A Maloof Style Rocking Chair - Making Templates

My first step was to go to a copy shop and have the plans duplicated so I could keep the original and use the copy for making the templates.  With three exceptions I used thin plywood underlayment for the base.  The exceptions were for jigs to cut dados, the form to laminate the rockers on and the back slats template.  The jigs had to be thicker (¾”) to provide support and registration for the dado.  The rocker form needed to be thicker (1½”) and solid enough to allow clamping of the laminating plies that form the rockers while gluing.  The back slat template needed more flexibility, so I used thin plastic laminate.

Building Jig Blank for Rockers

To make the templates I cut the paper copy apart leaving an inch or so beyond the finish size and glued it to base material with the same spray adhesive I use for mounting photos to foam core.  

Paper Pattern Mounted on Backer

Once glued I cut close to the line with the bandsaw then used an oscillating drum sander, disk sander, files, and hand sanding to fair the curves and match the paper pattern.  

Bandsawn Template

Finished Template

One thing that I noticed on the paper templates is that whatever CADD program the templates were developed on the large curves were not completely smooth.  By that I mean on close inspection you could see the individual straight segments that made up the curve.  It was not a big item as I cleaned them up when going from the bandsaw cut to finished template.  Also, it probably won’t make a real difference in the final sculpting as that is done by eye and to touch.

Completed Templates

Next up – Seat Mockup, Part 1 Rough Cutting

A Maloof Style Rocking Chair - Material Selection

Before I get into this post the subject of frequency has come up.  There is no set schedule, weekly or so is what I would like but that all depends if there is something of interest to post.  That all depends on how fast the project develops and what problems I run into.   I plan on including those things that went well and the areas where I had problems.  I hope the problems are minimal but you never know. 

Segmented Turning

I looked at using several different types of wood to make the chair; oak, walnut, regular and curly maple, mahogany, ash and cherry.   I wanted something finer grained than oak and lighter than walnut.  I think regular maple would be too light and the ones I have seen made out of curly maple the figured wood overwhelmed the design.  Ash was also too light and mahogany looks to be too open grain.  So, after much consideration I decided on cherry for all the main parts.  That should not come as a surprise as cherry is really my favorite wood to work with as these photos show.  Now all I have to do is find a source for roughly 50 board feet of 8/4 straight grained cherry heartwood.  This is proving to be a problem.  So far I have contacted three mail order places and two locations in El Paso all with no luck.  I will be expanding my search to Tucson and Albuquerque.

Cherry & Curly Maple Night Stand

Curly Cherry Guitar

The accent pieces are still under consideration.  I want to use a dark contrasting material for the plugs and layers in the runners.  I briefly thought of using walnut but my experience of using cherry and walnut together is that they look fine when new but as the cherry darkens over time and the walnut lightens up a bit they lose their contrast.  Ebony would be my first choice but I probably can’t get a piece long enough for the runner layer and at $100+ a board foot it’s pretty pricey.  Ebonizing a wood might work but I am concerned about the depth of the ebonizing and the black ebonization being removed as I do the final sculpting.   Other considerations are wenge and cocobolo.  I am leaning toward wenge.

Next up – Making Templates

Green & Green Style Table  Cherry, Curly Maple & Ebonized Accents

A Sam Maloof Rocking Chair - The Start

Sam Maloof  Rocking Chair

Building a Maloof style sculpted rocking chair has been on my “bucket list” of things to do for a long time.  I just never had the time or what I felt was sufficient skills to pull it off.  This fall while searching the internet for something else I came across one of these rocking chairs made out of cherry whose auction estimate was $40,000 - $60,000.  Since I had finished up most of the projects that needed to be done this brought up the thought of trying to build one of these chairs again.   

I was pretty sure that to pull this off I needed plans and preferably some sort of how-to sculpting guidance.   Research brought up two authors, Charles Brock and Scott Morrison both of which had plans and a DVD.  I ended up going with the Scott Morrison materials because the videos he posted on YouTube presented things in a clear and concise way.  Also, a few years ago while my dad and I were at the St Louis Woodworking show Scott was there discussing how to build one of these chairs and I felt that he knew what he was talking about.  The plan consists of a 2’ x 7’ paper sheet with various pieces drawn out to full scale.  That along with 3 DVD’s made up the set.  

Next up – Material Selection