And the Best Picture of the Year Goes to ......

A student from my January Seven Day Build Your Maloof Inspired Rocker with Charles Brock Class sent me a picture of the two Maloof Inspired rockers he has finished. You can write your own blog to go with this interesting picture. He is a Rock'NChairman and she is a Rock'NChairwoman! Eric (last name withheld to protect the dysfunctional) is a 72-year old dentist who loves building rocking chairs and life in general. His wife is undoubtedly very fond of his efforts. He kept all of us in stitches during the January class. There is no doubt he deserves the 2010 Rock'N Chairman Picture of the Year!

What a couple and what a couple of rockers!

Seven Days - Five Rockers - Five Dreams

August 3-9, I taught another group of five hopeful craftsman the art of building a Maloof Inspired Rocker. It is so exciting to see their initial enthusiasm and to see them start to believe that this project that they have wanted to do for so long is coming alive through the diligence of their hands, work and effort. As each student sees first that they can sculpt the 7 spindles and cooper a seat into an inviting "smile" they blossom into becoming the chairmaker that registering for the class promised. Each will take their rocker to their home shop and finish sculpting, sanding and finishing. Of course I am always on call to help. Click here to see their slide show.

Wood working is about wood, tools, design, methods and sometimes making a living, but it is really about people and their dreams. The picture of five guys and five rockers at the end of their seventh day doesn't tell the whole story. Everyone brought something different to the class. One man traveled 3000 miles to build a rocker for their daughter who is having their first grandchild in October. He was a shop teacher and retired educator who just drank up the opportunity. A very bright financial planner of 30 was preparing a rocker for their first child in December. Can you imagine gaining these skills at such a young age. I hate to quote the late sports announcer Curt Gowdy who would laughably say, "Well his future is ahead of him!" An electrical engineer listened intently and worked flawlessly without an awful lot of experience. A contractor from South Carolina always wanted to build a rocker like that and worked at each task in the hope they would somehow come together. Another engineer was just into all things woodworking and absorbed every detail. When the seats, joinery, legs, arms, spindles, headrest and laminated skids came together on the last day I could see and hear their pride of accomplishment.

In the process they experienced a lot of woodworking. Some learned rudimentary best practices like how to mark out and how to use a jointer. All searched for and found out how to sculpt a line as a transition between two adjacent surfaces, fit joints in curved parts and find square reference points with which to work. I knew that they would no longer approach their woodworking the same.

I love to work with each student and to help them see their dream coming together. Long after my name disappears from the conversation each of them will be a hero to their family, friends and community because they built this great rocker.

Helping them achieve their dream is what mine is all about! It doesn't get much better than this!

A Minimal Tool List

A delimma is a problem offering at least two solutions or possibilities, of which none is practically acceptable.

What tools are necessary to build a Maloof inspired rocker? It poses an interesting question and everyone that has built one has a different set of answers. This question reminds me of National Lampoons "Christmas Vacation." Sparky Grizwold and family hiked through a forrest to find the perfect huge Christmas Tree, only to realize that they didn't have a shovel, axe or anything else with which to remove it from the earth. So they dug it up with their bare hands.

You can't build my rocker with your bare hands but what would be the minimal tool list? The maximum? Why do I pose this delimma?

Some woodworker's want to know the exact tools I use for every step in the process. Some want to see what is involved in every step, then they modify everything in order to use what they have in their shop. In other words they recognize the work-arounds and modifications as they go.

I use a pretty well rounded shop for each of my chairs but then I add a few specialty tools that would not be found in a general woodworking shop. An example would be a small router plane for fitting the Maloof type leg to seat joints. Can anything else be used? Is it a necessity? I started out using a small shoulder plane which is rarely used now since I discovered the best way to clean and true the bottom of the dados was with the router plane. The shoulder plane worked but the router plane gives more consistent results. You could also use a flat rasp or file. So what do you put on the list - the best tool or the least that will work?

Size, so it's been said, matters! Some projects require a six inch jointer while others require an eight. Can you do it with a six? Yes, It's much harder. Of course the 7 inch board can be face jointed by hand.

Let me know what you think about the tool list. Should it be minimalist or the maximum? I want to give you the information you need.

rocknchairman@gmail.com

As Iron Sharpens Iron, So One Man Sharpens Another

The title of this post is from Proverbs 27:17. I was reminded of this verse by a wonderful friend. He is one of those people who makes everyone who is around him a better person. I reached the end of a journey this June that has blessed me many times over and seems to have been a mutual blessing to others.

This week we had pictures taken of five rockers in a group with their owners. It was the first time I had seen all five of the rockers together. They were crafted from slabs of a huge English walnut tree full of figure and curl purchased on a wood safari through Pennsylvania at Talarico Hardwoods. The first rocker was for his wife and then one for my fellow craftsman followed by one each for three grown daughters. Seeing the chairs together with three girls who love their father and exude a love and respect for what he had produced for them was just remarkable.

These rockers were born of a relationship between myself and a woodworker who had a dream of building rockers for his entire primary family. He asked me if I would help him with make the five rockers a reality. He is one those people whose association makes you a better person. Every Tuesday night for five years we got together in my shop and worked for an hour or two on the rockers one chair at a time. We usually began each session with a prayer of thanks. The woodworking sessions and prayer have reaped many blessings. The relationship helped us get through the passing of family, illnesses and struggles with life. We celebrated new grand children and other achievements.

The picture of the first finished rocker spawned the out of the blue request for me to begin teaching "Maloof Inspired" rocker classes at Highland Woodworking. We celebrated that event together as he assisted me in the weekend seminar. From the teaching at Highland grew my instructional bundle publishing business that has helped fine woodworkers all over the world build their Maloof inspired rocker.

Sculpting Chairs Part 2 Start with the Hard Lines and a Rasp

Part 1 - "Lines, Shadows and Curves, Oh My!" contained some exercises to help train and improve your sculptor's eye. Let's put the rasp to wood in Part 2 and see what flows from the event.

I see chair sculpting in four phases:

• Construction
• Hard Lines
• Soft Lines
• Transitions

During the construction phase you make the chair's parts and join them using the band saw, table saw, lathe and other tools. Many of the hard lines are formed by this construction phase which ends with parts joined to each other. But most of these hard lines need to be transformed or sculpted so they form a flow from one part to the other. That is the topic for this article.

Where do I begin. Pick up a tool and see what happens. We are back to the fear problem unless we just jump in

and take a chance. Is everybody going to be good at it? No! There isn't a to risk in comparison to many things we endeavor to do, but a lot to gain by trying.

First find a model for comparison. In my newest "Build A Maloof Inspired" Instructional bundle I do a video segment comparing and contrasting the Maloof Inspired Low Back Dining Chair roughed out, assembled and ready to sculpt and a finished chair. In the comparison I draw what I refer to as topographical lines on the chair to show the way surfaces transition in various radii

to join other surfaces forming hard and soft lines. I used a white pencil on walnut to show these contours. For your own project a mental compare and contrast with a picture of the object you are sculpting would be of great benefit.

When I am unsure of finding my chair's shape in the roughed out parts, I prefer to sculpt my prototypes with a rasp. I use Auriou rasps and the number system I will talk about relates to them. The lower the number the more coarse the higher the number the finer. The Auriou's are hand stitched meaning their teeth are set by hand making that are totally random void of a pattern. The result is that they leave a much smoother cut which will not be furrow or tear-out if the rasp is used correctly. They also have teeth right up to and along the edge,allowing the sculptor to get into corners and crevices. They are a much harder cut on your wallet in that they average $100+ for each rasp. A set of 3 rasps I recommend will take care of a great many of your needs and is available at Highland Woodworking. There are other choices. Sam Maloof used Nicholson's patternmaker's rasp. They are the best of those not hand stitched.

The first rasps I grab are the combi flat #5 on one side #9 on the other and a big #10 cabinetmakers rasp that is curved on one side and flat on the other and comes to a point. cabinetmakers rasp. Work with how they cut on some long scrap. Use big muscles and make long sweeps focusing on holding the rasp at 45 degrees to the length of the piece of wood while pushing the rasp along the length . Do not saw with the rasp. When the cut is cleanest you have found its best working angle. Look at the rasp's teeth and push the teeth in that direction.

While making long sweeps you will be establishing a flat. When I round over a surface with a rasp, I mentally divide the surface into a series of contiguous flats and then join them with flats until they appxoximate a radius that pleases me.

Start with an arm. How do you want the outside line of the arm to flow? Is it going to provide lift is it going to have a sweep and in what direction? A way to answer this question is by deciding whether the flow for the chair from any point of view is going to be generally up and back (uplifting) or down and back, etc.

Are there lines that will flow from the front leg through the arm. Is there a line which will continue into the back leg?

Start with the big rasps, using sweeping, big muscle strokes. Work on it until it smiles at you!

Remember the best tools in your kit are patience, persistence and attitude!

Part 3 will explore the use of a grinder to transform and establish the hard lines when you know where they are and you want to get there in a hurry!

Sculpting Chairs Part 1 Lines, Shadows and Curves, Oh My!

A graduate of one of the most prestigious woodworking schools in the U.S. recently wrote me to ask for help. I am not sure how he arrived at having constructed a roughed out Maloof type rocker since they were inquiring about my bundle. They were fearful of shaping and sculpting the legs, seat, crest rail ,etc. and then faring one into the other. You know the tried and true FDR saying,"The only thing you have to fear is fear itself!" Sometimes we are afraid of failure and sometimes we are actually afraid of success. It is the old writers block, only in this case sculptor's block.

Let me qualify this as a discussion of art over engineering. The engineering qualities of the woodworker are very necessary as I have written before. This is more about freeing oneself from formula to producing what looks good to you and hopefully other observers.

Does nature or nurture make a wood sculptor? A man sat in the back of one of my Maloof Inspired Rocker Demo Classes for a day and a half before raising his hand and stating, "I can put it together but I can't shape it!" He went on to describe his totally frustrated attempts to do anything art related.

What are the human tools necessary for success as a sculptor of wood? Sight is huge but not totally necessary. If you can see the line or visualize it, you are ready to pick up the tools and sculpt. If not, you must become a student of sight. Try this activity. Most cars are automotive sculpture. Follow the hard lines (they define the edges or movement) and how they pull the eye around the car. Find the softer lines and how they cause transitions to be made from surface to surface or hard line to hard line. Make visual comparisons of two cars that are in a competing group. Observe a Camry and a Honda. This will really work well if both cars are the same color. How are the lines the same? How are they different? Observe how opposing surfaces meet. Is the line caused by the meeting of two surfaces that have different radii? What surfaces are concave? Which are convex? Where are the flat surfaces? Where are the shadows? What causes the shadows? Train your powers of observation. Now describe the lines and decide what their purposes are in the over-all design. Do the same thing with nature. Trees, leaves, flowers all have shapes, lines and surfaces in opposition. How do they work together to form the whole?

The first sentence in the previous paragraph sounds ridiculous and yes, I am sure an overstatement. Touch is huge and can help if you have a vision deficit ! When I started studying Sam Maloof's work I saw them in a museum setting and I explored Sam's chairs kinesthetically. I touched and rubbed them with my fingers every time the security guard turned his head. I was using my fingers to get the details. Just another way to program them to memory. As I sculpt I am always touching and asking myself how does it feel? Is it flat, hollow, round? How does it flow?

Get a ball of modeler's clay and form surfaces in opposition that you like and form a lines at the transition between the two. Visualize , think and feel, you are on your way!

The next post will discuss lines that are satisfying and flowing versus what is not!

Kreg Router Table & Router Lift

What do I expect out of a router table? As a chairmaker and teacher I want dependabilty and durability. The stand and table need to be heavy without being a boat anchor. Weight reduces vibration that can induce chatter in the cut. Because I take my router table with me when I teach a class, sometimes transporting it 100s of miles, the frame needs to be rigid and it has to have good casters. I want the table top and plate to be absolutely flat and I want them to stay that way because I have enough tool set-ups when I get to the class location. I don't want my router table to need adjustments, too. The fence needs to be easily secured and allow for micro adjustments without too many moving parts. It also has to have great dust control which is important for your health and happiness in the shop. Besides that, I don't expect much!

The router table is used for two very important operations. I trim or copy the back legs of my Maloof Inspired Rocker and Low Back Dining Chair using a 2" spiral router bit w/top pilot. The other operation is rounding over the inside of each leg at the joint to fit the radius of the seat 's rabbet. In this case I need a full round over without a bead. The fence helps me round over even though I round past the dados that are cut through the legs. Otherwise, without the fence the pilot could plunge into the rabbet. It's just a matter of control and this table and fence give me what I need.

The lift is the icing on the cake. The plate is heavy duty milled aluminum. It has a multiple jack screw system that makes it easy to level and machine screws to hold it to the table when you have it just right. It is built for a porter-cable router but there are adapters available for all the popular router motors from Kreg. My Bosch router motor fits tight without any movement. The real reason for the lift is adjustment. This baby comes through in several ways. There is macro adjustment with a rod that locks, unlocks and positions the router horizontally. A thumb wheel makes the micro adjustments easily and it all locks in to prevent slippage. It's all EeeZeee !

If you need a lot of stops and micro-adjusters for the fence, Kreg has thought of them all including some handy feather boards. If you want the best new thing check out there Beaded Face Frame Kit. I don't do this kind of work but after talking to people who do this system will add beaded face capability to your shop's router.

This router table and lift meets and exceeds my expectations everyday in my shop!