Continuous Arm Windsor Rockler

[pkinneb]

Last week I attended a continuous arm Windsor rocker class at Greg Pennington's shop in Hendersonville TN. What follows is a quick journal of that experience.

First I will say that the overall experience was awesome! Greg is a great instructor very knowledgeable and explains things well. The small class, 4 students, and laid back tone of the class made it very enjoyable.  Pretty much 8-5 Monday - Thursday and 2ish on Friday. I will say this was a very physical class I had over 13K steps 4 of the 5 days and two of those my butt didn't leave the shave horse

The process was very different from the woodworking I have done and learning the new tools draw knife, shave horse, travisher, scorp, etc was a large part of the experience. 

I apologize in advance for some missing parts like all the laser drilling, spindle drilling, reaming...I was so into what we were doing that I forgot to take pics 

 

So lets get started the plan is to take this:

And turn it into this:

I was surprised by the number of species we used five in all: Hard maple - legs and front two top spindles, White oak - spindles and arm, Pine - seat, Ash - rockers, and red oak - wedges and pegs.

First up was rough shaping the back spindles on a shave horse with a draw knife.

Greg going over the process:

Lets get busy

Lunch

end of day

Day two more spindle shaping and steam bending the arm.

Ready to sit for two days. The second day Greg moved them into the TN kiln also known as the front seat of his shop truck with the windows rolled up in 100 degree heat lol. It worked well.

Back to spindles

All my rough shaped spindles + an extra ready for the kiln to dry them out before final shaping. 

Next up was the seat. We started by using two lasers to drill all the holes, sorry no pics of this 

Then we starting to shape the seat, first with a scorp

Then a travisher

At this point I cut off the back scrap off on the bandsaw, one of the few power tools used this week

Then we used a drawknife to shape the back

Next Greg demonstrated turning the spindles, he had done this before hand for us since not all had lathe experience.

Next up was fine tuning the leg fit using a reamer which again I unfortunately didn't get any pics of

Once glued up we cut the legs as flush as possible and then final trimmed them with a sharp chisel

Now we moved to his jig for cutting the slots for the rockers in the legs.

 

Then it was back to refining the seat shape with spokeshaves and scrapers

Here Greg is demonstrating using a veritas tenon bit to provide a guide for final spindle shaping.

Then shaping demo

Next we marked and drilled the arms for spindles

using two mirrors here to get the angle right

Back to spindle shaping with spokeshave's and scrapers, then dry fitting of all the spindles

...and the glue up. We used hide glue for all the glue ups on this chair.

After cutting off the wedges we moved on to fitting the rockers using scrapers

The rockers are glues and pegged. Who says a square peg won't fit in a round hole...

Then we wedged the rockers

and cleaned them up with a chisel

At this point we were at Friday afternoon and had a working rocking chair

Now I'm back home and have a bit of final clean up, mostly scraping, and a bit of sanding and I'll be ready for milk paint.

 

 

 

[Tom King]

Awesome!!!!!

[treeslayer]

Wow that looks awesome! And what a great experience and you’ll have a beautiful rocker to treasure for a long, long time, we’ll done

[wtnhighlander]

That chair looks great, and the class sounds like a blast!

[Ronn W]

That's a great project and a great class.  Lots of new techniques and tools, I love it.

[Chet]

That looks like it was a fun time and the rocker looks pretty cool.

What was the class size?

[Mark J]

 Beautiful chair! 

Thanks for sharing the class experience.

[curlyoak]

Very impressive! I enjoyed the presentation too.

[pkinneb]

On 6/30/2022 at 8:28 PM, Chet said:

That looks like it was a fun time and the rocker looks pretty cool.

What was the class size?

Thanks Chet!

Just four which was really nice.

[Chestnut]

This is awesome good work. These chairs amaze me.

[Bmac]

Love it! Thanks for posting the experience.

[pkinneb]

Finished cleaning everything up last night and getting ready for the milk paint finish process, I will put the first coat on tomorrow.

First task tonight was to sand the runners doing this provides a very smooth rocking action for the chair. Just a board with 150 grit on it, back and forth in a smooth action until you have about a 3/16-1/4" flat

Then I taped off the bottom. I made the chair for my favorite aunt and will right a special note to her here. when I apply the clear top coat over the paint this will be covered as well.

Then I moved on to remove the pitch in the pine seat so that the milk paint adheres better. To do this you heat up the wood and then wipe down with painters solvent. I repeated this twice on the top and three times on the front edge of the seat bottom.

And finally I started the mixing of the barn red base coat of milk paint. 2 parts water two one part paint. As you can see you need to mix several times to get it mixed well. After several mixes over a few hours I placed a cover on the container and will let it sit overnight before mixing again and then will strain it prior to the first coat tomorrow. I will apply 2 coats of red, then follow that with to coats of black, followed by three top coats of BLO, Spar Varnish, & Mineral Spirits mixed 1:1:1.

[Coop]

The chair is amazing! As I doubt that I will ever build one or have the ability todo so,I do see milk paint in my foreseeable future as my wife frequents Etsy and Pinterest more than she does our kitchen so you have my continued attention. 

[wtnhighlander]

Which brand of milk paint are you using? Always interesting to see how different brands cover.

[pkinneb]

On 7/8/2022 at 6:05 AM, wtnhighlander said:

Which brand of milk paint are you using? Always interesting to see how different brands cover.

I am using The Real Milk Paint Company paint and will be going with a 2:1 vs 1:1 ratio to allow the grain of the wood to come through a bit better. This was suggested by Greg in the class.

[Tom King]

I've never had any desire to take a woodworking class before, but I would take this one if I ever had time.  I'd be copying the jigs.

[Chet]

I have always been intrigued by the look of milk paint but never seem to come up with an appropriate project.

[pkinneb]

Well that didn't go as planned as life got in the way but I did get the first coat of milk paint on today. Once dry I will sand/ steel wool it and start coat two of the red before moving on to the black.

Ran through a filter before starting 

Then on the chair it goes

I imagine some will be WTH red really? Hang in there it really gives the black a rich black brown look that is awesome 

[Coop]

With a brush, did you concern yourself with uneven coverage or streaks?

[Chet]

I have seen the red then black paint technique before.  Any history as to how it came about who developed it?

[Tom King]

I've seen some really old ones (Windsors-not rockers)  that have been used for a couple of hundred years.  They had many coats of paint over a few centuries, and the wear spots show multiple colors of paint where they get worn down through the surface.  I saw one that had blue, yellow, red, and black must have been the latest most popular color, because they all had an old coat of black on the top.  I probably have 35mm pictures of them buried in a drawer somewhere here.

These were in Prestwould house before its restoration started.  I would think they still have them there.  No one had lived in it for a long time, and it was just left open.  We were surprised then, probably late '70's, that no one had stolen those chairs, or any of the other furniture in it.  

https://www.virginia.org/listing/prestwould-plantation/241/

I don't think the really old ones were painted with milk paint.  I think it's just the closest thing that looks like the old ones.  They may have somewhere, but I'm pretty sure all the old ones around here were painted with some sort of oil paint.  They used to sell pigments in local stores that people could mix with linseed oil to make paint.  Cans weren't invented until the Civil War. 

Some of those pigments were Very toxic.  Painters typically mixed it in their hands.  There was a common affliction called "Painters' Palsy".  I expect that's why they looked for a paint that looked similar.

[Chestnut]

I'm thinking more along the lines of "Hey that red looks more my style why not stop there"

[pkinneb]

On 7/11/2022 at 11:25 PM, Coop said:

With a brush, did you concern yourself with uneven coverage or streaks?

No for a couple reasons first these are really thin coats so not a big chance to streak in the first please but since I will sand/ steel wool between each coat if it does happen I should be able to correct it there. Having said that this is my first time doing this so still learning  

[Coop]

On 7/12/2022 at 12:06 PM, Chestnut said:

I'm thinking more along the lines of "Hey that red looks more my style why not stop there"

I thought the same thing! 

[Tom King]

All the old ones I've seen, and any other really old paint from back then, had really big brush strokes visible.  I don't think they had good brushes for anything but artists, and no thinner either I guess.