Walnut Bench with Danish Cord seat

[vincent nobel]

I just wanted to quickly show my latest creation. It's a walnut bench with a Danish Cord seat. Built with a combination of handtools and powertools. All surfaces were handplaned, and not sanded. The weaving is of course done by hand and follwed the instructions on Finewoodworking.com.
The finish is walnut oil from the supermarket's salad dressing aisle. I don't normally mind using sapwood, though in this bench I don't really like how it came out on the front rail. I think it should have more contrast to get away with it.



The weaving of the cord was tougher on the hands than I thought it would be and the result is somewhat less tight than i hoped for, but overall, I am pretty satisfied with it.

cheers,
Vincent

Apologies for the grainy quality of the picture.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

Your bench looks neat.

The weaving looks difficult. It turned out really well. Where did you buy the weaving material from? Do you have to soak it first to make it pliable? Does the weaving also get a finish applied?

Questions, questions, questions...

-Jeff

[vincent nobel]

The Danish Cord is a paper product so it should not be soaked or it will loose all its strength. It's effectively a rope made out of three paper threads that are twisted together. It's very pliable although it can be tough on the skin of your fingers when you're weaving it.

The cord does not get finished. If it gets dirty it can be cleaned carefully with a bit of moist cloth, but again, it should not get really wet or it will loose its strength. I bought the cord at www.seatweavingsupplies.co.uk which was very fast, but if you're in the States, you'll have to find another supplier. Google for Danish Cord and you're bound to find a supplier somewhere near you.

The weaving isn't really difficult, although you do need to pay attention that all the cord lines up the way they should and don't cross over at the wrong points. Also getting the tension right is not 100% intuitive, and that's where I went wrong a little bit.

Other than that it's a project I'd thoroughly recommend. This took me basically two full days in the weekend plus some work during three evenings during the week.

[Jeffrey Makiel]

Vincent...thanks!
-Jeff

[John Eaton]

That's got my imagination working - I've been wanting to do a Nelson style bench in the modern style - now I may try to do something a big Danish Modern and incorporate the cord you have. I need to start drawing up something...

Thanks for the inspiration!

-- John

[vincent nobel]

Thanks for the kind words. Let us know what you come up with for your design.

cheers,

Vincent

[Lon LeBlanc]

The boys over at FWW have a 3-part video series on weaving a Danish cord seat. Pretty fascinating stuff. Mark Edmundson is the author. I just did a search for "cord seat" from the FWW front page and brought it up without a problem. I've watched this video before, and it does a good job of explaining just how it's done.

Lon

[Jason Tuinstra]

Very nice. I remember seeing this is FWW. Looks like you did a great job.

[John Thompson]

Nice job Vincent...

Sarge..

[vincent nobel]

Lon,

Indeed I took my inspiration from the FWW videos and the pdf article they have on the bench by Mark Edmundson. It's really well explained in the video, i think and I had no difficulty putting it into practice from there.

cheers,