alan ferrency[SMTP:alan@l...] said:

(a bunch of stuff about round mortise and tenon joints being inherently
unstable snipped)

>The stretchers
>in a Windsor chair are compression members, not tension members (in
>his book he makes the stretchers 1/4" longer than they should be, to
>make sure they're pushing the legs out).  Since they work to push the
>legs apart, it doesn't help much to construct them to resist a
>pulling-out force.

Okay, here's where I'm really confused.  I've heard this theory before
(probably from Mike Dunbar's newsletter), but I don't yet understand it.
Could someone explain to me how the stretchers of a Windsor chair
are under compression?   I don't deny that it's true, I just don't understand.
My more-or-less intuitive analysis indicates just the opposite.  Perhaps
I should have paid more attention to vectors in high school Physics class.

-Hal