For the home stretch of the jam-packed three-day workshop the final set of exercises involved the giant panel. It had already served its first purpose, getting the students comfortable with laying down an exquisite brushed shellac surface over a large area. Since the panels were roughly half the size of a dining table, I’m thinking any hurdles of intimidation have been overcome.
At this point the panel was subdivided into four quadrants, each of them to be treated in a unique manner. The first quarter was easy — just leave it alone as an example of laying down an excellent base of three-inning shellac.
A second quarter was spirit varnish pad polished to a high sheen, demonstrating the option of creating a not-grain-filled padded surface.
The third quarter was hand polished with abrasive powders, first 4F pumice then rottenstone in mineral oil, using a polishing pad identical to the spirit varnishing pad. This was followed by a light application of paste wax and buffed when the wax was firm.
The final quarter was burnished with Liberon 0000 steel wool saturated with paste wax, and as with the rottenstone polishing, rubbed until you just get tired. When the paste wax was firm ex poste it was buffed with flannel to a brilliant glow.
As always there is at least one somebody who gets seduced by my library.
When we wrapped up the event it was clear that they had all mastered the techniques wonderfully, and departed with confidence and a set of sample boards to guide and inspire them for decades to come.
If scheduling a workshop identical to the one these fellows completed, drop me a note. I will no longer “schedule” any workshops but only host them on request.
Washington, D.C.
October 3, 1863
By the President of the United States of America.
A Proclamation.
The year that is drawing towards its close, has been filled with the blessings of fruitful fields and healthful skies. To these bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come, others have been added, which are of so extraordinary a nature, that they cannot fail to penetrate and soften even the heart which is habitually insensible to the ever watchful providence of Almighty God.
In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity, which has sometimes seemed to foreign States to invite and to provoke their aggression, peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict; while that theatre has been greatly contracted by the advancing armies and navies of the Union. Needful diversions of wealth and of strength from the fields of peaceful industry to the national defence, have not arrested the plough, the shuttle or the ship; the axe has enlarged the borders of our settlements, and the mines, as well of iron and coal as of the precious metals, have yielded even more abundantly than heretofore. Population has steadily increased, notwithstanding the waste that has been made in the camp, the siege and the battle-field; and the country, rejoicing in the consciousness of augmented strength and vigor, is permitted to expect continuance of years with large increase of freedom.
No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American People. I do therefore invite my fellow citizens in every part of the United States, and also those who are at sea and those who are sojourning in foreign lands, to set apart and observe the last Thursday of November next, as a day of Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens. And I recommend to them that while offering up the ascriptions justly due to Him for such singular deliverances and blessings, they do also, with humble penitence for our national perverseness and disobedience, commend to His tender care all those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers in the lamentable civil strife in which we are unavoidably engaged, and fervently implore the interposition of the Almighty Hand to heal the wounds of the nation and to restore it as soon as may be consistent with the Divine purposes to the full enjoyment of peace, harmony, tranquillity and Union.
In the finishing trade we often quip that our job is to make wood, “Brown and shiney.” Historically one of the main methods employed for the “brown” part was asphaltum, or tar. I knew of using tar as a toning glaze in gilding, where the tar would be diluted with white spirits and used to accentuate the gilded surfaces. I had not used it for wood until about fifteen years ago, responding to the evangelism of Alan Noel, a/k/a “The Czar of Tar,” and famed Atlanta based finisher and restorer and long time friend
For the workshop I’d asked Knoxville Dave to provide instruction on both pad polishing and asphaltum glazing, since he does so much more of that than I do. Yes indeed, that is a can of fiberless parging asphalt that he is mixing and diluting to glaze consistency.
We both using glazing as our “go to” technique for coloring, since it is so much more controllable than any penetrating colorant, and can be controlled to perfection. Sometimes staining works perfectly, but is is “just off a little bit” enough to take that technique off the table for me.
The exercise that really showcases the asphalt glazing technique was toning the turnings. They were first shellacked then burnished, leaving a magnificent foundation on to which you lay the color. The dilute asphalt was spread on the surface, then manipulated with cloth pads and fine bristle brushes to provided subtle shading to the presentation surface.
One of the beauties of asphaltum is that it performs almost like a dye, yet can be manipulated to provide both understated and exuberant change.
Dave also demonstrated using the glaze on a flat panel to great effect, mimicking the “ammonia fuming” so prized in Craftsman furniture finishes.
With that, the students were turned loose on the workpieces.
One of the fellows did some asphalt glazing to his new carved Bible box to great effect.
After the asphalt dried the surfaces were sealed with another coat of the shellac varnish.
The only thing left for the workshop was final detailing for the mega panel. Stay tuned.
Gluing the internal ribs was no big deal; first I dry-fit all the ribs then marked their locations, so that I would know where to put the bead of glue. I used PVA mostly because I have a lot of it left over from another project and just wanted to use it up.
Once the glue lines were down and the grid re-placed on top of them I simply “clamped” them in place with a couple hundred pounds of bricks. Everything stayed put over night and in the morning all was well.
I moved on to the backing blocks needed for the threaded screw holes and a couple of other features. For the threaded vise holes I just held them in place with spring clamps.
For the backing blocks on the top and bottom faces I uses more of the same ‘brick as clamps” strategy.
One area of great frustration, fear and failure for many woodworkers is the challenge of applying a hand-finish to voluptuous surfaces, including carved and turned objects. While I could not provide a syllabus with examples of every possible option in this exercise I was able to introduce the principles, practices and tools requisite for the task. The key to success in varnishing the curvey parts is to use the correct tool, in this case an oval wash or Filbert Mop brush for watercolor paintings.
There are many excellent brands of watercolor brushes for artists that work brilliantly for wood finishing, but I have sorta settled on Simmons brushes in part because they were widely available at Michael’s. Even their cheapest brush, the “Simply Simmons” line, can provide an exquisite brushed surface. I have a few of the middle-quality brushes, the Simmons Sienna line, and they are even better. Of the premier line, the Simmons Sapphire, I have about a half dozen, and they are sublime, a blend of nylon fibers and sable bristles.
Regardless of which one you choose, and the price range is around $10-15 for the Simply Simmons to $75-100 for the Sapphire, you will have excellent results on undulating surfaces because the Oval Wash/Filbert Mop configuration does not have the square corner typical for most brushes. Those corners are the source of nothing but headaches on the carved or turned surface as it is the corners that “squeegee” off excess varnish, leading to the runs, drips, and errors that are the curse from finishing with the wrong tool.
In this workshop I had a pile of turned spindles and frame-and-panel cabinet doors to provide the battleground for the exercises. As almost always the starting point is to burnish the entire surface with a polissoir, and I have designed a “Carver’s Model” polissoir with 3/4″ bristles for just this instance.
One of the real delights for the workshop was that one of the students had just made a carved Bible box the week before, and brought it along for the class.
The transformation of the raw carved surface by the application of a few minutes’ worth of burnishing was truly astounding.
Then it was time to get to brushing the shellac varnish, and the draping character of the oval brushes – almost literally clinging to the irregular surface – was life-changing to the students as they were able to lay down multiple flawless applications of varnish.
Suddenly, what had been an aspect of wood finishing imparting fear and loathing became something to anticipate with celebration.
… or more precisely, glass paper.
Though certainly not used to the degree of our current time, when it is ubiquitous in every shop I have ever visited, sandpaper was in the furniture maker’s and finisher’s tool kits in days past. There are many probable reasons for it being much scarcer in the 18th century, not the least being the cost of all paper-based products. We know only the time when paper and all its descendants are cheap and plentiful to the point where it is simply mindlessly disposable. 250 years ago, not only was the paper essentially hand made (yes, I know the process was being industrialized even then) but so too was the associated product of “glass paper.” Abrasive paper sheets were undoubtedly also industrialized to a great degree, but thus far I have never read an authoritative period account of glass-paper making. If you know of one please let me know.
One of the delightful rabbit trails I’ve been incorporating into historic finishing workshops in recent years has been to include making a sheet of glass paper by each student. As in olden days the abrasive itself was ground glass, known as frit, and the adhesive gluing the abrasive to the paper was hot hide glue. Using 135 gws glue to saturate 100% rag paper, then sheet was sprinkled with the fine frit (approximately equivalent to 100-grit sandpaper). Not to self — when photographing this exercise for the book, DO NOT use white frit over white paper.
Set aside to dry for a day, the result was a usable sheet of abrasive paper. Were I to incorporate this product into my normal shop activities I would take the additional step of “hardening” the glue with a chemical crosslinker applied to the back side of the paper. Historically the chemical would have been formaldehyde, but nowadays I would use Heico NH5 photo gelatin solution.
One of the major evolutions of this final version versus the first one was the overall length of the unit, from 48″ to 60″. There was no a priori reason for this change from a functionality perspective, there is precious little conservation work you can do on a 5-foot long bench that you cannot do with a 4-foot long bench. The proof of this is my beloved 4-foot torsion-box-with-Emmert bench that has served my everyday needs for more than thirty years, with a little help from a movable deadman.
In the earliest versions the only way I could fit in 30″ legs was to install them offset. For reasons I can never really articulate, I found this feature offensive.
When it comes down to it, the real reason for the extended length is that it allowed me to have folding legs that did not have to overlap when the bench was folded up. Splitting the length distance in half, I can have folding legs of 30″, which when added to the 3-inch bench thickness proved me with a 33″ working height; lower than I prefer but adequate for on-site work even for an extended period. Given that the bench was designed for on-site conservation tasks, much of which would be executed while sitting, this was more than acceptable.
As an incidental benefit, the length also allowed me to make full advantage of a 60″ x 60″ piece of Baltic Birch plywood. I began by cutting the whole piece of 6mm Baltic Birch into two 24″ x 60″ face skins and one piece of 12″ x 60″ to use towards the internal torsion-box grid.
With a perimeter of 12mm Baltic Birch I set to cutting and gluing the pieces in place.
I ripped the 6mm plywood into the necessary ribs on the table saw, then ganged them together to edge plane the whole lot of them to enhance the overall flatness.
I cut all the ribs to length and notched them for the egg-crate construction.
This is us test-fitting the internal grid on the previous version. Somehow I did not take pictures of this step on the current model.
The third inning for the big board exercise was perhaps the simplest and certainly is receiving the sparsest treatment on the blog.
The preparation for the third application set was to scrape the entire surface briefly with disposable razor blades. Scraping finishes is a long standing tradition going back probably three centuries, but rather than go through the practice of preparing and using burr-edge scrapers it was just easier to use razor blades for such a limited time.
Following the scraping to the point where the surface was uniformly matte, the final application set was accomplished with another 4-6 complete coats of the ~2-pound shellac varnish.
The board was then set aside for the rest of the second day, to be used for the rub-out exercises on the afternoon of the final day.
In the realm of wood finishing there is probably no technique more revered than that of the mirror-like French Polish. The catechism, liturgy and mysticism of this top-of-the-food-chain practice form the transcendent popular doctrine of the art form. In roughly 100% of the finishing workshops I’ve taught over the past four decades my exhortations on the strategy and structure of finishing success are politely entertained, but the student response tells me that what they really want to know is “how to French Polish.”
Such was once again the case in the recent workshop. Inasmuch as “French Polishing” is not a direct manifestation of The Divine I am not particularly seduced by this mindset. Pad polished spirit varnish surfaces are indeed spectacular and lovely in the right setting, but I see the world of wood finishes as being so much larger and richer than that. Nevertheless a spirit varnish pad polish is one important component of the art, a practice I undertake on occasion and with pretty solid competence. Given that my pal Knoxville Dave does more of it these days than I do, I asked him to come to the barn for the weekend and lead the students through this series of exercises.
Spirit varnish pad polishing is unusually dependent on the “feel” feedback loop running through the brain, down the arm, into the hand holding the pad, the nature of the interaction of the varnish laden pad with the surface being polished, and the resultant information signal being sent back up the hand and arm to the brain. With practice this OODA loop becomes habituated like almost every other aspect of creativity, but at the beginning it is critical to decode the process. Dave is really excellent at that decoding tutorial.
This workpiece is purposely bland so that the visual information will be derived solely from the varnish being laid down. Dave charged his pad and began sweeping his pad across the surface in a landing-and-takeoff motion, developing both the motion and rhythm for the equation of pad + varnish charge + temp + humidity + character of the workpiece, feeding into the OODA loop instructing the process.
In short order the sheen began to build such that the evidence was clear of the proceedings. After a few minutes of the pad polishing there was enough build-up that Dave moved on to a more visually appealing workpiece.
The mahogany veneered panel was just the thing to emphasize the possibilities of this most simple finishing technique. Given the wax filled grain of the surface the build-up went very fast; the time codes on the images indicate a total work time two minutes between the previous picture and the following picture.
With this encouraging demo completed the students began working on their own workpeices. They took it it like a fish to water.
One of the issues we struggled with for the weekend was the cool, damp weather. As the spirit varnish was applied the solvent evaporation brought the surface temperature of the workpiece down to the dew point, and we wrestled with cloudy films. Once they began to become manifest it was time to set the workpiece aside and after an hour or so the film clarified.
It was, in the unforgettable words of actor Pat Morita in The Karate Kid, “Wax on, wax off.” This time, however, the “wax on” was molten and the “wax off” was accomplished with Roubo-esque scrapers I made from brass bar stock and scraps of tropical hardwood flooring. By melting wax into the surface, the wood would be prepared perfectly for a grain-filled spirit-varnish finish in the traditional fashion, wax being the dominant grain filler until mineral deposits like plaster or gesso became more popular with industrial manufacturing of furniture. Although, when hammer veneering was the fabrication technique, the grain was well-filled with hot hide glue.
Three sample boards were readied for the exercise with pumice block and razor blade scraping, especially the crotch mahogany veneer panels that had a lot of residue from their original manufacture (I picked up a stack of these panels somewhere along the way and cannot say exactly how they were made except to say that the trace evidence suggests the use of phenolic adhesive and a mighty powerful press, but there was a lot of smoothing to be done). The mahogany panels were being prepped for primo pad polishing as was one of the nondescript sample boards, the third board was going to be waxed, buffed and nothing else.
With small tacking irons wax from the solid blocks was drizzled onto the wood surface, then the drips were re-melted and spread around the surface until there was a good deposition of the molten wax over the entire sample board.
Once cooled, any excess wax was scraped off with a burr-less scraper fashioned after those described and illustrated by Roubo. When finished, it was time to move on to the process everyone had been waiting for.
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