Hey Folks-
Let me just second what Jeremy said about John's (Woodguy1975) rocker class-phenomenal! Of the 3 students, none of us had ever built a chair before and we all left with working rocking chairs! Having said that, a good part of the chairs' character comes from the shaping, and that's up to the individual. So this is my process of finishing the rocker: Here's what the chair looks like when you're done with the class:
Now the following process is my method-and as this is my 1st chair I am probably wrong on many things-my opinions on shape are also mine-and they may not appeal to everybody-but that's what makes these chairs so unique- a bit of your personality shows through. If anyone has any helpful hints-please feel free to post-I'll put it to good use on the next one:wink_smil. Now on to part 1-I decided I'd start by shaping the rockers:
1st I must explain that in class the last thing we did was attempt to rout a 45 degree chamfer along the underside of each rocker, leaving about 3/4" of flat material on the bottom. Unfortunately, because the rockers are laminations (think spring tension), we all had some really bad tear out during the process. So I went home with 1 rocker done and one undone-so the 1st thing was to match them up-I decided to do this with a block plane:
So the 1st thing was to sharpen the tools:
here's the undone next to the done-to show what I'm going for:
and the tear out section:
block plane making curls:
Now the tear out section made the next decision pretty easy. Because it was not in the "rock" zone I decided I'd round over the back 1/2 of the rockers-started with the angle grinder. This allowed my to eliminate the section that got torn out: here's the result compared to the unshaped:
Now I had to move to the front half of the rocker and smooth the edges (I tapered the sides up toward the top by ~1/4") and also rough shape the front horns:
Next I tried to clean up all my shaping with a spokeshave but I found that my rockers were not liking that-lots of reversing grain and tear out-so I ended up smoothing with a random orbit sander-here's the results:
and finally the whole chair after today's efforts:
You can see the chair already looks quite a bit lighter- I didn't shape around the risers too much today as I want to wait until I finish shaping the legs to see what profile I want. One design note here, because of the tear out section I took out a considerable amount of material from the rockers: about 6" back from the rear legs. At 1st I was concerned about this but after seeing the shape, I actually think the curve flows a little better, a welcome surprise!
Next step will be to shape the rear legs- But that'll have to wait till Friday, until then......
:BangHead::BangHead:clamps-clamps-why do i never have enough clamps
Let me just second what Jeremy said about John's (Woodguy1975) rocker class-phenomenal! Of the 3 students, none of us had ever built a chair before and we all left with working rocking chairs! Having said that, a good part of the chairs' character comes from the shaping, and that's up to the individual. So this is my process of finishing the rocker: Here's what the chair looks like when you're done with the class:
Now the following process is my method-and as this is my 1st chair I am probably wrong on many things-my opinions on shape are also mine-and they may not appeal to everybody-but that's what makes these chairs so unique- a bit of your personality shows through. If anyone has any helpful hints-please feel free to post-I'll put it to good use on the next one:wink_smil. Now on to part 1-I decided I'd start by shaping the rockers:
1st I must explain that in class the last thing we did was attempt to rout a 45 degree chamfer along the underside of each rocker, leaving about 3/4" of flat material on the bottom. Unfortunately, because the rockers are laminations (think spring tension), we all had some really bad tear out during the process. So I went home with 1 rocker done and one undone-so the 1st thing was to match them up-I decided to do this with a block plane:
So the 1st thing was to sharpen the tools:
here's the undone next to the done-to show what I'm going for:
and the tear out section:
block plane making curls:
Now the tear out section made the next decision pretty easy. Because it was not in the "rock" zone I decided I'd round over the back 1/2 of the rockers-started with the angle grinder. This allowed my to eliminate the section that got torn out: here's the result compared to the unshaped:
Now I had to move to the front half of the rocker and smooth the edges (I tapered the sides up toward the top by ~1/4") and also rough shape the front horns:
Next I tried to clean up all my shaping with a spokeshave but I found that my rockers were not liking that-lots of reversing grain and tear out-so I ended up smoothing with a random orbit sander-here's the results:
and finally the whole chair after today's efforts:
You can see the chair already looks quite a bit lighter- I didn't shape around the risers too much today as I want to wait until I finish shaping the legs to see what profile I want. One design note here, because of the tear out section I took out a considerable amount of material from the rockers: about 6" back from the rear legs. At 1st I was concerned about this but after seeing the shape, I actually think the curve flows a little better, a welcome surprise!
Next step will be to shape the rear legs- But that'll have to wait till Friday, until then......
:BangHead::BangHead:clamps-clamps-why do i never have enough clamps
