My proof-of-concept panel with the parquetry pattern at full scale. Rendering this was an extremely instructive and useful exercise that changed my approach to every step of the process.
In prepping for the tool cabinet parquetry mock-up — that is as exact as I can make it rather than my previous proof-of-concept — plus the actual parquetry on the cabinet, I was going to need dozens if not hundreds of the diamond units. A task that large is similar to eating an ox. You do it one bite at a time.
Here’s that first bite.
My starting point was cutting hundreds of 30-60-90 triangles both with the grain and across the grain. My veneers were all white oak cut from leftover scraps from the French Oak Roubo Project, and man was it dense. I tried cutting the triangles using jigs and handsaws (that is how I teach introductory parquetry workshops like the upcoming one at Wood and Shop near Charlottesville VA), but soon came to the realization that this ox needed a little prodding.
Given my recent success using my Delta benchtop bandsaw with a fine blade, combined with a new strategy for working the parquetry, I decided to do all the sawing on that little machine.
Soon enough I had two plastic shoebox-sized tubs each filled with hundreds of the slightly oversized triangles I needed for what would come next.
Changed horse #1.
Even though I wasn’t sawing the triangles by hand I was determined to edge plane each one using precise shooting jigs fabricated especially for that purpose. A few dozen of those, especially the ones that are primarily cross-grain, and that determination flagged. I needed a different system if I was to get the ox eaten. That “new system” will be the focus of my next post on the project.
Changed horse #2.
In addition, once I first established the size of the parquetry pattern I created a brass template to make each diamond the perfect size and fit. I was so intent I used trigonometry calculations and a vernier caliper to get the dimensions and angles really precise. (If you ever wondered when you would use what you learned in 11th grade Trig class, now you know.) The frustration of this fussiness soon depleted my enthusiasm for this approach. The alternative I devised will be demonstrated in a post a way down the road.
Changed horse #3.
Stay tuned for “what would come next.”
PS Posting might continue to be sorta sketchy for another little while as grandson #3’s arrival is imminent, and grandsons #1 and #2 have birthdays right on the heels of #3’s introduction to his share of the national debt.
After a very long while of not working on it I have resurrected the (very showy) decorative parquetry aspect of my mondo tool cabinet. I cannot recall exactly where I left it blog-wise and thus presume you don’t recall either. So, let me go back to the start and endeavor to keep the thread going better than before. Although with blizzards, greenhouses, and soon-to-be-three grandsons you never know. My goal is to post every week or so, walking you through my process step-by-step.
The short and sweet re-introduction is that I’m going to use a fancy parquetry composition, one inspired by the works of the Roentgens. Certainly not as fancy as theirs, and definitely not as well executed (they were perhaps the finest furniture-surface-decorators of their time, or maybe of all time [their pictorial marquetry is without parallel in my opinion]).
All of my base veneers were sawn from leftover chunks of white oak from the French Oak Roubo Project, so though the material is not literally contemporary with the Roentgens it does not miss it by much.
Depending on the piece and my mood (or weariness) I used both hand and machine sawing for the task.
The parquetry pattern is a cluster of four 30-60-90 triangles assembled into both swirl and sunburst patterns into diamond shapes, to be used alternately in the final composition. An early sketch and proof of concept confirmed my vision for the cabinet.
Once the veneers were cut into their ~1/8″ sheets I began sawing out the hundreds and hundreds of smaller triangles. These did not have to be particularly precise, and it was more efficient to deal with them ex poste and in the assembly process. So my little Delta bandsaw was the perfect tool to saw a stack of the veneers into the requisite triangles. Hundreds and hundreds of triangles.
At first I thought I would plane the edges of the triangles and created several jigs for that purpose. It turned out to be way more trouble than that was worth, trying to hold on to little pieces of really dense white oak, planing the skew edges. Did I mention that there were hundreds and hundreds of them to do?
I wound up taking a whole different approach, which will be the topic of the next post in this series.
As I approach the end of the year I am reflecting/projecting on the projects ahead of me. In addition to diving deeper into writing I’ve got a large number of things on my plate, including the mini-Gragg for Li’l T’s March birthday (coincidentally the month for the arrival of grandson #3, all of them March boys), outfitting my 18thC tool chest collection for on-site interpreting and re-enacting, doing some casting and patternwork, some possible private tutorials at the barn, several new workbench builds, blah, blah, blah.
High on my list will be resuming work on my ultimate tool cabinet, the one that will take me along until my ashes are scattered on the mountain. Since the presentation surface of the cabinet will be parquetry in the fashion of the Roentgens, and made from scraps left over from the French Oak Roubo Project, I still have a lot of veneer to saw to complete that. I’ve written about that some, but it has been so long I will probably start the account all over again.
To enhance my veneer sawing I am thinking seriously about another upgrade to my bandsaw using the roller guide set from Carter.
Have any of you tried this product? If so, please let me know. It is not cheap, around $200, but if it works as well as they say I will plunk down the money without hesitation. Given the fact that I originally bought the saw for $100 at a yard sale, I can afford to tart it up a bit.
While undertaking some recent reorganization of my basement workshop in Elderbarndottir’s former house (she got married in November and moved to her husband’s house) I came across this nostalgic and beat-up picture from early 1977, hiding behind one of the shelving units. This French secretaire was my first really high-profile/high-value furniture restoration project at Schindler & Son of the Palm Beaches, where I started working in late 1974. Unfortunately I did not take any detailed pictures of projects at this point of my career – had this happened once I was a museum conservator the project would have been documented with hundreds of photographic images to go along with the written reports. I probably took a picture or two of the interior, it was spectacular. Bat that was almost 50years ago and cannot recall that detail.
Somewhere I have a picture of a Riesener cabinet from the same client, but that picture has not turned up yet.
Prior to this I did a lot of run-of-the-mill restoration for “ordinary” antiques along with a boatload of custom finishing and refinishing; before Schindler’s I was a “scratch and dent man” at a couple of furniture stores.
This project arrived in pieces in the back of Ambassador So-and-so’s Mercedes station wagon. The secretaire bore the inventory stamp of the Chateau de Saint Cloud. It should come as no surprise that the culture from which the word bureaucrat is derived should be punctilious about household inventories, but there you have it.
Over a period of a couple weeks, I reassembled it and made repairs to the rosewood and tulipwood veneers, then finally a couple of days of shellac pad polishing. “Pop” Schindler came almost every day to watch and guide me, it was on this project that he introduced me to hot hide glue.
This was a seed for my fascination with exquisite European furniture, especially of the French variety (along with our company’s work at the Wrightsman estate in Palm Beach and their furniture collection), and was truly the acorn from which my fascination with Roubo sprouted. It was also the prompting for me to embark down the career path of conservation; I entered that stream in 1981 at Winterthur Museum while I was a student in college.
Early on I had decided to incorporate demonstrations to the program at Handworks, and in order to have something on which to demonstrate I made a set of parquetry panels.
I’d begun these some weeks before, you can follow their development in my earlier post about Bandsaw Parquetry. One of the points I was trying to get across was the importance of surface preparation so I was going to start with some surfaces that REALLY needed preparations.
Finally, after two weeks of assembling stuff to go, two days of playing TETRAS loading, unloading, and reloading the truck full to the brim, off we were. After two long days of driving, we got to Cedar Rapids for a good night’s sleep before heading down to Amana for the Handworks set-up. I wish I could’ve said confidently that I prepped thoroughly and tied up all the loose ends but the odds were near 100% that several hours into the set-up or Handworks itself I would remember something I left behind.
John and I showed up bright and early for setting up, the building opened at 9AM and we were there around 9.15. I think we were the first booth to be completely set up
Here is a walk around the Festhalle during the set up time. Upcoming posts will document other spaces and activities for Handworks.
I was in my usual spot, on the center row near the Lie-Nielson booth up on the stage, and between Jeff Hamilton in front and Gary Blum to my rear, with Matt Bickford across the aisle on one side and Patrick Leach on the other. I took the picture of the main space from the stage, where L-N set up very late in the day. While they were working on their display Tom Lie-Nielson stopped by and we had a nice long chat.
My setup took only a couple hours, leaving lots of time to visit with friends from years past. I especially cherished the time with the Bickfords, folks who are definitely on my wavelength.
Across on aisle were Matt Bickford and a chairmaker I did not know (there were actually a lot of exhibitors and tool makers I did not know),
and across the other aisle was Patrick Leach’s seductive vintage tool emporium. Amazingly enough, I escaped the weekend without buying a single tool.
Immediately behind/adjacent to me was Gary Blum with his innovative workbenches and accessories, and hand planes.
Konrad Sauer was just down the way with his spectacularly high-performance planes,
then Lost Art Press. I think Gramercy Tools was between them but had not set up when I was walking about.
Benchcrafted was the booth greeting the visitors immediately on entry. It makes sense, they’re the ones who pulled the whole event together.
Back in the corner was innovative genius Jeff Miller who was showing off this device that hollowed out bowls. It was the coolest thing I saw at the event. Over his shoulders you can see the Lee Valley booth, but they had not begun setting up yet.
Rounding out the Festhalle setups from that time was Ron Brese, closest to Benchworks at the other end of the center row.
With the rest of the day free we had a chance to go visit all the other booths in the three other venues, although some of the booths were not ready until late in the day or even the next morning.
We were girding our loins for a wild couple of days starting at 10AM the next morning.
During my recent Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing workshop I used a parquetry panel to demonstrate the substrate preparation processes and found it so useful that I said to myself, “Self, you should do this demo at Handworks.” In the blink of an eye, I committed myself to cranking out six more parquetry panels in a very short time. I will do four (hopefully identical) demos of French wax finishing, at 11AM and 3PM both days. My plan is to take a panel from rough parquetry to gleaming in about 20-30 minutes using analogs to the tools, techniques, and materials available to a Parisian atelier.
With an audience looking over my shoulder.
Wish me luck.
In the meantime I had to actually fabricate six parquetry panels; four for the demo sessions, one more to remain “raw” and a sixth to be completed in advance to use as a showpiece. The only ways I could conceive to finish such an undertaking were 1) cutting parquetry lozenges by hand for several days running, or 2) use my bandsaw or table saw to gang-cut stacks of lozenges. After initial trials I decided to follow path #2 with my little Delta benchtop bandsaw.
I’ve used my bandsaw for ripping parquetry and banding stock strips before, but could I tune the machine to actually create the diamond lozenges themselves? Let’s FAFO (Fool Around and Find Out). *Spoiler Alert!* – the result was so successful that it will likely be my standard procedure from now on. My days of hand cutting individual diamond lozenges may be over.
I first fabricated a crosscut sled for the bandsaw from some scraps of maple runners and mahogany plywood. I ran this through the saw approximately halfway, then inserted my thin 6″ machinists’ rule into the kerf to serve as the reference line.
Taping a 30-60-90 triangle in place against the reference line, to make sure nothing moved, I tacked a fence to the sled at 60-degrees to the kerf. I often use tacks rather than glue in cases like this because I can induce micro adjustments with a hammer when necessary.
Using the newly installed fence I cut a 60-degree stop block to use whenever I want to cut 60-120-60-120 lozenges. For any particular composition of parquetry I cut a slice of the veneer strip then rotate it and place it against the blade to establish the placement of the stop block against the fence. One good/bad feature of the little bandsaw is that the blades are very thin with almost zero tooth set. Not good when making rough cuts in irregular stock, excellent when making precision cuts in identically prepared stock strips.
With the machine set up and the test cuts made to assure the angles and dimensions were spot-on I was able to saw five or six diamonds at a time and filled my shoebox-size bin in about 20 minutes.
With the stock elements in-hand I laid out cross-lines on paper and got to work.
I find the cross-lines to be exceedingly helpful keeping myself on track as I glue down the diamond lozenges to the paper. Any irregularity, no matter how miniscule, compounds and amplifies. Hence the guidelines to keep me on track. With precise diamonds and the cross-lines I could compose a complete foot-square panel in a little over a half hour.
Trimming off the projecting elements with a veneer saw and Japanese knife the next morning I now had six compositions ready to glue down, in this case to 1/2″ Baltich birch plywood.
The irregularity of handsawn veneer (or bandsawn for us modernes), regardless of how carefully executed, is why the ancient ebenistes saw the toothing plane as the first woodfinishing tool to be employed.
On to mounting the parquetry panels face down on the plywood. All the gluing for this project was done with 251 gws hot hide glue.
Final trimming in situ was followed by banding and perimeter strips. I work two sides at a time, trim the ends of those two sides at 45-degree angles, then cut and trimmed the remaining pair of sides. It took me a lot longer to do the banding and perimeter strips than to compose the original parquetry.
And with that I am now the proud possessor of six parquetry panels for showing-and-telling. If you are at Handworks stop by and take a look. I’ll be in the center aisle of the Festhalle.
My longtime pal Ripplin’John sent me photos of his latest project en route to an MFA (at our age John, what were you thinkin’?). Seriously, I am immensely proud that we are friends, my circle of close friends is actually quite small, and of his artistic and technical accomplishments while exploring the realm of artistically integrating wood and metal. Some time ago I gave him a copy of the Matthew Boulton book and is now going to town.
This “lunch box” employs classic boullework techniques, right down to the engraving. In his own words,
I changed the normal procedure somewhat. I printed the drawing on PNP paper and then transferred it to a brass blank slightly larger than the size of the sides. After engraving the brass, I assembled the packet with shop-made veneer and cut out the pieces as needed. Doing it this way meant that I was engraving much larger pieces of brass. Holding the very small pieces after cut out would have been pretty tough.
Each assembly was then glued to another piece of veneer before gluing to the box. This was done to ensure that a failure of the glue up on one side would not wreck the whole piece.
The corners, finial and cheese crackers are cast bronze.
Well done, sir. You can tell him so in person at Handworks where he will be helping me in my booth.
A couple weeks ago I had a terrific three days teaching “Shellac Finishing” to members of the Howard County (MD) Woodworker’s Guild. A good time was had by all, but alas I left my camera behind so I have no pics to chare.
My teaching calendar for the remainder of the year is as follows:
May 20 The H.O. Studley Tool Cabinet and Workbench banquet presentation for the Annual Meeting of the Early American Industries Association, Staunton VA
June 19-21 Historic Woodfinishing 3-day workshop for the regional chapter of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers, at the Barn
July 17-19 Historic Woodfinishing 3-day workshop at Wood & Shop, Earlysville VA
August 21-23 Introduction to Parquetry 3-day workshop at Wood & Shop, Earlysville VA
After three years of near-drought conditions (twice last year, once the previous year) I am suddenly deluged with opportunities to teach and present this year. In addition to those I have previously mentioned, there will be a third Historic Woodfinishing workshop, this one at the Barn(!), commissioned by the regional chapter of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers. They’ve had a month to get their members into the class and now I can open it up to the general audience for the last couple of slots. My neighbor is coming over this afternoon to help me rearrange the classroom and move some workbenches down from the fourth floor.
I’m also going to be the banquet presenter for this year’s Annual Meeting of the Early American Industries Association, speaking on the topic of the incomparable Henry O. Studley tool cabinet and workbench.
I even declined a gracious invitation to teach out on the West Coast and another out in the Heartland, but my days of that kind of travel for teaching are over.
When it rains, it pours.
So, here’s what my upcoming teaching/presenting schedule looks like:
April 12-14 Historic Woodfinishing 3-day workshop for the Howard County Woodworkers Guild, Columbia MD
May 20 The H.O. Studley Tool Cabinet and Workbench banquet presentation for the Annual Meeting of the Early American Industries Association, Staunton VA
June 19-21 Historic Woodfinishing 3-day workshop for the regional chapter of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers, at the Barn
July 17-19 Historic Woodfinishing 3-day workshop at Wood & Shop, Earlysville VA
August 21-23 Introduction to Parquetry 3-day workshop at Wood & Shop, Earlysville VA
September 1&2 Handworks 2023, Amana IA (yes, I know this involves long-distance travel but I’ve been committed to this for several years)
I am delighted to be teaching a pair of classes for Joshua Farnsworth this summer, Historic Wood Finishing (July 17-19) and Introduction to Parquetry (August 21-23). The workshops will be held at Joshua’s place near Charlottesville VA. You can get the particulars here, and I believe he will be posting the course schedule imminently. I hope to see you there.
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