Grandpa & the boys.


A random sunflower grew up with our corn.


Peas, beans & Marja

Blackberry season

Three of our twenty five meat birds, humanely raised on grass.

Our "Field of Dreams"


Firewood from the Valley


Adding a honey super. We may get over 200# of honey this year.


Our flower garden/chickenyard

John the Apostle speaks to the children at VBS

Our chicken yard.


Loafing near Rockhouse Point.



Cobblestone beach

A hive really hums on a warm day.

Is it fake or real?


Jonathan picking raspberries from our patch.


David hauling in firewood with the John Deere.

The tongue says it all.

Sam & me at Wolf Point

A Yellow Birch/Walnut Rocker

Yes, that is a knot. Also note the purpleheart plugs covering the screw holes

and all the light sapwood in the walnut back slats.

The white streaks in the leg are sapwood.

Thirteen strips of wood


Hard and soft edges play with the light in different ways

I suppose a should have added two eyes here

The true test of a rocking chair - can you fall asleep in it?

Building a Rocking Chair

Bringing in the new baby from the garage. The chair is now fully
assembled. The hard work is done and the monkey is finallyoff my back.
What remains is shaping the leg/runner joints, sanding and finishing.


Two 4" torque screws + glue. A real sense of relief sets in when
this is accomplished. Maybe I'm paranoid, but drilling the pilot holes
and driving the screws is a bit intimidating. I imagine hearing something
crack and seeing the end of the leg split open. At this point that
leg is already attached to the seat and armrest. What would you do
if something went wrong right here?
Building rocking chairs with turned spindles is so much easier because
all your joints are mortise and tenon, done with a lathe and a drillpress.



Shaping the leg ends so that the runners sit flat is a painstaking job.
This is one of the things that make building these rockers a
love/hate relationship.




Checking for daylight between the leg and the runner.



I used 3" decking screws here.



The back slats are bandsawn. I turned 1/2" tenons on the ends
on my lathe.


My garage rarely has room for a car. The tablesaw is my work
table.


It's always nice to reach the point where you start assembling
the chair using glue, after all innumerable times it has been dry
assembled to see how things fit and look.


The runners are made of 8 strips of wood glued
and clamped in a form. Two runners take nearly
a whole bottle of glue.

There's a lot going on here - grain patterns, angles, curves, proportions, sharp edges, soft edges, etc. Every element can add - or detract from the whole, and you have to see it in the chair to really see how it works. I kind of design as I go - not a very efficient method, I will admit, but it allows me to experiment and tweak things. I spend a lot of time just looking at these chairs dry assembled to see if something feels right esthetically. And of course, I spend time sitting in them to see if they feel right physically.

Nakashima style, cherry & maple. The back leg goes through the armrest.

I built this one for myself and painted the spindles black to match our parlor stove. All maple.