It’s been quiet at the shop since Follansbee wrapped up his class. I’ve been focused on preparing materials and parts for two rocking chair classes. That’s 15 chairs worth of parts, which, at first, I found rather intimidating. For the last couple of years, I’ve been on edge, always working, waiting for some critical thing to happen or making hard decisions. When I started preparing all the parts, I started to panic a bit. I thought, “How am I supposed to just stand here and turn posts while everything is spinning wildly out of control?!?"(it isn’t). Then, I turned a couple, and was reminded why I do this. The anxiety fell away and all of a sudden I had plenty of space to relax while I watched the wood peel away. I got to just do something. Sounds simple, but I’m pretty sure just about everyone can relate to what hallowed ground that is these days.

It was even a bit tough stopping to shoot this video, I wanted to stay in the zone. But everything is well set up now so it didn’t distract me too much. I’m turning a Rocker post, which is 35 1/2” long and relatively thin. I use the steady rest I showed in this post. There is also another post where I show this post turning and add some other comments on reducing vibration.

Turning parts with lots of beads and coves is actually much easier in some ways. There are lots of distractions and eye catching moments to draw you away from the quieter lines and proportions. When I was designing this part, it had to serve a few technical functions, such as having enough material where the arm and crest join in.

Other than that, most of it comes down to aesthetics. One interesting thing was how the shape of the part and the bend interact. The bending process widens the part a little in spots, subtly changing the proportions and the curve needs to play well with the dimension changes or it looks awkward. I usually find some guidance for the shape and heft of a part in the way it would respond to force. The idea being that thinner parts would deflect more under pressure so the curve increases as the dimension decreases. It’s an eyeball thing, no math, just lots playing. I also don’t want any distinct transitions, so picking the points to size was a critical step to making sure everything just “flows”.

Here is the bent post in a chair you can see how the shape of the post matches the curve of the spindle near the bottom. At the top, there is a bit more curve in the post than in the spindle, but I like that there is some tension there, the obvious solution is to have everything match, but enjoy a bit of separation between the spindles and posts.

I like the way the wide part of the post fills the negative space at the bottom of the outer spindle. I want the all the parts to have a quiet tension, like they found their shape in relation to everything going on around them. There’s some analogy to how a forest grows, but I’ll let you fill in the blanks.

Here is my next project, revamping this rodback design I made long ago for a set I’m making. I’m hoping to offer this as a class next year. It’s the form that first interested me in making chairs this way, so it’s obviously close to my heart.

I’m going to detail the process of redesigning and building it in upcoming posts.