Festool Zigzag Chair User Manual

high style plus utility in a

contemporary zigzag

 y d av i d d u n d a s

70

proect numer

It was a revolutionary design in the 1930s, but not everyone can

afford to sit on a piece of art. We work the best features of the original

Zigzag chair into a stylish and completely accessible chair

you can actually pull up to the dinner table.

T

he original Zigzag chair designed by Dutch architect Gerrit Rietveld in the 1930s is an iconic
piece of artwork. The cantilevered, Z-shaped chair looked deceptively simple but employed

masterful joinery and was hailed as a sublime example of minimalist design. It was not a chair you

would want to use for, say, everyday dining.

Nevertheless, with modern adhesives and joinery techniques, it is feasible to build a com-

fortable upholstered dining chair both reminiscent of Rietveld’s Zigzag and strong enough for

everyday use. Our chair’s cantilevered frame also gives it a slight comfortable

springiness.

To withstand structural stresses, the chair’s

side assemblies must be made from a strong

hardwood such as jarrah, maple or white

oak. The seat cross-rails and the slip-seat

frame can be made from a secondary

hardwood. The chair’s miter joints are
reinforced and locked with floating
tenons, epoxied, and pinned with brass

screws. We designed this chair to be built

using the Festool Domino tenon joiner.

Getting started

The visible parts of the chair can be made from an

8' board of 6"-wide 6/4 hardwood. Plane the board to a

thickness of 13/8" and rip it into three lengths 1¾" wide. For

ease of handling, cut the three lengths in half to yield six 4'

lengths. Plane and joint each 4' piece so as to finish 13/8"x
19/16" ensuring that all the faces are square to one another.
Crosscut the parts for the feet, legs, seat side rails, back stiles, and back rails

from the 4’ lengths according to the cut list. It is easier to achieve a consistent

length for the matching parts if you clamp a stop to a crosscut sled or use a miter

gauge with a long fence and an adjustable stop. Mark
out 38" radius curves on the top edges of the back

rails, and bandsaw away the waste from
their front faces. Use a random-orbit
sander with progressively finer sanding
disks to smooth and fair the curves.

The hidden parts, the seat rails and
the seat frame components, are made
from an 8' board of ¾" x 2½" second­ary hardwood. Since the angle to be cut
for the miters is 67.5°, you will need
to make a supplementary 22.5° jig to
achieve the correct angle (see sidebar).

Cutting the miters

Make the 22.5° jig for cutting the
miters on the feet, legs, and the front
end of the seat side rails. Before start­ing the cut, ensure that the broader
(19/16" ) face of the workpiece is flat on
the saw’s table (Fig. 1). Set aside the

22.5° offcuts for later use as wedges to
facilitate clamping at the glueup stage.
The 49° miters for the back stiles are
cut without the jig by setting the miter
gauge to 41° and clamping the rear face
of the back stiles and the bottom face
of the seat side rail against the miter
gauge fence.

Marking out and milling
the mortises

It is important to remember, when
marking out the positions of the mor­tises on the components of the side
assemblies, that the assemblies are
mirror images rather than identical.
It is worth laying out the parts and
marking the matching miters before
marking the mortise centers on the
reference face (the face on which the
Domino’s fence will rest).

You are now ready to mill the mor­tises in the side assembly components
except for the miter locking tenons,
which will be milled after the leg miters
have been glued up. All of the chair’s
mortises are milled using the narrow
width setting on the Domino joiner.
Also, all of the chair’s mortises are
cut with the 6mm-diameter Domino
cutter, except those that reinforce the
miter at the bottom of the back stiles,
for which the 10mm cutter is used.
The height of the Domino’s fence is set
using the dimensions given in millime-

ters in the figures, so that the mortises
are cut at the required distance from
their respective reference faces. All the
chair’s mortises are 20mm deep, except
for those for the locking tenons, which
are 28mm deep, and those for the back
stile miter, which are 25mm deep.

In order to achieve a perfect joint,
the Domino’s fence must lie perfectly
flat on the workpiece, so that the mor­tise is milled exactly perpendicular
to the face. To help ensure that the
machine’s fence remained flat during

the cut, I clamped a cleat behind the
workpiece so the fence would have
a broad surface to rest on (Fig. 2).
Although this procedure slows the mill­ing of the mortises a little, it is essential
to avoid the risk of cutting any mortise
at the wrong angle.

To mill the mortises in the end­grain of the back rails, seat rails and
stretcher, you need to attach the narrow
frame accessory (Fig. 3) to the Domi­no’s fence to hold the machine steady
during the cut. The mortises in the end

0 5 . 0 7 | w oo dc ra ft m a g a z i n e 39

photos: david dundas

MAKE A JIG FOR CUTTING LEG MITERS

Cut a right-angled triangle from ½" plywood with a base 24" long and

a height of 9

15

/16". Mill a hardwood cleat 1½" square and 36" long. Cut an

8" length from the cleat, and glue and screw it flush with the base of the
plywood triangle. Cut 24" from the remainder of the cleat, and mark out a

22.5° miter on one of its ends. Cut away the 22.5° wedge of waste with a
backsaw, and plane the miter face to the marked line. Then glue and screw
the mitered cleat flush with the hypotenuse of the triangle. Square the outer
faces of the cleats by running the jig over the jointer with the jig’s base
against the fence.

Set your miter gauge to an angle of 45°, and clamp the jig to its fence,
adjusting the position of the jig so that the mitered end of the cleat barely
grazes the table saw’s blade as the miter gauge is moved forward in its
slot. I used a Kreg miter gauge, which has a suitably long fence, but if you
have a standard miter gauge, you will need to attach an auxiliary fence to it.
Align the end of the workpiece with the mitered end of the cleat and clamp

it to the jig with a hand-screw clamp. It is essential

to clamp both the jig and the workpiece very

firmly. If either came loose during the cut,

it could cause a nasty accident.

1

2

w w w . w o o d c r a f t M a g a z i n e . c o M

915/16"

24"

24"

90º

22½º