Woodworking: Rocking Chair
Woodworking is a hobby of mine and so I decided to test my skills and expand my horizons by building a rocking chair completely from the scrap wood in the Nolop makerspace at Tufts University
I began by drawing up some dimensions and making a frame for the chair using the miter saw. I then cut some curves out on the band saw for the seat.
This is the finished seat with all the boards cut from the table saw and miter saw. They have been nailed in with a nail gun and also had some wood glue as well.
These are the components for the backrest of the chair. The plan was to embed the boards into the headrest using a drill and chisels.
Here you can see the back rest coming together. The vertical boards are secured in the headboard. After chiseling out the spaces for the boards, they are friction fit into the headboard and then glued in as well to secure them. Holes were cut into a bottom board as well to friction fit the vertical ones in and hold them in place. A support is put along the middle piece because it is a thinner piece of wood and is more likely to crack under weight.
After getting the correct positioning of the arms, a triangular support was cut using the table saw and band saw. This allows the arm rest to be more easily mounted to the chair and provides some aesthetic appeal. Another support is placed towards the front of the arm rest so it is not just free-hanging. This is also secured to the base of the chair for support via nails and screws.
Once the glue had set for the backrest, it was secured to the base via screws into the frame. Two boards were also strategically placed on the back to help strengthen the backrest and allow it to not move when weight was put on.
Curves were then cut for the armrests, again using the band saw. The picture on the left shows the arms being clamped in place to get a feel of where they should be positioned.
Here we can see the full rocking chair put together. The rockers are now put on and were constructed by gluing two pieces of plywood together to add thickness and running it through the bandsaw to get the desired curve. They were then sanded and fit to the bottoms of the base posts. Once fit to the base posts, I drilled pilot holes through the bottom of the curves and embedded long screws in after putting wood glue on the curves. This made sure that these rockers weren't going to move when weight was put on the chair.
The finished product is seen here, after having been sanded and stained with a red mahogany color.
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