In three weeks I am taking a class at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. The course is titled: "Make a Keepsake Child's Sculptural Rocking Chair", taught by Marc. Two days ago the wood was purchased, not my favorite task, as I don't really know what I am doing. Two cherry boards were purchased as well as two hard maple boards.
I can't crosscut long boards with the table saw in my small wood shop, so the boards were laid across 2 X 4's and cut to length with a circular saw. The garage was over 90°, but the fan helped a little. The saw had no trouble getting through the 8/4 or 1 3/4" thick wood as long as the board was held tightly under my foot. A framing square was used as a saw guide and clamped to the board with three large pinch clamps.
Today the boards were ripped to width on the table saw. A seldom used blade was employed as it was sharper than the blade usually in the saw. The table saw had little trouble getting through the thick material, unless it approached a knot in the maple. Two cuts were made on opposite sides so both sides were clean when the desired width was reached. All boards were ripped except two that were already near the appropriate width.
Now it is off to Menards. Some tools needed for the class, a Japanese saw rasp, 8-14 gouge, 5/8" brad point drill bit, etcetera were purchased online. An angle grinder is also needed, one equipped with a sanding attachment and coarse sandpaper. A Bosch angle grinder was selected along with a sanding pad and a few grits of sandpaper to fit.
The morning was again spent in the garage, though this time the focus was on the lathe. The tool list for the class includes dowel centers in 1/2" and 5/8" sizes. The former were available from Rockler where a few other required tools were also purchased. I decided to make the 5/8" size.
A 5" length of 3/4" steel hex was cut on the horizontal bandsaw. This was held in the three jaw chuck, faced, and the end turned down to 0.620" for 5/8". The corner was chamfered with a file. The steel was removed from the chuck and was cut off with a hacksaw 7/16" from the reduced portion. This process was repeated three more times making the parts shown below.
The part was returned to the lathe, but this time the reduced end was held in a collet, ensuring the eventual machined point is concentric with the machined end. After facing the end, such that 3/8" of hex remained. The final 0.25" was then reduced to 0.30". The compound slide was set at 30° and the central stub was reduced to a point. This work, nearly complete, is shown below.
The other three parts were machined in the same fashion to produce the four dowel centers shown below. The final operation was sanding the six faces remaining from the original hexagonal stock. This was done with 120 grit sandpaper producing the four completed dowel centers seen in the second photo below.
A decision was made at this point not to harden the points. They will be used to transfer hole locations to wood and should be sufficiently hard to manage this task.
Something was needed to hold the dowel centers, so a "not quite a box" was fashioned. A 2" X 2" X 3" block of wood was located. The block was cut in two on the table saw to produce a bottom and a lid. The bottom was marked for four holes and drilled with a 5/8" brad point drill bit to a little over 5/8" deep. The dowel centers were put in the four holes and the lid aligned over the points. The lid was given a few raps with a hammer to transfer the holes. The lid was drilled with a 7/8" Forstner bit and then the bottom was opened with a countersink for the points. After sanding the holes in the top to open them up, the lid fit nicely on the block of dowel centers. The sides were sanded and the corners chamfered producing the block shown below, which does a nice job of protecting me from the points.
The workshop is now over, though the chair is far from finished. The workshop was a whirlwind as is to be expected, when Marc Adams is the instructor. At the end of the class he informed us that this was in the top ten of project complexity of the four thousand workshops taught at MASW over the years! The whirlwind of a workshop was complicated by a whirlwind in my bowels that left me sidelined for over half of a day and moving slowly the remainder. Luckily, the class was supported by three outstanding assistants, who kept me somewhat on track. This was the first time the class was taught and the next time the five day class will be extended to a sixth day to spend more time on sculpting. An incredible workshop!!
Much of the afternoon will be spent returning tools to their homes, finding places to store the cutoffs, and bringing in the partially completed chair for further work. Marc informed us that at least forty more hours of work would be required to complete the chair. Much of this time will be spent sculpting each of the parts and then once glued, sculpting the joints. Of course this is followed by hand sanding and finish application.
Only one thing about this class troubled me, the purchased grinder. As it turns out I purchased the wrong grinder, a 4" not 4.5" grinder is needed. The smaller grinder from Makita has a 5/16" spindle instead of the common 5/8" spindle and fits a small rubber disk and small sanding pads. Mine is much too large to get into the smaller areas needing sculpting. I might cheat and make an adapter to reduce my 5/8" spindle to the 5/16" spindle needed for using the smaller fittings shown in the photo below, though working with a heavier grinder also presents challenges.
Before going further into the details of sculpting the roughly cut chair shown below the work in class will be recounted from my not so voluminous notes. The photo below shows the chair upon first setting it on the rockers with dowels in place. The arms were rough cut at the time, but were not installed during rocker attachment. The chair at this stage has not seen any glue and can be readily disassembled.
The chair was designed on 1/8" MDF at full size. The dominant face, in this case the side, was drawn on the board. The rocker is designed so the seat is 12" high based on measurements of children published years ago by MIT. Adult sculptural rockers are designed to fit an individual, who can sit in the rocker, allowing adjustments. This is necessary for achieving the most comfort. Does the seat fit the person's bottom? Does the curve in the spindles fit the curve of the sitter's back? For this chair we went with the design Marc used in making multiple such chairs for his children and grandchildren. Only the final design sketch is shown below.
The seat was the first part tackled. Two templates were made using 1/8" MDF, again based off of Marc's. One template defined the outside and the extent of the flat part of the seat. The second template defined the front edge of the seat. These two templates are shown on the design in the first photo. The seat made from three cherry boards, jointed but not glued, with the design drawn out is shown in the second photo.
A bandsaw was used to cut out some of the center of the seat as seen in the first photo below. It was at this stage that the three boards were glued. The three board glue-up was made square on the tablesaw, very important because all of the joints need to be parallel or perpendicular to one another. The two photos below show the process of chiseling out the seat.
Something that should have been done in class was chiseling out the shape of the seat front, both the top and the bottom. This was the first job to tackle after moving the chair to the basement workshop and cleaning off the workbench. The chair bottom is shown below with the top area along the front that needs to be removed.
It is now a week since the class ended and time to begin the sculpting process. This began with chiseling the top front edge to match the drawn lines. The seat was flipped over and the bottom was marked and chiseled, though this will be redone as insufficient material was removed. The photo below shows the seat from the top after completing this first round.
The seat bottom where significant material had been removed creating the tush depression, was lumpy in places. These lumps were removed with the rasp and created a well shaped and smooth to the touch posterior impression as seen below.
The rasp leaves long grooves that need to be removed. This was done with 50 grit sandpaper. The sandpaper was held by hand and after many strokes removed the rasp's cutting marks.
What I didn't notice until the rasping and sanding dust was removed with a vacuum were the marks left by the end of the rasp as it dug into the curve at the back. These are readily apparent in the photo above. Removing these by hand was not very effective as they are so deep. An alternative was stumbled upon by the drill press, where a bunch of extra accessories are piled. A 3M rubber sanding pad and a 40 grit glue back sanding disk. The pair made quick work of the gouges when the disk was mounted in the cordless drill. Care had to be taken to not leave sanding grooves in the back of the curve.
At this point the seat bottom depression is completed except for final sanding. The front edge, however, still needs significant work. This was accomplished in the afternoon on both the bottom and top using the chisel to sculpt the edge to the desired shape. A small amount of edge was left to complete the roundover with sandpaper.
An attempt to remove the chisel marks on the front edge with the newly created disk sander was begun, but the drill suddenly stopped working. Assuming it was the battery, the battery was removed and placed in the charger. The battery was recharged in about 15 minutes, but the drill still does not function!! The rasp was turned to and of course works well, but leaves rasp marks. The nice thing about using the rasp is that the profile can be sculpted and this was done creating nice smooth curves. Sanding by hand with 50 grit paper required about fifteen minutes to remove the rasp marks from half of one side of the front edge. The first photo shows the results of sanding with the now defunct disk sander, the second shows the results after rasping and the third shows the sanding progress to remove the rasp marks.
Gluing up a repair on the seat corner that busted out yesterday began the day. A scrap of cherry was located and one square corner was cut off. The chipout was not square, but was squared up with saw and chisel. Glue was applied and the clamped corner repair is shown below.
The arm supports were studied and sketches drawn on them from two directions of their approximate final shape. This allowed determination of just how much material could be removed, about 2 5/8". This excess was removed with the table saw. Since the arm supports span two joints, it was not clear what sculpting could be accomplished without attaching the seat and/or the arms. Focus shifted to the rockers as most of these are not near joints.
The rockers are too wide and too tall or thick. The center of the bottom curves of the rockers are fixed and not to be messed with. The bottoms were prepared by taping the two rockers together side-by-side and sanding the bottoms on a spindle sander. The work was done by one of the helpers during the time I was out. Prior to this work I had cut the rockers to profile with the band saw, after the two flats for the leg joints were cut parallel and flat with a table saw. The spindle sander left a very smooth and flat surface on the middle bottom of the rockers. The outer parts of the rockers can be sculpted on the bottom (though probably won't be), but not the middle.
The picture after the next paragraph illustrates an important point about rocking chairs in general. Most of the weight of the rocker and the person rocking sits over a point below the back leg. For a child's rocker this is not so important as the child, who fits this chair, won't weigh all that much. For an adult chair this is important. Most of the weight of the adult will be held up by the two joints holding the back legs to the seat. Consequently, the beefy hip joints used in this rocker. There is no stronger common woodworking joint.
The female hip joints for this rocker were cut first with a dado blade in a table saw followed by routing above and below to produce the half-round profile. The male halves of the joint were also cut with a dado blade and then routed to their half-round shape with a profile bit. Tight joints were managed by sneaking up on the depth of the routed cuts on the female joints in the seat.
Lines were drawn on the rockers to indicate the approximate shape and desired width and height. Placing the doweled front and back legs on the rockers did not indicate any modifications were needed in the locations of the these lines. The lines can be seen upon expanding the photo below.
I must admit to some hesitation to begin sculpting other parts of the chair. Overcoming my trepidation a rocker was started. The middle part between the leg joints was targeted first. The rocker was reduced in thickness from both sides with the Japanese saw rasp. About 3/16" was removed from both sides. About 3/8" was removed from the top of the rocker. This left a rectilinear shape, but now ready for shaping into the desired semi-round cross section. The photos below attempt to show this process. This one section of one rocker took about 45 minutes of physical labor.
The second rocker was treated similarly reducing the central portion, also requiring forty-five minutes of hard work. Good exercise and in a relatively cool basement.
The front and back of the first rocker were thinned next. This rocker thinned everywhere except the areas close to joints is shown in the photo below.
The rasping was exhausting me so an alternate path was sought. The scroll saw seemed ideal as I don't have a bandsaw. A number of blades were tried before settling on a #9 blade. Cross cuts were made about every inch to provide some relief from the cutting, which was challenging. The rocker had to be held tightly to the bed while proceeding slowly with the cutting. Got some bad burning early on, but less after lowering the speed of the blade. In total about three hours was required to complete the rough cutting on both rockers, which are shown below next to a photo depicting early struggles with burning the cherry.
Not sure where to go next in terms of sculpting, so took a sculpting break and spent three hours hand sanding the seat with 120 grit sandpaper. A few of the worst rasping marks were removed with a half round file, if they were on a convex surface or if on an accessible concave surface. The resulting seat looks very good upon close inspection and is pictured below.
As far as next steps for sculpting goes some areas of the back legs can be reduced in size similar to the work on the rockers. Most of the remainder of the parts have minimal area between joints and the joints aren't touched until assembled. My plan currently is to assemble the chair and clamp it tight as if it were being glued up. The joints will be marked for rough cutting. The chair can then be disassembled and the rest of the parts roughly cut. Final rasping to shape will be done after the chair has been glued up. A few more bar clamps are needed to tackle this next step.
The rockers can be sculpted to final shape distant from the joints, so this was begun next. The back parts just need to be rounded, but still with a flat bottom most of the way. The top was tackled first with the saw rasp. After some work it was not clear exactly what I was shooting for so a template was made from a scrap of 1/4" thick pine. A hole was cut in the pine with a 1 3/8" Forstner bit and opened to the end with a saw. The first photo below shows the beginning of the work and the second shows the pretty much completed roundover with the template.
After a few days with no ability to get into the shop I am back to sculpting. The back of the second leg was sculpted, again with the saw rasp. The middles of the two rockers were then tackled. These are too wide for the template so were completed by eye. They were also partly rasped with the Nicholson rasp as it can better get into the curves where the legs join. The two rockers at this stage of sculpting are shown below. Not quite sure how to round the ends, so these have been left untouched.
The remainder of the sculpting requires an assembled chair. The chair was clamped together with seven clamps plus two for one arm. My clamp selection is one shy of being able to clamp both arms. The clamped chair is shown below.
The desired curves were marked out with a pencil beginning with the front legs. The back legs were also sketched in as well as the one clamped arm. Photos of Marc's chair were used as a reference, though actual dimensions were just approximated. The curves drawn were adjusted until they looked good to my eye. The curves are close to final dimension so any rough sculpting needs to end about 1/4" outside the lines. Final sculpting will be completed once the chair has been glued up. The three photos below show the front leg lines from three sides. The second arm was then clamped and its lines sketched on as well.
The holes for the arms and their supports are not aligned correctly. Dowels were made from maple scraps with a scraper. These dowels were pounded into the holes until they reached bottom after adding glue. The photo below shows the dowels in place.
The next morning the dowels were cut off with the flush cutting saw. The arm supports needed the holes from the arms transfered, but there was no 3/8" dowel center as the original 5/8" and 1/2" dowels were substituted with 1/2" and 3/8". A quick trip to the small lathe and the 3/8" dowel center was made from scrap steel hex. This center is shown below. After marking the new hole locations in the arm supports they were drilled with a 3/8" Forstner drill bit about 3/4" deep.
The next step is roughly rasping all of the parts except the seat. To this end all of the parts was again marked, though this time with a Sharpie and about 1/8" outside the previous pencil markings. The last 1/8" will be taken care of once the parts are assembled and they can be appropriately mated. Using a combination of saw, saw rasp, and Nicholson rasp the two arm supports were roughly rasped to the Sharpie lines. The two supports are seen below.
Sawing and rasping this hard maple is physically challenging work!
A front leg was tackled next. It and the arms point out a flaw in my marking. Once a side is roughly rasped to shape the marks for its two adjacent sides vanish. Photos and extending the marks over the ends will be used to remind me of these marks' locations. The first photo below shows the front leg set up for sawing off a large section of the top. The completely roughed leg is also shown below. The other front leg was roughed out similarly.
After a day in Cincinnatti to visit the future recipient of the chair it is back to work. A number of tasks remain before it is time for glueup. The spindles need to be reduced along their length to fit more deeply in the mating holes in seat and chair back. The back legs need to be reduced in width to align with the outside of the seat. The rockers, where they join legs, need some major reduction. The front corners of the seat need to be sculpted. The crest rail needs to be shaped and the ends of the rockers should to be rounded. Much of the rockers can be sanded up to 150 grit or so. Some work on the spindles can be done before assembly especially sculpting the side-to-side shape. The design to be carved in the crest rail can be done before gluing. Finally, the arms can stand some rough shaping.
Spindles were sculpted first. The ends were reduced as needed to fit all the way to the bottoms of the holes in the seat and crest rail. The tops need a pronounced radius, while the bottoms sport a gradual slope. The work was begun on each spindle with the saw rasp and finished with the Nicholson rasp. The four sculpted spindles are shown below. Where to go from here on the spindles still confuses me, but will be mapped out with them in place between seat and chair back.
To add further confusion to the mix the seat, crest rail and back legs were put together. By accident the crest rail was put in backwards. This almost eliminated the issue of the outside spindles sitting significantly higher than the inside spindles. With the spindles fully inserted a bit of the groove cut for the biscuit is visible, but less with the crest rail in backwards. The only issue with putting the crest rail in backwards is there is more tension when aligning the biscuits during assembly. The first photo shows the crest rail inserted normally with the biscuit slot just visible. The second shows the crest rail in backwards.
Decided to go with the backwards crest rail! One of the spindles needed about 1/4" of material removed from the front face to be even with the other three. All needed significant material removed from the back faces as I am planning to thin them to about 5/8". To this end the front of the first spindle was rasped bringing it down to the level of the others. Spindles two and three were then thinned from the back. About 1/2" of material had to be removed in the middle and feathered out to about two inches from the ends. A chisel was used to remove most of the material, followed by the saw rasp and then the Nicholson. Both spindles were then cleaned up with a file, much more efficient than coarse sandpaper. The first photo shows a spindle after the chisel next to a second spindle marked for the same work. The second shows a rasped spindle and the third a filed spindle.
Each spindle required about 1 1/2 hours of work to get to the stage shown above. Hard physical labor, but rewarding when viewing the completed work.
Ran a four hour rocker marathon this morning. All of the places where legs attach were shaped to size, including the curves in front and back of each of the four joints, as well as the sides. My work with the saw rasp is improving with each use. The photo below shows the completely shaped rockers.
After the rockers come the legs. The smaller front legs were first shaped after careful marking. The photo below shows the resulting legs.
The back legs have me stumped. A lot of material, ~1/2", needs to be removed from almost the entire length of each leg. A bandsaw would be ideal, but I don't own one, at least not a vertical bandsaw. Sawing by hand would be a nightmare, keeping to a line over two feet of hard maple. Two alternate possibilities come to mind. The angle grinder might work as it can remove a lot of material quickly. Another possibility is using a router in a jig, allowing the router to move back and forth across the length of the leg. The angle grinder is the quickest to attempt, so that will be tried first.
Not as quick as planned, testing the angle grinder approach. First, the Bosch angle grinder purchased a month ago was discovered to have the very nice X-lock system. Unfortunately, I was unaware of this when I purchased the device. After determining that the X-lock system cannot be effectively removed or used on regular accessories, it was back to Menards to purchase two flap sanding discs, 60 and 120 grit. A leg was clamped to the downdraft table with vacuum attached. I wore a dust mask, safety glasses and hearing protection. A full body suit would have been helpful.
The angle grinder made quick work of removing the material and with no burning or digging in. The disc was kept at a 10-15° angle, while constantly moving from side to side. One leg about half complete is seen below. The amount of dust produced was gargantuan! Not only a huge quantity, but spread across the entire shop. Vacuuming up the dust took more time than sanding the legs. In any event both are now thinned to a more reasonable size as seen in the second photo below.
The bottom two or three inches was not completed with the angle grinder as it is tapered. This was finished with the rasps. The rasps were also used to smooth out the waviness left by the grinder's sanding. With the legs thinned the two perpendicular faces were tackled. Some lines were scribed when holding the back legs on dowels in the rockers. These lines were extended to produce the desired curves. This can be seen in the first photo below. The second photo shows the bottom of one back leg after rasping to the lines.
After many hours of rasping one back leg is completed, i.e. sculpted to rough shape. The side originally cut with the band saw was also gone over with the rasp to remove a few small hills and valleys. Tomorrow will see the second back leg sculpted to the same shape, realizing less than one month remains before the birthday party.
The following morning the second back leg was completed to the same stage of sculpting. The rasping marks were removed with a file. The arms and the crest rail are the remaining parts that require some sculpting before assembly. The crest rail also needs to be decorated prior to assembly. I am considering a veneer inlay, but have not settled on a design.
A second aspect of finishing the chair is the finish. Marc never uses stain. He starts with boiled linseed oil, with initiator added, to saturate (more on end grain), then wipes it off after an hour and buffs. The linseed oil needs to dry for a week! So much for completing this by the birthday party. Deft semi-gloss lacquer is sprayed on after warming the cans in 120° water. The chair is sanded lightly after the first coat of a total of three. As a finishing touch Marc recommends finishing the finish: 0000 steel wool to remove any shine, followed by paste wax and buffing.
I want to at least explore some stain possibilities along side just the lacquer. To that end two cutoffs were prepared, one cherry and one maple. They were planed and then sanded from 80 to 320 grit leaving a glass-like feel. A number of stains will be applied to patches on both boards. Both boards will then be coated with linseed oil and lacquer. Boiled linseed oil is available at Menards and has the requisite additives to speed drying. New cans of lacquer also need to be purchased and Menards does not carry semi-gloss spray cans. Rockler carries the desired lacquer but not in the store. Woodcraft carries both Watco lacquer and the linseed oil in store.
A number of tasks were completed this morning, August 17. The arms were sculpted to approximate shape, mostly rounding below the circular ends. With the arms shaped they were returned to the clamped up arm supports, which were marked. The arm supports were removed and shaped as needed to fit the arms. This work is documented in the three photos below.
A decision was made to leave the crest rail flat on both the back and front, at least not with a pronounced convex or concave shape from side to side. Wide chamfers were shaped on the front, both top and bottom. The top corners were shaped to better fit the curve of the back legs. A concave carve-out was made on both sides of the back to fit the back leg's curve. The two photos below show the front and back of the crest rail.
It is no longer clear what else needs to be done. The chair was clamped together revealing a number of areas for more sculpting. Two photos below show the chair clamped together sans rockers.
When doweled to the rockers, it was readily apparent that some work could be done on the junctures between legs and rockers as seen in the two photos below.
The other two areas that still need work are the spindles, the two on the right side need to be shortened by 1/4" to lower the crest rail and hide the lower end of the biscuit joint. The arm supports require significant shaping/material removal. The exposed biscuit joint cut is seen in the first photo below. The second photo shows the excess wood on an arm support.
A good part of this excess was removed with saws. The photo below shows the arm supports after sawing off the material at a compound angle with multiple saws.
Work on the arm supports continued somewhat haphazardly until a final shape was settled on. The first arm support was sculpted as shown below, though a break was needed before beginning the second.
The second was completed more quickly as it was modeled after the first. Both were set in place on the chair and are shown below. I am pleased with their shape.
The two photos below show how the back legs currently mate to the rockers. Both legs are slightly twisted. The front legs are similar, but not twisted quite so much. The bottoms of the legs, front and back, and the leg mating surfaces on the rockers were marked to facilitate removal of the excess material with a rasp. The back legs should have a semicircular cross section on the front and back while the sides are kept flat from top to bottom. The front legs should have a completely round profile in the center, but with flats on the sides as they join the rockers and the seat. The inside of the seat join will be round.
Most of the day was spent working on the rockers. The excess material was removed. Corners were rounded and the ends were shaped. Even the bottoms had some bumps that had to be removed. The two photos below show the current state of the rockers.
The sanded scraps from multiple paragraphs above were tackled today. I liked the looks of just the boiled linseed oil so much that no stains were explored. The photo below shows the boiled linseed oil on the scraps, though the photo does not adequately reflect the looks of the two pieces of wood.
Took a short break from the work, unintentionally. Felt like a bad cold was coming on Tuesday and felt really bad Wednesday. A combination Covid-19, Flu A, Flu B test clearly indicated a Covid-19 infection, my first. No symptoms in my lungs only a very congested head, fever and headache. Started on Paxlovid, extremely expensive even for an old pharmaceutical researcher, and began feeling better in twelve hours. Today, Saturday, August 23, it is back to sculpting. Today is leg sculpting!
The bottom corners had already been marked when sitting on the rockers, so these were quickly taken care of with only a small amount of material removed. Lines were drawn on all four faces of the leg to serve as targets as the corners were rounded. A 45° chamfer was first put on a corner with the saw rasp. This was rounded with the Nicholson rasp and the round corner finished with the half-round file. Flats were left on the bottom four sides to eventually mate with the corresponding flats at the rocker mounting locations.
The back legs were worked on over three days, not because they took that long, but because of lack of a vision of the final product. In any event most of the long edges that needed to be rounded, a little or a lot, were in fact completed. The two sculpted legs are seen below.
With legs mostly completed the arms were targeted. First, lines were sketched on the arms to indicate where the rounding should end. A depression was chiseled and sanded into the large flat area. The edges all around were rasped and filed to shape. The first two pictures below show the lines drawn for rasping limits and the depression. The last three photos show the completed arms from multiple perspectives.
Two items need to be completed prior to assembly. The bottom front edge of the seat needs to be sculpted on the two corners. The crest rail needs to be decorated. There may be others that I am missing. In order to seek any other pre-assembly chores the chair was dry assembled.
The crest rail sits proud in front as seen in the photo below. It is also a little high revealing a bit of the biscuit joint on the right side. This latter issue was quickly resolved by shortening the two spindles on the right side by about 1/8". Sitting proud will be taken care of during the assembled sculpting.
The only major issue uncovered is the junction between arms and back legs. In both cases the joint does not come together as shown below. The gap is about 1/16" or so. There is insufficient flex in the leg supports when attached to the seat to provide any relief. The only path forward is to prepare slices of cherry or maple to slide into the gaps. My fear is that this will highlight the problem with two glue joints so close together. On closer inspection it might and was possible to pull these joints together with clamps.
A decision was reached and the image on the crest rail will be a cartoon cat inlay of brass, copper and aluminum. 1/16" thick brass and aluminum sheets are in my stock. The copper is only 1/32", but as it is used on only three small areas, the surrounding metal can be chamfered to fit. In order to provide more "colors", some engraving will also be done on the metal in certain areas. Engraving and saw kerfs will be used to simulate lines in the cartoon. The cartoon is shown below.
The cartoon was scaled to 32% making it about 4 1/2" X 4 1/2". The paws will be aluminum along with the face and whites of the eyes. The inside of the ears, the mouth and the nose will be copper. The rest of the cat will be brass. The current plan is to "draw" the stripes onto the brass using a pointing tool with hundreds of small dots. The black in the eyes may just be painted onto the aluminum. The shadowed area on the left side and bottom of the cat may be ignored.
The first step is printing out the cat and transferring the design to the metal. This was done by smearing China white onto the brass, taping the design on, and slipping a sheet of carbon paper under the design. The cat was transfered with a pencil sketching all of the lines. A photo of the traced cat is shown below.
The sawing began. A jeweler's saw was used to cut out the cat. The back leg was cut separately, just to emphasize the break between the body and the back leg. The first few cuts are seen below. One challenge is the size of the brass blank relative to the saw. A larger saw would be nice to minimize stopping cuts and starting from the opposite ends, when the corner of the blank won't fit through the too narrow saw.
The cartoon cat sawing was completed this morning. The paws were cut from aluminum and the face also. The holes in the ears and in the face were traced onto the copper and the cutting was done outside the lines. A bit of filing and the pieces fit reasonably well. The copper is thinner than the aluminum and brass, so the edges of the holes will be beveled. Some of this was done just to get a feel for the look. The first photo below shows the nose and tongue in place, the second shows the complete cat at this stage.
Prior to proceeding an experiment was run. A scrap of brass had a bit of cat sketched on a clean face. This included areas simulating the stripes and shadows on the cat, three textures are needed. The stripes were filled in with the pointing graver. A few lines were cut with a 120° graver. The brass was sanded with 400 and then 600 grit sandpaper. The brass was then polished with a buffing wheel and red rouge. Finally, an area, the shadowed part of the fur was sanded with 600 grit sandpaper. The result is shown below. I like the three textures, though the sanding will need to be done with an automated tool for more control and to minimize the straight lines.
All of the small bits of engraving were completed quickly. More time consuming was pointing the many stripes. This is shown in the first photo below. Most of the cat pieces were then sanded, 600 for the aluminum and 400/600 for the brass. These sanded parts were polished on the buffing wheel with white or red rouge. The polished parts are shown in the second photo.
The remaining parts were polished this morning using the Dremel, while holding the part with pliers wrapped in a paper towel. Not ideal for holding, but the polishing was quick on the tiny parts. The three photos below attempt to capture the polished whole, though I have yet to figure out how to adequately photograph polished things.
Inlaying the cat into the crest rail is the next step, but requires some thought prior to implementation. I hope to minimize the amount of resanding and repolishing needed for the cat. Polishing is impossible once the metal is set in the wood. The cat will be taped together and the tape overhang trimmed off. The assembled cat will then be traced on the crest rail that has already been sanded to 320 in the area around the cat's location.
After taping the cat together it was traced onto the crest rail. A 1/8" router bit was used to rough out the bulk of the material to a depth just shy of 1/16". This is shown in the first photo below. Material was removed to the line, but leaving the line, with a 1/16" end mill. Once the ears fit adjustments were made elsewhere until the cat dropped down into the routed area. The taped cat inlaid is seen in the second photo. The third photo shows the cat and tail inlaid into the crest rail.
The cat was removed and the area around the depression was sanded up to 320 grit using the new orbital sander with its hook and loop sanding discs. What a wonderful upgrade from the old Craftsman sander that used 1/4 sheets. The cat parts were washed with soap and water to remove any last traces of the rouge.
A busy Saturday morning began with preparing a patch for the bottom corner of the seat that had chipped out during class. The chipout's arc was filed smooth and a matching scrap of cherry was prepared to fit. This was glued in place and clamped as seen below.
While the glue was drying the cat inlay was completed. First the body, face, and feet were put into the depression after dripping in Starbond thin super glue. The accelerant was sprayed on instantly curing the glue. Glue was dripped into the tail depression, the tail put in place and again accelerant was sprayed on. The photo below shows the inlay at this stage.
Each of the small pieces was put in place after dripping in glue. When all were in position the accelerant was sprayed on fixing them. As seen in the first photo below, glue got onto the brass around one eye. This necessitated sanding the brass to remove the glue and then further sanding up to 1000 grit. The Dremel was used to polish the sanded areas of the brass and aluminum after putting tape over the adjacent wood. A lot of hand sanding of the wood was done around the periphery to get rid of the glue stains. The second photo below shows the finished inlay, which as planned is proud of the crest rail surface.
The excess material from the patch was removed with a rasp. Lines were drawn on both corners and they were rasped until the lines were met. A file was used to fine tune the rounded corners. A drawn curve in the first photo shows the plan. The next two photos show both corners after rasping and filing to the lines.
Consideration was given to rounding the sides of the seat. Looking at a photo of the model convinced me not to undertake rounding before glue-up. The rounded seat needs to flow into the curves on the legs, so will await assembly.
Planning on glue-up today, so tackled a few jobs that could be done in advance. The spindles were all sanded up to 320 grit. The seat was also sanded on both the front and back to 320 grit. Minimal sanding was done on the outer edges as these still need sculpting, but the bulk of the seat is done. Much of the seat and the spindles will be covered prior to glue-up to ensure glue does not get on the sanded surfaces.
Now it is time for dry assembly and a final inspection to determine if everything that can be done to the individual parts has been done. After thinking through the best order of assembly the chair was put together. The front legs went on first and clamped from side to side. These are independent of all other parts so can be glued and forgotten prior to further assembly. The arm supports went on next and were also clamped only from side to side.
The rest of the chair was assembled. This is the tricky part for gluing as so many surfaces need to be glued and quickly assembled before the glue sets up. The spindles were installed in the seat and the crest added to their tops. No glue is used on the ends of the spindles. The back legs were inserted into the seat joints and clamped from side to side at the joint. A clamp was also added to hold the biscuit joints between legs and crest rail in place. With the scraps remaining from bandsawing out the back legs they were clamped to the seat front to back. At this point I ran out of clamps, three more are required. A pipe clamp was temporarily called into service, but it is too heavy for me to feel comfortable using it. I have no clamps long enough for pulling the arms flush with the back legs, though do have clamps for holding them vertically.
Yet another trip to Menards provided more clamps. Exploring Titebond's website indicated that Titebond III has the longest setup time, so that is the glue chosen. Adjustments were made on two joints, where the arms meet the back legs, providing a better fit. Further inspection revealed no work needed before the glue-up. The front legs were glued on and clamped. The remainder was then glued. Dowels were cut to fit in the arms and glued in. Glue was spread on all mating surfaces and these were pressed into place and clamped. What a nightmare! But it is complete at 2 in the afternoon. The clamps will be left on for 24 hours as there is a lot of tension in most joints.
After a Labor Day morning of rock picking at Sugar Creek with the two older grandsons the chair was unclamped. It is solid as a rock and quite heavy. The picture below shows the chair, not quite a rocker yet.
Sculpting began in earnest this morning. The chair was clamped to the top of the tablesaw. Lines were sketched around the periphery of the legs and seat bottom as seen in the first photo below. The usual tools were used to create a clearly defined chamfer around this half-loop. The front leg-seat joint was flattened. The arm support-seat joint was sculpted, significantly altering its profile as I struggled to get the previous profile correct with the tools at hand. The back leg-seat joint was also flattened and sculpted a bit as the leg is proud of the seat. The inside of the back leg leading up to the arm joint was rounded. The results of this work are shown below in the second photo.
The opposite side was sculpted similarly, though only I will ever carefully compare the two sides.
A dedication needs to be carved in the bottom of the seat, probably something like:
For Freddie on his first birthday,
all our love,
Momma and Poppa Mac
The dedication was printed out in Euphoria Script and transfered to the seat bottom using carbon paper. A sample was also transfered to a scrap of cherry. An attempt was made to carve the text into the cherry, but it looked pretty bad, so a Sharpie was chosen to ink the text onto the cherry. The result is shown in the photo below. A quick test indicates that boiled linseed oil does not cause the text to run.
One arm, its support and the back leg in the same vicinity was completed. First, the joints were brought to level across the faces, then lines were added and the joints shaped to the desired profile. The photos below show the sculpted arm. The joints have gaps and will need some work during sanding to hide the gaps. The second arm was finished similarly. An odd discrepancy was noted: the left arm and right arm are not the same. One is convex on the front and the other on the back!
Began with the back of the seat this morning, putting a large curve around its length. The legs stuck out the back so they were chiseled to rough shape and then rasped and filed to round them and blend in the chiseled areas. Sanding with the new hand sander removed the chisel gouges. The final thing tackled were the parts of the legs below the seat. These were rounded as needed. The photos below document this work.
The last sculpting accomplished this morning were the tops of the back legs along with the crest rail. This trio is seen in the first photo below. After lunch the rockers were glued in place with 1/2" dowels supporting the four joints. The clamped rockers are also seen below. It is no longer a chair, but a rocking chair!
Happy birthday to me! Clamps were removed and the rocker was set upright. It sits so far back on the rockers that it can only rock a few degrees backwards!! The picture below shows how close the backs of the rockers are to stopping any backward rocking. The maple back legs are just too heavy. Either the back legs will have to be significantly thinned or a counterweight will need to be added below the seat front. The crest rail has yet to be sculpted on the back side and could also be a source of weight reduction.
Meanwhile, work began on leg sculpting where the legs meet the rockers. The front and back leg on one side were finished in 1 1/2 hours. A rest was in order. The photo below shows these completed joints. The legs on the opposite side were finished as well.
Decided to first remove material from the top of the back legs and from the crest rail. The rail was marked as seen in the first photo and a few attempts with the chisel to remove material. Turned to the angle grinder with a 60 grit sanding wheel. Five minutes later almost 1/2" of wood had been removed and was now scattered all over the shop. The second photo shows the reduced back leg.
The crest rail was reduced next. It was marked about 5/8" deep at the top tapering to nothing at the bottom. The first photo shows the rough angle grinder work and the second photo shows the final profile after angle grinding and a bit of hand sanding. The backs of the legs were also rounded also seen in the second photo.
Sanding started with the oscillating sander and 60 grit sandpaper. The coarse grit was necessary to get rid of filing and rasping marks. 90% of the surfaces were accessible with the sander. The surfaces that were more well hidden were sanded by hand with 60 grit and 120 grit sandpaper. Multiple joint gaps were filled. The narrowest were filled with a bit of glue followed by sanding. The wider gaps were filled with a mixture of glue and sawdust. After drying these filled gaps required significant sanding.
Sanding began in earnest this morning, beginning with 180 grit. Significant effort was needed to remove all of the file marks that for some reason had not been removed with the coarser grit paper. Lighting is key to see these marks. Again most of the sanding can be done with the new oscillating sander. Many small hard to reach areas required hand sanding. These were sanded with the worn hook and loop paper, which is mostly worn out on the edges, there are few flat surfaces. Six hours of sanding and it is ready for a finer grit.
Sanding with 220 grit sandpaper was next and took about three hours, two for the oscillating sander and one for the hand sanding. A further three hours completed the sanding with 320 grit sandpaper. Tape was removed from the crest rail, the spindles, and the seat. More sanding with 320 grit on these parts was done by hand except for the seat which was amenable to the oscillating sander. After removing the dust, wiping and blowing using the shopvac the rocker was ready for applying a finish. It is shown below.
The first finish to be applied is boiled linseed oil. The oil was wiped on with a shop rag. It was not flooded like some sites recommend, but just enough oil was on the rag to thoroughly wet the surface. None remained on the surface to wipe off. The photo shows the chair with its new coloring. Boiled linseed oil requires as long as seven days to fully cure. I won't have time to work on the chair for the next five days as I am taking a weeklong class.
My grandson's birthday party was yesterday. His parents saw a very early photo of the chair in progress. The family will be up this coming Saturday, so I have plenty of time to complete the chair.
The chair was carried to the garage this morning after wiping off any remaining dust and giving the metal a quick buff. The rocker was surrounded by plastic and sprayed with Watco semi-gloss lacquer from all sides. The photo below shows the chair at this stage.
Two hours between each of three coats and then a day to completely dry. The next day the chair was lightly sanded with 0000 steel wool. The steel wool is very gentle, but the mess it leaves behind is quite the pain. The chair was first blown partially clean and then vacuumed. A fourth coat of lacquer was sprayed on in a few places: arms, top and bottom of the seat. These spots were rubbed out with the steel wool. Paste wax applied liberally, allowed to dry, and buffed to a shine completing the project.
And a few photos to conclude this rather long-winded build.
