Maloof Inspired Rocker Plans

[Brad Estelle]

First Post: I've been lurching around here for a bit as a guest, finally jumped in when there was so much interest in the "maloof" rocker. I am a mediocre woodworker, a few small hand projects to date, lots of residential building/remodeling experience, confident with those tools, but limited time at the bench. Want to be a part of this build, as I see it developing. Will be my most invlved project to date. I like that there are so many procedures and stages involved. Have a couple of sets of plans, that I will probably morph. I have a pretty primitive shop, unheated, (brrr!), anxiously waiting for a delivery of a bit of walnut for this project.
Have enjoyed everyones input, keep it up, have enjoyed every post
Brad

[Brian Kent]

Brad, that is wonderful. I promise to make many good mistakes for you to learn from.

Welcome aboard!

Brian

[Prashun Patel]

I finished a good part of the seat shaping. I made a profile gauge to help make both "cheeks" symmetrical. It's a piece of wood that bridges the seat, and is registered @ 90 deg with another batten of wood. Screws project thru the center line of the spanning piece up to the seat pommel. You line it up on one side, adjust the screws until they're touching the seat. Then you flip it to the other side and carve until...you get the idea.

Smoothing high spots has been tricky. I've used a combination of rasps, ROS, and scrapers. Still not there. A compass or radius plane woulda been helpful. I was able to smooth the thigh sections of the seat by holding a rasp at a flat angle and pushing with my hand on the top of the blade - not the handle. Finds the high spots very well. Needs to be curved to work the slopes. The "cheeks" part has been hard to get though...

The second pic is a view of the front leg to the seat joint. Being cheap, I didn't buy the matching router bits for this bridle joint. It took a bunch of hand shaping and more patience to get it to fit flush after routing with the bits/bearings I had. Thank goodness there's only 4 legs!

I've learned to mark my pieces ad nauseum. I ruined 1 legs by cutting a dado on the wrong side. When I did it the 2nd time I just splined in the errant kerf with a little shave of walnut (see the top mortise of the leg). It'll surely stand out in the end, but it'll be a beauty mark...?

[Brian Kent]

Shawn

You are far braver than I am to freehand that joint. The matched set of router bits is what I am asking for on my Santa list. Very good idea on the depth marker, instead of having just one marker for all.

How did you join together the seat boards? Did you use a domino or biscuit or dowel for alignment? It seems that so much long grain glued together would not need additional inside reinforcement.

I plan to chop mortises with a mortise chisel and then use small floating tenons for alignment.

Brian

[Prashun Patel]

How did you join together the seat boards? Did you use a domino or biscuit or dowel for alignment? It seems that so much long grain glued together would not need additional inside reinforcement.

I used a Dowelmax. I had to use a wedge to get align it properly on the beveled edges. Brock advises reinforcements for 2 reasons: 1) alignment - since some of the boards are beveled, they'd squirrel around when you tried to clamp them without; 2) Strength: Some parts of the seat are carved fairly deep, so there's not as much gluing surface as the rough blank leads u to believe.

[Prashun Patel]

I'm not an expert enough to say whether the reinforcements are necessary for either. I can tell you that when I clamped up the coopered boards for a test fit without the dowels, they did NOT squirrel around as others have experienced.

Further, I found it easier to glue up the seat in sections. I glued up Boards 2,3,4 first (the outside faces of 2&4 are parallel). Since you're going to hog out the seat, alignment isn't all that critical anyway; you can even make a little jig to hold the bottom edges flush. After that was dry, I glued 1, 5.

[Brian Kent]

I see in your avatar that you are much younger than I expected.

I think I just may try it with glue only. Now I just have to wait until Christmas to get the router bits!

[Scot Ferraro]

My Charles Brock plans came today. Looks like a lot of shop entertainment for 2010.

I'm saving for the wood. Still planning on a combination of straight grain and curly maple. But I saw some photos of a curly cherry rocker. That looks magnificent too. 8/4 cherry is about $6.25 at Reel Lumber (local) and some of their pieces show some figure.

Hi Brian,

I just ordered 175 BF of Birdseye Maple from Bell Forest products out of Michigan. Medium to high figure boards came out to around $7/BF for the 4/4 and I think I was charged the same for the 8/4 since I ordered 300 BF total lumber. The wood is magnificent and they specialize in Birds-eye and Curly Maple. With shipping it still came out to be cheaper than what I could find locally and I called around to several places. They sell 8/4 in shorts too for a little less and that would be perfect for most furniture projects, including a rocker since the lengths are typically 3-5 feet in the short category. You can Google Bell Forest products for more info. I will definitely order more lumber from them in the future and was very pleased with everything.

Scot

[Richard Dragin]

Just found this thread.....

Having built several Hal Taylor chairs I am biased so takes my comments for what they are worth.

Has anyone completed one of these chairs from the plans? The customer comments don't include anyone who has built a chair.

Hal has lowered the price of his plans because he now sends them in .pdf format instead of printed and he now includes a video.

Shaping the leg joints by hand might save the cost of the router bits but you'll never get a perfect fit and IMO waste a lot of time and material.

Hal talks a lot about grain and bi-lateral symmetry which either C.B. does not or Shawn ignored (sorry Shawn).

Anyone in the market for wood to build a chair should start at Austin in Santa Ana or Bohnoff in Vernon.

Keep posting because I am always interested to see how other rockers are designed, I'll be posting chair #6 soon.

RD

[Prashun Patel]

Richard-
It were your chairs that inspired me! The 2nd or 3rd post in this thread ref's yours. I see your point about the symmetry of grain, and I paid attn to it, but this was about the best I could do with the stock I had. Ah well, live and learn, yo!

And you are right - it was hard to get the joints to fit. I got it pretty good (for me!) though. In the end, I'm not sure it was worth the patience it took...

[Richard Dragin]

Well you've already completed some of the more complex aspects of the chair without the benefit of the matched bits, I'm impressed. Keep at it and post more of your progress, you'll probably inspire someone else to build a chair.

[Prashun Patel]

Thanks. I don't want to mislead: I did use existing router bits, and altered the bearings to get them to match as best as I could. I tested it on scrap, and realized the fit was off by a 'smidge' (technical term). I then routed the roundovers a little shy and only finished with hand tools. I didn't craft the entire roundover by hand.

I painted the inside corners of the mortise with white crayon, and then malleted the legs into the joints after roughing them a little with a fine rasp. The fibers compress, shine, and pick up the wax at the points that require filing. It's doable but tedious. You learn quickly how to file down points and fan out the spot without creating flats.

[Richard Dragin]

That all sounds familiar and I went through a lot of "adjusting" to get a good fit. I was using bits from MLCS and finally splurged for the ones Hal recommends from Ridge Carbide. It made a big difference and the current chair I am on has the best fitting joints yet. It also helps if your jointer and table saw are dead nuts zero because if not you can see the result.

[Brodie Brickey]

That all sounds familiar and I went through a lot of "adjusting" to get a good fit. I was using bits from MLCS and finally splurged for the ones Hal recommends from Ridge Carbide. It made a big difference and the current chair I am on has the best fitting joints yet. It also helps if your jointer and table saw are dead nuts zero because if not you can see the result.

Richard,

Which bit set is needed for the chairs?

Thanks,

Brodie

[Richard Dragin]

A 1/2" rabbet and 3/4" round over. The key is that the rabbet bit has a diameter of 1-1/2" so it will mate with the round over. Because of manufacturing differences not all bits will match up, the Ridge Carbide worked a lot better than the MLCS bits I started with.

Others have mentioned 5 degree bits which is closer to what Sam used I think.