A Tale of a Chair

We bought a chair some time ago at a church jumble sale. My wife has an affection for chairs and we have a small collection chairs that are all a little different.
In my eyes the chair is rather unusual. Unlike most wooden chairs the back legs are in two pieces. They are split at the level of the seat. The whole assembly is held together by wood screws; the old fashioned slotted kind. I have never seen this sort of construction before. However talking to a man who is 76 about this chair he said that as a child they had a whole dining suite with chairs like this.
The other feature of the construction is that all the rungs have turned tenons. On first inspection they appear to be dowels, as per my sketch below.

When we purchased the chair the front  rung was missing and this has been on my list of things to do.  My new hobby of wood-turning has allowed me to make a  replacement rung. I was fortunate to have some old timber from a piece of furniture that was long past its use by date.  The new rung is almost inextinguishable from the material found in the chair. A bit of Danish oil and some wax sees the chair ready for a new life.

Drawing

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Chair rail

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