African Mahogany Antique Rocker

Here's a really fun and amazing story.  I really love this! 

My customer brought her marvelous old rocker to the shop for repair. (Sorry, no pic)

But I wiIl use what I'll call a "pic narrative" to help me tell this story. 

The initial goal was to reglue the right broken leg and then generally stabilize the chair's joints. Then we'd recover the chair seat. However, when I got a really good look at the break and it's relationship to other vital joints in the immediate area,  I knew we had an even bigger problem.  Three joints were located in very close proximity within that same structural area.  The break was compromised by past multiple repairs in the same area. The leg's present break, and this repair, promised to fracture the integrity of all three joints! Ugh. That won't work.  We needed a Plan B. 

Plan B required my taking the front of the chair apart. It meant replacing the broken leg-arm and fabricating a new one from contemporary African Mahogany wood...a "do over." We'd use the existing leg-arm as a pattern and start from scratch. One looming question persisted: Because this chair was hand-made @1860 could we get the new wood to look like the original? Hmmm. We'll need to wait and see, but I was reasonably confident. 😊 👍 

My customer trusted me.

So the process began. I removed the fabric from around the perimeter of the seat.  Wow, you can (enlarge the

so you can) see the battered tack strip securing the velvet fabric. It's been re-upholstered at least five times through the past 140 years! 

Then I worked to separate the leg-arm assembly from the frame.

And I pulled the leg free from the chair arm and began to use it as our pattern for its now-to-be-fabricated replacement. 

The new leg is taking shape. Multiple "dry fits" of the new leg gradually affirmed its fit, and clarified the appropriate hole positions and alignment with other critical joint connections. Yaaay!

Finally I glued the new leg into place and also glued the arm back onto place. Then I clamped it all securely for 12-hours. Yaaay yaaay!

Will the new wood look like the old wood? I sanded and prepped and then re-stained the entire chair front area.

 Then I carefully hand stripped the entire chair and re-stained it all so all the patina promised to match. It looked so good! The next step...re-upholstery. Wow 👌.  So pretty. 

My customer graciously forwarded this pic of her great grandmother (1865) seen here as a child standing next to her mother (left side). Mom is seated in this marvelous OLD rocker.  It's wow wow wow stuff!

And that's why I call this special... the amazing stories these precious pieces can tell.

So, that's WoodTalkin.  Are you listening?

Happy New Year 2022 everybody!

Dick Brandow

720.350.2992 cell & text