Custom wooden rocking chair step #2
You can see some progress has been made since cutting the rough lumber to size. We have cut the rear legs to rough size on our bandsaw, using the freshly smoothed side on the table creating a square cut following the lines that have been traced on from our templates.
The headrest pieces have been coopered and are ready to be glued up to create a flowing curve from leg to leg. Coopering is the process where multiple pieces of wood are cut with a angle on the sides, when mated together they create a curve. This design feature lets us arrange the headrest with the grain going up and down matching the seat, arms and legs. It also allows us to create a headrest that has a large radius, without the coopering process this would not be possible. This allow us to match the curve of the back braces to curve of the human body, our back are not flat in any direction why would you want to sit on a flat backed chair? Also when the headrest is glued to the legs the joint will be long grain to long grain which creates a joint that can withstand around 2 tonnes on force.
We have selected and re-sawed the back brace laminations, selected there order for the glue up. Each back brace is constructed with 4 layers of laminations, this creates a very strong yet flexible back brace which is one reason these custom wooden rocking chairs are so comfortable.
The rockers have also been selected for quality and beauty and re-sawed into 1/8'' strips ready to be glued up in our form.
Both the back braces and rockers are built using a technique called bent lamination.