Maloof Rocker - Finishing

At long last I have come to the final post on this project. It's been awhile getting here with the good times where things went smoothly and then there were times where frustration and bad words were directed at the piece.  Fortunately there were no problems that could not be resolved or worked around.

The last operation is finishing and because of material differences I will utilize two different types of finishes.  Since the construction lumber I used had knots, some other flaws, a few oops as a result of my practicing plus the wood is not really much to look at I decided to putty the flaws and paint it.  That also meant I did not have to sand it to the same level as the actual piece.  I am not sure where it will end up although my wife has hinted on putting it out on the front porch.  On the other hand I may keep it in the shop area.  In either case I wanted a durable finish so decided to use a fairly heavy body opaque deck stain.  The color I used is a dark green and with two coats I am happy with the way it came out.  One chair down and one to go.  As the photo shows it has ended up on the front porch although it may end up back in the shop later. J

Test Chair Done "Temporarily" on Front Porch

Ready to Start Spraying Finish

The actual chair gets a sprayed on nitrocellulose lacquer finish and preparation of the surface is key.  I start by using compressed air to get as much dust off as I could then wiped it down with a clean old tee shirt.  Next is to wipe down the workbenches with a wet cloth to capture dust, cover the spray area with a piece of cardboard and set the chair upside down on padded blocks.  The blocks are to put some space between the arms and the cardboard to minimize blowback of overspray onto the arms.  Spraying lacquer requires some protective gear.  I always wear a pair of nitrile gloves, a long sleeve shirt and a respirator with cartridges rated to remove the hazardous vapors.

To start I used a small air brush to do the bottoms of the rockers, arms and put a seal coat on the seat bottom.  Three coats of lacquer on the bottom of the rockers and arms gave me a nearly final quality finish and good base to work from.  I used 320 grit sandpaper to smooth the transition between what I already finished and the raw wood.  On the seat bottom I did a light wet sanding using 1,500 grit.  I have better luck wet sanding a finish as I don’t end up with hard chunks or corns of finish on the sandpaper.  However, you can’t wet sand unsealed wood as the water will raise the grain.   Also, now that the bottom of the seat has a seal coat on it I signed and dated the piece there.

Seal Coat and Underneath Side of Seat Signed

With the bottom of the rockers done I could flip the chair over and work from the top down.  I will use the larger Fuji HVLP (High Volume Low Pressure) sprayer for the rest of the finishing.  There are a couple of reasons for the change in equipment.  The seat is really too big to get a good finish with the air brush and the headrest nearly so.  Additionally because there are few sharp edges where I can break the application of finish I need to keep a couple of “wet” edges going and to do that need the speed of application I get with the HVLP gun.  However, to keep the overspray down I adjusted the controls from the broad fan shaped pattern I usually use to a smaller more circular one.   With everything ready to go I mixed up a batch of matte lacquer, thinner and retarder then shot one coat onto the chair.  With that done I quit for the evening.

I let the finish cure overnight and when I checked on it the next morning was shocked.  Almost none of the areas had the smooth surface I was used to getting.  The vast majority, probably 95%, of the finish in no way resembled what I had expected and was totally unacceptable.  The seat felt like someone had thrown 80 grit sand in the lacquer before it dried.  There were other problems but all in all it was a disaster.  In this photo the chair looks fine but trust me it’s worse than awful.

First Coat Finish Disaster

I had changed from the broad fan shape spray to a circular spray to minimize overspray and had adjusted the flow and spread to what I thought looked good and seemed to work on the test board I did.  Not so in actual practice.  My only recourse was to see if I could level the surface and retry.  Out came the wet sandpaper and I started to clean up the mess.  A few hours later I had probably removed 90% of the finish I had applied and had the surface back smooth.  I mixed up another batch of lacquer made some adjustments on the spray gun and gave it another coat.  Next day the results were better but I was still plagued with problems.  For the areas that were not acceptable out came the wet sandpaper again to clean up the problem areas.  Right now a wipe-on poly/oil finish looks really appealing.  In fact, for a couple of days I seriously considered stripping off all the lacquer I had applied and starting over.

I may be a little slow but I was not going to go through the spraying process again without making major changes.  Giving it some thought I decided to take a whole different approach.  To start with I used the small airbrush to spray the slats.  They are small, close together and the airbrush gave me more control and less overspray.  That worked just fine and once they were done I moved onto the arms and seat.  Here I made two changes from the earlier setup.  First, I went back to the fan shaped pattern I typically use.  Second, I altered the lacquer mix by increasing the amount of thinner.  This time when I sprayed the results were what I had expected.  That left the headrest, rear legs, seat bottom and rocker tops to do.  The next day I shot them using the same process and they turned out just fine.  There are not many photos during this phase of finishing for a couple of reasons, photos just don’t convey how rough the finish felt and I was preoccupied with finding a solution.

From here I only had to do a light final wet sand using an 8,000 grit pad.  If I had used a gloss finish I would have used the 12,000 grit pad.  Really the only thing it’s doing at this point is removing any dust that gets on the finish.  Now that the lacquer finish is done I am happy with it.  The matte sheen fits the piece and I know it will give me more protection than a wipe-on ploy/oil blend.  However, given what I went through to apply the lacquer and thinking about the probable use the chair will get I doubt that the extra protection is worth it.  Had I to do it over or if I build another chair (that's a BIG if) I probably will go with the wipe-on ploy/oil blend.

Completed Rocking Chair

Last step is to let the finish cure for a couple of weeks to let the lacquer gas off and then move it into the house.  How does it feel?  The back support is great, the arms are contoured and just fit, the chair as a whole is very comfortable and it takes minimal effort to rock.

The question that frequently comes up when I build pieces is, “How long did that take?” and on about half my projects I do not track my time.  However, this project is anything but normal so given the scope and that my estimate was for a 4 to 6 month build I decided to track my time.  I recorded the days worked, how many hours I worked that day, if it was on the test or actual piece and what I did.  First the disclaimer, this project had a lot of skills and techniques that I had not done and had to learn.  This was the main reason I built the test piece.  It’s better to mess up a piece of 2x6 construction lumber than a piece of 8/4 cherry.  Anyway from start to finish the project took 348 ¼ hours done in 102 working days spread out over 5 months.  Of that time 110 ½ hours were on the test piece and 237 ¾ hours on the actual chair.  The test piece has a lot less hours because it is not finished to as high a degree as the actual chair.   Remember all the sanding and my poor fingers. Also the patterns and jigs are all included in the actual chair.  For those into a more detailed breakdown here it is:

Item	Actual	Test
Arm	27.25	6.75
Back legs	15.25	11.5
Epoxy	1	0
Finish	13.5	0
Front legs	15.25	13.25
Headrest	16.75	9.5
Paint	0	6.75
Patterns & jigs	21.75	0
Plank work	9.75	0
Rocker	38.5	25.5
Sanding	19.75	0
Seat	27	20.25
Slats	32	17
Total Hours	237.75	110.5

The other question I get is would I do anything different and I can think of only three things. 

1. Given the problems I had with the sprayed lacquer finish I would probably use a poly/oil wipe-on blend.
2. While the chair fits me it is just a little tall to be comfortable for my wife.  If I were to build another I would likely shorten the legs a bit, maybe an inch or so.  
3. The rocker to leg joint is held together by ½" wood dowels.  I think I would seriously consider using ⅜” steel threaded rod instead.  That would leave a bit more wood at the joint for leg and rocker strength while the steel though smaller would be considerably stronger than the wood dowel.  I would use the threaded rod versus smooth rod to provide the epoxy with additional bonding area.

In the end I think that I should not give up my day job although from what I have read the chair currently made by Sam Maloof Woodworker Inc. runs about $25,000 and there is a three year wait to get one.

So for now I will sit in the rocker and relax - for a bit.  Then again I have my eye on another project that looks interesting....

dave