Maloof Style Rocking Chair

This chair was brought to us by a gentleman who had constructed the entire thing himself, in the style of the Maloof Rocking chairs made in the 19--'s He was making it for his pregnant wife. Unfortunately, with the assistance of his Father the back spindles were sanded down until they were two fine to support weight. Also, he had trouble attaching the rockers in such way that they did not become loose as the chair was used'.  The spindles are on the floor in front of the Rocking Chair.  The dark colored spindle is the original that was put into the chair.  As you can see, it becomes extremely fine and delicate towards one end.   All it took was one person sitting in the rocker and half of them snapped in two.  The light colored ones are what we are putting in the rocker this time.


We also had to attach the rockers to the chair. When they had come off originally, the area around the joint was damaged. To attach the rocker this time, we cleaned out the joint, added new wood to the underside of the rocker, and held it together with epoxy and a hefty dowel.

It took some tricky work to get those spindles in correctly but the rocking chair now looks beautiful and is very usable. We gave the new spindles 3 coats of tung oil and the man who made the rocking chair is going to do the final coat of shinny finish at his home. We are very happy with how this project turned out, and even more happy that our customer liked the finished product!  For more pictures of the work on this project you can check out our flickr page ....  Maloof Style Rocking Chair   

Sam Maloof was a furniture designer and woodworker who first began in his garage by making items for his home in 1948.    The pieces he made were so well liked that people started commissioning items from him. In 1953 he finally build himself a studio so that he could continue making furniture.  His pieces can now be found in museums all over the United States including the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Even though he received remarkable recognition for his work as an 'artist' he continued to call himself simply a 'woodworker' on his business cards until he died in 2009

Fabricating a Carved Settee Leg

 From time to time we have something come to us that not only has a broken leg, but the broken off part is completely gone!  Now usually we like to put any broken off parts back onto the piece, as then the wood is all the same age, and it will continue to age at the same pace as the rest of the item of furniture.  But, in a situation like this, where the broken off piece is completely gone,  we have to start from scratch and do our best to choose wood that will blend with the rest of the piece.

 In this case,  we had a beautiful Settee come in with one of  the more decorative front legs broken off.  The Settee is made out of mahogany so we put together some small pieces of matching mahogany and attached
them to the leg, as you can see in the first picture.   You can see in the second picture that we have taken some of the excess wood off and have drilled holes along the inside curve of the leg to make hand carving a bit easier.  Next a template of the leg shape was attached to the leg, for more refined removal of excess wood.  You can see in the 4th picture that all the excess wood has been removed and the fine shaping is ready to begin.
 The leg carving turned out very well.  It looks almost exactly like the other two on the settee.   Now it is off  to the finishing department.  It is their job to make the epoxy line disappear and of course to stain and finish the entire settee.  It is not particularly often that we have to do this kind of work, but fortunately we have the guys with the skill to pull it off.   Do you have a job you think is impossible?   Bring it to us, clearly this job was not enough of a challenge, so your impossible repair might be just the challenge they need!

Another 'Modern Furniture' Cautionary Tale...

Most of the furniture we work with here at the shop are antiques or good quality newer furniture,  but from time to time we get a piece in which makes us sad for our client, and mad at the maker.  You see, so often when modern furniture is made, there are shortcuts taken in the building process which the buyer is oblivious to.  We have had coffee tables come in that are completely made out of cardboard!  We often have pieces arrive that are pressboard or 'particle board' covered in veneer, it is like a wolf in sheep's clothing.  

This time we had a bed frame come to us for stripping.  It was a sturdy looking bed frame with a dark finish.    We put it through the stripping chemicals with no problems and all the finish came off just as it should have.  But then, when it was put in our 'neutralizing bath', we discovered something very sad.  The curved 'sleigh' top of the footboard began to bubble up and stretch as you can see in the top photo.  It was only then that we discovered, that the curved section had been made out of particle board and then covered in paper that was printed with a wood grain on it.  The glue holding the paper on failed and the paper could easily be pulled away from the particle board.   

This means that in the building process, the makers decided to have a curved particle board section pressed into the shape they wanted, instead of having actual wood carved into that same shape.  They chose to do an inexpensive short cut.  Unfortunately it is not inexpensive to fix the mess that has now been made because of that short cut.  The hard thing here, is that so often, there is no way to easily determine whether short cuts were made, before buying a piece of modern furniture. 

The best way to ensure that the piece of furniture you are purchasing is going to me made out of wood, not wood dust, paper or cardboard, is to buy older furniture.  The older it in the safer you are, but just as a point of reference,   Particle Board was introduced in the 1950s,  became widespread in the 1960s, and since the 1970s it's use has been refined, but is still commonly found in furniture of all levels of 'quality'.   If you are planning on purchasing modern made furniture, make sure you do your research.  If you went out to purchase a car, or a home, I am sure you would ask all kinds of questions to make sure that you were getting the best item for your money.  Do the same thing when you go out to purchase your bed frame, dinning table, hutch, etc and you will at least have smaller odds of getting a piece of junk.  

Rocking Chair with Carved Back Panel

 We recently had this rocking chair come in to our shop for repairs.  One of the stretchers had broken which in turn caused the one of the rockers to break off as well.  While this kind of thing happens fairly often, and we get broken rocking chairs in all the time,  this particular rocker has such interesting styling, that I became very curious about it's origins.  Now, you all get to see what information I have found out about this piece.

The first thing to note, is that there is a very unique sticker on the underside of the seat.  Most antique furniture has no markings by the maker, they simply relied on us recognizing their unique style.  But this chair gives us a very good clue to it's age and maker via the sticker.  You see, around the beginning of the 1900's through the 1940's  Grand Rapids Michigan had a furniture making Heyday.  So the sticker on this Rocking Chair tells us that the chair was made in the early part of the last century.

What really drew me to this rocker originally, was the carving on the back.  I had never seen something like it until this Rocking Chair came in.  The figure on the back seems to be a Spanish Explorer,  and from comparing images,  it is most likely Cortez or Ponce de Leon.  The seat is also round with little notches carved out giving in a drum like look.  In trying to get a better idea of the age of this chair, I found several similar chairs, each with an oval or square carved back and almost all with a round seat and all being given an age at about 1900.  This one seems to have the most intricate carving on the  spindles, stretchers and legs though.  Below are some examples of the other chairs I found. 

Pretty neat right?  I would love to find more designs from the era, but to be honest, I have to say, the carving on the rocker in our shop is still my favorite.

If anyone can tell me anything about the armor that is demonstrated in the carving on the rocker in our shop, I would love to hear about it!  While the helmet looks like Cortez,  the square collar is unlike anything I have been able to find thus far.

Putting a Bed Leg Back Together

This is certainly a useless leg for a headboard! The wood sheered off into multiple pieces where the bedrail should hook in.  It is a classic story of wood beating out metal when put through an endurance test.

To repair this leg, we had to piece together the original broken off wood, along with new wood where it was missing.  Those pieces of new wood had to contoured to match the shape of the original.

We also used epoxy putty filler in a similar color to the wood, as a filler where the missing wood areas were to small to fill in any other way.

Clearly this leg still needs some touchup, to beautify it and make it presentable, but we don't get to do that this time.  Our customer has decided they want to try and tackle that job themselves.  But at least we know we are turning over to them a bed leg that is as strong as it can be!

Roll Top Desk Gets Some New Pieces.

 Work continues on a Roll Top desk which came to us in so many pieces, I playfully called it the 'Humpty Dumpty' desk.  We put the entire thing together and once we did, the discovery was  made that it was missing a few slats on the tambour unit.  The owner of the desk gave us the go ahead and we had 3 more slats custom made to fit the originals.  Now we have to cut them to length and drill holes to match the rest of the unit.  A wire runs through these holes to keep them together, instead of them all being glued to a cloth.

Another project on this Roll Top desk is that of creating new drawers for the cubbies.  There was only one drawer left.  We were able to use this original drawer to  determine what the styling of the new drawers should  be.  The 3 smaller drawer still need a handle, then all the drawers,  and the new tambour pieces, need to be stained to match the rest of the desk.  This should be an interesting task, and  the finish on the rest of the desk is pretty old an worn.

Tell us about  what projects you are working on right now.  We would love to hear!

Child Sized Rolltop Desk with a Chalkboard!

This adorable child sized roll top desk just got it's repairs completed today.   I wish I had thought to take a picture before it was repaired!  But I can at least recount for you what we did to get it in it's current cute shape.  You can probably see a pale line across the top, that is where the wood was broken in two.  We could have done color work to make that line  disappear, but the owner's of this desk decided not to have us do it.  We also repaired the tambour unit,  made the chalkboard writing surface be able to slide in and out,  repaired the falling apart cubbies and put the stand back together.

This is such a cute desk.  I envy the child who gets to spend their hours playing school at such a neat little workspace.

Cautionary Tale Against Modern Furniture

This is yet another cautionary tale against purchasing newly made furniture.  Old furniture you can count on, when it looks like wood, it is wood.  But new furniture, a person never knows.  That is what happened to the unfortunate owner of this coffee table.  It appeared to be made out of wood, then painted  black.  It even had a noticeable wood grain. The coffee table was made with just two legs,  one on each side, and they ran the width of the table.  One of them broke off.   It was only then, that the true nature of this piece of 'wooden' furniture was truly revealed.

This 'Wood' was actually ground wood pulp which had been pressed into hard 'boards'.  The outside of the 'boards' was given a wood grain pattern.  The inside of each board is hollow and actually, (I can hardly believe I am going to say this) actually filled with strips of cardboard! CARDBOARD! I am horrified that someone out there is making this product and calling it furniture!  They are essentially selling fancy painted cardboard furniture and calling it wood.  I wonder what they would say if you asked them what type of wood was used?  Would they try and claim whatever variety was used to make the wood pulp?  

The truly sad thing about this is that an average consumer would have no idea, from looking at a piece like this (with out the break) that this was anything but wood.  They could easily believe that they were actually purchasing a sturdy, genuine wooden coffee table.  And that is where I get back to my original point.  Take buying older furniture seriously my dear readers.   It will actually last, and if some child dances on your coffee table a little to often, and a leg breaks off, at least it is made out of something that can easily be repaired,  wood!