Old rocking chair redux

[Aegwyn11]

Hoping for a little advice. My wife volunteered to complete a restoration on a very old rocking chair that her mom is strongly attached to. Its been partially sanded, but has more work that needs to be done. It looks like it was built using a bunch of glue-ups that were cut into the various curved shapes. So, I have two questions.

1) Is this the perfect excuse to get another Festool sander, or should she stick to hand sanding for this? Right now we only have the RO150, which is useless for this project. I guess I'm wondering if the DX93 would do anything to make this project easier for her.

2) What should she do for the seat?

Picture of the chair.
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Picture of the seat area.
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[AlexThePalex]

Aegwyn, get a DX93. NOW!  ;D

You won't regret owning one and it's so perfect for this chair that your wife won't complain either. Hand sanding the corners is gonna be a PITA but the DX will make short work of it.

Rotex + Deltex = never having to worry about one single sanding job ever. Of course there are jobs that other sanders will do more comfortably, but if you're a bit skilled these two can get ANYTHING done.

Btw, I wouldn't say the Rotex is useless for this. I think I could do 80% of that chair with the Ro150.

 

[mattfc]

Btw, I wouldn't say the Rotex is useless for this. I think I could do 80% of that chair with the Ro150.

Was going to say.. with a softer mounting pad, there is pretty much nothing I haven't been able to do with the RO150 (except get in tight corners.. cos its round!)

Old stuff quite often has grim build up, so some curved cabinet scrapers might be useful,as the grim just blocks up the sandpaper

 

[Aegwyn11]

Hmmm I didn't think of getting a softer pad for the Rotex...thats a great idea. I'll swing by the toy store later and grab one and also look at the DX. I suppose I could pick up the DX and worst case, if it sucks for this, I've got 30 days to bring it back. I'm assuming that for this application, the soft pad for the DX would be preferable as well?

 

[JJ Wavra]

I would also look for soft interface pad for the rotex with or without the super soft pad.

JJ

 

[tbellemare]

Rotex + Deltex = never having to worry about one single sanding job ever. Of course there are jobs that other sanders will do more comfortably, but if you're a bit skilled these two can get ANYTHING done.

I agree with Alex on this one. I would add one more to the must-have list and together, the three are what I would consider the ultimate hobbyist package...

The sander I would add to the Alex list is the LS 130. I think it can't be beat for contours. It can be technique sensitive but really makes short work of stuff that otherwise can take massive amounts of time and frustration.

Tom

 

[Aegwyn11]

I picked up the super-soft pad for the Rotex last night as well as some 100grit Rubin and showed the wife the basics of using the sander. Works really good, she seemed to be having a good time with it 

Realizing that this chair was built well over 100 years ago and isn't exactly the finest piece of furniture ever made, its got some issues. One is under the arms...you can actually still see the marks from the bandsaw used to cut the shapes from the glue-ups. I put the Rotex in gear driven mode and turned the speed up a little...knocked down some of those marks in no time flat, without changing the overall shape at all

At this point I'm thinking I'll let her use the Rotex on it for a while and make some progress, then look at getting the Deltex for her.

Any thoughts on what to do about the seat and back?

 

[mattfc]

Any thoughts on what to do about the seat and back?

It looks like from the photos that the seat was solid as opposed to sprung, since you can see the supports for a seat plate. What are you after, solid wood of farbrix/leather cushioned? I would sugest making a template out of thick cardboard to fit, then use this to cut a base plate out of ply or MDF. You should be able to find plenty of places that sell foam or latex to pad it with, then cover over and fix with glue and a staple gun on the underside.

If its solid wood you are after.. same prociple with the template, but then you need to shape the solid wood.