Wool and Spice

Back in March I mentioned that Jack was planning to build a porch rocker for our deck as his next big project. To give you a break from peony and cat pictures, I thought you might like to see some of the construction process. (We got the plans  from this website.

I’m not a woodworker but I’ve been gaining an education by osmosis the last couple of years. However some stuff refuses to stick. For example I can’t ever remember which is a mortise and which is a tenon.

I know a mortise and tenon join two pieces of wood at a 90-degree angle. Like the side of a nightstand to the base of a nightstand. They form strong  joints but making a clean, good-looking one takes some attention to detail, down to the one-thirty-second of an inch level. You want the sides to be even and straight (unless you don’t, but we won’t go there). You want the joint to be snug, but not so snug that when you glue it together the glue oozes all over or makes the wood swell so much the two pieces don’t fit.

And of course you can get into all kinds of variations like a through wedged half-dovetail mortise or a feather tenon, depending upon the shape of the hole or the extension. We won’t go there either because I have no idea what those are.

For the record, the mortise is the cavity cut in the first piece of wood to receive the tenon which is an extension shaped on the end of the second piece of wood. Female (mortise) and male (tenon).

And that’s your woodworking lesson for today. This is a pass/fail course so don’t panic.

Anyhoo, in April we went to his favorite wood store (more expensive than any yarn store) so he could pick through their mahogany and white oak. Then life got in the way so he wasn’t able to start construction until this week.

In the meantime, the wood so carefully selected to be straight and true, dried out and started cupping. Having your wood cup (if that’s the right term) is sort of like finding out your gauge swatch lied big time. You really can’t work with crooked boards, any more than you can use a DK weight yarn with a pattern written for bulky-weight yarn and expect to get something wearable.

The boards were planed to straighten them again. Next, mortises (remember those?) were drilled into 4 pieces of  the mahogany, then two boards were glued together, matching up the mortises, to make a sturdy inch-and-a-half rocker foot. Once the glue set, Jack attached a template to the board sandwich and c-a-r-e-f-u-l-l-y cut out the rocker on his bandsaw. Then you visit rocker island for the second one.

There’s a lot of waste on each board, but the leftover mahogany will go in the scrap pile and get used for a small project eventually.

And that’s how rockers are made. Next time: making the legs and rails and joining them to the rockers (remember tenons?).

Tags: porch rocker, woodworking