The Backstory plus Gluing Up Backslats
He promised his grandchildren, now young adults, a rocking chair. This was to be a delightful part of his retirement. He built three, all from the same plan and then, sadly, he died.
His widow commissioned me to build the fourth. She still had all the templates and plans and the build narrative, plus more of the same hard rock maple he had used before.
I opted to cut and mill two sets of parts, looking to build another in the near future, plus allowing me a little comfortable fallback if something should go awry with any of the first-run operations.
There is not much on the web about this chair. The designer's last blog post was in 2011. None of the images would transfer to this blog. Fortunately I was able to print a few and paste them in the plan book.
The narrative is properly linear and well written. However, the back slats, which are a bent lamination of two pieces, should be done first or you'll be sitting around watching glue cure. This I learned the more difficult way.
I used Franklin poly glue and let the lamination stay in the form for two days, within an hour or two. The 13 I made are all so similar I was very pleased.
The quarter inch bolt with the big washer goes into a teenut on the bottom of the form. The outer half of the form is screwed to the deck; the second piece is free. Once it is clamped up, tightening down the bolt makes the mating surfaces parallel.
I used the halves of the forms, pocket screwed to my sanding table, to sand the slats. The horizontal light was crucial in getting all the surfaces scratchless.
The rockers are a much larger project, 6 pieces of 1/4" material, 49" long. They, too, came out with very little sanding to make them into twins. They didn't get photographed in the form, but you'll see them soon.
He promised his grandchildren, now young adults, a rocking chair. This was to be a delightful part of his retirement. He built three, all from the same plan and then, sadly, he died.
His widow commissioned me to build the fourth. She still had all the templates and plans and the build narrative, plus more of the same hard rock maple he had used before.
I opted to cut and mill two sets of parts, looking to build another in the near future, plus allowing me a little comfortable fallback if something should go awry with any of the first-run operations.
There is not much on the web about this chair. The designer's last blog post was in 2011. None of the images would transfer to this blog. Fortunately I was able to print a few and paste them in the plan book.
The narrative is properly linear and well written. However, the back slats, which are a bent lamination of two pieces, should be done first or you'll be sitting around watching glue cure. This I learned the more difficult way.
I used Franklin poly glue and let the lamination stay in the form for two days, within an hour or two. The 13 I made are all so similar I was very pleased.
The quarter inch bolt with the big washer goes into a teenut on the bottom of the form. The outer half of the form is screwed to the deck; the second piece is free. Once it is clamped up, tightening down the bolt makes the mating surfaces parallel.
I used the halves of the forms, pocket screwed to my sanding table, to sand the slats. The horizontal light was crucial in getting all the surfaces scratchless.
The rockers are a much larger project, 6 pieces of 1/4" material, 49" long. They, too, came out with very little sanding to make them into twins. They didn't get photographed in the form, but you'll see them soon.