Well it is the holiday’s and if you have some woodworking skills (and I assume you do) then putting them to work as gifts seems like a natural idea.  I originally started out making kids furniture to sell on Ebay (highly recomended by the way, so go ahead and steal that idea).  Of course this year we have a new munchkin in the family so it only seemed naturally to dust off the old kids chair project.  I use to make the chairs the hard way which is cutting all the sides and doweling them together and hoping it comes out flat.  I have (fnally) learned that this takes way too long to do and there is a different way to skin this cat.  This year I redrew the design to be cut on the cnc machine.

I had the CNC cut all the parts and it tool like 5 minutes and they came out perfect.  Next we rounded over the edges with a palm router.  Anytime you finish an edge, wood becomes furniture in my opinion.  I do realize that not everyone has access to a CNC machine, but if you do, this can be really fun.  Next up was some good old fashioned hand sanding.  I used MDF on this project.  I know what your thinking, it will break, or its cheap, or whats your problem?

Here is my reasoning, and it comes from making a lot of these.  First of all, kids do not weigh that much, so weight is not an issue.  If you use decent joinery along with glue, they really cannot break it.  I use to build the chairs and ship them out assembled.  They were made out of maple, which is about as tough as it gets.  Federal Express still managed to destroy them, so I switched to building them as flat stock with “some assembly required” (like the rest of the world)  Once you put it together, its amazingly strong.  I had the conversation of building it out of other materials, it went like this:

Maniac: maybe we should cut them out of plywood?  CNCoperator: You will spend forever filling the voids and somehow chinese plywood has infiltrated the lumber yards and its full of voids, you will have to sand the heck out of it and I know you hate that.  You could go with Russian Birch, but thats like $80 a sheet.

Maniac: How about getting some 12″ hardwood like poplar and cutting it from that?  CNCoperator: If you can find it, its not very stable and chances are it will split.  If you send it out west where the humidity is low, it will almost always split and then you have that to deal with.  Smaller pieces with intricate joinery always make for better stability, or you can use this MDF.

Maniac: How about some other engineered material?  CNCoperator: everything is so expensive are you sure you want to go that direction?

Maniac: How about if we make the outsides out of hardwood and the support pieces out of MDF to save money?  CNCoperator: Now your bugging me.

Maniac: Or we could use decent hardwood cut on the CNC from like 6″ pieces and then pocket join them together?  CNCoperator: not a bad idea but do you want to see all those holes?

Maniac: Or we could make it out of MDF.  CNCoperator: You drink too much coffee.

See part 2 for video of the CNC and of the finished product (gift).

Related posts:

• Building Children’s Furniture, Part 2
• Building Childrens Furniture, Part 3
• Building Children’s Furniture, Final Assembly
• Calling All Woodworkers – Understanding Sharpening Tools and Equipment – Woodworking
• Building a Loft, Part 2

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