How We Build a Rocking Chair — Assembly

It is fun assembling a Weeks Rocking Chair — watching all those curves and angles come together in space and fit  (#1).

Putting the arms on the chair is particularly gratifying.  The mortise and tenon joint is the strongest woodworking joint and is demanding even when joining flat, square, and straight pieces of wood at 90 degrees.  Joining curved and contoured pieces at odd angles with a mortise and tenon  (#2) is woodworking of the highest order.

With a toothbrush, we brush glue into the mortise of the back leg and of the arm.  We brush glue onto the tenon of the arm and of the front leg.  We push the arm into the back leg mortise  (#3) and down onto the front leg tenon.  At the moment when the arm seats on the shoulder of the front leg, the glue squeezes out of the abutting surfaces of the arm and back leg, and the woodworker is delighted.

We drive a wedge into a kerf in the front leg tenon  (#4) to secure the arm to the leg like an ax head to a handle.  As we drive it we can hear the two parts becoming one — a very satisfying culmination.

Disassembling a Weeks Rocking Chair would be like tearing limbs from a tree  (#5).

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