Child's Rocker

[Ruffnek]

I made this over the weekend from a picture I found on the net. I scaled it down to fit a child as it's going to our pool cleaning guy for his daughter's 2nd birthday.

The wood is Eastern Red Cedar with a Bois d'Arc heart applied to the front stretcher and the child's name routered into the headrest and painted yellow. Finish is a coat of BLO, followed by a seal coat of shellac followed by Poly. I'll probably brush on a couple more coats before I'm through with it.

The Cedar is a bit soft but I figure it will mostly sit in her room covered in dolls and teddy bears, anyway. I used loose tenon joinery for the first time and rather like it's simplicity...no having to account for tenon length in measurements.

Thanks for looking.

[Joe Lyddon]

Cody,

Very nice work!

[sachbvn]

Oh that's frickin' gorgeous!! He will be uber appreciative - and she will LOVE it!


Zac

[bmorto]

Looks great Cody, your are good and fast.
bmorto

[Doug B]

That is simply amazing Cody. Beautiful work.

[Stretch]

That is nice! Don't let my wife see it, or she'll have me cleaning your pool to get one. ;D

[Beamer]

Nice work, Sir

Did you make templates and route the parts to shape? Hand tool fitting? Could ya give us a little details on your process? I know you have a good mix of hand and power techniques and it'd be neat to get some more details about how you mix the two.

[Doug B]

Nov 10, 2009 19:40:21 GMT -6 Stretch said:

That is nice! Don't let my wife see it, or she'll have me cleaning your pool to get one. ;D

LMAO! That was funny! I don't care who you are, that there was funny! ;D

[Ruffnek]

Nov 10, 2009 19:57:20 GMT -6 Beamer said:

Nice work, Sir

Did you make templates and route the parts to shape? Hand tool fitting? Could ya give us a little details on your process? I know you have a good mix of hand and power techniques and it'd be neat to get some more details about how you mix the two.

I made templates out of 1/4" MDF, traced the outline on the stock and cut out the pieces on the bandsaw...no template routing. I smoothed up the curves at the OSS.

The slats were resawn from 1" stock and planed to 3/8". I rounded over the edges on the router table.

The joinery was all loose tenons. I made a couple of jigs for the router...one for the ends and another for the sides of the stock to route the mortises. Really simple stuff.

I used a 3/8" straight bit with a 1/2" collar. The end-grain jig saddled over the 1" stock and was held by clamping. The side-grain jig, I used double-stick tape to hold it in place while I routed. I used 3/8" ply for the tenons, rounded over at the router table.

This was the first time I used loose tenon joinery and I really like it. I like cutting mortises with the router, too, except that I needed a spiral upcut bit instead of the straight one I used. The sawdust would pack in the jig ahead of the bit and i'd have to stop, blow it out and then finish the mortise. But it still went pretty quick...just messy with all the sawdust off the router.

Thanks for looking, guys, and thanks for the interest in the technique, Jason. It was a fun, quick project.

[Leo Voisine]

You made that over the "weekend"??

Cody, that would take me a month of Sundays.

AWESOME - but don't let my daughter see it.

Nah - she won't check in here yet - she thinks I'm still back at the old place.

[boodrow]

I seen the rocker in person yesterday, as usual the pics dont do it justice. Beautiful piece of work.
Boodrow

[sawduster]

You Rock, dude!! ;D

[kvwebb]

Fantastic work Cody!

[Beamer]

Nov 11, 2009 5:34:27 GMT -6 Ruffnek said:

Nov 10, 2009 19:57:20 GMT -6 Beamer said:

Nice work, Sir

Did you make templates and route the parts to shape? Hand tool fitting? Could ya give us a little details on your process? I know you have a good mix of hand and power techniques and it'd be neat to get some more details about how you mix the two.

I made templates out of 1/4" MDF, traced the outline on the stock and cut out the pieces on the bandsaw...no template routing. I smoothed up the curves at the OSS.

The slats were resawn from 1" stock and planed to 3/8". I rounded over the edges on the router table.

The joinery was all loose tenons. I made a couple of jigs for the router...one for the ends and another for the sides of the stock to route the mortises. Really simple stuff.

I used a 3/8" straight bit with a 1/2" collar. The end-grain jig saddled over the 1" stock and was held by clamping. The side-grain jig, I used double-stick tape to hold it in place while I routed. I used 3/8" ply for the tenons, rounded over at the router table.

This was the first time I used loose tenon joinery and I really like it. I like cutting mortises with the router, too, except that I needed a spiral upcut bit instead of the straight one I used. The sawdust would pack in the jig ahead of the bit and i'd have to stop, blow it out and then finish the mortise. But it still went pretty quick...just messy with all the sawdust off the router.

Thanks for looking, guys, and thanks for the interest in the technique, Jason. It was a fun, quick project.

Nice description

I can relate to the loose tenon glee. I had a similar one with pocket holes and then later with loose tenons. It's handy to just cut all yer pieces to the length of the space they fill and not have to worry about accounting for joinery.

There's just something neat about slapping a project together quick and having it all work, too, huh? It's gratifying to know that you've reached a level where whole pieces of furniture aren't quite so fraught with uncertainty. Even better when a new technique works right off the bat, too.

[tlcneeded]

nice rocker.
yep i got one on my to do list hopifully coming sure to a post near you.
thanks for posting it.

[Ruffnek]

Thanks again for the comments, y'all.

Update: When I got home from my re-scheduled Houston meeting today, the pool guy was here cleaning the leaves out of the pool. I showed him the rocker and he was nearly speechless over it. When he finally could talk, he said that on a scale of 1 to 10, it was a definite 12. Said it way exceeded his expectations. Of course, I was immediately puffed up with pride.

He even tried to up the price a bit but I wouldn't let him. I told him that all I wanted (besides the free $56 pool cleaning) was to refer any interested customers to me and to tell them that I get $250 for a similar rocker.

[Joe Lyddon]

That's a good way to get the word spread! ;D ;D

[skoman]

That is great work, Cody! Never tried loose tenon joinery before.

Nice marketing method as well.

[admin]

Great work, and a very nice marketing method too. Gotta do whatcha gotta do to get the word out.

I'm sorry, but I'm not too sure I know what a loose tenon is... Wikipedia, here I come.

[Ruffnek]

Nov 12, 2009 6:53:51 GMT -6 admin said:

Great work, and a very nice marketing method too. Gotta do whatcha gotta do to get the word out.

I'm sorry, but I'm not too sure I know what a loose tenon is... Wikipedia, here I come.

TJ, Loose tenon joinery is where you cut a mortise in both mating pieces and then make a separate tenon to glue into the mortises. After the tenon is glued in place, it's not loose anymore.

It's practically as strong as milling integral tenons onto the stock.