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 ver the years, it has been the experience of my clients that when
shopping for a true Windsor chair they have encountered a 
wide range in the price of Windsors for the same reason price
ranges exist in any other product -- quality. Many sources of
chairs passing themselves off as chairmakers are really small
factories assembling mass-produced components. Factories hire
semi-skilled labor that assembles those same easy-to-put together
components.
The reality about a Windsor
chair is that if it goes together easily, it comes apart easily.
It is for this very reason, in the name of economics, that
factories rely on glue to secure their joints, hence the term ‘glue
joints’. When the glue fails after a few years, the joint fails.
This factory shortcoming has even led to retailers selling glue
injectors, a devise not unlike a syringe, which injects glue in
the mortise of the leg!
As a master Windsor chairmaker,
I have studied wood joinery and know how to make mechanical joints
– joints that are secured by some mechanical feature and
individually fitted to each and every chair. In short, the
mechanical strength provided by the triangulation of nearly all of
the chair’s components is key. For example, the wedges used to
hold the legs in the seat are not there to ‘look colonial’ as
some factories would have one believe. An integral part of the
structural integrity of the chair, they are a hardwood keyed wedge
driven in the leg top that not only holds the leg in place but
keeps it from twisting in it’s socketed hole which would loosen
the undercarriage assembly.
This is just one example of
mechanical joinery that was originally used some 250 years ago and
that I continue to use in my chairs today.
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