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Rocking Chair- Part 6 |
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I have set up the table saw to cut thin strips for the laminating work. The first things I need to make in this way are a couple of rockers and the laminations need to be 1/8 inch thick by 1 1/2 inches wide by 45 inches long. The second set of things to be made in this way will be the back brace laminations which are 90 thou. thick and 33 inches long and this picture shows a billet of wood ready to be sliced up for back braces.
For this work I had the help of my wife to pull the strips through as the cuts were completed. I would not like to attempt this without such assistance, there is an ever present danger of kickback or simply a very annoying damaging of the strips by the saw blade if they are not cleared neatly from the saw.
As it is there is a tendency for the wood to get burnt. I have tried half a dozen different blades to find the one that works best for me - in the end it is my Trend general purpose blade, resharpened for the occasion. So many blades start vibrating when ripping thin strips and this wrecks the strips in short order.
Note the Sheppach outfeed table - vital for this work.
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This is a bunch of lamination strips for the backbraces that my wife Mary is helping me sort out. The idea is to have nice looking strips for fronts and backs of the (four strip laminated) back braces (seven back braces in total but making up one spare for a total of eight). The two middle strips do not need to look good as they are not seen. I was very pleased with the ripping operation finally. the strips only varied by a max of 4 thou from one strip to another.
The saucer and yellow J-cloth in the lower right of the picture are for wiping a little water on the strips to reveal the grain
We have tried to match figure and grain here. Once we had done that we made up eight stacks of four strips each |
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This is a backer for the rocker laminating operation that is being glued up. I made the form from two inch thick poplar that I had left over from a bedroom furniture project. I bought all the shiny new Besseys at the Ally Pally woodworking show, in anticipation of their being needed for this rocking chair. I am using two kinds of Bessey clamp here. The big F type clamps with wooden handscrews and a lever operated cam clamp (klickclamp's big brother). Both offer massive clamping pressure.
The wooden handscrews are applied temporarily to ensure the stack of laminations stays aligned whilst applying the big clamps.
The former and handscrews have been liberally waxed before this exercise to ensure the large amounts of glue squeeze-out do not stick to anything |
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Here are two rockers and their associated backer (used in the gluing/clamping operation). Apart from cleaning off the worst of the glue squeeze out (I used a drawknife for this - very effective), nothing has yet been done to the rockers. In due course they will be planed to width and trimmed to length. Later on, when the basic framework of the chair is complete, they will be attached to the chair with stacks of shorter laminations that will form the basis for the flowing curves from rockers to legs.
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