Rough-shaping the seat
My seat is made up of five boards which are wide enough to provide space for the seat template. Before gluing up the seat panel, some of the initial rough shaping can be done on the band saw. The inner contour of the seat template is traced onto the boards; a separate template is created for the front profile of the seat. These lines are used as a guide for the initial band saw shaping of the seat.
Once the contour of the seat is marked on the top & front of the seat boards, the initial shaping is done on the band saw. The panel is separated and the layout lines are transferred by eye onto the inside of each of the seat boards. Each board is then taken to the band saw, and cut out close to the layout lines.
At the band saw, each piece is fed through free-hand, using the layout lines as a guide. This is kind of tricky. It should be noted that this is not a safe band saw technique, and it is not recommended! Since the feed direction changes, a fence cannot be used. Establishing the proper angle to start the cut is also tricky, since you can’t see the guide line on the end of the piece.
To help with this, I set up a mirror so I could see the line on the end. This helped me to establish the proper angle from the start, but doesn’t really help beyond that. The guide lines were intentionally drawn with a dull pencil, giving 1/8″ or so margin for error during this phase. With this in mind, I tried to saw just on the inside of the line, although in some places I did cut right on the line. recommended. 
In order to do this kind of cut (relatively) safely on the band saw, the wood has to be positioned with the “inside” guide line down toward the table where it can’t be seen. The wood has to be held at a constant angle to avoid cutting through that line on the bottom.
6 responses so far ↓
1 sean de queiroz // Jan 6, 2008 at 2:15 am
i noticed that while the back legs on your rocker are pretty much straight up and down, maloof’s rocker has legs that are substantially splayed at the top crest. do you know how he does this. is the joinery at the seat done at an angle? i’m baffled.
2 Monty // Jan 6, 2008 at 6:47 am
Maloof uses custom router bits to achieve that splayed look on the back legs. I used a simple rabbeting bit to join the back legs to the seat, resulting in a 90˚ angle. The bits like Maloof uses can be found at Woodline. Read more about these bits here.
3 sean de queiroz // Apr 22, 2008 at 9:10 am
i’m wondering what kind of joint you used to join the rockers to the legs. if i’m not mistaken maloof dowels the arms to the leg posts–at least i can’t see a plug on the arm where he would use a screw like on some of his other joints. did you use a dowel to attach the rockers. i was thinking one way to use a screw would be to cover the screw with a final lamination after the rocker is already attached to the chair.
oh, thanks for the info on the maloof router bits. i went ahead and bought them because i really like the splay. it took me quite a while to figure out just how to make that joint with the other tools i have however. the people at woodline couldn’t help–strange to sell a product you don’t know how to use–i even wrote to sam maloof but got no response. i now think that maloof must have a specially ground stacked dado set for making the leg part of the joint. he can’t use hand tools to make the joint like i had to..
thanks
sean de queiroz
4 Monty // Apr 22, 2008 at 8:08 pm
I am using dowels (5/8″) to join the rockers to the legs. I would not want to attempt to plug a screw hole, since any slight irregularity in the finished surface would be detected as a “bumpy” rocking motion. Dowels should be strong enough – much better than a screw threaded into end grain.
5 Essen // Sep 30, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Could you not just cut the mortise in the front face of the back leg on a crossslide tablesaw jig with spacers on one side of the back fence to keep it from moving during the cut. Then for the inside face prop the leg up on a spacer on one side to make the proper 5 degree cut in? I would imagine that everything could be done with power tools, but the spot that mates with the roundover would be very close, but not exact in the seat-side of the joint. epoxy mixed with sawdust could hide this one little flaw. I have actually made this joint before in a different way… without any $75 special bits… but this seems easier than what I did. I made a right and left jig that held a router at an angle to the cutting surface. This is not how maloof does it , because his chairs don’t have that slightly narrower spot and “shelf” under the chair that mine did. The next time I do it, I’ll be adding a 5 degree wedge that terminates it’s point at the bottom of the joint to get rid of that shelf and allow some material for a nice contour on the inside edge of the joint on the topside. This is hard to describe without pictures, but I hope this makes sense and helps someone.
6 Graeme Smith // Feb 14, 2010 at 7:20 pm
Charles Brock glues additional thickness to the inside of the back legs, rips it at 6 degrees to a taper and then can dado the resulting surface with normal square dadoes to achieve an angled splay. The additional material is almost invisible once the job is done as it is nearly all carved away.
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