Love taking the journey along with you on this project.  I'm learning so much just from your pictures and descriptions.  Thanks for the instruction!!

15 minutes ago, Thad said:

Love taking the journey along with you on this project.  I'm learning so much just from your pictures and descriptions.  Thanks for the instruction!!

It's all my pleasure Thad, I am having fun too!

One word. Elegant.

Looking mighty mighty nice John.  Looking for the same treatment (how-to & whys) on your finishing selection and seat material & method.

 

BTW - can you recommend a book to ID a rocker?  I have an old rocker that belonged to my grandmother, then my folks.  It was likely old(er) when my grandmother obtained it.  It is large, heavy and has claw feet on the front legs.  Also, very comfortable.  But I have never seen another one like it or even similar to know what style it is called.

1 hour ago, Cal said:

Looking for the same treatment (how-to & whys) on your finishing selection and seat material & method.

Most certainly Cal!

 

1 hour ago, Cal said:

can you recommend a book to ID a rocker?

Cal I have a book here at home that is very handy for identifying furniture for their time periods and and in many cases the region they were created. Even though the book focuses on American furniture, it goes into depth how the furniture got here from other parts of the world.

Goodreads is a great place to become a member too, you can read thousands of books by digitally borrowing the books.

That being said, if you post an image of your rocker here perhaps I can ID it quickly, as I have read the Sotheby's guide already and I may be able to zero in on where your rocker was created.

 

Sotheby's Guide to American Furniture by Patricia P. Petraglia

WWW.GOODREADS.COM

---

Sotheby's Guide to American Furniture book. Read reviews from world’s largest community for readers.

 

Turning and Bending the Shawl Rail

The shawl rail is the final part to be created for this rocker, actually it should have been created at the same time I was bending back slats two years ago, but I just left it out, and here we are now. The shawl rail serves a few purposes, and it's called various things, it can also be a pillow rail, a cushion rail among others. When these chairs were originally sold by the shakers, they would tie small pillows to the rail that went with the chair as an enticement to purchase the chair.

 

It's a miracle I still had a billet of curly maple sitting in my small lumber box for this project, I figured after two years I would have used it for something else, not remembering the original intent for the remaining billet of the original cut outs for this rocker. But I found it!

 

I purchased this lumber at Curlymaple.com where the gent who owns this small mom and pop mill sells much more than just curly maple, don't let the name fool you, they have some beautiful lumber of varying species. We have a great hardwood retailer here in my area, but really, the three main species, Cherry, Walnut, and Maple, it seems the best lumber with the prettiest figure and grain comes directly from east of the Rockies. The cost difference is dismissable, especially if you plan on selling your work, you can build in the cost to the price of the work, and it truly is negligible.

There is another dealer of lumber that I have purchased from as well, his curly maple was outstanding, he is Bob Kloes Lumber and he is a wonderful craftsman as well.

 

 

So, I just wanted to show you all that I put a billet of 8/4 maple through my Shopsmith, and I am so tickled that my Smith is cutting so well. For awhile there it was not cutting well, I could not have pushed this billet through the table saw of my SS before an electrical repair was made, and now it's like I have a new Shopsmith, the edge facing you in the image below was just cut, I cut out a 3/4" strip to use for my shawl rail, and as you can see there is only a couple dark marks, my fault, the first mark I fed it in angled, and the middle slight burn is when I paused briefly.

If you have not already seen my electrical saga you can see it at Shopsmith Has New Power.

 

 

Jumping to the actual turning of my shawl rail piece, I set my calipers at 11/16" and I roughed it in with my Easy Wood Rougher to about a 1/16" heavy, so I could come back with my Easy Wood Finisher and bring it close to final dimension, and of course with the sanding the very near final dimension is achieved.

@Artie, I am going to create a separate topic for reviewing the lathe capacity of the Shopsmith, I was going include it here but it really deserves its own topic, but I can say, I was pleasantly surprised in many ways by how the Shopsmith lathe function performed for this task.

 

 

After I turned down the spindle and sanded, I burnished the spindle with a handful of shavings, this is a really neat way to bring out the glow of the wood and figure, but the reality is for this process, it's useless, only because I need to insert this spindle into a 200 degree steam box that raises the grain considerably and all that burnishing work is eliminated during the steaming. But hey, it's good practice! Really I could sand to 220 on the lathe and leave it at that, until it comes out of the bending form for final sanding or scraping then finishing.

 

 

For the diameter of this spindle, it's long, about 22" long, so I had to support the spindle while I was turning it with my left hand wrapped over the spindle with my fingers hanging down and my right hand holding the chisel right at the same location being supported by my left hand, and my left hand thumb is applying pressure on the top of the turning tool tip and acting as a guide as well. It's hard to explain. But I adapted this method by reading the Kerry Pierce book on shaker furniture and how to build. I saw him using this method and I adapted it as well and have turned dozens of thin spindles using his method and I am very comfortable with it.

 

The tool rest is set back for sanding.

 

 

Just another shot of my Smith in lathe mode. You may notice I have a live center at the tail stock, it's one I had laying around for other purposes, I need to purchase a regular live center for future turning if I am going to use the Shopsmith, which I will. My Laguna lathe live center would not fit the Shopsmith, I tried, it's a different taper.

I installed the Shopsmith dead center on the lathe first to give it a whirl, so I could at least say I did for review purposes, within minutes it started whistling, and it was annoying, so I switched it out.

 

 

Our shawl rail is turned and ready to bend.

But first I had to orient the spindle correctly before bending. When bending you want to avoid grain run-out at the outside of the bend as much as possible. That is why for bending you want to try to choose consistent and straight grained lumber if possible, sometimes appearance and design don't allow this luxury, but if possible you want to consider using very straight grained lumber for bending. That being said, curly maple is anything but straight grained, and this section of my billet had some pretty good cathedraling of the grain, and that is the worse to have for steam bending but there is a way out of this predicament.

 

If you see the first image below I have circled in red, the area of the spindle that has the small cathedral grain. We don't want that grain to be on the outside of the bend, this will cause grain run-out. I experienced this on my first rocker shawl rail as an inexperienced shaker rocker builder, and it has become unsightly over time, and it even has the possibility of the grain flaking out and away over time from the outward stress of the bend. It's not so unsightly that anyone will notice it, but I notice it, the lines of the grain in that area are darkened, almost like the cathedral developed a dark outline of itself.

 

So to alleviate grain run-out in a bent piece, simply install the piece in the bending form with the cathedraling facing up and down, and the straight grain portion of the piece should be on the outside of the bend.

 

 

The area circled in red within image below is the straight grained portion of this spindle that I want to have on the outside of the bend, this will avoid grain run-out. The cathedraling is facing up and down in this image, out of view.

 

 

Before I put the spindle in the steamer I set a center mark on the spindle so I could line it up with the center of my form, to ensure the radius of the bend is centered. So, I am going to set the reader up for something that I did completely wrong, even after my long winded explanation of grain run-out. Perhaps you can see where I am going wrong already in my mind, planing this simple bend. Just look at the image below, by the end of this post you'll know already where I am going with this. The line I marked is not only the center of the bend, but an indicator to remind me which side of the spindle should be facing up to avoid the cathedral grain on the outside bend.

 

 

The following images are just fun shots of my steam box I made. If you want to see how I made this box you can see my gallery at:

 

The foil at the front catches a little condensation that ends up dripping out, but the majority of the condensation runs to the back of the box, the box is slanted back for this purpose.

 

 

A plastic container to catch the main runoff of condensation

 

 

Front shot

 

 

The recommended temperature for steaming is 210 degrees or there abouts. We are almost there.

 

 

I set the spindle in the box, dang, I forgot how hot it gets in there, even with the door open, I steamed the skin off a couple of my knuckles. So I grabbed a pair of tongs from the kitchen to be ready to take it back out.

 

 

The formula for bending is one hour per inch thickness of lumber, my spindle is around 11/16" so a 1/2" to 3/4" in thickness, I estimated around 45 minutes, a half hour would of done it more than likely but I feel it's better safe than sorry.

I pulled the spindle out WITH MY TONGS this time! And working briskly setting the spindle in the form, and with one hand holding the spindle in place, and the other hand turning the screw, we bent a stick, how cool is that.

 

 

 

So, back to my big Duh moment that I asked you to beware of by the end of this post, take a look at the positioning of the cathedral grain and where it's located at the bend. Yep, after all that preparation and bloviating about how important it is to have straight grain on the outside of the bend, I inserted the spindle into the forum incorrectly! See my pencil mark in below image, indicating the cathedral grain on the outside of the bend, it should be on the top or bottom.

 

 

Sheesh, but it's ok, I simply filled the steamer back up with water, waited for the box to get back to temperature, and put the spindle back into the steamer and straightened out the spindle back to its original shape, straight. What steam can giveth, can also taketh. After re-steaming the spindle I inserted it into the form oriented correctly and we are back on track.

 

So we are all caught up now, you know what I know, and I'll be tinkering a little in the shop today, kids and mama want me to fix my Dad spaghetti and french bread today so I'll be busy with that too, but for now there isn't much we can do with this chair till the spindle is removed from the forum (about 7 days). I had planned this correctly I would have done this two weeks ago when I restarted this project, but my mind is just getting re-wrapped around woodworking again, I'm not firing on all 8 cylinders yet in the shop, it's been awhile.

 

Last night I ordered the shaker chair tape for the seat and that will be in this week and hopefully I can finish the chair next weekend.

For the retailer I purchased the tape from, see link below.

 

Shaker Chair Tape | Shaker Furniture | Shaker Workshops

WWW.SHAKERWORKSHOPS.COM

 

Thanks for following folks, and have a wonderful Sunday, and a memorable Memorial Day.

 

 

Nice post John. I thought you said you was not good on lathe. That is a good job for not having a steady rest. You can build your own for the next project and it makes it much easier to stabilize the blank.

 

Thanks so much Gerald! And thanks for the steady rest idea, I love it!

This morning, after I submitted the last entry here, I walked into the garage and looked to see how my shawl rail is doing. 

I decided to loosen up the form a bit so the radius of the rail will more closely match the existing radius of the back slats.

Since the back slats set for two years, some of the bend came out of the slats. I should have resteamed the slats and bent them back. But it won't make that much of a difference really, as long as they all match.

I'll let the rail sit in the form in this relaxed stage till Friday. Then I'll fit it to the top of the backrest with wedged tenons. 

 

 

Oh, one last thing, you can now see I got the grain oriented correctly this time. Note the cathedral grain facing up, out of the bend. 

Whew! That's how you spell R.E.L.I.E.F. 

John,

You make it look easy. 

1 hour ago, Larry Buskirk said:

You make it look easy.

Ain't that the truth!!

22 hours ago, John Morris said:

That being said, if you post an image of your rocker here perhaps I can ID it quickly, as I have read the Sotheby's guide already and I may be able to zero in on where your rocker was created.

Thank you John.  The rocker is currently "stored" with a bunch of our furniture and belongings while I work on floors and such.  As soon as it becomes available though, I will post up a pic.

 

Great how-to on the use of your steam box this morning.  And good of you to detail the finer points, mistakes and all - and how to go about correcting them!

That was a great run-down on your steam bending process.  That's something I would like to learn more about.  Thanks for keeping us updated on this.

Installing the Pillow Rail

A couple weekends ago I installed the pillow rail, life has been happening again lately and I have not been able to get back to my chair as I had hoped for last weekend, by now my chair was to be finished and the seat weaved and ready for a new home.

But I'll catch up on the progress here today!

 

The pillow rail tenon has to be refined still in the image below, I try to get as close as I can with the tenon while it's on the lathe, but the rear leg is such a long spindle at 42", and to turn that tenon down to the 1/2" while it's on the lathe, I think is not wise, and the original author and my mentor for these chairs (Kerry Pierce) agrees per his books on this subject. The image is blurry, but the main thing is you can see how I carefully clamped the rear chair leg to my bench, in order to refine the tenon with a file, my Japanese file laying on the bench by the pencil.

 

 

After the tenon was refined to a point, I bored out the 1/2" hole in the pillow rail itself. I am using my Fay and Spoffard brace and a Jennings bit, a great combination for boring.

 

 

Getting ready to bore the other end of the rail. I wanted to show you my Fay and Spoffard brace, these are wonderful tools, highly sought after by chair makers, especially Windsor makers. And I know why, the level of accuracy and the feel of these braces is incredible. Since there aren't any other mechanics between the human body and the bit, besides the brace itself, you have a direct feel to the wood, you can literally feel when the bit is getting close to the other side, you can even hear the wood starting to shallow out, and you can hold this brace at angles and maintain that angle easily because you don't have the other mechanics in the way as other braces do, such as a ratcheting system, a bulky chuck, switches for reverse and forward etc etc. There is a direct translation of your energy, to the wood being bored, this is completely difficult for me to explain but all I can say, if you are wanting to bore holes with bit and brace, you owe it to yourself to find a Fay and Spoffard (or Spoffard) and try it for yourself, you'll be amazed.

Note the "quick release chuck", just a winged knob, a slight turn and that bit slides right out, and in with another, I can change a bit faster than with a portable drill quick release, and faster than a ratcheting chuck on other braces, not that speed is anything that matters in this brace, but it's just fun to talk about.

 

 

So the tenon holes are bored in the pillow rail, and it's time for final fitting, sometimes the rail does not seat properly, and some fine tuning is in order, as was the case here. I know, it looks rough right? Believe me, once the final fit is done, and the slot is cut, and the wedge in place, it cleans up nicely.

 

 

The wedge slot is cut.

 

 

I took a piece of my Macassar Ebony and chipped some wedges out of it. The holes you see were plugs for one of my sculpted rockers (Link Here) that I built in the past. This is a left over chunk of Ebony that I am using for the wedges.

 

 

I cut out a few of these wedges from the Ebony, and shaped them to fit into the slotted tenon. This one is before final shaping, I took a chisel and shaped it into a wedge (not shown).

 

 

I wish I could have gotten images of the glue up process, but I did not. It's nothing special, you simply flood the tenon with glue, insert the pillow rail, then flood the slot with glue, and hammer the wedge home. The image below is the wedged tenon after I flush cut the wedge down, and filed the tenon and wedge flush to the rail.

 

 

Note the orientation of the wedges, they are perpendicular to the pillow rail grain, if the slots in the tenons were cut parallel with the pillow rail grain, the wedges would have split that rail as they are rammed home.

 

They still look a little rough, but they will clean up nicely with a couple passes by the scraper, the burrs will disappear, and the glue line around the tenon will be whittled down to nothing, exposing a fine joint.

 

 

Just a neat image below, I thought. I had my mobile phone on my lap as I was photographing this process, the phone hit the floor facing up and somehow an image was accidentally taken, it's from the bottom of my bench, looking up. With my wood clamps stacked around one leg of my bench, you can see the handles, and the bottom of my end vise. Just kind of neat. A little abstract.

 

 

Thanks for following along folks. Oh yes, my shaker tape weave for the seat came in a few days ago, and it's the wrong color! So we are delayed a bit for the final finish and seat. Stay tuned!

Just fabulous. Another masterpiece.

Quite a masterpiece John!

Well thank you gents!

Great craftsmanship.  Such patience.  You have done everything very logical and it shows.  Thanks for sharing your journey.  

21 minutes ago, FlGatorwood said:

Great craftsmanship.  Such patience.  You have done everything very logical and it shows.  Thanks for sharing your journey.  

My very most pleasure! And thanks so much for your kind comments.

Hey, we have a part 4 live now!