Scooped chair seat - Maloof style

[rscrawford]

Thanks Angie!

[zeeway]

Okay, I finally got brave enough to try a Maloof seat from the walnut glueup I prepared. With thanks primarily to Russell Crawford for his guidance, here is my version modeled in Aspire....on my machine...

and the finished part - okay, it needs sanding and finish, but you get the idea...

I have to tell you there were a lot of walnut chips flying. I used four 1/4 inch wooden dowels to keep everything aligned for the back-side machining.

So now I just need four legs, two arms, and a backrest...

Angie

[sawmiller]

I took a cedar slab and cut 3 seat scoops that I had modified... Made it into a bench .
However, my daughter ran off with it the next day
Can't find any pics now
Dan

[Bob_S]

Dan
"my daughter ran off with it the next day"
made me laugh - we have had the same very happy problem

Bob

[rscrawford]

Looks good Angie! I see you did a roughing pass. I like to save as much time as possible on my machine, so I don't rough pass the seats. I just use a 1/2" bullnose bit with 8% stepover, and do it in one pass.

[zeeway]

Looks good Angie! I see you did a roughing pass. I like to save as much time as possible on my machine, so I don't rough pass the seats. I just use a 1/2" bullnose bit with 8% stepover, and do it in one pass.

That must be something to see. That would be tempting to try, but I am not sure my machine could take that depth of cut. Your machine must be super rigid - it's a Camaster, right? Do you have a lot of ridges in the seat profile to sand out?

Angie

[rscrawford]

I do the profile cut first, then do the seat finish toolpath as a raster starting at the front and going side to side. This way the 1/2" bullnose never has to take that initial deep full width plunge cut ( it starts in the profile cut).

It's not hard on your machine at all, because it's only cutting about 1/32" each pass. That's light enough for any machine. The 1/2" ball nose is very rigid, so it doesn't vibrate at all.

[sawmiller]

angie, the one i did was just finish pass also.. and you have the same machine as me, i believe
castcnc

[zeeway]

Thanks, Russell and Sawmiller...yep mine is a Joe's/Castcnc also. Will give that a go next time.

Angie

[wdwkr53]

I may be too old to learn new tricks, but I tried rscrawford's seat. I get the attached profile. It is much deeper and a different shape even though I am using his sketch. I studied the 2rail sweep tutorials several times, but still have a hard time with the merges. At the risk of sounding too simple, why is component 1 there? Is it possible to see the unbaked version so I can understand how you got to the baked version? And finally, why is the sweep profile on layer 1 concave is you are creating a roundover? I wish there was a course one-on-one or interactive on this. I have made Maloof's rocker & lowback by hand & want to try Aspire. I do lithophanes & signs, but new to contours. I hope you can head me in the right direction.

[zeeway]

Hang in there woodworker...here's what I get when I run Russell's file as is (with his toolpaths):

Presume you are changing the file, since you are getting different results.

You can change the depth of the scoops by changing the sweep profiles...so you need to play around with those to get the profile you want. Also, I would suggest you do the sweep between the center spline and the outer profile of the scooped portion of the seat.

Angie

but wait...this is in the V carve section. I used Aspire to run this simulation. Are you using Aspire or VCarvePro?

[4DThinker]

I've been playing around with the fluting toolpath, and here is a rough pass cut of a seat done for a student's chair design that is pretty comfortable once smoothed out. Just the inner butt pan. Outer profile is up to you. 1" deep in this model, but change the cutting depth of the toolpath if you need a shallower version.

Tried to upload the file but it exceeds the 2meg limit. PM me if you want it via email.

[wdwkr53]

I made a mistake in posting in the VCarve Pro section because I am using Aspire. But I posted here since that is where I found the download. After Zeeway's response, I found rscrawford's post on the several sweeps to get the seat dished out. I will work with that next. Thanks.

[flatheadyoungin]

Thanks for sharing that file, Russell. Kind of a funny story, here. About a year ago, a fellow wood shop teacher bought the plans to build a Hal Taylor rocker. Well, he built the rocker and I built the CNC (that he convinced me I needed ). Now, I'm ready and started on the rocker's seat. For some reason, I want to build the rocker "normally" but I'd like to shape the seat with the CNC- actually I have the seat about 90% shaped but I just want to do it. I'd also like to Vcarve the story of the lumber in to the bottom of the seat.

We've been on your site quite a few times. Yes, you have some very nice looking work and you have such good demeanor on the forums- thank you.

I'm anxious to play around with your file. I started trying to design my own, but I just don't have the experience in Aspire, yet.

[rscrawford]

That seat was just a quick mock-up I did a long time ago to show how I make my Maloof style seats. The dimensions are not at all what you would use for a rocking chair. But you can simply take the model and resize it to fit the seat size and shape you want to make.

If you have problems, let me know and I can walk you through the process I use to build the model. I've made several Maloof rockers before I got into CNC woodworking, hand carving the seats (gouges, etc), and the model I have now is VERY similar to my hand carved seats (except it is perfectly symmetrical!). The concept is a little tricky to follow, but the results are more organic than simply using a single two rail sweep and two vectors.

Here is one of my rocking chair seats, still on the machine.