Shaker Transitional Rocker Part 3 (Curly Maple)

[John Morris]

Shaker Rocker in Cherry

 

Related Topics

• Shaker Transitional Rocker Part 1 (Curly Maple)
• Shaker Transitional Rocker Part 2 (Curly Maple)

 

Current Project

So folks, I decided to break this topic up in parts as the last one was getting a little long in the tooth.

So you can see the links above to the first two parts of my chair build. April of 2017 is when I started this maple chair, and as you know by now I decided to pick it back up and get back out in the shop and try to focus for once on woodworking as I did in Part 2. Thanks for following me!

 

The back support rack is assembled as can be seen in Part 2. And now it's time to bore the mortises for the side rungs of the chair. The side rungs connect the back legs to the front leg assembly rack. I use a story stick for the entire chair layout, 99 percent of this chair is cut, turned, laid out, and assembled with story sticks. In the image below I am marking out the side rungs.

 

 

Once the side rungs are laid out, I am using a slant support to bore the mortises at the proper angle, so the side rungs will splay out, thus creating a trapezoidal seat. So the front of the seat will be wider than the rear.

You can see my first Shaker Rocker at this Link to get an idea of what I am talking about.

Also, @Gene Howe, I know what you must be thinking, why use the slant table on a drill press that is fully capable of slanting its own table? I know I know Gene. For this Rocker I don't want to deviate from my norm, but next chair I make Gene, I promise I'll utilize the tilt table of my Shopsmith.

 

 

Just a side view of my slant jig, also, the Shopsmith has a wonderful table that moves on two axis, first off the tilt, and the slide, in and out for fine adjustments in accuracy, this way I could clamp the jig to the table, and with the hand wheel I can slide it in and out till the bit sits directly over the line I need to bore, I really like my SS.

 

 

Another view of what I am referring too for the sliding table, it's pretty awesome.

 

 

First set of mortises are bored, I am using a Freud Diablo 5/8" Forstner with center spur or pin I guess you could say, it's a very clean cut.

 

 

Some of the rungs are too tight to fit in the 5/8" mortises so I like to secure them in my vise and take some rolled 80 grit and work the tenon down till it fits snuggly in the mortise.

 

 

After I made sure all the rungs will fit nicely, I did a dry run to see how they all line up, and they lined up beautifully.

 

 

Now it's time to bore the mortises in the front assembly, you'll see these mortises are angled inward, to catch the side rungs that are angled outward from the rear legs. I used a story stick to lay these mortises out as well.

 

 

Again, the Diablo by Freud really does a nice clean cut in this seemingly brittle Maple. In my desire to turn more and more towards hand tools, this may be an operation best suited for the drill press, as the angles in these frames are very important. I will practice with a brace and bit, there are tricks that Windsor makers use to bore accurate angles by hand, but for this chair I'll continue on the beaten path I know, just to get this one wrapped up successfully, this chair will be sold, so I can't afford big errors at this point.

 

 

Now that the front and rear legs are bored out, I performed another dry run before glue up. You may notice at the left, it appears the side rungs were bored at an incorrect angle, they were not, well they were, but the error was on purpose. The books I am studying for building these chairs are written by Kerry Pierce. Mr. Pierce built-in a deliberate error in this these chairs, once those rungs are inserted into the mortises, the stress of those tenons are actually locking the chair together, if there is ever glue failure, the chair will hold together mechanically.

There is a wonderful story in Mr. Pierce's books, he talks about repairing an original Shaker chair, the joints were loose, the glue was void, but one thing he noticed was the chair was virtually impossible to beat apart, and he surmised it must of been because the Shaker's introduced this deliberate error in the rung angles, in order to serve as a backup in case of glue failure.

 

Now you can really see the trapezoidal shape of the seat.

 

 

I only took the below picture to show the folks what my shop looks like now. Where the Shopsmith is sitting is where my wife's car parks. When I am done for the day I'll roll the Smith to the left side of the shop against my saw bench. So what you see here is what I am down too now, I have my Smith, my lathe as you can see on the back wall, my work bench at the rear left, and a miter saw cutoff bench at the left of which you cannot see the saw, but you can see the bench area. I have downsized considerably, for folks who may not no or have ever seen my shop before, there was a huge Grizz 12" table saw with an aircraft carrier bench right where the Shopsmith is sitting now. I had a 15" Delta Drill Press at the back wall where my cabinet makers bench is now, along with a 15" Grizz band saw, a Performax sander, and and a router cabinet, and at the right side of the shop out of picture, I had a 6" Grizz jointer, a planer, and a dust collection system. I sold them all, and to be honest, I do not miss them. But that's me, it was just time, I actually feel liberated being a relative minimalist.

 

What started my downsizing was my desire to turn my shop into a more quiet experience and to start focusing on building with hand tools and in order to force myself to use more hand tools I knew I had to rid myself of luxuries. What quickened the downsize was my wife and I purchased her brand new car last Spring, it's the very first brand new car we have ever had, and it's a nice one, a 2018 Honda Pilot Touring, that is her daily driver, and I decided I wanted to give her, and her car a proper space to park, instead of in our driveway. Also the security of her being able to just pull in and close the garage door behind her, is really comforting for me. By the way, the garage door in this image actually leads out to our backyard, it's a pull through door. The two car door is behind the photographer.

 

It's funny how life works out, we adapt, and often times, it works out really well.

 

 

I'll end this tonight with my preparation for glue up. Once again, everything I need is on my bench, and within hands reach, all the rungs have been fitted, and the next post in this topic we'll see a chair assembled. Thank you all once again for following along! I'll install the rest of the images for this day in the shop tomorrow night.

 

 

 

[Cal]

You are making great progress on this John.  I do hope that your future posts will give us a similar in-depth of the seat weaving.

[John Morris]

6 minutes ago, Cal said:

I do hope that your future posts will give us a similar in-depth of the seat weaving.

Thank you Cal, and you can bet on it, actually the weaving is one of my favorite parts of these chairs to do, it's very relaxing actually.

[Gene Howe]

Beautiful work. Great pictures. 

[Larry Buskirk]

Very nice John, looking forward to more! 

[Gerald]

Verrry Interrezting as the spy said in the funnies. You have enlightened me greatly. Just so you know I would go insane (as if I was ever sane) without my tools.

[Larry Buskirk]

2 minutes ago, Gerald said:

Verrry Interrezting as the spy said in the funnies. You have enlightened me greatly. Just so you know I would go insane (as if I was ever sane) without my tools.

Gerald, I think you meant toys didn't you? 

And define sanity!!! 

[Gerald]

56 minutes ago, Larry Buskirk said:

Gerald, I think you meant toys didn't you? 

And define sanity!!! 

oops

[John Morris]

So now I have all my main chair parts ready for glue up, I need to make some last second decisions, which side of the rungs do I want facing out, I'll go through the rungs and inspect each one for figure, and determine what I want to be viewed from the side. I want the most dramatic figure facing outward, in view.

Once I have made that determination, I'll put a little pencil mark on the tenon indicating the side of the rung I want out, so as I am not making that decision during glue-up.

 

 

Now that my rungs are marked, it's finally ready to make this look like a chair. This glue up went really well, everything fit perfectly, more than I can say for past chair builds, I guess experience is adding up and my OJT is paying off finally. I'll let the chair sit for a couple hours then I'll go to the fitting of the arms.

 

 

I'll be back later today to submit the rest of the images for this day "last Sunday".

[Gene Howe]

Looking real good. Eagerly awaiting the arms and rockers. 

I see a bottle of TB. No Hide Glue yet? 

[John Morris]

7 minutes ago, Gene Howe said:

I see a bottle of TB. No Hide Glue yet? 

I transition slowly Gene. 

[Harry Brink]

Looks great!!

[John Morris]

In Part 1 of this topic series I shaped my arms, that was just over two years ago when I started this rocker and then shelved it for reasons out of my control. To see how I shaped the arms you can view here at Shaping Arms.

In our current topic here, I sketched out a rough shape where the arm tenon should be. The mortise is 5/8", I used a ruler to establish my tenon lines.

 

 

Now, since I am heading towards a hand tool experience in my shop, I could have easily made these little cuts with my turning saw, but truth be told, I really like using my Shopsmith, it's that fun for me now. So I converted the SS from a Drill Press to Bandsaw operation. The motor and table is tilted back down to the base.

 

 

Then the Band Saw is mounted and the motor is slid over to connect with the bandsaw.

 

 

The tenons are cut and now they need to be shaped round and the arms need to blend into the tenon area.

 

 

With my Lee Valley shave, I start to make some cuts, and see where it takes me. I have an idea what I want to see the shape look like, but I am kind of winging it here, because I really want to use my RAY ILES tenon cutter, so I need to rough shape the tenons close to round, then the tenon cutter can be used.

 

 

Just another perspective of the image above.

 

 

My tenon cutter is working well, it will cut a perfect 5/8" round tenon.

 

 

So I have a little problem here, I am not too sure I like the tapered portion before the tenon that the cutter produced, I like the more sculpted appearance of a completely hand shaped tenon. You can see the more sculpted beginning of the arm tenon on the arm above the other in the image below, and the boring smooth shape the tenon cutter produced on the arm below the other, I am mulling the use of the cutter in the future. The cutter is made more for Windsors, where the smooth tenon (no shoulder) is tradition. The Shaker chairs traditionally have a shouldered tenon. And that shouldered tenon consequently allows more material for creative shaping.

 

 

Both arms shaped with the cutter, I also tried to add some interesting sculpted lines that flow into the tenon area the best I could, just to keep it visually interesting. I think I succeeded, not a complete loss in the design department after all.

 

 

With the arms shaped, we are ready for glue up to the chair. I cut a slot in the front leg top tenon in order to accommodate the wedged tenon that will keep the arm tightly secured to the chair.

 

 

After a dry run installation, I marked the arms for the holes the top tenons will fit into. I did not get images of this process, I thought I did! It's an interesting way to get the arms perfectly aligned and holes marked for boring, next time I'll have to take images of that operation and walk through it. But for now, the image below shows the arm in place, I tapped the wedged piece of cherry I cut earlier into the slot very firmly with a regular steel hammer, a steel hammer seems to be the only tool to ram these wedges home, I tried a wood mallet on wedges for other projects in the past and it just doesn't feel like it does the job like a heavy steel head hammer does.

 

 

Almost immediately I cut the wedge flush with my Crown flushing saw.

 

 

And planed it flush to the arm. You may have noticed the chair is not sitting on the floor. I needed to support the chair firmly between my legs on solid ground in order to get the plane to cut through the tenon without too much pressure being place on the rocker at this point. Even with the plane skewed, cutting through the end grain of the tenon required a bit of force.

 

 

Then scraped the surface to bring it completely flush and pretty.

 

 

it's getting late this day (last Sunday) and I finished my goal just in time for dinner. Time to close up shop. I have a chair frame assembled, the only thing missing is the shawl rail at the top of the chair. I will have to turn the rail and steam bend it, the shawl rail will also be fitted to the top tenons at the rear legs with a wedged tenon just like the arms.

 

 

To make this chair I studied Kerry Pierce's book "Chairmaking Simplified" and "Pleasant Hill Shaker Furniture" also by Kerry Pierce. I poured over the images, and sketches, and the processes and learned, thanks to Mr. Pierce, how to build these wonderfully fun chairs. Thank you Mr. Pierce!

 

 

After I finished my celebratory cup of coffee and took the picture above, I swept the floor, cleaned up shop, and rolled my Shopsmith to the side of our garage to make room for mama's car. Lights are turned off, mama's car is pulled in, and it's time to join the family in the home, for dinner and fun.

 

 

Next post in this topic will show how the rockers are fitted to the chair. Thanks for following!

[FlGatorwood]

Super.  Thanks for the lesson.

 

[Cal]

This has been a great narrative John.  Looking for "the rest of the story..."

[John Morris]

Thanks Bob and Gator, I like story telling, if this series gets a little long winded, please let me know, I can get wordy. That being said, I do love it when folks share their work here on The Patriot Woodworker, that the images are accompanied with good descriptions. I do appreciate the "Look what I built" topics, I love the images, but if you can also put a little narration in with the images, I feel others can walk away with something more too, perhaps new ideas, new motivations. I like to see things like, how'd you do it? What did you use? Where can I find it? What didn't work, what did work? What was in your mind when you decided on that method instead of? You know who is really good at narrating their work here? Jess, Smallpatch, I love reading his narrations of his images.

 

Thanks again guys.

[Gene Howe]

Your narrations and photos are so chock full of good and, interesting info, so don't worry about the length. PIP posts are always the best. 

[John Morris]

23 minutes ago, Gene Howe said:

so don't worry about the length.

Thank you Gene, I won't then.

[John Morris]

@Gene Howe, today in addition to fastening the rockers, I am going to turn the shawl rail, on my Shopsmith! This'll be the first time I've used the SS lathe. Wish me luck!

[Gene Howe]

Don't forget to raise them wheels!