Maloof Style Chair - Finished!!

[Prashun Patel]

The rear stretcher goes from the middle of the front stretcher to the rear leg.

[Tim Mahoney]

Prashun,

Why use 4/4 for the seat? Can't you get 8/4 in your area? Actually now that I think about it maybe using a 4/4 base of walnut and a top of maple would look wild with grain. Like a Gibson guitar body. Now there is a thought. I agree with Darren about shaping close to the joint before glue up. It's fun to watch others make Maloof's chairs knowing all the work that goes into them. Nice work as always.

Tim

[Prashun Patel]

I'm using 4/4 because that's what I have on hand. As always, I do realize that these kinds of 'savings' lead to more effort which nullifies any perceived saving.

[Prashun Patel]

I completed the glue up of the stretchers and legs.

Fitting the stretchers took some effort. Not only do the tenons have to be turned to the right diameter, the holes need to be aligned correctly. If not, the leg joints won't come together without risking snapping the stretchers.

I compensated for my bad hand drilling skills by cutting the tenons a little wider than the target and then tapering the ends (only the tips) with the tapered tenon cutter. Then I dry fit, and noted the burnish marks, disassembled, shaved, and retried. I compensate for lack of skill with patience and time.

I also started shaping the rear leg of the walnut chair. The curved Microplane very useful for quickly shaping the inside chair/leg joints.

Before gluing up the maple chair, I took more wood off of the joints. The headrests are laminated 4/4 pieces. I thought about doing a bent lamination, but Scott does his this way, and I liked the look.

[Ken Mosley]

Great looking project Prashun!
DO I know you from the J D Lohr School from a few years back?

[John Sanford]

I can't see the plans anywhere on his site, could you provide a link? Those look like chairs I'd like to build.

[Dan Bowman]

He sells his plans, and they're very well documented on DVD. You can buy directly from Scott's site, but you can get them cheaper at A&H Turf. Do a Google search.

[glenn bradley]

Ah, they're starting to take shape. Looking good and thanks for taking us along.

[Prashun Patel]

I'm not sure it's right to post links to other sites here, but I'll try: www.finewoodworker.com. I'm not affiliated. I just like his plans and designs. Like Hal Taylor and Charles Brock, he's very accessible, humble, and encouraging.

I never attended JD Lohr school, but I'm impressed you might know another Prashun Patel; I thought I was the only one. Patel's are many. Prashun's are rare.

The hand shaping is really great. I did a rocker last year. Then I used a rasp for a lot of the shaping. For this project, I've discovered the joy of a well-tuned spokeshave. I've also discovered how to use the grinder with more confidence. That really makes shaping the seats and the joints easy. The carbide kutzall disc is shaped like a donut; the radius of that curve is just perfect for the transition from legs to seat. Using it this close was intimidating at first, but you quickly realize how controllable the disc is - and more importantly - how minor mistakes can be blended away.

[Fred Floyd]

The chairs are taking shape. I've built two of Hal Taylor's rockers and am starting on the Scott Morrison bar stool. Each of them use slightly different approaches, so there are good ideas to extract from both. I was particularly impressed with their willingness to share their knowledge and to provide encouragement when things didn't go as smoothly as in the videos.

The Kutzall Extreme disk does a terrific job of getting through the bulk of the waste around the joints. I was surprised how much control you have. Chairmaking is really fun and does give the craftsman a lot of opportunity to be creative. None of us will ever be Sam Maloof, but it is still enjoyable to explore how his furniture is put together.

Prashun, the chairs are coming along quite well and certainly don't take the extended time that the rocker does. Can't wait to see the finished pieces.

[Prashun Patel]

I'm using maple dowels for the walnut chair plugs, and walnut dowels for the maple chair plugs. To make them, I cut a 5/8" square blank out of each material, then rounded over the edges with the rasp. Then I fed each thru the Veritas 1/2" dowel cutter. Against the advice of the instructions, I power fed it thru the cutter by chucking the end in my lathe and running it at the slowest setting. The cutter gets very hot, so I stopped very frequently, and used a clamp to hold the jig. Actually, you need a clamp to hold it; free hand holding it would not give you enough leverage and will whip the whole thing out of yr hands quickly. Very dangerous. I - um - didn't make that dumb mistake...

[Prashun Patel]

Here are some shaping pix of the legs. I'll switch to the ROS from here.

[Brian Kent]

Those are very helpful pictures to show the shaping process. The figure in the maple is beautiful (and is going to be even more beautiful).

[Prashun Patel]

Got the headrest attached and rough shaped today. Because the bottom of the headrest and the inside neck of the rear leg are hard to access after assembly, they had to be preshaped and sanded.

I used a 50g fiber disc on an angle grinder to do this shaping. You can see that I used it a little too long on the maple; got some burning. I switched to the ROS to clean this up. I also found a small void around one of my walnut plugs. a little CA glue with some shavings should fill that nicely.

The last 4 shots show some of the initial sanding I've done with 60gt on a ROS. The key to using the ROS is to use a soft backing pad. This is is firm enough to be aggressive, but confirms nicely to curves. You can get the edge of the sander right up and into those tight seat joints.

I was turned onto Indasa Rhynogrit sandpaper by Richard Dragin. I didn't appreciate it until now. It really holds up to this kind of aggressive sanding.

I even used the ROS around the curved legs. This has to be followed by hand sanding, though with hand sanding to remove the inevitable (for me!) ridges that come from power sanding convex contours this tight.

Next I will work on smoothing the headrest and thinning it out to make it less 'chunky'.

I think the joint to the headrest needs some more definition.

[jeremy levine]

Great thread !!