Maloof rocker questions

[ghost]

WOW! that is nice!

coming along very well.

excellent work.

love the grain pattern

 

[Janello]

Nice work so far ! She's a beauty..

[AndyG]

I haven't had a chance to work on the rocker for the past 4 months. My wife and I had our first child at the start of the year and I haven't had any spare time....

 

Things have settled down a bit and I'm slowly getting back into the shop. I glued up the legs during the week, so I can start sculpting and blending in the leg to seat joints.

 

 

I used west system epoxy which seems to be working really well.

 

 

I also got a RAS 115 for sculpting the rocker. It won't replace the galahad wheels completely but it will compliment it nicely.

 

[davewyo]

1 hour ago, AndyG said:

I haven't had a chance to work on the rocker for the past 4 months. My wife and I had our first child at the start of the year and I haven't had any spare time...

Congrats on the the new addition to the family, Andy!

The chair is looking fantastic!

[AndyG]

 

So I just took the clamps off and dry fitted the arms and have found that there is now a gap between the arm and leg joint.

 

This obviously wasn't there before I glued up the legs, so I've somehow clamped it in such a way that's moved the leg out of it's original alignment.

 

My thoughts to fix this are:

 

 

1- Glue on a small piece of end grain and use the sandpaper trick to flush up the joint. The sandpaper trick is where you put a strip of coarse paper between the joint and pull it up until it's flush. Im not overly keen on this idea as the joint now seems to have the gap on one side meaning the leg has been skewed inward.

 

2- Glue the dowel in. Then screw the arm to the leg so it's nice and flush then use a dowel centre to re-drill for the dowel. This idea seems to be the best one, but as I said before I think the leg is skewed inward now so not sure if the arm will align with the front leg like it did before.

 

 

3- Just remake the arms. Frustrating I know, but at least I know it will look perfect. My only concern is matching up the walnut as I've ran out.

 

Your thoughts and ideas would be hugely appreciated.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Andy

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dknapp34]

Congrats on the the new addition to the family, Andy!

The chair is looking fantastic!

The Festool or the baby?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[Eric.]

1 hour ago, AndyG said:

1- Glue on a small piece of end grain

I'd be more inclined to glue a piece of long grain to the leg side of the joint, rather than gluing end grain to the arm side...if that's what you're proposing.  The long grain will take better adhesion and will be a less visible repair, plus it will be easier to resize to the proper angle (I'd use a sharp plane for this, rather than sandpaper).  Glue on a thin wedge, then shape.  Can you take a couple pics giving us a less zoomed-in view?

Because this thread was titled "rocker questions," and I haven't built a rocker (and therefore figured I'd be no help)...I haven't come in here to see what's going on.  Wish you would have put this in the journal sub-forum so I would have known to look.  You're doing a great job man.  Spending all that time to lay out for grainflow makes a big difference and it's paying off.  Nice work so far.  Congrats on the new baby!

Edit:  I'm confused about what's glued and what's not...your arm-to-front leg joint is glued but not the arm-to-rear leg?  Or is that picture just from a dry fit and you can still remove the arm entirely?  Can you disassemble the chair enough to access the rear leg joint at all?

[AndyG]

 

Thanks for the reply and the comments. The arm is not glued at all, it's only dry fitted.

 

 

Another idea I had today was to plane away a little bit of material from the arm and leg (where the joint meets) to get a fairly good joint. I don't know, maybe I'll just sit on it for a little while and the right idea will come to mind.

 

 

 

 

 

[AndyG]

I started sculpting the leg to seat joints yesterday. I started with the RAS and followed up with the die grinder. I'm really loving the RAS, it's awesome!

 

I still have a lot of refinement with hand tools, but I'm happy where it's at.

 

In regards to the arm situation, I'm just going to make them again. I think any fixes will not look as good.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[wtnhighlander]

Sometime, a do-over is best! Sorry you have to through the hassle, but you will be much more satisfied with the results!

[Cheeset202]

Andy, I am several steps behind you in my rocker build and I was hoping to prevent having the same issue you have with your arm to rear leg joints.  It may be too late as I have already fit my arm rest to the rear leg and have a good tight joint, but I did this with the legs screwed to the seat and now realize when I glue and clamp my legs there may be some slight movement of the leg joints.  Before I begin sculpting the arms I think I may remove the leg screws and dry clamp the legs and check those arm joints, hopefully I don't have a gap that cannot be corrected!

[AndyG]

So I've starting working on the rocker again. Last time I posted I mentioned that the arms did not sit flush with the rear legs, and as a result there was an unsightly gap. I decided to redo the arms as I believed no fix would have look acceptable and I don't want to compromise on this build.

So I've just sculpted the 45 degree chamfers on the top of the arms. I've been using the RAS, and  I'm very impresssed with it. The holey galahad wheels are great, but I find the RAS leaves a more even surface plus it has dust extraction (about 70%). There's still plenty of work to do, but I'm happy where it's at now. I also posted a pic with the spindles (they still need to be shaped) sitting against the headrest. Just to give you an idea what it may look like. 

 

 

[pkinneb]

Looking good! I second on the RAS it worked well on a recent project for me as well.

[Cheeset202]

Andy, good to see you back on your rocker.  I will be posting an update tomorrow after a day in the shop.  I have tried using the RAS but have struggled a bit as I find it is pretty aggressive for sculpting even compared to the fine Galahad sculpting wheel.  Due to its flat shape and aggressive cut I found I was gouging the wood a lot.  It does work well at bringing outside square corners down but I have found my rasps do a quick job rounding over and I have much more control.  I have only been using the 100 grit on the RAS but it still eats through the wood pretty quick.  

[AndyG]

Looking forward to seeing your update CheeseT.  

 

I've continued working on the rocker over the past week. I find myself jumping from one part of the build to another, mainly because I'm taking my time with figuring out how I want things to look. For example, I like the look of a thinner arm, so I've been looking at the arms on Charles Brocks rockers and trying to make mine look similar. I also cut the strips for the rocker laminations, I'm using huon pine which is from Tasmania here in Australia. It's one of my favourites. 

I do have some questions though if you don't mind helping me please. 

With the back slats, the lower ones in particular, are the 1/2" tenons all 1 1/2" (the depth of the hole). And will this give a uniform look? I know Marc mentions numbering and fitting each slat to a hole, but can't work out if it's because of the seat or the headrest? If someone could clarify that it would be a huge help.

Also, I tried using the veritas 1/2" tenon cutter, but found I couldn't really get good results. I removed most of the material then tried the cutter, it wouldn't cut even when I changed the depth of cut. I ended up using rasps and doing it by hand, it worked well but the tenon isn't a snug fit. I figured I'll be gluing it anyway, but I'd still rather it be gap free and a snug fit.

What was your process for cutting the tenons? 

 

Thanks for the help!

 

 

[..Kev]

3 hours ago, AndyG said:

Looking forward to seeing your update CheeseT.  

 

I've continued working on the rocker over the past week. I find myself jumping from one part of the build to another, mainly because I'm taking my time with figuring out how I want things to look. For example, I like the look of a thinner arm, so I've been looking at the arms on Charles Brocks rockers and trying to make mine look similar. I also cut the strips for the rocker laminations, I'm using huon pine which is from Tasmania here in Australia. It's one of my favourites. 

I do have some questions though if you don't mind helping me please. 

With the back slats, the lower ones in particular, are the 1/2" tenons all 1 1/2" (the depth of the hole). And will this give a uniform look? I know Marc mentions numbering and fitting each slat to a hole, but can't work out if it's because of the seat or the headrest? If someone could clarify that it would be a huge help.

Also, I tried using the veritas 1/2" tenon cutter, but found I couldn't really get good results. I removed most of the material then tried the cutter, it wouldn't cut even when I changed the depth of cut. I ended up using rasps and doing it by hand, it worked well but the tenon isn't a snug fit. I figured I'll be gluing it anyway, but I'd still rather it be gap free and a snug fit.

What was your process for cutting the tenons? 

 

Thanks for the help!

I don't recall if each hole in the seat is drilled to the same depth but, assigning the slats to a specific location has a lot to do with the crest rail.  They will all be very different lengths in the end.  Remember that the seat is coopered as well so, that also changes the length of the slats.

The tenon cutter is pretty hard on the hands but, it does work.  

Chair's looking good!

[Cheeset202]

Andy, the reason the bottom holes are drilled to differing depths is due to the coopering of the seat.  Place shims under the seat to allow it to sit flat and level on the drill press.  Set your drill depth on the outside hole to 1-1/4", then drill all your holes, as you drill towards the middle the holes will decrease in depth due to the coopering.  This is done so the spindles all line up when the tenon bottoms out in the hole, you need to assign a spindle to each seat hole so the tenon length will match up to the specific hole in the seat.  I found the tenon cutter worked well, you may need to set the top of the cutter in one notch further than the bottom, this really helped the cut.  The bottom tenons are trickier to cut due to the tapered shape, I was needing to rasp the square corners every couple of turns of the cutter and it eventually bottomed out at the bottom of the tenon so I finished up with a rasp.  The top tenons went very smooth because they do not taper.

My tenons fit tight in the hole but it took a bit of work getting them all even because I don't think I had the seat sitting perfectly level when I drilled the holes.  I did end up with a slight gap in the back side of the seat tenons due to the amount of relief cut I had to do to get the tenons to bend forward to align with the headrail holes.  Next time I make this chair I will be drilling the seat holes at a 2-3 degree angle so I don't need to file in the relief at the back of the spindle.  If you look closely you can see the slight gap at the backs of the spindles.  The epoxy will easily fill those in.

I have made small mistakes (one big one that resulted in remaking a rear leg) along the way on this build that so far have been fixable.  When the chair is complete I will post all the things I learned along the way, small details that Mark does cover in his videos but are worth emphasizing for your first chair build.  I recommend you look at other member builds, SeventyFix and Shaneymack, as they experienced some errors along the way that are helpful to know as you continue to build your rocker.

[AndyG]

Thank you for the replies.

I have drilled the holes already, and now remember that they won't be all the same depth due to the seat shape. This was done at the start of the year. 

So do I now individually measure the depth of each hole and cut my tenon to that depth? Or do I cut them all the same length which will result in a uniform look? I don't know why this is confusing me so much!

 

Thank you. 

[..Kev]

You want the slats to all line up uniformly in the chair.  If they don't, it will stick out like a sore thumb.

[Cheeset202]

33 minutes ago, AndyG said:

Thank you for the replies.

I have drilled the holes already, and now remember that they won't be all the same depth due to the seat shape. This was done at the start of the year. 

So do I now individually measure the depth of each hole and cut my tenon to that depth? Or do I cut them all the same length which will result in a uniform look? I don't know why this is confusing me so much!

 

Thank you. 

You shape your tenons (so they bottom out in each hole) to the length of each hole, each hole should get slightly shallower as you move towards the center hole, this way your spindles should come out at a uniform height as they follow the coopered curve of the seat.  Like Kev mentioned it is very important to get all the spindle profiles on the same horizontal plane.  

[AndyG]

So I've taken on the advice above and had better results today. Instead of using a rasp to remove the excess material, I used the RAS being very careful not to remove too much. I then used my rasps to get close to 1/2". 

I then tried the tenon cutter, this time skewing the blade as recommended. It worked better, but not great. I tried different skew angles, I even loosened the screws and with hand pressure I tried to see what angle would get it to cut then tightened down. I finally got relatively close with about an 1/8" of material to be removed with the rasps and scrapers.

It took me about 40 minutes, and as you can see I'm close but still have a little more to go (red mark is by aim). I got a feeling I'm doing this the hard way, there surely can be a quicker way? I'm thinking of getting closer to 1/2"  when removing excess material with the RAS, this may speed things up.. I'd love to hear your thoughts and tips if you got any.

Thank you.

 

[Cheeset202]

Andy, the bottom ones are a bit tricky and cumbersome due to the taper in the bottom of the spindle, you don't get very far with the tenon cutter before you need to remove wood with your rasp or RAS.  In your bottom picture you are getting close to your target depth, move onto a scraper at this point to sneak up on the cut.  I found it difficult to tell when I bottomed out in the hole or was just stopping at the taper of the spindle.  I used my calipers to measure the depth of the hole and kept finessing the tenon until I hit my depth.  You will find the 3/8" top tenons go a whole lot faster.  I used a block plane to rough shape the spindle tops to my circle mark, a couple of quick shots with a rasp on the corners and the tenon cutter did the rest very quickly.  I did find I had to do a bit of finessing with the bottom tenons to get all the spindles at the same height.  Be very careful when you go to lean the spindles forward to fit in the headrest, I found I had to file about 1/16" notch, 1/2" long on the back side of the tenon in order to relieve enough pressure on the tenon.  They will break easily as others have found!  So far I found the spindles to be the most finicky, tedious part of the build.  

[AndyG]

I got the arms glued up now. I decided to do the hard lines and fine tuning of the arms after they're permanently attached to the chair. I'm pretty happy where things are at now, even though it's taking longer than expected due to limited shop time. 

[AndyG]

Arms are pretty much done as far as sculpting goes. A final shaping/scraping will happen during the finishing process but I'm pretty happy how they turned out.

Next up is finishing the back slats..... I don't know why but I'm a bit hesitant to do them. The shaping is easy, but getting them to fit so they all line up will be a bit of a challenge.

[AndyG]

I shaped the back slats yesterday, it was pretty straight forward and quite quick. Now I need to fit the remainder of the tenons into the 1/2" holes. Once the slats are done, I can finish sculpting the rest of the chair and begin sanding/scraping then begin working on the rockers.