Rocking Chair University
Hal Taylor, Rocking Chair University
Hal Taylor devotes his life to making absolutely the best wooden rocking chairs in the world--and to teaching others to do the same. You'll never meet a more generous and patient person. It was a real privilege to make my first chair under his mentorship.
The Woodpile
You start with a visit to Hal's woodshed. I had my heart set on using English walnut (Juglans regia), which is a very aristocratic wood suitable for someone with latent monarchist tendencies.
Looking for the Just the Right Grain
After picking a few flitches of English walnut, we began looking for just the right grain pattern to give artistic matches for the seat, arms, and other pieces.
Patterns
After 30 years of making chairs, Hal has a pattern for cutting every imaginable chair piece and size of chair. This is a priceless amount of intellectual property.
Seat Layout
Within an hour we had found just the right pieces for the seat.
Routing the Seat for the Legs
After planing the seat to thickness, and cutting notches for the legs on a table saw, the notches are routed to make tenons for the legs.
Router Table
Speaking of routers, Hal's router table has five routers, each with a different bit perfectly adjusted for a particular cut. No time is wasted changing router bits or setting bit heights.
Laying out the Back Legs
Here we are laying out the back legs so that the grain will run just right.
Roughing out the Back Legs
After the layout, the next step is to band saw out the rough leg shapes.
Jointing the Back Legs
Then you have to joint the leg pieces to get one side perfectly flat.
Bandsawing the Back Legs
After gluing on adder blocks to give more wood where the legs join the seat, you cut the legs to a roughly final shape.
Back Leg Billets
We now have back leg billets ready for further shaping.
Gluing the Back Legs to the Seat
Somewhere underneath all of the clamps the back legs are being glued to the seat.
Laying out the Back Braces
We set aside a piece of wood that looked like it would give a nice grain pattern for the back braces. This was then cut into lamina on a table saw with a very thin blade.
Gluning up the Back Braces
The back braces are layers of walnut, mountain ash (for just the right amount of flex), tapered walnut at the top and bottom centers, ash, and walnut. These lamina are glued for 24 hours in a fixture that gives them just the right curved shape. The rockers are also glued for 24 hours. I'm guessing Hal must have over 200 clamps.
Cutting Tenons on the Back Braces
After the back braces are cured and cleaned up, tenons are cut in the ends. These will fit into the holes in the seat and head rest.
Sanding the Back Braces
Finishing the back braces requires a good bit of band sawing, shaping on a spindle sander, routing the edges, and sanding.
Arm and Leg Roughout
Here's the underside of an arm showing the arm, and adder block, and the front leg. This is as far as you can go with a bandsaw.
Grinding the Arms
The next step is use a right-angle grinder to start shaping the bottom of the arm and the joint between the arm and the front leg.
Underside of the Front Arm-Leg Joint
After a good bit of grinding and then sanding with a random orbit sander, you finally end up with an smooth transition from leg to arm. Only a small part of the adder block remains.
Laying out the Head Rest
I spotted a piece of wood with a pattern of heart and sap wood that would make a nice center of the head rest. This was then balanced with other pieces to the left and right. These pieces were glued up a pair at a time to make the curved head rest.
Bandsawing the Head Rest
Here I am cutting the head rest to make a coved head rest with just the right radius. As always, Hal has a fully adjustable fixture that can cut a head rest of whatever radius is required for a particular sized chair.
Compound Head Rest Cuts
Using a single-purpose fixture, the ends of the head rest are simultaneously cut at a 20 deg angle in one direction and 6 degrees in another.
Polishing the Head Rest
Just as for the other parts, shaping the head rest requires lots of grinding and sanding, with final polishing by Abralon (bascially 1000 grid sand paper), which leaves a glass-smooth finish.
Fitting the Back Braces
After a week of work, the various pieces of weirdly shaped wood start to come together and take on the appearance of a chair. Here we're doing final testing to make sure the back braces fit perfectly before gluing the head rest to the back legs.
Construction is Complete!
Then one day you take off the last glue clamp and do a bit of touch up sanding and polishing, and it's ready for a coat of oil. We completed this chair in 8 days, which Hal said was the fasted he had ever built a chair. I guess that means I didn't get in his way too much.