Maloof Rocker - The Real Seat: Bevels, Dowels & Leg Joints

Some of  my Notes

With a basic processes needed to build the seat and legs practiced plus a couple pages of notes on things to do and not do I started on the real seat.  I made the notes as I built the mock-up to make sure I did not miss anything and because it’s pretty easy to get something out of sequence.

First order of business is to check to see if any of the seat’s rough cut pieces had moved since they were cut.  Well, three of the five had developed a bit of a twist that had to be flattened so I dragged out hand plane and set to work truing up the surfaces.  Not hard but it took half a day to get them all square, flat and to a thickness that varied less than 1/100 of an inch.  I needed the outside boards of the seat to be this accurate because the leg joints are cut from the top and bottom and what remains is the tenon of the leg joint.  If the board thickness varies so does the thickness of the tenon.   The mating piece is cut with a dado blade and does not vary once set.  End result is if the boards are different thickness then some joints will fit and some won’t.   The fix to make them go together is to modify each joint by hand.  With all the angles and arcs I really, really want to keep that to a minimum.

Once I had all the pieces ready to go I laid them out shuffling the order, flipping end to end, switching top and bottom and shifting back and forth until I got a good grain match.   The photo shows the final result.  Once the pieces are cut to width with proper bevels I will cut them to final length.

Grain Matched

This process for putting the seat blank is nearly the same as the mock-up so I will not go into a lot of detail here.  First is to mark the bevel direction then set the blade on the table saw and cut the edges on each board. 

Direction of Cut Marked

Angles Cut

Setting Saw Angle

At this point the pieces have extra width so I had room to fix any problems that might arise.  Before I cut to final size I wanted to do a test clamping to make sure I had the angles right and the outer two boards were flat, which they are.

Test Clamping

Still Flat

Next I cut boards to final width and length then clamped them all together checking to make sure everything still is in proper alignment.   

With the blank at final width I clamped the seat template to the blank then traced the seat outline and the guide line for the recessed area.  More layout followed: the dowel locations, the front leg dado then the back leg straight and angled geometry.  Unfortunately these layout lines are made with a sharp pencil resulting in thin lines that just did not show up in the photograph. 

Seat Layout Done

One change from the mock-up was the way I marked the dowels location.  In the mock-up I measured each one with the calipers.  This time I set a couple of combination squares and used them to do the layout.  If you carefully look just about 3/4 an inch off the end of the squares in the photograph you can just see a small point marking where the dowel will go.

Combination Squares Set for Marking Dowels

A dry fit and clamp with the dowels in place showed the outer boards still flat.  Not that I am paranoid about things getting out out of alignment or anything.

Still Flat? - Yep

Rear Leg Joint with Just a Smidge to Remove

Now it was time to make sawdust, drilling the dowel holes and making all the table saw cuts for the legs including the little bit of hand trimming due to intersecting angled cuts.  

All Cleaned Up

When I did the mock-up I had some problems with getting a smooth transition between the straight and angled router bits.  I felt like I needed more practice with the bits to avoid the gap problem in the actual chair.  Digging in the scrap box turned up some 2x6 material so while I had the saw set up I made four test pieces to practice the rear leg joint.

Next Up – The Real Seat: Fitting Legs & Seat Glue-up