Sam Maloof Rocker, Charles Brock,and Coy, Part 3

Coy got to unveil his rocking chair at the monthly meeting of the Central Oregon Woodworkers, a genial fellowship of craftspeople of all stripes--turners, carvers, generalists, a model maker and restorer, and serious hobbyists. And George, who is so difficult to categorize that we'll have to see a separate blog post after we visit his shop.

It was a riveting moment. All or close to all of these people know a Maloof chair when they see one, though few had heard of Charles Brock or were aware that you could buy digital/print coaching for the construction of one of these works of art. Coy got to share some of his journey, both holding tools and allowing his mind to explore this manifestation of Sam Maloof and his spirit.

In stark and fascinating contrast was a table full of bones--all the parts of my Maloof project were there, but not a single one was attached to another. Next step is the cutting of angles on the headrest, drilling for the spindles, and dry fitting with the back legs temporarily attached to the seat. Oh, the seat, it needs to be shaped too; now it's a rugged landscape of pieces roughed on the bandsaw and far from looking like an inviting place to plunk oneself.

Attendants who are well acquainted with what it takes to get a foursquare piece of wood to become curvilinear and graceful could get a grasp of the hours it would take to go from the relatively easy part of cutting parts to a template to the sinuous sight of the front leg flowing into the arm rest, or the back leg sprouting from the rocker and leafing at the seat, the arm rest and the headrest.

And those rockers! The contrasting maple stacked just so with the walnut. The ebony plugs at the front and back legs. Note the artistic use of sapwood (the white) in the spindles and the seat.

Congratulations, Coy. It's a beauty.

And he wants to build another one.

A newcomer to the group last night was Hans Emmons, who builds and restores models. From his web site I lifted this quotation from Beryl Markham, the 20th century aviatrix who made history as the first person to fly the Atlantic solo from east to west:

"No human pursuit achieves dignity until it can be called work, and when you can experience a physical loneliness for the tools of your trade, you see that other things - the experiments, the irrelevant vocations, the vanities you used to hold – were false to you."

Sam Maloof Rocker, Charles Brock, and Coy, Part 2

It's just about the rocker. But wait, if it's a rocking chair, that's it! It can't be just about the rocker if, when there's no rocker, it's just a chair!

There are three ways to bend wood: steam, kerfing, and bent lamination. Steam is very effective, fun to do, but limited to solid wood. (There is a new way of bending wood which involves compressing it endwise first to collapse the cells, but we'll get into that sometime in the future, when I'm smarter about it.)

Kerfing is the process of making numerous parallel saw cuts not clear through the board, evenly spaced, so the board can easily be bent but remain solid on one side. This often is used as a substrate for veneer, and the sides of the board--where the kerfing shows--is hidden.

Kerfing could conceivably work for making a rocker, but covering the kerfs and insuring enough strength would make it more labor-intensive than it needs to be.

Hence the bent laminations you see in the image. The bonus here is that you can include contrasting colors--something Sam enjoyed doing, and something that Charles encourages as a way to "have fun" and personalize your rocker. Coy's choice is maple, which brings a bright white to the walnut.

Right out of the clamping form, the stripes are even. When the rocker is rounded and shaped, these will be more expressive and artistic visual components.

Brock refers, in his written companion to the how-to DVD, to the "rockers' cyma curve" as one of the "most stunning features one usually notices about this chair."
Absolutely. But what is a "cyma curve"?

This is from Raymond McInnis' Online Dictionary of Woodworking:

The Queen Anne style emerged in England at the close of the seventeenth century. (Queen Anne -- the English monarch from Holland, i.e., the nation of the Dutch, but today called The Netherlands -- gave the "Queen Anne" style its name. She ascended the throne in 1702, and reigned until 1714.) The Queen Anne style is of Dutch inspiration, and as the historian of furniture history Joseph Aronson (pages 64-65) notes, "combines elements of comfort, grace, elegance". As the century progressed, in England the Queen Anne style evolved, and the cyma curve became strikingly more pronounced.

Aronson elaborates,

"Sleek and sophisticated, there is generally a unity of curved lines in Queen Anne furniture; a restraint of ornament and a better technical understanding of design. The cabriole leg is the outstanding detail, and its skillful association with other curves, as of seat outlines and back members of chairs, produces superb, distinctive designs. Improved technique made stretchers unnecessary after 1710, and pierced back splats became more decorative. Marquetry was subordinated to fine walnut surfaces. Carved motives were the scallop shell, broken and C-curves acanthus leaves."

Queen Anne style continued through the reign of George I and well into the reign of George II, so that late Queen Anne furniture often is called early Georgian. But says Aronson, -- The Encyclopedia of Furniture, New York: Crown, 1938, pages 64-65 -- "as the style progressed it had more and more curved lines. The cyma curve predominated".

A shorter explanation: the cyma curve is an elongated S.

There are things easily understood in a short time from a short sentence, and then there are things which require absorption and understanding. Reducing any significant furniture to references to geometric tropes would be, as they say, like dancing about architecture.

But it is good to zero in from time to time for a closeup.