Rhonda's Rocker

Vintage furniture repairs offer a chance to examine joinery and building techniques up close and personal.  If a piece of furniture was originally well made, and survived hard use, chances are that the Owner has developed a real affinity for the piece and is heart broken when its accumulated issues render it unusable.  Rhonda's rocking chair was such an item.  We worked together at an Architecture firm and I had noticed the broken rocker while at a social gathering at her house.  Later, after I had left the firm and started the lunacy of career redirection, Rhonda encouraged my madness by allowing me to repair her chair.

I got it to my shop and looked it over.  It had been painted at some point in it's life.  Traces of light green paint remained in crevices.  Heavy stain and varnish had been added after the paint removal.  The binder cane weaving on the backrest was in good condition, but the seat was long gone.  Tenons on several of the stretchers had pulled out their mortises, and I found this condition on one of the curved rockers as well.

 

The main problem was a broken arm where the grain ran diagonally creating a weak spot at the tenon in the back post.  At this point I was not entirely sure what species of wood the chair was made from so I removed the broken arm and planed away the finish so I could see the wood grain.  The wood was light colored and extremely dense with a tight grain and some open pores.  I suspected hickory, and then confirmed it by comparison with some that I had in my wood stash.  Hickory is a fine chair making wood, strong and resilient, but matching the new light colored wood with the multi-layered patina of the finish was going to be a challenge.

Using the old arm as a guide, I made a new arm for the chair, taking care to keep the grain straight for the tenon into the back post.   The front post fits into a round mortise drilled into the new arm and is braced with a metal bracket.  I matched the stain and instead of wiping it off, allowed it to dry in a couple of heavy coats.  That was followed by varnish.

I then examined my options for fixing the loose stretcher tenons.  Someone had tried to repair some of these by driving nails through the front and rear posts into the tenons.  After removing all of the nails and dry fitting them back into their respective mortises I could tell that the fit was not tight enough for a good fix, no matter how much glue was applied.  Using an old trick that I read about somewhere, I used plane shavings from the construction of the hickory arm soaked in glue and wrapped around the tenons to increase their size. After glue up and clamping the chair structure was sound. 

Rhonda and I traded a few emails about the seat.  After some discussion we settled on a new woven shaker tape seat.  This is a 5/8" cotton tape woven with an internal cushion. 

 

The finished chair, hopefully with some life left in it.  Thanks for your interest.