Restored Rocking Chair

The restored and finished rocker in its place. For reading, chatting with the cook, just visitin', or watching the bird feeder.
   From broken pieces to a show stopper.

You can see on the top of the near spindle, that has the arm attached to it, has been reinforced with an iron hoop, which looks as if it were originally part of a chisel handle.
   That spindle was broken where it entered the splat top of the back. The spindle was drilled out, the splat was drilled out. The hole in the splat filled, drilled to the size of a new dowel, and a dowel inserted into the spindle, and the splat.

Shows the big crack in the seat which was glued, and screwed from underneath. The curved part added to the seat at its rear had broken off, so that was glued and screwed back into place. The curved part under the front of the seat had broken off too. So I fitted, glued and screwed that back into place.
   Note the original signature on the seat base.

The old rockers each had an 18" flat spot on the bottom from lots of wear and being dragged around.
   I removed those and used them to trace a pattern onto a piece of cherry wood from my barn inventory (that I chose because it had a curved grain which almost exactly matched the curve of the rocker shape). Now replaced, the new rockers are exactly the outline of the originals - without the flat spot of course!
   Back to easy rockin'.

A final close up of the restored seat and rockers.
   All the stretchers were removed; their ends and their respective holes in the legs cleaned and refastened with special glue designed to swell the wood and tighten the joint.
   Ready for a whole new generation.
   Best of all, it looks like it's never been touched.

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