Full Chisel Blog

There is talk about that the rocking chair is an American invention.  All right, we will claim it although I don’t know if that is true.  Rocking cradles were known in Europe.  Some say the rocking chair was developed to be used at a loom because it was in effect an adjustable height seat.  I don’t know but rocking chairs are interesting pieces of furniture and are frequently damaged, usually wear on the rockers, but with it moving most of the time, joints can also loosen up.

This is a Western version of the Boston rocker, made of pine and painted and grained look like mahogany, with gold details.

Here is another version called a Dixie Rocker because it was made in southern Utah in the 1850’s, 60’s.  This one is painted and grained to look like QS white oak.

Here are two unusual rocking chairs.  These were made by John and Thomas Cottam, prolific chair makers from England, that produced hundreds and hundreds of these type chairs during their long time in business.  Their lathe was powered by horses.

Both do not have their original rush seats and have been overpainted, too bad.  The rockers are made of fir instead of pine which will wear better.  If the rockers are not coplanar then a rocking chair will creep or crawl to one side or the other.  This has to do with angle of contact and the surface treatment of the bottom of the rocker, which wears off.  A slight belly reduces ‘crawl’.  The more the curve the more likely a chair is to crawl, lower arcs reduce crawl.

But to eliminate crawl all together use walnut for the rockers.  Don’t ask me why.

Here is my favorite Cottam rocking chair, it is made for a child and underneath that piece of wood is a woven willow seat bottom.  All Cottam chairs had twisted rush seat bottoms.

I have made reproductions of their chairs, but never a rocker, this is my next project.

I saved the best for last.  This one defies all rules of furniture made in the West during the pioneer period.  This one is made of one of the few local hardwoods we have out here, it is made of Big Leaf Maple.  It has an oil and shellac finish and its original cat tail rush seat bottom.  The wings have been replaced.  This chair belonged to Brigham Young and was one of his favorites.

It looks like this chair bodger had a lathe.

Whether the rocking chair is an American innovation, I am not sure, but it is definately from the nineteenth century and not earlier.

Stephen

I do make a lot of furniture and chairs are one of my favorite projects to build.  I make copies of nineteenth century styles so I don’t need to come up with anything original, I just rip off the past.  The difficult design part is replaced with mechanically reproducing the piece so I can concentrate on construction rather than what it should look like.

Over the 35 years I have been doing this, I have had to repair hundreds and hundreds of chairs.  Chairs are the most mobile piece of furniture, hence it recieves the most damage and abuse.  Broken rungs, spindles, tenons, legs, seats, all parts of the chair break and I have repaired every part at least once and some repairs are so common, broken tenons on the end of spindles and rungs that I have extra tenons turned to the right size with a small tenon to go into a socket repair hole.

A mule ear ladder back chair came into the shop, flat cane seat almost completely gone, the chair loose and of course those nail ‘repairs’ to tighten up a loose chair (didn’t work).  I would like to tell everyone that nails and screws don’t work, but they have earned me a great deal of money over the years removing them, cursing whoever did the ‘repair’, questioning their lineage but reassured that there is a ’special place in hell’ for those people.

Mr. Buss, my able assistant on Saturdays in my shop, he likes doing repairs and has put dozens of broken chairs for the Park in ‘good order’.  Most of the repair work is on Windsor side chairs and this was the first ladderback that he had repaired.  He spent 4 hours removing the nails, and while Mr. Buss does not curse like I do, he also questioned their lineage and muttered things under his breath.

The chair is similar to this one with another slat in the back and round turned front and back legs and one more set of rungs on the legs.

The construction techniques are identical with the rungs on the front and back are below the rungs on the sides, but the holes overlap a bit.  This means that one socket will slightly intersect the adjoining socket.  During original construction the front and back legs are assembled, then the holes for the angled rungs drilled.  This will catch a bit of the tenon already in the socket and cut a small notch on the tenon.  When the other rung tenon goes in the socket it will lock the front and back tenons into the legs with the other rungs acting like locking wedges.

Mr. Buss was disassembling the chair to re-glue and I pointed out to him that the chair was probably made as I described above and that the front and back needs to be removed from the side rungs before the front and back can be taken apart.  He said he had not seen that before (his first ladderback repair) and was happy to know that bit of information as it made the disassembly real easy.

I told him if he tried to disassemble the front and back first that more damage would occur as the front and back rungs are probably locked into the sockets, so damage will occur to the tenon or socket or perhaps split the leg.  He also knew to mark the pieces as the chair will be totally disassembled and because it is hand made each socket and tenon are unique, so it is crutial to get the right parts back in their right places.

He suceeded in his quest, picked up some good information and the chair is sitting quietly under a couple of his favorite ‘new’ clamp, a piece of rope and a stick.  I showed him the tourniquet rope clamp method and he has perfected it, I have seen him put 5 rope tourniquets on one chair.  Next week he will use bungs to repair the nail holes and I will put a new seat in the chair and it will go back into useful service.  The chair will hold together with just hide glue, no nails or screws necessary.

When taking furniture apart to repair it, it helps to know how it went together and in what order the pieces were added.  This is then reversed to un-build the piece prior to repair.  Repairing furniture has given me an insight into how the furniture was constructed, so it is very helpful for making reproduction furniture.  Also repairing furniture gets you inside the furniture so you can see what tools were used to make the piece in the first place.

Stephen