Taylor Rocking Chair WIP....ish.

[Kalimna]

As discussion of chair project had almost overtaken another thread, I thought I would just start a clean one.
The backgorund - my wife is pregnant (due in July...) and wanted me to make her a rocking chair for when the little sproggle is here. Never having made one before (or any chair or serious bit of furniture for that matter), I thought I would start off gently with a nice Maloof inspired (so I found out) Hal Taylor chair........ I'm afraid there aren't any WIP just yet, as all I have are a buch of shapes roughly cut out and needing doubling up to get to required thickness. I certainly realise that my methodology is a little less than perfect...
What this roughly boils down to is wanting to use scottish timber, finding some lovely walnut (from Loch Etive) that came in a little over 1" rough sawn boards, and thinking I would be able to duplicate shapes and arrive at Hals' suggested 2" thick timber (I purchased the plans/DVD from him).
All well and good, but the walnut was a little more warped than I thought, and at any rate I hadnt accurately worked out how much I would need, so anything from now on is a compromise. Either way, I had to find some more timber. I would like to have used more walnut, but it isnt all that easy to come by, so I settled for some cherry from a local ASHS place.

Woodbloke - i realise that having a secondary timber for this project is less than ideal, and I would have greatly preferred to use walnut solely apart from a few accents. But my inexperience got the better of me and I shall have to make do... I don't think it will end up quite a 'patchwork' as suggested in my other post though....

So - my main question to all of you learned folk is (and pointed particularly towards those who have completed a Taylor chair), how much leeway in finished timber thickness is there from the suggested 2"? Are there any areas of construction that may need to be adjusted slightly?
In fact, any general advice at all?

Cheers for wading through another post.....
Adam

 

[Ironballs]

Hi Adam, first up I'd ask one of the mods nicely to move this thread into the projects section, they'll be happy to oblige. I'm looking forward to seeing this one progress as I do like the Maloof rockers.

I'm not sure about the leeway you'll have with the timber, what might be worth doing is getting some tulipwood or similar cheap timber and doing a full scale mock up for your more difficult parts - may also help avoidance of error on the final piece.

I'd agree with Rob that ideally you want a single species for this chair, however.... one of the full time students at Leeds College of Art made a Maloof style rocker last year and his was made from walnut and maple, striped seat and alternating laminations in the rocker part. It just about worked so can be done, perhaps sketch yours out and colour in different sections to see what you get

Cheers

Damian

 

[PAC1]

Some of the pieces you take down to 1 5/8 ths so there is some leaway. On the whole you need the full thickness for the legs and head rail. The seat could be thinner if you wanted. I use beech on the backsplats and faced it with the main type of wood but you could use a contrasting wood.