Sculpted Rocking Chair Class - Day 2

[gary]

We had a short day today as we got out at 5:30. We concentrated on the seat all day.

In the morning we learned about the design considerations that go into making the seat. We also learned how to measure somebody to determine the best size seat for someone. Using this learning and by measuring ourselves, we built our seat front view and top view templates. We also had to mark where the legs attach to the seat and how deep the joints would be.



We then started building our seats. My shair is made from mahogany (african) which I bought from Wall Lumber on their shorts special. Anyway, the rough size of my seat is 24.5 wide x 26" deep x 1.75" thick. Marc used by seat for his jointer safety demo even though the boards we jointed at home (all my hard work to waste l ) Heres a view of by seat layout after re-jointing and biscuit joinery was completed.



The biscuits are applied low in the seat to allow ample room to sculpt the top. They must not be near the front or rear or they could interfere with the sculpting process. Here's a picture for the biscuit joints.

[gary]

We then learned how to bandsaw sculpt in a safe manner. It's a little more controlled than I've seen Maloof use in his video. He truly is the master and I respect him much more now that I've tried it. The boards are sculpted using the marks transferred from the templated. I really lucked out as I had 5 boards in my seat - it resulted in the middle board being easy to sculpt. I also lucked out on the 2 boards next to the middle one - the overall width of the seat allowed those boards to be sculpted flat (like resawing). The 2 outer boards only required minor sculpting. In the future in making these, I'd try to get the seat sizes and templates made before cutting the lumber to try and duplicate my luck. Here are a few pictures of the seat after bandsaw sculpting.







We then proceeded to glue up the seat (ordinary Titebond III) and call it a night. Tomorrow we use carving chisels and grinders to finish it up. Joinery will also be applied to the seat tomorrow.



I hope this is helpful, I'm having a blast. BTW, I saw where they're considering offering another Sculpted Rocking Chair class sometime end-August/early-September. The spots will go quick so call the school if you want to get it.

[Wood_workur]

Wow. Looks really nice. Wish I could be there

I was watching the New Yankee Workshop this morning, and the used an ax-like tool and a bent draw-knife to sculpt out the seat for the windsor chair. They also used one single board for the seat, to prevent is from seperating, or moving un-evenly (or creeking), but I doubt that would happen with a glue up.

[JR]

Cool, Gary. Keep it coming.

JR