Juan is a fellow woodworker who found this bentwood rocker in pieces at the side of the road. Just what he needed for the nursery for his first child! He put it back together (though I'd have liked the cross-bracing to be neater).

The girlfriend, however, didn't want to know about it. She thought she's fall off, with the baby in her arms. Could I add arms for him please? So I used a very rough template to get the height and a pleasant curve. (The chipboard on the seat is to approximate the cushion.)

I roughed out a design on some masonite. The original Thonet chair had a very simple armrest, but I wanted something more ornate here. More whimsical, perhaps. So I matched the scroll on the rocker, and tried to approximate the same thickness of the bent wood. Here, I've panel-pinned the design to one of the many plywood scraps taking up space.

Scary moment! Isn't there always one? In a lapse of concentration, right at the middle of the tight curve, I touched the opposite side of the router blade. It took this plywood and launched it about 20 metres across the workshop. Lucky nobody was passing, because my machine backs right onto an open passageway...

The exercise repeated four times. Two 22mm plywoods laminated together for each side. I flattened the joint areas slightly, glued it together as in this pic, and then drilled angled dowels in to reinforce the joints.

Seems to work ok. A bit of filler for the commercial grade ply, and a bit of sanding coming up.

The chair, sprayed. It's going off for the upholstery this next week.