♪♪ It's time for "The Woodsmith Shop."

I'm Phil Huber.

On today's episode, we're going to be building a porch rocker.

It's a perfect upgrade for your deck, patio, or porch, and it's a comfortable way to while away the hours.

This rocker is made from cypress.

It's a lightweight, decay-resistant material that's a lot of fun to work with, whether you're using power tools or hand tools.

And this episode and this project features a good mix of all of those.

We're going to make some sturdy joinery for a rock solid chair, and then show you how to assemble it quickly and easily.

If you're ready to build along, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

It's time to build.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by -- Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by -- Kreg.

Tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by -- ♪♪ Titebond Wood Glues.

The pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by -- ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ So our rocking chair starts off with a couple of end assemblies.

These end assemblies consist of the back leg, the front leg, armrest, a couple stretchers, and the rocker.

We're going to put those together.

And then what I like about this project is then you can make that seat however wide you want, if you want it to be a single rocker or a double rocker, those end assemblies are just the same.

So I've started my layout on these rear legs by clamping them together, because there are a series of mortises on the inside faces and inside edges.

Want to make sure those are consistent where I can get them.

So I have marked out a few of the mortise locations, and these mortises that are on the faces are actually the mortise locations that are on the inside edge.

And this will make a little bit more sense and a little bit more at the router table to cut those mortises.

I want those lines to wrap all the way around the leg, just so I know where those mortises go.

And I've also laid out the shape of these back legs.

These are kind of a dog leg style where they shoot off at an angle about halfway up.

Now we're going to have mortises on this angled section here, but I think the way we're going to cut these at the router table is going to make it extremely easy to do that.

So our first task after I have this initial layout done is to get the band saw brought into place.

And we're going to cut these to shape.

I'm going to cut them a hair oversize.

I'm going to leave my layout line.

All right, with a good quality blade at the band saw and some careful cutting, you can get really close to those layout lines, especially with something soft and easy to work with, like this cypress.

So now we want to smooth these out.

I want to get this surface here in the same plane all the way across.

I can feel just a little bit of wave as I'm going across the surface, and a hand plane will take care of that really well.

Now for this outside taper, I could just plane that straight across.

But where we have this inside corner, the toe of the plane is going to hit that before I can get that whole thing smoothed out.

So what I'll do is I'll plane as much as I can, and then I'll switch over to a rasp or a file.

I like a hand-stitched rasp here because that leaves a pretty smooth surface.

It's not going to be finished quality, but that's what sandpaper is for at the end.

So when I'm cleaning this up, I am going to pay attention to the way that the grain is running.

You can see here that the grain is kind of running up and out as we go down that taper.

As long as I'm planing that way, I'm going to keep those fibers laying down and I'm going to avoid a lot of that tear out.

If I flip this around and I was planing against those or uphill, I'm gonna get a lot of tear out and it's just not going to leave a very good surface.

Okay.

And what I'm doing is I'm just watching until all those saw marks disappear.

So now we'll work on the inside.

So just a couple of minutes really cleans those up.

Now to cut the mortises, I'm going to use the router table.

And I've already loaded up a quarter inch spiral bit.

And what we're going to do is use reference marks that I've already made on the fence that show me where the front and back edge of the bit is.

Now, with our legs, I have marked the mortise locations and I've wrapped those layout marks all the way around the leg.

Now, you can kind of see where I'm going with this.

What we're going to do is we're going to turn the router table on.

I'm going to line up the starting point of the mortise with the lead edge of the bit mark that I made on the fence, and I'm going to plunge it down, and then I'll rout until we hit the stop point and then we'll lift it off.

Now, one of the things I like about cutting mortises at the router table is it leaves a really clean mortise.

It's pretty much ready for glue.

However, it does leave rounded corners and when we cut tenons, those need to match up to that mortise somehow.

Whether we round over the corners on the tenon or we square up the mortises, it doesn't really matter.

But because this is cypress, it is fairly soft.

It's super easy to chop with a chisel.

I'm just going to line up the chisel at my layout line.

Hold it 90 degrees.

And just chop straight down to the bottom.

And that really quickly cleans up those ends and squares that off.

So the next part of this puzzle is to create the side stretchers and cut the tenons on those.

And this is done easily at the table saw.

I've already cut those here.

And I did this with a Dado blade buried in an auxiliary fence.

This allows me to create a tenon that's super smooth and is going to fit in that mortise nice and neat.

Now, I did size these a little bit big.

Now, you notice that it won't go into that mortise real easily.

And that's because with this cypress being fairly spongy, this is a great time to peen the tenons.

What I mean by that is I'll take these tenons and I'll come over here to a hard surface like the anvil on this vise.

And then I can use a ball peen hammer... [ Tapping ] ...and just tap the tenon.

[ Tapping ] Now, what that's doing is it's compressing those fibers so that they'll slip much more easily into the mortise.

Now the only thing left to do before our first glue up is to dress these edges.

And this just gets a slight roundover.

A lot of times what I'll do is I will just put a small roundover bit in my palm router and then run it over all of the edges.

But these are pretty narrow.

So in this instance, I like to take my palm router and turn it into a little makeshift router table.

And I do that just by clamping it in my vise.

And then I can treat this as a small router table and just run the roundover here.

Now, I'm only going to do this with a small bit like this eighth inch roundover.

And obviously we want to make sure that we're paying attention to where our hands are.

So now let's go and get this glued up.

I'm gonna go ahead and peen these tendons first.

So I will hit them with a ball peen hammer on both sides against the hard surface, just to kind of mash those fibers down, like I mentioned.

That way we can spread some glue and quickly get everything in clamps before those tendons start to swell back up.

So while our side assemblies are drying, we can go ahead and cut out a couple of other parts here at the band saw.

The first thing we're going to cut out are going to be these armrests.

Now, I've used double sided tape to stick these together, and I traced the template onto just one side.

So I'll cut them both out together.

And then I will feather in the shape at the edge sander while it's all stuck together.

That way, I know that they're going to match exactly.

And then the final part is going to be the rockers themselves.

Now, I'm gonna cut out two different parts for the rockers.

We're going to cut out the blanks out of cypress, but I'm also going to cut out a template out of plywood.

We're going to use the template to flush trim those rockers.

That way, it ensures that we have an exact same shape rocker on both sides of the chair.

All right, now that our side assemblies have been given plenty of time to dry, we can go ahead and attach some of these parts we just cut out of the band saw.

And we'll start here with the arms.

Now in the plans, this calls for a tenon on this front leg that matches into a mortise on the bottom of the front arm, and you can certainly do that if you wanted.

However, I think this is a good time just to use a simple dowel joint.

So what I've done is I just turned a couple of cypress dowels out of some scrap stock.

And this was just offcuts from some of these parts at the band saw.

And we're going to drill a hole through the top of this arm and into the leg.

And we'll rely on that dowel to hold it in place.

On the back side, though, we're going to drive a screw from the back.

And we'll also plug that hole with a dowel.

Okay, now that we have the arms attached, the last thing to do on these side assemblies is to attach the rockers.

So now we have to scribe the bottom of these legs to match this curvature of the rocker.

So as you can see, when I hold these up here, we have a wedge shape where they don't match.

So what I'm going to do is I'm actually going to use the template here.

And I'm going to line up, made just a little mark on the front of the template so that these two sides are the same.

Then we're just going to line it up and we'll just mark it.

And now I can go ahead and cut that off with a pull saw and then smooth it up with some sandpaper and rasps.

Now, we have to figure out how we're going to attach the rockers once we have the bottom of those legs shaped.

And this is where we're going to use simple joinery, but we have to do it right for it to last.

And the joinery we're going to use is going to be a simple screw from the bottom side of the rocker into the leg.

But because we're screwing into end grain, there's not much hold there for the screw.

So what we're going to do is we're going to drill a hole through the leg and install a dowel, and that dowel is going to end up being a cross dowel for that screw to drive into.

Okay, so I have shaped the bottom of those legs and we can see how that rocker fits really, really nicely on there.

I've also drilled these two holes.

Those holes are going to be for these dowels.

What you can kind of see here is how by putting that dowel in, it gives something for a screw to bite into that's not end grain.

And it's kind of a cool little detail.

Someone might look at the edge of this rocker and say, what's that dowel for?

And we know the secret because we built it.

So at this point, those rockers could be attached.

However, by putting the rockers on, this is going to want to move around while Phil's working on the seat and the back.

And as much as I'd find that entertaining, we'll go ahead and leave 'em off until he's done with that.

Here are the pieces that make the connection between the two side assemblies.

We have the upper back rail.

This one's going to get curved a little bit later on.

Then there are three identical rails that are going to support the seat.

And then one is going to be the support for the back slats in addition to that upper rail.

And then finally one smaller, narrower rail that will go in there.

Now, what I'm going to do here at the table saw is with the Dado blade installed, I'm going to cut an identical tenon on each end of all of these pieces.

That's going to fit those mortises that Logan cut earlier.

And then later on, I'll trim them as needed in order to match the spaces that they're going to fit into.

What I'll do is fire up the table saw, make a pass along one face, flip the piece over and make a pass across the other face, and that will give me the width of my tenon.

The two seat back rails will accept a series of back slats to give you back support when you're sitting in the rocker.

Now, in order to do that, what you could do is cut a series of small, accurately spaced mortises along the length of the rail.

We're going with a different route here.

Instead, what I've done is set up a narrower Dado blade in the saw, and I'm going to plow a groove along the top edge of this lower rail.

What we'll do then is make a narrow strip that I've cut a series of notches into it.

Take that strip, glue it into this groove, and what you end up with is what you need, a series of mortises to accept those back slats.

Here's that lower back rail with the mortise strip glued in place, and our tidy little row of mortises in there.

Before we do something similar for the upper back rail, we need to establish its shape.

It's going to have a nice pleasing curve to it, just to break up the straight lines that we have going on.

To lay out that curve, I have a shop-made drawing bow.

No relation to Robin Hood or Katniss or anything here.

What I'm going to do is, I've marked the center line and then two end points for the top of the curve, and I can lay the bow in place, line it up with those lines, and then trace it.

I'll do the same thing at the bottom edge of my curve.

Here's that center point marking the apex and then aligning it with the lower corners.

Our primary task here at the band saw is to remove waste.

We want to get as close to the layout line as possible, but still preserve them to help us in the refining step later on.

So what I'm going to do is cut along the outside edge or the top edge of this rail first, making sure to stay away from where the tenon is going to be down on the end.

Then I'll do the same thing on the inside edge.

I can make that in one long sweeping cut, staying close to, again, but outside those lines.

Then over at the bench, I'll refine the top edge of the curve with a block plane, working from the apex downhill with the grain to avoid tear out.

On the inside edge, the block plane isn't really going to work, so instead I'm going to use rasps and a file to smooth that out.

The straight lower back rail does a great job of capturing the bottom end of the back slats.

At the top, with our arch, that's going to be a little bit more problematic to create mortises in there.

We're going to eliminate the mortises altogether.

And instead I've installed a slot cutter in the router table here.

The bearing on the slot cutter will follow along the inside edge, cutting a consistent depth slot all along that edge.

Then the upper end of those slats will just tuck right into that groove.

Now, I don't want that groove to stick out on either end.

So I've marked some stop lines on both ends of my work piece here, and I can just eyeball it as I ease the work piece into the bit.

And then as I approach the end of the cut, I feel like we're getting to that antsy part of the project where you really want to start putting things together.

And we're close, but there's a couple of things that need to happen first.

What I want to do now is to fit the tenons that we cut on the seat rails into their respective mortises in the end assemblies that Logan made.

Now you can see that right now my tendons are much wider.

So I've laid out some lines here to trim those down.

That's our first step.

You can do this at the table saw.

I like doing it with some hand tools.

I'm going to start with a handsaw to cut down on the shoulder line.

You could use the handsaw to trim in from the end, but on thin, straight grained material like this, there's a better and faster way to do it.

I'm going to use a chisel.

Put it right on that pencil line.

And then a couple of taps with a mallet gets that right down and it results in a smooth cut.

Now you can see we're pretty close here.

The other thing is that these mortises have rounded ends from the router bit, whereas the table saw and handsaw cut tendons are square edged.

Now, if you really want to start a woodworking argument, you can try and pick which one you need to do.

Do you square up the ends of the mortise or round over the tenons?

Me, I'm in the round over the tenons camp, and that's because I can do it really quickly with just a rasp or a file.

Just a few strokes is all it takes.

And really all you're doing is knocking off the corners.

It doesn't need to be an exact match to the end of the mortise.

One of the things standing in the way of assembling our rocker are the five back slats.

We need to get those fit into place between the lower back rail and that curved upper back rail.

Starting point is cutting a tenon on the end to fit those mortises in that lower back rail.

Then what I did is slip each of the slats into place in their mortises, and then added some spacers that I made from some scrap wood so that -- they were all in the right alignment.

Then I could trace the profile of the upper rail onto the slats.

Now that gives me the curve, but it doesn't give me the final length.

I set a compass to the depth of that groove that I routed in the upper rail, and then scribed that along the top.

And that brings me here to the band saw, where I'm now going to cut along that outer line in order to shape these to their final length.

Assembling a chair always feels like you're two hands and a couple of clamps short of what you need in order to get all of these parts put together.

But it pays to have a plan and to be able to do a run through a couple of times just to make sure everything fits.

Here's the process that I followed.

I started with this back assembly with the slats.

I put glue on the bottom end of the slats and fit those into the bottom rail.

Then a little bit of glue on the top and then fit the top rail in place.

Those spacers that I had before made sure that the slats were spaced correctly.

But you want to make sure that these end spaces are even as well, so that the whole thing isn't tilted one way or the other.

Then I used a pin nailer to secure the joints from the backside.

I didn't really want to see those from the front.

After letting that set for a little bit, the next step is to glue on one of the side assemblies, so take some time to put some glue on each one of the tendons on one side of both the back assembly and then all these other little rails here.

Then you can fit that in place.

That part's not too difficult.

Then you can tip it up on edge, and that way you can get glue on all surfaces of the tendons in order to put the other side on.

For that, I flipped the rocker onto its back and then fit the other side in place.

You're going to kind of have to work back and forth a little bit to get all of the tenons started before you can start putting clamps on and draw things together.

Next on the list is making the seat slats.

Now, these start off as thick rectangular blanks.

Over at the drill press, I set up a stop block to drill a hole at the front and then one at the back.

These will be used to attach the slats to the seat frame with dowels way down the line here we're also going to use them here at the band saw.

Now the shape of the slat is contoured for comfort.

And once you're done with these cuts, the slat could be a little tippy.

Not a big deal if you're doing one.

But for as many as we're doing, I want consistency.

So the first part of that is to create a paper pattern that I can use to trace the shape of the slat onto the blank.

Then to provide support, I have this support block, which is really just another slat blank that I had.

And then in the holes I added a dowel and that I can use to attach the slat piece to.

Now I have something that's wider, not as tippy, easier to control when I'm cutting this at the band saw here.

I'll use it to cut one side of it.

Then I'll remove it, flip it around, and then be able to cut the other side.

Cutting out all these slats over at the band saw.

Definitely gives you some practice over there.

And by the end, the cutting will be really smooth and even.

Now, the closer you can stay to your layout lines, the better it is for smoothing those out.

And to do that, I use the edge sander over here where I could work both with a flat platen on the edge sander, as well as the drum on the end to be able to smooth the outside curves, and then the inside curves, blending them in down to the layout lines.

Then it's time to install them into our rocker.

And what you want to do here is set yourself up for success.

That starts by clamping a stop at the back edge here, and that's going to be a reference for each of the slats front to back.

Then side to side, I made some smaller thin spacers that fit between each one of those slats.

The slats are held in place by sections of dowel.

What you can do is just take some glue, run it around the inside of the slat and into the pilot hole, and then just tap the dowel into place.

With the seat installed, what we can do now is attach the rockers.

Of course, if you wanted to, you could just leave this as a regular patio chair and just have the legs long enough and cut flat to work that way.

We're going with the rocker look, based on the ones that Logan made earlier.

And you'll remember he drilled these cross holes in the bottom of the legs.

So I'm going to glue in a length of dowel here to anchor the screws.

Then I've marked a line here in a center point on the rocker to drill a pilot hole for the screws.

And then I'm going to drive in some long screws.

I put some wax on there to help ease them as they go into place here.

That will allow the screw to lock into that cross dowel and into the leg, holding everything in place.

On today's episode of "The Woodsmith Shop," we built this porch rocker.

Along the way, we learned some tricks about working with materials that are going to stand up to the elements outside.

And speaking of which, about the only thing left to do on this rocker is decide on the finish.

Now, you can put a finish on it, but just know that if it's going to live outside, you're in it for the long haul and you'll have to reapply the finish every year or maybe every other year.

For me, I think what we'll do is just let this one age to a silvery gray color.

It's a great addition to your porch, patio, or deck.

if you're ready to build along, the plans are at our website, WoodsmithShop.com.

And until then, keep rocking.

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Everything in today's show comes from the newly expanded Woodsmith Guild Edition with shop projects, plans, tips, and techniques.

To get a free preview issue of Woodsmith Guild Edition, and a free Woodsmith book, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

In addition, past seasons of "The Woodsmith Shop" are available on DVD, or you can watch them online from your computer, tablet, or mobile device.

For more information, go to WoodsmithShop.com.

Announcer: Major funding for "The Woodsmith Shop" has been provided by -- Old Masters.

Offering wood stains and finishes for the woodworking enthusiast and professional.

And by -- Kreg.

Tools designed by woodworkers for woodworkers.

Create what inspires you.

Additional funding provided by -- Titebond Wood Glues.

The pro's advantage.

♪♪ And by -- ♪♪ ♪♪