Maloof inspired Dining room chair - CNC Cut


Jens Olson

Recommended Posts

This chair is one of the first finished furniture pieces me and my business partner/father have produced using our new mongo CNC router. We are giving woodworking full time a go and we both lean to the danish modern/Maloof style of furniture. After making a could prototype chairs the Maloof way we could not see us being about to get the production time down to a point where we could make a profit selling dining room or rocking chairs. In college I had learned a little about using CNCs, so we started looking into different ones as a way to speed up the carving of seats and legs. We settled on a Legacy Artisan II. We received the CNC beginning of August. We got to work learning the machine and prototyping Rocking Chairs and dinning chairs. So that is the back story about this chair, its the first finish CNC Chair.

 

The wood is Black Walnut we logged just north of the Twin Cities and then hauled back to our Idaho shop. We cut the chair in 4 sections: 2 sides, seat, and the back. Each of the sections get Cut on the Bottom/back then gets flipped and cut on the front/top.

 

To give a little insight into cut times. 

Back: 20 min per side                           ====  40min Total 

Seat: 15 min on bottom and 45 on top ==== 1 hour Total

Side: 30-40 per side                              ==== 2:45 hours Total 

 

Joinery: The sides and seat are put together before cutting using dominos, then the final assembly is put together using screws and plugs in the Maloof Style.

 

After the whole things is assembled there is about 1-2 hours of final shaping/sanding before finishing. 

 

Finish: The finish we use is a traditional Maloof Oil/Poly and Wax/Poly.

 

Love to get everyones thoughts on the design and implementation.

post-14177-0-53362400-1380490909_thumb.j

post-14177-0-96073900-1380490916_thumb.j

post-14177-0-77088100-1380490922_thumb.j

post-14177-0-03640000-1380490929_thumb.j

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I like the design. The seat has a floating effect. And I really like the wood grain choice, especially the concentric rings on the back and the light streaks in the seat.

I have an unused can of the maloof oil/poly. It recommends a pretty intense sanding/polishing procedure. What was your sanding process?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Thanks for the nice words.

 

We do three coats of the both oil/poly and wax/poly. Brush it on, wipe off after 15-20min. In between each coat we use 0000 Steel wool. for the first couple coats we use 400-600 grit sandpaper. Then day or two after it is dry we use a old tee shirt to buff it a bit just to make it smoother to the touch.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

How wide is that chair? It looks beautiful but uncomfortably large to me.

 It is  19" at the back and 21" at the front. I shaped it out of a 19.5"x21.5"x1.75. We had to make it a little wider than a chair without arms. One of our prototypes was smaller but some heavier people hips where tight. I think looks wider because the arms angle out and the seat carve goes out at the end too.

 

 

 I wish I could get CNC machine for myself. 

 

They are way fun. I will have to post a video of the cnc doing a v-carve sign. Way fun to see and makes you realize the machine has a mind of its own.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 9 months later...

I am wondering what software you use for your design.  I made a Maloof rocker & low back years ago & am now into CNC.  Do you know of a way to get my current seat profile into software without mapping it in Mach3?  The same goes for the arms.  I like what I made & would like to reproduce it as accurately as possible.  Oh, & I am jealous of your very expensive machine!  Mine is 8020 home built & always needing "tweaking."  Sometimes it feels like I do more trouble shooting than machining!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.