A Simple Solution to a Common Problem: Replacing a Rocker

Some friends have a century-old painted wicker rocker that is a prized accent on their front porch, and one of the rockers broke.  Several times.

I find that many of these old rockers are made from “run of the mill” lumber which can be good or bad, and when they are bad there is just no fixing them.  So, I made a new one.

I began by tracing the remaining sound rocker on a piece of 2x framing lumber and band sawing the  bottom profile into the 2x and ripped a number of strips from the same 2x board to build up a new laminated rocker (the only time I have used the table saw in a couple of months).

Using the just-sawn contour as the form, I laminated a four-ply rocker from the strips using yellow PVA as it was going to be exposed to the porch environment.  I clamped it all together, wrapped in wax paper to make sure it comes apart as it should, and let it sit until the glue was hard.  A couple days later it popped free just fine.

Pinching the rough laminated piece in the four dogs of my vise I planed and shaped it in just a few minutes.

My first step was to clean up the glue squeeze-out with a plane which took 30 seconds per side.

Once that was done I traced the original rocker again to determine the front to back taper.

With a spokeshave I achieved the desired taper line in a few minutes.

Getting the holes of the right size in the right place, I finished off the project with some final shaping with spokeshaves and rasps, and it was ready to be sent home.