hello youtube today I will talk about a project that I made about four or five years ago I made about a dozen of these rocking chairs and this is probably the better one of the bunch that I made actually I keep this one in my shop so when it's time for a good break I've got a good chair to sit in and I really enjoyed it does sit comfortable and it's got a good rustic appeal that fits in perfect in to my shop so if you want to grab your pen and paper it'd probably be best that well you could write down some of these dimensions that I'll give you here in a little bit but keep in mind that wouldn't be made of logs if your logs are different dimensions than mine it's going to change a few things so my my dimensions are get you in a ballpark but they won't be be perfect for you you'll have to adjust a little bit but hopefully this will help you out first thing I want you to notice is if I turn the camera to where this would be like a chair sitting you'll notice that that front set of legs is actually a little longer than a stand your chair that if you didn't have that rocker on there that that that it would be a chair that would sit kind of more leaning towards the back so that's that's the one thing that I noticed when I built the rocking chairs is that if you don't get that correct what that's going to do is change how this rocking chair sits if you've ever gotten to a rocking chair that's sent back way too far it's really kind of scary and it's really unsafe especially for people with back issues you might pull your back out when you sit down in there to scare you half to death and it can get you injured so at any rate I'm going to give you some dimensions here so let's say if you want to get you a pen and paper you can pause the video and hopefully these dimensions will help you out starting with the backlog this this logs total length is 37 inches that is from top to bottom it's 37 inches you measure from the bottom up to this first piece here that is 34 inches and to this piece from the bottom is 21 inches this piece here to the bottom is at 14 inches okay that's the bracket that's going across for the back and this front log the length of it is 21 inches the arm is a total length of 19 inches and the front support which is this piece going across here is 26 inches the seat depth is that 20 and a half the back is it 23 these back supports which are the logs that go across the back or 19 inches now what I did to get my my rockers is I took a rocking chair that we had in the family for years and I just basically traced that rocker out onto a piece of oak I took like a 1 by 6 oak it may have been five quarter but at any rate it was somewhere around that dimension you want to use those because that is that that that needs to be the strongest piece of woods you've got on this rocker what I used is I use sweet gum for the log I used cherry for the back and the seat and used a little bit of cedar to give me my bracing that I used in the front you'll notice across here I braced it so that the legs are not wanting to go in or outward and 1/2 so foot some bracing across the back and again that keeps it to where it's more stable when you build your rocking chair whether you build it out of two by sixes or post or logs or whatever when you rock your rocker if it's smooth as this one is you've done good by getting the rockers on the bottom smooth if they have any divots in them what you will have is a buh buh buh buh buh buh buh buh every time the rocking chair goes bang forward you'll get a vibration so you've got to make sure that when you cut that that you get a good smooth cut all the way across if you notice what I did is I used a I used a assistant a little bit different only logs I used to mortise and tenon and what I did is I bought two different kits one you would hook to a high-powered drill and the other you would put onto a router I'm going to tell you there's good and bad about both so the thing that I did not like about the one a high-powered drill is if you've got that log set up in a vise or whatever and you come across a you come across a not well it's not going to give us and what it's going to do is it's going to knock put a real real strong jerk and when it does it will about break your arm so you would not want to use oak on that thing I can tell you because it probably would break your wrist or your arm I used sweet gum and I cut it in the wintertime and with me cutting it in the wintertime it was very wet inside and that made it a lot easier to to use on that mortise and tenon like I said I also bought one that was made to go to a a router the problem I had with the router is you had to turn the log you had to spin it by hand and that would give you a very oblong tenon so it really made it very difficult so I cannot suggest buying either one of these systems unless like I say you're going to use it on a very wet wood like gum I would use the the one that you put on the high power drill that's actually cheaper and it's it did make a very nice tenon so I really liked using it but yeah I I really enjoyed this this rocking chair and I like the way it sits one thing I want to point out to you is is when you put it together make sure to put it together kind of loose to start with and and then try rocking it and see how it does if if you notice that it wobbles it could be that you may have the left side higher than the right or vice versa it takes a little bit of tweaking and the more you fill with this the more you'll see what I'm talking about that you know you just want to keep it to where everything is a square as you can get it and that's kind of hard to do when you're working with logs because they're not straight you notice here on this log it's got to sweep to it and I wanted that so that it kind of sweep in and out as you would sit in it it would be more comfortable for your arms to rest on there now if you cut the tree in the wintertime like I did it will actually hold the bark if you cut it in the wintertime this bark will stay on these logs these logs whether it's rocking chair itself I made it about somewhere between four and six years ago I don't recall exactly but you can see that the bark is still on it but the good of it is is when you take your draw knife the day you cut this tree take your drawing off and that's when you want to feather this out even if you're not going to make this this this rocking chair for another year you want to cut that with a draw knife the day that you cut the tree and what will happen is it will leave a nice crisp streak in there of naked wood with no bark but if you do it that day it will actually try to heal itself and will actually give a flat bark on there which is really nice so that's probably the best tip I can give you on this I really really like how it turned out that was a trick I learned by accident and I put these supports under there and let your own because it did the rocking chair did have a lot of wobble to it but once I put the supports under there that took it out I probably could have used a lot smaller and just kind of hit them up in here as opposed to such matches but this rocking chair will never get out of this shop you know it's something that I enjoy here in the shop and you know just taking it easy so it's a really really been pleasurable the only measurement I forgot to give you folks is uh from the bottom of this log here to the top of this point here is 13 inches again that's from the bottom of the front log to the top of the support is 13 inches to get the bottom support of your your your against the bottom of your seat and one thing else I want to show you is if you put a square onto the back of the log you'll notice that it is not 90 degrees so I believe that's probably going to be about 110 between the arm going downward to the arm so anyway hopefully it helps y'all out hopefully y'all have some fun with this I think it's a pretty neat piece I really enjoyed making them and uh hopefully hopefully you guys can leave me some good comments down there too tell me yeah we all came here to learn and learn from each other so please leave some comments hit the like hit the subscribe and check out a few of my other videos thank you guys so much for watching today take care