More than thirty years ago I made a built-in cabinet in the living room to hold all manner of contents you would expect for a living room wall unit. Included in the design and construction was a set of shoji sliding doors using Japanese mulberry bark paper for the screens. I learned right quick that having paper panels on cabinet doors is not optimal for a home occupied by little ones. I soon replaced the original papers with new ones and backed them with plexiglass to minimize the puncturing and tearing of the lovely paper.
Recently I took another look at the shoji and saw another dozen or so tears that had occurred of the intervening decades. One by one I took them down to the basement shop to repair them. Unfortunately all I had was scraps from the original construction and installation or I would have simply replaced complete sections of the paper en toto.
My first effort to follow that trail was to order some new mulberry bark paper that turned out to be beautiful but not a good match to the originals. So all I could do was use my scraps of the original paper and make the necessary repairs.
Here’s an example of one repair, a protocol I followed successfully on the nearly dozen tears.
This tear is adjacent to one of the shoji frame elements, The dark area near the upper center of the image is a previous repair, still wet from the repair. As the repair dries it will resume the color of the original paper and thus become invisible to the standard viewer.
Here’s the scrap of the original paper left over from the construction 30 years ago. One edge is straight to match the shoji frame, the other is torn, or “deckled” to provide a feathered edge allowing the perfect blending with the underlying sheet being repaired.
After mixing up the adhesive, in this case dilute wallpaper past methycellulose, the repair ws laid in place and the adhesive brushed onto the margin and wicked in, binding the repair.
Next time I return to Mordo I will try to remember to take a picture of the finished project. The repairs really do look nearly invisible, complying with the “Six-foo-six-inch rule” that governed our work in the museum. In other words, from a standard viewing distance of six feet the repair is invisible, but close-up (“six inch”) it is discernable.
I didn’t need to make any more blocks of beeswax for the moment, so I concentrated on turning my purified beeswax into Blend 31.
The preparation is indeed exotic (/sarc). I weigh out several hundred grams of shellac wax, then three times as much of the purified beeswax. It all goes into the cooker to melt together at a slightly higher temperature than is necessary for the beeswax alone.
Once it was all melted uniformly I ladled it into the silicone molds I made a long time ago that have served me well all these years. Given the temperature of the room I can make a new pour every 30-45 minutes as the blocks cool and can be removed from the molds. They are still pretty warm at this point and need to be set aside to cool completely.
A good day’s production is almost 50 units. I make four at a time, and each extraction/pour takes about 5-7 minutes.
Now on to the wrapping and packaging of the wax to take it to Handworks 2026.
The latest installment of the forty-year-long conversation with my friend “retired” broadcaster Brian Wilson (who cannot shake the habit), was posted at his Brian Wilson Writes Substack. If you enjoy provocative strident discussions about forbidden topics, give it a listen. If you do not, don’t.
The Abraham boys and their posse are at it again and Handworks 2026 is barreling down the pike. It will be Friday and Saturday of Labor Day weekend, in the lovely village of Amana, Iowa. I’ll be there again close to dead center of the Festhalle, hawking my wares such as they are. Polissoirs, beeswax and shellac wax, videos, and original c. 1765 Roubo prints, etc.
The Festhalle from Handworks 2013
It’s the most amazing tool festival of hand woodworking you will even encounter with visitors and makers from around the globe if the tradition holds.
I’m already ramping up my truckload of stuff to take with me, at the moment creating a pile on and under a workbench I will be taking and making wax processing part of almost every day from now on.
This just might be my last long road trip other than family priorities. We just don’t have the oomph for drives like that anymore.
I love tales like this. I knew of an instance in some southern swamp where they discovered an ancient sunken cypress trunk that was so valuable the salvage company had around-the-clock guards protecting it until they could find just the right buyer who had just the right project. I vaguely recall it went to a developer who was going to use it in all the public spaces is a huge skyscraper somewhere. I think the dimensions of trunk were 48+” diameter at the top and 180-plus feet long. That’s a mighty big tree.
I’d heard the asking price was $7 million.
Many years ago back in Maryland we had a micro-burst that uprooted a number for mature tulip poplar trees, the largest of which measured 24″ in diameter at the first branch, which was at the 60-foot mark. I was unable to find a sawyer willing to deal with it, so given the cycle of life it has now gone back to the earth.
That’s right, sometimes cleanup is the exact opposite Christmas. Usually in the aftermath of a deep cleaning and reorganizing of the barn I find that I suddenly cannot find something I need. In the “Before” I knew exactly where that thing was even if the overall spatial composition was more similar to a maelstrom. But at least I knew where item X, Y, or Z was.
Yesterday I needed to sew something up but could not find nor remember where I put the stinking sewing kit.
Now that I am in my approximately 4,000th day of organizing, reorganizing, cleaning and tidying the barn I am qualified to declare that Cleaning is Christmas. Unlike my friends MikeM, Ripplin’ John and MartinO I am not by temperament nor habit fastidiously organized in my physical surrounding. This means that combined with my forgetfulness about the details of my surroundings, organizing and cleaning reveals “new” contents of the barn that in truth I had forgotten either 1) that I even had them, or 2) where I put them, sometimes in a “special place.”
My current paroxysm of tidying the joint is just such a reality. Sometimes the revelations are mundane, such as, “Oh, that’s where I put my favorite utility knife.” Other “discoveries” are more meaningful. Just a few days ago at the Plane Wellness shindig I was commenting to someone there that I was running low on the shellac wax I had ordered several years ago directly from the factory in India. I was lamenting(?) the fact that I might need to send another big pile of money there to restock if I was going to continue using and selling shellac wax for more than another few months.
So, there in the corner tucked behind one of my workbenches were two full cases of shellac wax. Enough for two or three years of consumption. Suddenly that was one less thing I needed to worry about. That alone made it a good day. The cases were so embedded in the space (I had to actually cut the boxes apart just to extricate the contents) that I clearly placed them there before I built a storage cabinet and placed the workbench in its current location and then put stuff on top of them.
Then, as I was taking inventory of my polissoirs and packaged waxes underneath the workbench I use for that purpose, I found two full cases of the 190 proof grain alcohol I use for mixing spirit varnishes.
At this point all I have to do is persuade myself that cleaning is something I need to habituate myself toward. Yeah, good luck with that.
Now I just have to concern myself with the fact that my polissoir maker is struggling with some health problems that are disrupting his broom-making output. Yikes.
During our recent visit to flyover country to celebrate Ripplin’ John’s MFA exhibit I was able to spend most of a day with him in the shop. John’s fascination with undulation has progressed well beyond ripple molding machines into the realm of Rose Engine lathes, of which he has at least two.
This is a gargantuan vintage machine,
which has been augmented with this modern unit made by Davil Lindell, if I remember correctly.
He let me noodle on the Lindell for a few hours, including the cutting of this pattern on the end of a small box.
What a joy it is to spend time with the people you admire doing stuff that is just pure, unadulterated fun.
My circle of friends is mostly populated with men who inspire me due to their knowledge, skills, talents, temperaments and character. No person better embodies this than my long-time friend Ripplin’ John (you can meet him at my booth at Handworks). Engineer, craftsman, and theologian, his company is a treasured enrichment to my life.
Mrs. Barn and I recently traveled to attend his exhibit as he received his Sculpture MFA safely into his eighth decade of life! He is indominable rather than monomaniacal, a distinction worthy of note. The exhibit attendees were treated to an impressive compilation of work and creativity; his thesis dealt with the question “What Is Art?”
The attendees in rapt attention as John elucidates the purposes of his artworks.
Congratulations, John, and thanks for being my friend and fellow Christian soldier.
Here are some pics from the exhibit.
One of the many beautiful objects crafted by John’s hands and tools
One of a series of miniature turned boxes John created with his Rose Engine Lathe, a creative technology completely unknown to most of those in attendance,
The assignment here was to create a sculptural artwork from a book. John excavated and epoxy-laminated a stack of pages, then turned the resulting block on his lathe.
John was exploring the realm of formed, enameled metal medallions.
One of the many facets of John’s program was to teach a class. This is the student workshop where he instructed the kids in basic metalwork. From what I could see they related wonderfully to this graduate student the same age and their great-grandparents.
No doubt, the most bizarre moment of the visit to the college campus was spotting this dispensary in the men’s restroom. Our culture is doomed.
Recent Comments