because this oak is so dense and the pegs are so stout that I didn't think they would deform as intended.  I had visions of the pieces splitting instead.  A middle ground would have been to drawbore the pieces very slightly.  At some point, I may try some experiments with pieces of my scrap white oak.  In any case, the joints are tight and the back looks good to me, except for the one grain mismatch I mentioned earlier.

The next step was to make the front legs and fit them to the side rails.  Here is what I have:

It was a relief to see the front legs vertical and things looking roughly as they should.  You can see in the front picture how the side seat rails slope up and out.  The chair is a full 4 inches wider in the front, which seems like quite a lot to me but it does give the chair the appearance of receiving you with "open arms."

So now it's on to making and fitting the stretchers and arms.  The arms have a substantial curve to form a second Timberline Arch and I'll have to make a template for them.  I'll also have to take a trip back to the lumber yard to see if the whiskey distillers have left any quartersawn white oak because I don't have material suitable for the arms.