Arm Joinery and Sculpting
An arm template is made, based on the dimensions laid out on the master template. 
The design of my arm template is based on what I have seen in books, and looking at Woodguy’s example. I modified it a little to hopefully add a little more arm support back at the elbow. Using the dimensions from the original master template, the arm stock is cut to size and fitted to the chairs temporarily using dowel joinery while the stock is all still square. The back legs are drilled using the drill press (pic at right), and the front legs are drilled by hand. The arm stock itself can be drilled on the drill press for the bottom hole, but the back hole requires drilling by hand.
Once the arm joinery is done, the arm stock can be roughed out at the band saw. Doing it this way employs the freehand band saw technique that Maloof uses. This saves some grinding time, but it is quite tricky. It is not a safe band saw technique, and is not recommended.
Further shaping is done using the angle grinder, being careful to avoid grinding those areas where the arm joins the front and back legs. These areas will be shaped later after the chair is assembled. There is still some hand shaping to be done, but these pics show how the arms look after rough shaping with just the band saw and grinder.
9 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.
7 DECLANKK // Nov 17, 2010 at 12:06 pm
just wondering when will you the rocker joinery updated ?
8 Eli // Aug 4, 2011 at 3:26 pm
You say that you use 8/4 stock for all pieces. I have read that Maloof used 12/4 for the arms. Does that make a significant difference?
9 Jacob // Jan 4, 2012 at 2:33 am
Good morning,
I am interested in building a rocker for my wife but can’t find or afford decent rocker plans on the net. Can you please provide/share some of the cutting measurements of the rocker you build, which by the way looks awesome.
Thanx
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