I’m taking a detour from violin building for a bit as I shift over to fulfill a commission to build a rocking chair. It has been quite a few years since I built my last one, but it has always been quite a pleasure and challenge to do this sort of work — lots of curves and compound angles, steambending and shaping with drawknife and spokeshave. Time to dive in!
Red Oak Billet
I have squirreled away a nice stack of billets of red oak, such as this one, split out of a gorgeous windfall from several years back. Rather than continue to split and rive the wood to working dimensions, I prefer to resaw the stock at this point to obtain the best yield and to also make it easier to rough in tenons from the squared stock as needed.
Here’s the oak sawn into front and back posts, rockers, splats, rungs, back rails, and armrests.
Resawn Stock
Before going any further I put together a mockup that allows me to adjust the back angle and test the splats and back rails for comfort. I keep tweaking angles and curves and heights trying to hone in on a really comfortable chair!
Back and Seat Mockup
Once settled on what I’m going to do I get the steam-box fired up and get to bending. The bent parts need days, preferably a week or more after steaming, to dry out and set the curves.
Crest Rail
My small steam-box is in the background. Once this bend has cooled and set for a few hours I’ll let it dry on the form inserting narrow spacers between the form and the piece for increased air flow. My friend Link, man of many ideas, suggested using slightly thicker spacers for the middle to maintain the curvature since the radius of the bend would increase if all the spacers were the same thickness.
Rocker
Since the stock has very little runout and the curves are relatively mild the bends go well with very little or no fracturing. Any more bend than this , or a less “bendy” wood requires the use of tension straps to assure success. It’s nice to keep it simple.
Back Post
With only a couple of forms made to bend the six back splats I built a drying rack to hold all the bent splats and free up clamps and the forms for bending.
Back Splats on Drying Rack
Until next time!
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