Off my rocker

[SwampDonkey]

That's the whole trouble. No chair to come home to sit in. A nice wide porch would be beneficial to. ;D

[Dodgy Loner]

Nice, wide, wrap-around porch: check

Two comfy rockers to sit in: no check :(

[Dodgy Loner]

Dodgy Loner's Guide to Weaving a Chair Seat

Step 1: Build a rocking chair


Ok, now that the hard part is over, you're ready to start weaving ;D

Well, not quite. You still have to -
Step 2a: Make sure it is spring.
Step 2b: Find an straight, clear elm tree 4-8" in diameter. Cut it down. Buck it where it gets knotty.
Step 2c: Shave the outer bark off the elm log. Be careful not to cut too deep - elm bark is thin!
Step 2d: Make one straight lengthwise slice through the inner bark. Carefully peel off the bark.
Step 2e: With a sharp knife and a straight edge, cut the bark into lengthwise strips as wide as you'd like (usually 1/2-1")
Step 2f: Wrap the strips up and allow them to dry. They will shrink too much and your weaving will become loose if you try to weave them when green. To make them pliable again, soak them in hot water for about 10 minutes when you are ready to use them.

Ok, now that you have your strips, you're ready for Step 3.


Step 3: Use superglue to glue a strip to the rear rung.


Step 4: Wrap the strips around the frame front to back, keeping them tight as you go. When one strip runs out, overlap them about 1" and superglue them together.


Step 5: Once you are finished wrapping front to back, the side to side weaving begins the same way - with a strip superglued to a side rung.

Now come the fun part!

Step 6: Start your weave by going over two, under two, over two, under two. On the next row, move everything over by one: over one, under two, over two, under two. The third row goes under two, over two, under two, over two. Fourth row goes under one, over two, under two, over two. On the fifth row the pattern repeats itself.
Keep checking yourself as you weave - it's easy to get mixed up. You can see in the picture below that I made an error that I had to undo. You don't want to get too far before you discover your mistake!


Step 7: Keep weaving until there's nothing left to weave!

Here's a picture of my finished seat



You can vary the pattern a bit depending upon the width of your strips. Since my white oak rocker used 1/4" strips, I chose to go with an over 4, under 4 pattern.

[Dodgy Loner]

OK, enough of this tutorial nonsense. It's time for the glamour shots ;)



 

[fishpharmer]

Looks just as good up close.   8) 8)

And outstanding tutorial on weaving a seat.  Is that your woven seat?

[SwampDonkey]

Superb Dodgey.  8) 8)

[fishpharmer]

 Is that your woven seat?

I meant to ask is that your "first" woven seat?
Funny how leaving out one word can make for such a different meaning.   :-[

[SwampDonkey]

It was late in the night. So your allowed at least one "fat finger". ;)  :D

[WDH]

That is excellent.  I believe that I could do that.  I love it that you harvested and prepared the elm bark. 

One question about the attachment of the leg to the rocker.  I looks pegged, but is it otherwise glued?  Will the leg move or pivot on the rocker as the rocking chair is engaged in its intended use?

[Magicman]

It's time for the glamour shots ;) 

My eyes !!!  No more talk about those leg pictures.   

Very nice Dodgy, and an excellent tutorial about harvesting and preparing the Elm bark.  Those will surely become family heirlooms.   

[metalspinner]

The details in the second seat are awsome!  And the ray fleck in the QS cherry is really special, Dodgy.

On the strips of bark, does it matter which face of the strips faces out?  Just guessing here, but I think the bark would have a bit of curl in it after drying?

[Dodgy Loner]

I meant to ask is that your "first" woven seat?

No, I rewove the seat on my Granddad's rocker for Christmas a couple years back. However, this was my first attempt using elm back. It went a lot faster with the wider strips!

One question about the attachment of the leg to the rocker.  I looks pegged, but is it otherwise glued?  Will the leg move or pivot on the rocker as the rocking chair is engaged in its intended use?

Actually, that is the only joint in the rocker that's not glued. Since it is pegged at two points, I don't believe the rocker will pivot at all. The joint is very, very tight. I left it unglued so the rockers can be easily replaced in the future if need be. Other than the seat, the rockers are the part of the chair that will wear the quickest.

On the strips of bark, does it matter which face of the strips faces out?  Just guessing here, but I think the bark would have a bit of curl in it after drying?

Yes, it does matter. Sorry I overlooked that. You are right, the bark side faces out, as the strips will curl towards the wood side. You don't want the edges digging into your butt!

[Dodgy Loner]

Although I hadn't let the cat out of the bag at the time that I originally posted this thread, I built these two rockers to announce that my wife and I were expecting a daughter. I gave the oak rocker to my Dad on Father's Day, and the cherry rocker to my in-laws on Easter last year.

Well, little Ellery is finally big enough to use those rockers when she visits her grandparents, but I still don't have an Ellery-sized rocker at my own house. I intended to remedy that for Christmas this year. Of course the only logical choice after building one oak and one cherry rocker is to build a walnut rocker, so that's what I did

I liked the cherry rocker a lot, but couldn't resist a little tweaking to the design:
-The posts are a little thicker
-The back slats are a little wider
-The rockers are also a little wider, with the part between the legs relieved just a bit
-I added turned caps of figured walnut to the ends of the arms
-Finally, the lower rails are all gently tapered towards the legs, rather than straight.













Now it just needs a woven seat! I will be using white oak splints for the seat.

[SwampDonkey]

You've become quite the rocker maker there Dodgy. I had a rocker when young and rocked a lot as my mother says. I was in a hospital for several months when real young and mother said I never rocked again when I got home.  :

The children will enjoy those rockers I'm sure.

[Tree Feller]

That's a nice rocker, DL. I like the way your design has evolved.

[thurlow]

Love it!!!!!

[Lud]

Trying to do a little better is a great philosophy for a maker.  You're going to be pretty DanG good by the time you're 60!!   You[ll have made so many mistakes and learned to cover them so well folks won't even think you're  still making them! :D :D

[WDH]

Lud,

Don't give away our secrets  :D.

Dodgy,

Truly a work of art and very inspiring.  Simply beautiful!  I am very impressed, but this is not the first time  ;D.

[Axe Handle Hound]

Somehow I missed this entire thread until I read about it in Dodgy's post in the Christmas project thread.  Those are some really cool chairs and I love the "how-to" aspect of the thread.  I really like the way you added the detail carving/edge-profiling on the arm rests as well.  Beautiful work!

[Dodgy Loner]

Thanks for the kind words! I still have yet to tackle a full-size rocking chair, but I'll have to try one before too long. The biggest sticking point is that I will have to rig up some way to extend the capacity of my lathe by a few inches. It will only hold 42" between centers, and the back posts will need to be in the neighborhood of 48" long :. Not looking forward to that. They make an extender that bolts onto my lathe, but I can't see spending a couple hundred bucks for something that I'll use so infrequently.

As I mentioned before, I'll be using white oak splints on this chair. Luckily, I harvested and split a white oak sapling a year or two ago, and the splints have been patiently waiting in my shop ever since. Unfortunately, it was not the best quality of oak for making splints. You really need fine-grained, slow-grown stuff, but here in south Mississippi, nothing grows slowly. So my splints weren't of the best quality, being very rough and having too much variation in thickness - and generally just too thick - to make a nice woven seat. I pondered how to remedy that shortcoming and came up with this solution:

I screwed two HSS planer blades to a couple of 2x4s and clamped the whole assembly in my bench vise. The gap between the blades was just smaller than the thickest splint that I had.


The first few passes were difficult. On some splints the scraper removed nothing at all, and on others, it wanted to remove too much. It took a lot of elbow grease to work those ones through. After each pass, I narrowed the gap between the blades just a hair. Once I got them down to a consistent thickness, it was smooth sailing, with the jig taking off long, curly shavings.



I finally decided they were of the proper thickness to use after about 7 or 8 passes through the jig. They're somewhere between 1/32 and 1/64" thick. Now I'm ready to weave my seat

[Tree Feller]

Using those planer blades to thickness the splints was brilliant!

[metalspinner]

Beautiful! 8)  I like the way you work and keep to traditional methods. 

They make an extender that bolts onto my lathe, but I can't see spending a couple hundred bucks for something that I'll use so infrequently.

I did just that several years ago.  After the rocker build, I was gonna make a set of dining chairs but decided chair making wasn't for me.  :D  The bed extender on my lathe has been holding up boxes o' stuff ever since. :

[DanG]

Thanks for the kind words! I still have yet to tackle a full-size rocking chair, but I'll have to try one before too long. The biggest sticking point is that I will have to rig up some way to extend the capacity of my lathe by a few inches. It will only hold 42" between centers, and the back posts will need to be in the neighborhood of 48" long :. Not looking forward to that. They make an extender that bolts onto my lathe, but I can't see spending a couple hundred bucks for something that I'll use so infrequently.

Dodgy, I'm surprised you haven't built your own human powered lathe.  I doesn't seem like too much of a challenge for such an enterprisin' young feller as yerself. ;D

[Dodgy Loner]

Beautiful! 8)  I like the way you work and keep to traditional methods. 

They make an extender that bolts onto my lathe, but I can't see spending a couple hundred bucks for something that I'll use so infrequently.

I did just that several years ago.  After the rocker build, I was gonna make a set of dining chairs but decided chair making wasn't for me.  :D  The bed extender on my lathe has been holding up boxes o' stuff ever since. :

Thanks, ms. I admit to being smitten with traditional techniques and furniture styles. The beauty of using hand tools, besides the fact that they're just plain cool, is that once you become proficient with them, your efficiency and the breadth of your abilities increase immensely. Got an angled cut to make on an awkward piece at a tricky angle? No problem, just use a backsaw. Before I would spend valuable time puzzling out some jig to make the cut on the tablesaw. Take the joint where the arms meet the back rails, for instance: I'm sure there's some way to do this joint properly with power tools, but I can't envision it. It was quick work with a backsaw and a chisel, though. Same thing for the joints where the rockers are attached to the legs. And where the curved back splats come in at an angle to meet the back posts. Sheesh, come to think of it, this chair would be a nightmare to make with power tools.

I still value my table saw and planer for stock processing, though. That's one process I simply don't care to do by hand, unless it's a board too wide for my planer. Wide boards are worth it ;D

By the way, ms: What kind of lathe do you have?

Dodgy, I'm surprised you haven't built your own human powered lathe.  I doesn't seem like too much of a challenge for such an enterprisin' young feller as yerself. ;D

DanG, that's a good idea, and I've thought about building a treadle lathe, but I don't have the room for it, and besides, how would I explain it to my wife?

"I thought you said you were coming out here to work on my rocking chair!"

"I am, dear, but first I need to spend a month building this here treadle lathe so I can turn the posts!"

Nah, that wouldn't go over so well :D

[metalspinner]

I have General lathe imported from Canada.  I believe it is a 16" swing (?) with electronic variable speed drive and a bed that is tooo long. :D