This is the original DVD case cover art. I’m leaving the front pretty much alone but reworking the back extensively.
One of the ongoing headaches(?) has been the inability to resupply my inventory for the historic woodfinishing video F&W Media (PopWood) produced several years ago, which I had available on the donsbarn.com website store. The new company that now owns PopWood discontinued the hard copies of the DVD and no longer even had “new old stock” copies in the warehouse. After some back-and-forth the new company released the video to me gratis, for which I am most appreciative. At Handworks 2023 the editor-in-chief made a point of confirming our earlier correspondence; my F&W videos were now my intellectual property to use as I saw fit.
The urgency of me acting on this came to a head a few months ago when my final copy was sold. Since then I have been noodling the revisions of the original DVD cover and am now ready to send it off for reproduction after I let it ruminate for a couple days. While the DVD content was now my property I had no desire to disavow F&W from the picture as they truly deserve all the credit for producing it in the first place. Thus I am keeping the bones of the original packaging, crediting F&W, but revising the content a fair bit to re-brand it as a Barn on White Run product.
As soon as I get copies into my hands I will be fulfilling the two dozen orders that have been sitting in my “Pending” folder.
It’s been something of a perfect storm with a very wet late winter culminating in two substantial snowfalls a couple weeks ago followed by warming weather and more rain, and the switch was thrown for everything to get going (we had the wood stove cranking out heat a mere seven days ago but were heating up to the mid-70s and sun yesterday). As a result we are in the midst of mowing, bush hogging, weeding, planting, burning, etc. with not a minute spent in the shop this week. If this perfect cycle of rain and sun continues, we will have to mow at least a part of every day for the foreseeable future. The grass I mowed on Monday is almost three inches higher today.
On top of that the rapid onset of spring/summer means that everything is producing pollen all at once. Combined with a stubborn sinus infection, it feels like I am breathing through jello much of the time.
Last summer we had the great good fortune of finding a college kid home for the summer to hire for the yard work. It was grand. We’re still looking for someone to help this year but so far no luck so it’s up to the old folks to get it done. As I’ve said many times, we work just as hard and just as long as ever but don’t seem to be getting nearly as much done.
As soon as I get this round of yard housekeeping done I will turn my attention to checking the penstock for the hydro system and making the requisite annual repairs, and moving forward on next year’s firewood.
… and here’s why. L’il T now has a brand new baby brother!
We just back to Shangri-la after a month in New Jersey helping with preparations, pitching in whenever and wherever needed, and doing grandpa and grandma stuff. L’il T and I spent untold hours playing with his cars, chasing balls in the yard, swinging and sliding at the park, reading books. Mrs. Barn got a full dose of medicine to respond to the demands of the grandma gene.
Amusingly (?) when I go to visit I always travel with a bin or two of projects to work on during the “down times.” When packing to return home, I realized I had not opened up those bins this trip except to complete some gold leafing (more about that later).
We also celebrated L’il T’s 2nd birthday, and I made him his first toolbox, complete with 23K gold leaf trim and his name. This picture is just before I started the gold leaf trim.
Again, one of the beauties of youtubeworld is the sheer quantity of vintage video on almost any topic you want. Finding it can be a challenge, especially when the titles are in other languages and “alphabets” but lately I’ve ben coming across some jewels from 40, 50, or even 60 years ago.
Here’s a glimpse of the modern master of lacquerwork, Gonroku Matsuda. Enjoy.
One of the thrills of incursions into the Evilgoogle Empire via the satellite of Youtube is coming across an instructional or demonstration video that was at the very least unexpected or unknown. Sometimes it is the result of a long search, that search can be keyword or descriptor directed. But when the subject and title are not English or even Western alphabet but rather Eastern in character it becomes a matter of sheer luck as YouTube cycles through videos of related topics for referral. Sometimes it leads to new videos, sometimes it leads to videos posted years ago that I had no way to know existed such as this one linked below.
For the most part urushi lacquerwork is applied to a wooden substrate, either wooden boxes or trays or turned bowls, with the occasional foray into furniture pieces, for example in the work of Gonroku Matsuda.
For I’ve long been searching for video about a peculiar lacquerwork technique that fascinates me, the analog to sculptural papier mache’, using urushi instead of oil or paste to assemble the creation. I have long held this candy dish (above) to be one of the most beautiful objets d’art I have ever seen, unfortunately not in person. It was made with this urushi-laminate technique, albeit using fine linen cloth instead of paper. Classically this method involves draping urushi impregnated fabric (or paper) over a previously sculpted (unfired?) terra cotta core, then excavating the terra cotta once the form is achieved.
The technique demonstrated in this video uses sculpting clay and plaster for moldmaking steps in a manner I find both fascinating and fully do-able.
A component of my routine in the shop these days is surveying, sorting, and dispensing of the tools laying here, there, and everywhere. Now that I am in my 70th year and have two handy sons-in-law and soon to be two grandsons I am either dispensing or dispersing many of the tools immediately or presumptively. Genuine tool sets for L’il T and the soon-to-come Baby T (for Baby Tyrannosaurus, the moniker for L’il T’s baby brother in utero, I suspect the final name will be different) are well underway.
One of the treasures(?) I came across was yet another infill plane, a truly challenging project for the future. As near as I can tell none of the adjunct components belong together with the original chassis so I can assume great latitude in the restoration of the tool. It’s raggedy but solid, so the end result should be solid but less raggedy once I get around to bringing it back to life.
I spent a day steam bending the conditioned dry wood with very instructive results. Not success, per se, but definitely instructive about the pathway to success.
I’ll backtrack to review the protocols for conditioning the dry wood.
Using some PVC from the stash I made three 40-inch-long tubes into which I placed two serpentine pieces, two arm pieces, two uni-splats, and two rear legs from the mini-Gragg. In the first one I created a 1% surfactant solution with distilled water, in the second a 1% ethanol solution with distilled water, and the third was a 1% fabric softener solution with distilled water. All pieces were fully submerged for the duration.
I let these sit for seven days and fired up the steamer.
To accentuate any effect of the conditioning I steamed the pieces for 1-1/2 times longer than might be expected for steaming green-ish wood, then bent them as quickly as possible. This meant 30 seconds of intensity after 35 minutes of steaming for the thinner components, and 75 minutes for the rear legs.
The results were instructive but not particularly encouraging for the extremely bent pieces, namely the arms and serpentines. That said I could definitely feel a differences, it just wasn’t enough for complete success.
Somehow, I missed this excessive run-out on the side when I was toothing the faces. This piece was never a good candidate under any circumstances.
In each protocol the uni-splats worked almost perfectly, with the only failure being due to a wood grain flaw that I somehow missed during the preparations.
This bend was “this close” to making a successful bend, but at the final instant let loose with enough tension to break. It is possible that this piece could be salvaged with epoxy impregnation.
This one busted right away…
… while this one flat out ‘sploded.
In bending the twelve extreme pieces – 6 arms, 6 serpentines – the failure rate was 100%. The pieces felt very plastic, bending nicely until an instantaneous catastrophic failure. It was abundantly clear that the fabric softener worked the best of all the conditioning approaches.
I did have one instance of compression buckling. Why this one? I got no idea.
The takeaways were indisputable and I will tinker with these further. 1) use fabric softener to condition the wood, and 2) the serpentine and arm configurations cannot be accomplished without compression straps. For the full-size Graggs I have used plumbers straps screwed to the bending stock but for these I will make compression straps from aluminum flashing, then tack them with aluminum tacks to the stock prior to inserting the pieces into the steamer. That way when the wood is cooked I can remove them and bend them instantly. The reason I am taking this approach is that I need for the compression straps to be exactly the width of the bent element and plumbers straps are narrower than the components. And, I do not need to keep the surfaces of the bent elements pristine since they will be painted once the chair is assembled and thus any tack holes will be filled with primer.
A few weekends ago I attended the PATINA monthly gathering, as always getting my tool-flea-market fix (I bought only a few small items) before going inside for the presentation on infill planes by Lee Richmond of The Best Things tools, towards whom I have sent very many dollars over the years.
The talk and Q&A were excellent and very informative and I learned a lot, particularly the history of infill plane kits that were available to craftsmen, and the prevalence of planemakers making tools to be marketed under other branding than their own. More about both points in a minute.
It got me wondering about my own inventory of infill planes which, when compiled, was more numerous than I initially thought. I don’t know why as these are tools I use regularly. I guess I just never thought of them in that way.
Here is my own collection, presented in no particular order.
The prize of my collection is my Robert Towell miter/shooting plane, probably from the second quarter of the 19th century. Towell was one of the makers who produced tools bearing his own imprint and sold from his own shop, along with unmarked planes sold by other purveyors. Mine is one of the latter, devoid of any maker’s marks but with all the hallmarks of his work. His planes were apparently of this form and are highly desirable by collectors, provided they bear his mark.
This image from the interwebz shows the maker’s mark that is missing on my plane. That lacunae is what made this plane affordable, otherwise the $5k price tag would have been beyond the realm of consideration for me. And, Mrs. Barn would have probably killed me…
Since mine is unmarked, it was “affordable” to me (still pricey by my standards but only 10% of the price had it borne his stamp) and I bought it from a flea market session at Martin Donnelly’s about 20 years ago. The throat is so tight (about 1/3 mm) I find the only useful purpose it has for me is trimming the end grain of boards on a shooting jig.
Contemporary tool maker Raney Nelson of Daed Tools made a series of Towell-inspired planes maybe 20 years ago and I got it through trading some other materials and tools for it, otherwise I could have never afforded it.
Like Towell and Raney’s friend Konrad Sauer the construction is hammered dovetails, with I think African Blackwood as the infill. I really should ask him more about this tool the next time our paths cross, as they do occasionally.
It’s just a bit too small to use as a block plane, but perfect for small shooting tasks. This plane might have evolved into the “collectible” realm as I am not sure how much plane making Raney does any more since he and Chris Schwarz started Crucible Tools.
This still-under-restoration smoother is one of those Richmond said was probably a kit of sorts, with the metal shell being sold as a chassis for a woodworker to make the wooden infill components. I got this late 19th century tool in a box lot of other derelict tools at a flea market, devoid of iron or wedge, looking like at had a stint inside a concrete mixer. I cobbled it together as a functioning plane after restoring the totally trashed wooden infills, ebonizing them and leaning the steel shell.
I was never really happy with the wedge or the iron I dug out of my spare parts drawer, so I asked my friend Josh Clark to look through his inventory to see what he had. I soon received a really nice double iron in the mail that fits the sole mouth very tightly and have been puttering on making a wedge off and on ever since. If I have success with a wooden wedge I just might make another out of ivory. Just because I can.
For many years Ron Hock used to sell kits to make planes, and this started as one of those. The maker in this instance was my friend Joe who gave it to me 15(?) years ago for reasons I can no longer recall. It was a very nice plane but underweight for what I wanted.
During the first Roubo manuscript I modified it with heavy brass cheeks and a bit of stylizing to use it as a veneer/parquetry shooting plane.
Some years ago at a Lie-Nielson event I bought this infill plane from Mateo Panzica of Lazarus Planes in Louisville KY. His fabrication approach is almost 180 degrees opposite from Towell and Nelson but you cannot argue with the results.
This weighty smoother is simply superb and gets regular use at my bench, perhaps more than any plane (other than my sleigh-style block plane that is going into the grave with me, unless of course it goes to L’il T or his brother). If I needed more new planes I would probably divide my money between Lazarus and Steve Voigt, although the Lasso of Truth would reveal I do not really need any more. (Other than a toother from Steve Voigt, if he ever gets them to market).
An infill I made all by my lonesome is this plane designed specifically for, and not useful otherwise to tell you the truth, shooting the edges of sawn parquetry elements. I saw Paterick Edwards demonstrate a vintage version of this plane at Williamsburg several years ago and decided I had to have one myownself.
I started out with a derelict one-inch rabbet plane body and beveled one side, then silver soldered the brass shell. I am really pleased with its performance.
I took a 10-foot piece of 3-inch PVC pipe and cut it into three 40″ pieces and glued on end caps to use as my re-conditioning chambers for the dried wood in preparation for steam bending it. I filled each of the three with “modified” distilled water.
In the first case I added 1% Everclear 151, if you recall I have a lot laying around, to do nothing more than reduce the surface tension of the water and induce greater and quicker penetration.
For the second tube I added 1% of a mild detergent to act as a surfactant. I would have used some Kodak Photo-Flow, an artifact from ancient days when photography was a film-based process rather than the electron aggregation it is now. I could not find my bottle of Photo Flow (ordering more now) so I added some mild soy-based detergent, fairly neutral in its properties. Were I being anal retentive I would have used Triton-100 pH neutral detergent but I don’t have all that much of it left and it is pricey. Like the ethanol the purpose of the detergent is to act as a surfactant “wetting” agent and induce greater and quicker penetration of the water.
The final tube of distilled water was enhanced by 1% Downy fabric softener, to impart lubricity to the wood fibers. I have to assume that the Downy has some portion of surfactant/detergent in it for the same purposes I am using, namely penetration and induced lubricity between the wood fibers.
I added one more of the modifications to this exercise, namely the increase of the wood surface area via a toothing plane. Using one of my toothing planes I worked the flat sides of the wood strips until they were completely toothed, thus doubling the surface area. Combining the expanded surface area with the surfactants in the modified water I can envision excellent penetration and wetting/re-conditioning.
I prepared a couple of each of the bent wood elements, serpentines, arms, and uni-splats, and stuck them into the tubes of wetter water. To make sure they were completely submerged on the top end I cut and stuffed pieces of hardware cloth into the ends then topped off the tubes. What I’m reading from the interwebz and private correspondence the pieces need to stay submerged for a week, so it’s looking like Friday morning will be Steam Bending Day.
I await the event with anticipation. Even if everything is a complete failure I will have learned something important. But, if everything is successful I will have the necessary parts in hand to begin L’il Gragg. Probably not in time to finish before L’il T’s birthday, alas.
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