Shaker Transitional Rocker Part 3 (Curly Maple)

[John Morris]

55 minutes ago, Gene Howe said:

Don't forget to raise them wheels! 

Been there done that! Pushing hardwood through the table saw, why is my SS walking away from me?

[Artie]

7 hours ago, John Morris said:

@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!

John, I will especially want to read your report on the SS lathe. 

[John Morris]

5 minutes ago, Artie said:

John, I will especially want to read your report on the SS lathe. 

You bet Artie! Right now I am sitting at my bench, watching wood steam. I'll get the shawl rail out of the steam box, bend it, then head on inside for a full lathe report!

[John Morris]

Fitting the Rockers

The rockers are always fun to fit to a chair. There are some factors that could cause the installation to the legs to be disastrous, or not, there are only two outcomes with this part of the process, either it looks good, or it doesn't.

So here we go, we are going to install the rockers onto the chair legs.

 

The edges of the rockers were still rough from the initial band saw cut out two years ago, so I wanted to smooth the edges, first I put one of the rockers up in my bench vise and attempted to use my shave to smooth out the ridges left by the bandsaw, but my technique was lacking, this curly maple edge is hard to understand for me, the grain direction did not want to cooperate and I ended up with tear-out. I'll have to revisit my shaving skills on curly edges, and see where I can improve in that regard, if anyone has any suggestions on smoothing edged curly wood, I am all ears.

So instead of making it worse I decided to go ahead and chuck up a small spindle sander with 80 grit and I was able to take the edges down to smooth, and followed it up with sand paper.

 

 

After I got all the edges smoothed up on the drill press, I planed the old wood away to get a consistent surface throughout the entire chair, these rockers were sitting for two years, and they developed a patina darker then the rest of the chair, so with my No. 4 smoother I made it nice again. There is reversing grain in these rockers all over the place, I had to hold down one end of the rocker, plane, then reverse the rocker and plane the other direction. In another topic I was discussing this exact scenario for reversing grain and planning out your material usage for specific parts of a project. When I started building this chair I was still pretty much in my machine phase in every thing I did, two years later I am very much into my hand tool phase. Two years ago, reversing grain didn't mean much in this instance, now it means everything, knowing what I know now, I would not have chosen this part of the lumber that I did for these rockers.

 

 

Once I planed the rockers smooth, I followed up with the scraper, there was a little tear out from the plane, the scraper is a great tool for dealing with tricky grains.

 

 

I set the chair upside down on the bench in order to work on the bottom legs, there are notches that must be cut in order for the rockers to fit into.

 

 

 

I just made this handy little template the morning I took these images. There is a small notch in the template where it meets the legs, so I can scribe a line accurately down the center of the leg bottoms. I did not have this template for the first chair I made, but browsing through Kerry Pierce's book on Shaker Furniture, I saw a similar handy template he was using and I decided to make one of my own, it works well. The lines have to be inline with each other, between the leg bottoms. This template ensures that alignment.

 

 

Lined up and ready to measure out the notches.

 

 

Before I start cutting into my leg bottoms, I wanted to layout the location where the legs meet the rockers, my story stick told me exactly where to mark out.

 

 

With my notches marked out with a marking knife, and penciled in, I am ready to cut the notches out. I used a marking knife to cut some deep lines into the leg bottoms, in order for my saw to have a better chance of tracking well and cutting straight. The hole at the bottom of the notch helps when I go to chip out the waste.

 

 

Here are the main tools I use to cut and shape my rocker notches, from left to right, a Japanese Iwasaki float, a small mallet, and a dovetail saw, the very fine teeth of the dovetail saw work really well for these precise cuts.

 

 

I cut down the lines, and to the limit line at the bottom notch, then I chisel away the waste, very little by little. One slip up here it could mean a mess to fix, you have to be careful not to drive the chisel too hard, you could split the rocker leg.

 

 

Here we have a complete notch for a rocker, and cleaned up nicely. The Japanese float comes in handy for the final fitting and shaping the notches. Since there is no cutting edge on these floats, as there are in most Western style files, you can file right up against the side of the notch with the flat of the file doing its business at the bottom of the notch.

 

 

The rocker is set in place for about the tenth time during fitting, and the final fit is good.

 

 

But, the fit is a tad tight, I had to press it in place pretty hard to get it seated into the notch, so I made a decision to make the fit a tad loose, I was concerned that with a very tight fit, and the stress the chair is under as it is being used, that the leg may split.

So I used the scraper once again to take some micro shavings off the leg areas, and I finally got the fit I wanted.

 

 

Now there we are, two rockers, fitting nicely, and ready for pinning.

 

 

I'll post back here later tonight, right now family is needing dad, so I'll catch up with you tonight!

Thanks for following along!

[Gunny]

Some work of art you are building John, nice work!

[John Morris]

5 minutes ago, Woodbutcherbynight said:

Some work of art you are building John, nice work!

Thanks Gunny, I am enjoying the experience myself greatly, it's a fun build. I love chairs.

[Gunny]

3 minutes ago, John Morris said:

I am enjoying the experience myself greatly,

I have been enjoying, okay maybe not enjoying perhaps enduring digging through roots, birnign roots, mostly destroying what is still left of this tree.  Maybe in time I might actually get to BUILD the deck back.  You know, work with some wood.   

[Cal]

During the fitment process, do you continuously take the chair off the bench to be sure the rocker is sitting level?  If not, how do you do that?

[Gene Howe]

Enjoying your progress, John. 

When I used fabric softener and water to bend some maple strips, I found that scraper tear out was eliminated. It was curly edge grain, 3/16" thick.

[John Morris]

1 hour ago, Gene Howe said:

When I used fabric softener and water to bend some maple strips, I found that scraper tear out was eliminated. It was curly edge grain, 3/16" thick

Hmmm, interesting Gene, I wonder if I filled the steam container with that solution if that would make a difference?  But, there really isn't anywhere on the chair where I'm running into that issue with the bent parts, in this case it was just the rocker edges, which aren't bent. But, you gave me an idea to consider.

[John Morris]

3 hours ago, Cal said:

During the fitment process, do you continuously take the chair off the bench to be sure the rocker is sitting level?  If not, how do you do that?

No I don't Cal. Measuring down to the limit line of the bottom notch, does the job at ensuring the rocker sits level. If we miss by a 1/16" or so it would not be noticeable at all. I never even thought of it sitting level, it just seams to sit fine. Now you gave me something to worry about.

[hatuffej]

I like that angled jig for the drill press. I'm going to make one that is adjustable. 

[John Morris]

1 minute ago, hatuffej said:

I like that angled jig for the drill press. I'm going to make one that is adjustable. 

I'd love to see it when you are done Hat, please!

[hatuffej]

7 minutes ago, John Morris said:

I'd love to see it when you are done Hat, please!

I'll try to get some drawings or pictures. 

[Gene Howe]

Found a rocker that looks doable for my limited skills... Maybe!

 

[John Morris]

Hey Gene, aren't you the resident Morris Chair expert builder? By the way, that is not a limited skill chair you are displaying there!

[Gene Howe]

32 minutes ago, John Morris said:

Hey Gene, aren't you the resident Morris Chair expert builder? By the way, that is not a limited skill chair you are displaying there!

Expert??? No way!!! But, thanks for your confidence. The word EXPERT, when in verbal form, can be can be broken down to it's compenents: EX is a has been and, a spurt is a drip under pressure. I might be an EX but, there's not a chance I'm under any pressure. 

Seiously, that rocker, in mesquite, would be quite an adventure. Maybe, some day.

 

 

Edited May 26, 2019 by Gene Howe

[John Morris]

That would be an adventure Gene, hey you know what, they now are marketing Hemp Wood! How about rocking in some Hemp?

It's actually quite pretty.

 

[Gunny]

John if I attempted such a feat I promise the chair would list to port about 15^0.

[John Morris]

Pinning the Rockers

 

Continuing this build we are going to pin the rockers to our notched legs. Pinning the rockers in these chairs is done for one main reason, if a rocker should be worn down, or break, you will be able to slide a saw blade between the leg and the rocker, and cut through the pin on both sides, and remove the rocker. So we don't glue the sides of the notch to the rocker.

Below I have the chair setting on the rockers where I want them.

 

 

I have a few things laid out to create my pins, and to drive them into the legs. You can see the bench hold fast securing an old wrench to the bench, the hole in the old wrench directly in front of the hold fast is a hole I drilled at 3/16", I'll force wood pieces through the hole to make my pins/pegs. The hole is sitting over a bench dog hole, so when I ram the pins through the hole, it'll drop down through the bench and onto the floor.

Next you'll see a mallet, I used it along with the blue handled Marple chisel to split out the pins from the block of Cherry sitting to the left of the chisel. I like to use the mallet because it just feels good, not too heavy, and controllable as I am striking the chisel with it.

Then of course the steel head hammer I'll use to drive the pins through the hole in the wrench.

A small knife I'll use to rough shape the pins close to size before I drive them through the hole.

 

 

I split out 4 rough pins from the small cherry block.

 

 

Then I roughed out a pin with my knife (laying to the left of my knife), basically just whittling away at it till it's close in diameter to 3/16".

 

 

The first pin was a success. The wonderful thing about doing your pins, or dowels, or pegs (your terminology) in this fashion is that you can create any type of pin how you want them. You can choose any diameter for your project, and you can virtually use any species of wood to fit your project needs.

 

However, some species are a tad more temperamental than others, I love using Ebony for pins, or these days Macassar Ebony but it is very brittle for this operation, and I'll go through a dozen attempts to just get a few successful pins made, the rest shatter into pieces. I thought of using Ebony for this chair, it would look striking to have the black pin in the light maple. But I changed my mind at the last minute, my reasoning was that because it is a brittle wood, I was concerned how it would do in the stressful environment of a rocker joint. So I went with the Cherry instead.

 

 

Here is one of the successful pins I created, you can see the splinters flared out, I went against the grain as I drove the rough pin into the hole. It's hard to tell where the grain direction is in these little pieces.

 

 

I made four successful pins, and one shattered as you can see at the far right. The ends of the pins aren't round, that is ok, I need the middle part of the pins, the ends will be cut off anyway.

 

 

I drilled a 1/16" pilot hole then followed it up with a 3/16" tapered bit. These tapered bits are excellent for boring out clean holes on both sides of the wood. Even at the exit hole, there is virtually zero tear out. I eye balled the placement of these holes, they don't have to be perfect, actually nothing on this rocker or most hand made chairs is perfect, it's a wonderfully fun non-perfect project.

 

 

This is the exit side for the tapered drill bit.

 

 

And, here is the tapered drill bit.

 

 

I coated the pin in glue, and drove it home till it exited the other side.

 

 

I couldn't get the pin all the way through on this one, it pushed back on me and did not want to completely run through, it's ok, I got one side through just enough.

 

 

So, given that the pin in the image above did not seat all the way through, I realized I did not have enough support behind the leg as I was hammering away at it, it just kept bouncing around and I was not getting a solid hit with my steel head hammer. So I rigged up some backing support for the rest of the legs and from here on out, the pins drove right in and through with ease.

 

 

 

With the pins fully seated I immediately cut the pins flush, again with my flush cutting saw.

 

 

Then I pare them down with a chisel. Paring down these pins left some chiseled facets behind, I like those, and I'll leave it be for finishing.

 

 

And I now have rockers completely secured to the chair, thank you for following folks!