Arm and Spindle Shaping

I completed shaping of the arms yesterday.  I actually shaped the right arm last week.  The process turned out to be easier than I thought.  I spent a lot of time looking at pictures of Maloof and Brock arm shapes, as well as the arms from other builders.  Most appear to be different, so I was left to decide which design I wanted to use.  There are so many complex curves that I finally gave up trying to draw the design on the wood.  Instead, I just dove in and started shaping until I found a shape that looked and felt good.

Maloof and Brock both started shaping the arms by band sawing much of the material away.  This requires the wood to be held at dangerous angles (that both men recommend against).  Since I enjoy keeping all my digits, I decided to do my shaping using an angle grinder with 60 grit sandpaper.  I could have used my Holey Galahad disk, but I felt that would be too aggressive.  The grinder made quiet a mess of my shop, but hey, sawdust is all part of the fun!

The front leg joint was shaped to gently blend into the arm.  The microplane works great for this task.  I used the grinder starting vertically from the inside edge of the back, and then spiraled to horizontal as I moved the grinder forward. You can see the spiral in these pictures.

The arms are shaped with a hard line all the way around that blend into the hard lines in the back legs.  In shaping the back legs, some of the lines remain hard (sharp edged) while some blend into softer curves.  Determining where to use the hard and soft lines is a personal choice.  Again, I tried to follow the Maloof design where possible.  The arm/leg joints are only roughly blended together.  The final smoothing will happen after the parts are completely screwed and glued together.

After completing the arms, I moved onto the spindles.  These are not difficult to shape, but they are time consuming.  As Brock says in his video, you had better enjoy making the spindles because there are seven of them!  I was able to complete three yesterday.  I used the angle grinder to round the back of the spindles (the wide part). And then I used my random orbital sander to refine the shape.  Rounding of the spindles was done using the microplane to start.  Then I sanded.  I used the Veritas dowel makers at times, but not exclusively.  This is a tedious process of sanding, testing the fit, sanding some more, etc., etc.  It’s a great feeling when the parts finally snug into place.  Note that I maintain the spindle numbering using chalk so I don’t get them mixed up.  I did a test fit of the first spindle into the headrest, but this picture was taken with the spindles just behind the headrest.  Four more to go…