Recreating Rohlfs - Tall Back Chair - Almost Done!

I spent the last few days finishing up the carving on the back of the chair. I’m still learning how to carve and have not really figured out how to get a clean carved surface so I spent some time today trying various ways to clean up some of the carving marks with a combination of small sanding stones on my Dremel, sandpaper and a sanding mop. Any advice from any of the numerous expert LJ carvers would be appreciated. Anyway, its not bad, but not perfect.

On my Maloof rocking chair I used sanding pads for the first time which really polished the wood to quite a nice sheen and I spent some time this afternoon sanding and polishing up the various pieces of the chair. I’m looking forward to getting some oil on the chair, especially the front rail which has a very nice bookmatched figure which I hope will pop nicely when the oil is applied.

I called it quits around 6:30 p.m. today and everything was ready to be assembled tomorrow morning. But I couldn’t wait and went back down into the shop after dinner this evening and put the chair together.

It a rather easy chair to assemble with only 8 parts, two sides, a bottom stretcher, front rail, the back and three gussets. In this picture you can see the carved bottom stretcher and the gussets in each front corner and along the back to help stiffen up the chair.

Since I did a dry fit earlier, it was a simple matter to glue and screw the chair together. Right now the seat is a piece of plywood I have friend who is a furniture upholsterer so I’ll need to give him a call and see if he can show me how to put together an upholstered seat.

Tomorrow I’ll cut some plugs and fill up the screw holes and apply the first coat of oil.

-- Peter, Woodbridge, Ontario