The Rocking Chair Project

      This chair is known in the antique world as a "Covered Wagon Rocker".  This particular one (circa 1850-60) traveled to the west coast on a real settlers wagon, and has since been handed down thru the family to its current owner.

  It has had a fairly rough life, and was broken and repaired a number of times with available materials and finishes before it was brought to me. I was hired to leave much of the wear & tear intact, for character, but restore it mechanically and physically to what it should look like today, had it not been so damaged.

  The chair is made of maple, with a faux wood grain painted over it, then stained & shellaced.

  It took a long while to to match the new to the old, but as you can see, it is difficult to tell which parts are original & which are not.

  I Liked the design so much, I decided to build another one. (from scratch)

  REPAIR PHOTOS

  ^ Chair as seen folded ^

  ^Folded^

  I took the idea of "building from scratch" literally,

and decided to make this chair out of Myrtlewood,

a rare & expensive wood.   It took me 3 months to go from the raw logs

  seen in top right photo to the finished product

  seen on the left. I had to learn how to cast

  metal to make a few parts on the chair that are

  not available today, and hand pound out some

  other brass parts.

   The original chair is held together with hand-pounded steel rivets that are not really pretty to look at, so I chose to use steel screw connectors

that are a lot cleaner looking. This is the only real deviation from the original.

  Nearly all of the cutting, shaping, sanding,

  fitting, assembly, and finishing was done by

  hand, right down to the 1" square nails found

  in every joint.

  A local seamstress made the upholstery for me,

  and did a really nice job of it.

I am very pleased & proud of the end product!!!

 

A modern version of the same chair,but with arms, and a more modular look, my own design.