The Old Rocker

   Questions have come up as to how I am doing with my new year's resolutions.    I did not want to write about them, but I guess I am the one who wanted accountability and I am the one that wanted to make it public so here are the disappointing stats for the end of the month of January.     1.   I have continued to exercise and now keep a log so that I track my calories burned and miles walked.   The month of January I walked more miles and burned more calories than what I logged in during December.    There was a Super Bowl party and there have been some other fun times that my weight at the end of this month is unchanged.   (Sad face..and the super bowl party was really held in Feb.)    2.  I have used a small portion of the wood in my scrap pile, but I also bought some new 2x4's that were on sale so I have went the opposite direction in trying to shrink my scrap pile.    3.   I have avoided any purchases online for the month of Jan.   4.   I have written my blog faithfully every Wednesday night although the stats remain unchanged.  Now that I have January's numbers we'll see how Feb. is doing.    5.   My Sketch-up lessons - untouched.    (Another sad face!)    So I would give myself a C minus for January.   I have to do better next month!

  Now that the "confession" is out of the way let's talk shop.   To the left is a chair that has been passed around Pam's side of the family for some time.   Currently Shawn has it and he asked if I could tune it up a little.   So I brought it home and this week finally got around to looking at it.   It is one of those solid oak rockers that should be classified as an antique, but it has been patched up so many times.   Mostly to just make it functional.  I'm afraid that it is just another old rocker.    (A place to store fat cats and stuffed dolls.)  Actually the cover to the seat pad is from a velvet dress that Pam wore when she was in High School.     

     I took the seat off the rocker and the picture to the right shows the condition of the chair.  A lot of the joints have come loose over time.   (The rocker rocks more ways than it is suppose to rock.)    Also, there were supposed to be brackets in each of the corners to hold the seat in place.    There were only three of the four original brackets left in the chair.     In the past, someone made a repair by driving a couple nails into one of the joints.    Later on, someone else tried to hold one of the broken joints together by using stove bolts.    Finally there was a variety of screws used to bind another couple joints.    I feel that this could be one of those projects where it should be fixed up to look like the antique it should be.  But we'll patch it up one more time and when done, it will be a rocker that the grand kids can climb all over and it will still work.     I spent a little time cleaning out the open joints.  When putting them back together again, I used horse hide glue.   You can buy it at Menards and it works well on old furniture.  (I like to talk glue talk!)


    I took out the back seat bracket and built this wooden ledge to sit the seat on.   In the front I will still use the original brackets to mount the newly recovered seat.   Most of the joints have been repaired.    Next week I am going to try my luck at ripping Pam's velvet dress off (now, now, - keep it clean) and cover the seat with some new material that I purchased.   (Purchased in December - before the resolutions came into effect.)
    Have a good week.