BUSY MAN GALLERY1

Whats that fool doing now

CATTLEMAN'S THRONE Cattleman...........and a thrown, well how about good family friend and cowman and the rest is fluff. I built this chair for a good friend here in California and it brings together quite a few found objects from here on the ranch. The poor fella that ended up with the chair, is our affectionate friend " Uncle Leonard" as the kids have always known him. And Leonard leases a portion of the ranch where he runs a small group of mother cows. Leonard worked and retired from Cal-Trans, where , as we like to tease him he has the distinction of wearing out 2 shovel handles leaning on them for 35 years. This is our retirement gift to Leonard. The road that I live on is the OLD highway 198, and was abandoned by the State back in 1956 or so. In a few places the old 3" by 10" redwood mile markers were still embedded in the dirt if you spent time looking for them. So we found one, pulled one out with a chain and come along affair, and today that piece of redwood iswhat makes the back of this chair after it was resawn to clean it up. Now Leonard had a big die off about 4 years ago with some bad feed and terrible storm all at the same time. The cows that died, were buried in a hole that was dug. Some 4 years later, we got ahold of a few ribs and acouple of cannon bones from a front leg and sandblasted them to clean them up. The white dots down the chairs back are those pieces of bone after they were ground to fit and installed. The wood is a combination of mostly Juniper which smells real pretty when it burns................which is what Leo promises to do with this chair when he gets it home. And all the leg braces are sections of dead Manzanita from a small tree out by the spring. This is my first upholstered seat, we used 5 inch foam, brown chap for a cover, welted the corners behind the legs, and wrapped the entire edge in 6" twisted fringe Mocassin chap. The entire chair is done with round mortises and peged holes, fastened with type 88 epoxy. I think it should lasta while all things given. This might be the first chair that I was able to get a good slope on with the back, I managed to get 15 degrees of slope so its more relaxed when youy sit in it. Hope you enjoy it.