OK. That's it. Waving the white flag. This just isn't working for me. With my setup, physical strength, etc... Steam bending or bent laminations are out for this chair. The pieces have springback, gaps between lamination, uneven height. Just not at all usable and a tremendous waste of wood. Was a somewhat interesting, but mostly frustrating exercise. Spent a good deal of money on winch/straps/mdf/ etc... And have taken up most of my workshop with jigs, etc... for this. Anyone need 2 steam generators and an extra long steam box (sigh...)

So I still need to make the chair (we've already bought the expensive cushions and really need replacement chairs out there. Building them like the originals (solid wood, but not using teak) is the new plan. A whole new set of questions pops up then.

To refresh everyone who's been so helpful memories, this is what the chair needs to look like:
Chair with Seams 1.jpg

The most difficult part is the chair back, which is 5-1/2" tall and 1-1/2" thick. I can easily make a pattern of the shape and rough cut it on my bandsaw. But how do I smooth out the profile with a router table when it's that tall? Are there pattern bits that long that can safely be used on a router? No shaper here. I need to make 4 chairs, so will need to make a bunch of identical pieces. And my initial concern about lining up the pieces for gluing still seems difficult (but not impossible.)

So mostly concerns about routing the pieces identically and smoothly. Both the inside and outside curves.