Fitting the Legs to the Seat, Walnut Rocker

[Courtland]

When I laid my rocker on my workbench last weekend I had a chance to become familiar with it. I remember now part of the reason I set aside to begin with was because the moisture content was just too high, the sawyer I purchased the slab from assured me it was in the 6 to 8 percent range but it turned out to be around 12 percent, and I could feel it as I cut into it and machined the parts the inside was very cool to the touch. So since I was in it as far as I was, I completed the cut list, then set it aside, during the last year since I set it aside, the parts moved a bit and the joints do not fit as well. Fortunately the movement was not in the direction that the fit would be destroyed, but some finessing had to be done anyways to get that tight fit that is the "money shot" on these chairs joinery.

The first image shows the sloppy joint, rear leg to rear seat joint. You can see the slop, there should be about a 32nd of slop to allow for the expansion of the tongue, so that is fine, but the gap at the top of the tongue where it meets the bottom of the groove, is way too much.

You can see the bad fit here as well.

and here

Very "gappy" indeed.

So to fix this, first I re-flattened the bottom of the groove with a medium shoulder plane, shoulder planes come with the blade just a tad narrower then the width of the plane, so you have to flush the side of the blade to the side of the plane you are going to be using against the wall of the groove, then to plane the other side of the groove, you'll need to flatten the blade to the other side of the plane body, I do this by laying the plane on my table saw, loosen the spinwheel below the cap, which in turn loosens the blade, then I let the blade naturally rest flush with the plane body on the flat surface of the saw. This assures the blade is flush with the plane body, then I re-tighten the spinwheel to secure the blade. As shown below.

Since I am lacking a proper hand tool work bench (mine is more suitable for assembly) I have to use two bar clamps to hold the irregular shape of the rear legs to my bench in order for me to plane the grooves flat with my shoulder plane. I can work the bottoms leg grooves in this manner.

Then I can clamp the leg flat on the bench to work the bottoms of the grooves for the adjacent leg sides.

After a couple test fits, it's time to work the face of the joints to re-flatten them and to make them 90 degrees to the chair seat. Remember my material moved over the last year, so things are completely wanky. I had to really look at this before I came to the conclusion on how to fix these joints.

I used my low angle jack for this process, I had to take the faces down to close the gap at the joints and to close the gap at the grooves where the groove bottoms meet the seat tongues.

In the next image you'll see the sides are now parallel with the seat joint, there is an even gap around the seat joint to rear leg. Since I flattened the joint sides, it changed the radius of the leg, so the joint cannot be closed. I knew this was going to happen, but the most important goal was to get the leg square with the seat joint once again, and I knew I could re-shape the 3/4" radius after.

I mounted the 3/4" radius router bit in my table, and made sure the bearing was flush to the fence.

I ran a test piece of lumber through the setup and test fit it against the radius of the chair seat, and it was a perfect fit.

Then the actual leg was run through.

And the fit is perfect.

After clamping the legs to the seat, the fit was even better than perfect, it is skin tight.

 

I must admit when I first set my rocker parts on my bench and tested the joints, I was very depressed, it looked like a lost cause at first, but really anything can be fixed, well most things can in the world of woodworking, after I fixed these joints, my day was a good day.

[lew]

Most Excellent!

[Gene Howe]

Fun times!

[Cliff]

If it were easy, everybody would do it.

[Ron Dudelston]

Stunning craftsmanship John. 

[Courtland]

Thanks gents, I'll keep the progress pics coming, and wish me luck! There are going to me more challenges to come as many of the parts moved over the last year, but we'll get em to fit good!

[John Moody]

Awesome, Awesome. I love to see those joints