For the second time in a month I loaded my truck to the gunwales and headed off to teach/demonstrate, this time at the recent 18th Century Trades Fair at my friend Tim’s place down county. I brought about a half shebang, the whole shebang would have require at least two trips. As it was I had an 8-foot Nicholson bench, a display table, a full-sized tool chest, lotsa wood to cut and plane, a ton of show-n-tell including my finishing box and exampls of furniture joinery, etc.
After a couple hours I was set up and ready to go.
No sooner did I get home from teaching the Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing class and got the truck unloaded, I dove straight into prepping for last week’s 18th Century Trades Fair down at my friend Tim Duff’s place in Mill Gap VA. I was looking forward to the event, the third annual Labor Day Weekend shindig, as I missed it last year to attend and participate as a longstanding supporter of Handworks in Amana IA.
One of the aspects of preparing for the Trades Fair was making myself a period-appropriate-ish tent in which I would occupy for my demonstrations. I’d purchased a nice canvas drop cloth several months ago to use as the covering and had “conditioned” it by leaving it spread outside through several rains (tells you how long ago this was; we had no decent rain from April through early August). Supposedly this tightens up the canvas weave.
As for the tent structure I decided to make everything from 2×4 construction lumber I had on-hand, it was a bit lightweight but it was handy.
I made the long main beam from a pair of full-sized boards, hand planed and scarfed together with a 24″ long “bird mouth” to achieve the 12-foot length I needed. These were supported by hand planed full-sized 2x4s mortised into the beam.
I spruced up the posts with recurved corbels and cut a curve on the end of the beam, then chamfered everything by hand.
To make the posts and beam into a tent I fashioned ten tent poles, again using 2x4s but cut into octagons on the bandsaw, then spokeshaved and once again hand planed. I actually found one of my Japanese planes to be the best tool for this task.
Once the surfaces were all planed I added pins (screws) to the tops of each pole. The pins were inserted into holes in the leather grommets I glued at the appropriate places in the canvas.
The guy ropes held everything upright and I planed a bunch of leftover Gragg chair pieces to be used as the cord stakes on-site.
Fortunately, I had the space on the fourth floor of the barn to set it up ahead of time. As it turned out I did not need the tent at the event, Tim had erected a large tent and asked me to demonstrate there along with a hand-finished deerskin artist and a local historical fort presenter. But, as Mrs. Barn says, I’ve got a first-class shelter for the next time I need one.
Plus, as the title alludes, two trash bags of shavings to use as tinder this winter. Since she is the one to revive the fire from the overnight coals every morning (a handful of shavings gets it going right away) the pleasure from the project will continue for many months.
N.B. Things have been crazy busy in a wonderful way and I’m looking forward to a more sedate pace in the coming days. Stay tuned. — DCW
Three weeks ago I gathered with 10 novitiate varnishistas from around the country for a three-day romp down the long and winding trail of historic woodfinishing hosted by Joshua Farnsworth at his Wood and Shop facility near Charlottesville VA. Over the years I have evolved a very tight syllabus to make sure every participant leaves with a set of successful exercises under their belts, or fingernails as the case may be. This solid foundation allows me to work around the edges and incorporate some new things as I did this year, with mixed success.
A large part of the course success is due to the fact that I supply EVERYTHING for the students to use. Though that is a substantial undertaking it does guarantee a greater chance of success than if I mail out a supplies-and-tools list. After a couple experiences of wasting several hours of class time scrounging up supplies, tools, and projects for the students who forgot them I tossed that concept overboard many years ago.
The routine should be fairly familiar to anyone who follows this blog, so this year I will simply be posting a gallery of images to capsulize the three days. There is no way a few pictures can convey fully the richness of the event from either a learning or fellowship perspective, plus there were many portions where I had no pictures because I was, well, teaching. There are entire exercises that were not included in the photos.
Smoothing the 24″ x 48″ birch plywood panels in preparation for fifteen coats of 1-1/2-pound lemon shellac.
Shellac makes its first appearance
The end of the “first inning” (five brushed coats of shellac)
After drying for several hours, we ended Day 1 with a light scuffing of 220 sandpaper followed by another five brush coats of shellac.
After drying overnight following the “second inning,” the surface was uniformly scraped, followed by a “third inning” of five coats and set aside to dry for 24 hours.
The final steps for the large panel included dividing it into quadrants, each of which was treated differently. This quadrant was dry-pumiced in preparation for shellac pad polishing.
Final shellac varnish pad polishing.
A second quadrant was polished with tripoli (rottenstone) in white spirits, the third was rubbed strenuously with Liberson 0000 steel wool saturated with paste wax, and the fourth was left “off the brush.”
Smoothing a mahogany panel with a pumice block.
Working the mahogany panel with a 1″ x 1/8″ polissoir, followed by molten beeswax (scraped clean) as a grain filler.
Making and using a linen pounce/pad to apply the 1/2-pound shellac varnish.
Building the padded shellac varnish.
Burnishing an embossed molding with the Carver’s Model polissoir, followed by a few coats of brushed shellac.
Revisiting the shellacked surface with the Carver’s Polissoir.
Applying asphalt glazing to half of the molding piece.
Feathering out the asphalt glazing with a badger brush.
Comparing the appearance of five coats each of Bullseye Amber and Bullseye Clear from the hardware store.
A classroom full of busy varnishers.
And much, much more.
So there’s a snapshot (pun intended) of the recent gathering. I know we will have the class again next summer at the school in Earlysville VA.
These are the handouts of the syllabus for the upcoming Introduction to Historic Woodfinishing workshop, honed over the years and the dozens of times I’ve taught the workshop. About the only changes I make any more are if the course schedule is truncated to be shorter than the three days I have here.
Sometimes a full day of handplaning is just, well, an Experience. After being mostly absent from the shop for several months I spent the last couple of weeks just cleaning, organizing, puttering and preparing for upcoming events.
As part of that enterprise I spent last Thursday handplaning a pile of resawn mahogany and cherry panels for student workpieces during this week’s Introduction to Historic Finishing workshop in Earlysville VA. I woke Friday morning with my right shoulder and left tricep barking at me, letting me know I was out of shape for hand tool work. That, and the blisters on my hands.
Not exotic, but still an exhilarating day. Plus a pile of tinder for this coming winter’s wood stove fires.
My latest conversation with long-time fried Brian Wilson is now available on this Now For Something Completely Different podcast, a labor of love for him to stay occupied in his retirement. After 55 years of broadcasting he can’t kick the habit.
These sessions could be titled “Don Uncensored” because I talk frankly about a variety of forbidden subjects (there is never any foul language, that only happens inside my head when I make a mistake at the bench).
As always, find it for yourself and avoid it if strident observations offend you.
I’ve laid the bench over to drill the holdfast holes in the apron.
As I prepare for the upcoming Historic Trades event over Labor Day weekend I am bringing to completion this latest of my Nicholson benches, originally fabricated for use in the Build A Gragg Chair workshop two summers ago. Well, something like “completion.” Given the utilities needed for that exercise the benches were never “finished,” all they needed were to be solid worktables able to hold Moxon and Zyliss vises.
With a drill jig I easily bored as many holes as I wanted across the front and in the top.
I went back and forth on this; do I add a nice leg vise? How about twin screw face vise, a/k/a Moxon.
In the end I decided to follow the muse of Mike Siemsen, whose brilliant video is a “must watch.”
I might go back and add a big screw leg vise, mostly for the experience of making the threaded screw, but for now I’m going to use this as a bare-bones bench. If I have time before the event I will tooth the work surfaces,
As Mrs. Barn and I get settled back into our routines at Shangri-la after many weeks of intermittent and extensive travel, we had a wonderful morning of fellowship yesterday helping our friends K&E harvest five dozen chickens. We started the morning with 65 grass-fed chickens and by lunch we had the bird carcasses processed and cooling. We departed with four of the whole chickens and an armful pastured/grass-fed-only beef in our cooler. (We recognize that sublime food is a luxury good and are willing to make it our primary luxury indulgence).
Sorry there are no pictures, we were up to our elbows in chicken guts from beginning to end.
Whew! Concluding a few months of mostly traveling we got back to Shangri-la late Sunday evening after driving non-stop from Alabama, where L’il T’s family just moved (we were “helping,” a/k/a grandparenting L’il T and his brother). Travel advisory — avoid Chattanooga if at all possible, the construction and attendant constriction made it a more than an hour of stop and go experience at 97 degrees.
I am looking forward to resuming some semblance of norma life, including full days in the shop. This is made possible by the cessation of travel for most of the foreseeable future, along with finding a sturdy Mennonite lad to do most of the yard work. We were spending 3-4 days a week just keeping the grass cut, brush beat back, and trimming the edges. This young man could do what is necessary in 3-4 hours, rather than 3-4 days. Oh, to have the exuberance and fortitude of the young! That plus a $10k lawnmower makes a big difference.
Other than routine chores around the homestead I’ll be preparing for a Labor Day Weekend shindig at my friend Tim’s place, celebrating the historic crafts of our ancestors. I’ll be assembling a vintage-form tool kit to fit into my antique cabinetmaker’s tool chest which has been used as storage for the past couple decades. So, I’ll be there with tools and one of my Nicholson workbenches, in period costume, probably making a small dowry chest. If you are in the region, stop on by.
And resuming work on my magnum opus tool cabinet, and oh by the way L’il T is now big enough to use a step stool to wash his hands and brush his teeth. The ones I made for his mom and aunt are still in service after 35+ years.
And my traveling tool kit needs completing. As do a couple of Gragg chairs. And those half-finished Studley mallet exercises, and the patterns for the genuine replicas. And the custom oculars for my rifle scopes, bypassing the now nearly defunct right eye (dominant). And the boat load of writing and editing staring me in the face. And setting up a video system to make in-shop vids after I get the Gragg video edited. And tuning my ripple molder.
This post is presented annually, revised a bit from time to time. Despite dozens of recitations, I can never read the last line of The Declaration out loud because I am overcome with emotion.- DCW
Tomorrow my fellow Patriots and I, however many of us there are, will commemorate and celebrate the 248th anniversary of the most profound statement of human aspiration ever known. We have already endured two violent wars of secession, the first from 1775-1783 and the second from 1861-1865, and I pray that our third one can be avoided by a peaceful segregation of a populace that no longer shares a common vision.
As our nation is seemingly rife with incurious, gullible and servile inhabitants, we would be well-served to reflect seriously on the document encapsulating the mission statement for the greatest nation ever known to man, the only nation ever founded on a creed rather than geography or lineage. It was and is of course imperfect, no institution created by fallen and sinful men and women can be anything else.
I am unabashedly proud to be a partisan in the cause of Life, Liberty, and Property (the original wording) and find The Declaration of Independence to be the most noble civil document ever created by mankind. I pray you will read and reflect on the ideas expressed by men who pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to pursue the path of liberty. Reading it is much like reading the Minor Prophets of the Old Testament; more up-to-date regarding the human condition than tomorrow’s headlines.
God Bless America, and may righteousness flourish and wickedness be overcome.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good. He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them. He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only. He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures. He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people. He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within. He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands. He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers. He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance. He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures. He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power. He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation: For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us: For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States: For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world: For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent: For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury: For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies: For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments: For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever. He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us. He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people. He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation. He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands. He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
John Hancock
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
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