Renowned furniture maker Peter Follansbee presented two sessions at WW18thC, the first concentrating on the making of 17th century carved frame-and-panel chests, the second on making chairs. Peter looks like someone who planned on attending a Dead concert and found out he wandered into a woodworking shindig.
His comfort in front of an audience and well-deserved confidence in his ability is heartening. And his artistry with carving flows from his hands naturally, seemingly effortless.
His second session was an ambitious attempt to make a green-wood chair in 90 minutes. He got close.
With the legs and writing box done it as time to assemble them and make the shelf that had to be fitted to them precisely not only for the structure as a whole but to provide the specs for the spindles that held them together.
Not a whole lot of descriptive detail required here, the individual components were simply screwed together to make sure the pieces fit and allow for the layout of any remaining components.
It was certainly not a wasted effort as it allowed me to work out some of the minute details that could not be spatially resolved any other way.
It was finally time to move on to my pile of vintage true mahogany.
With the legs in-hand it was time to build the writing box that went on top of them. Again using mostly southern yellow pine from my pile I set to work. It was straightforward but had to fit the legs precisely. I dispensed with making the bow-front drawer for the box as it would be predetermined by the box itself.
To get practice for the re-sawing that would come soon in prized vintage mahogany I did that with this tulip poplar stock.
The joinery for the box was mundane but a necessary exercise.
I established the curve of the drawer frame and the top with drawknife and spokeshave.
And put it together. The writing surface was simply tacked in place with finishing nails as I would need to remove it to check the internals once the real project was underway. On that version the top would be glued in place with glue blocks.
Up next: joining the legs, box and shelf to finish the prototype.
It’s been more than four months since I last wrote about my project to interpret an early 19th century writing desk for a client, when I had the opportunity to use period appropriate technology for virtually the entire project. Previously I had written about deriving the design templates for the project, and this post will finally get down to fashioning wood.
My first problem(?) was that I was a bit hazy on some of the internal construction details of the original. To resolve that void, or to at least come to a workable conclusion, I needed to build a full scale prototype. Using some left over 2x SYP from a workbench-building project I did just that. I rough cut each leg element with a bandsaw (this was primarily a proportion and joinery exercise) then shaped them just enough to get the gist of the idea.
Then with each individual element fashioned I dove into the joinery for the complete leg assembly, with frequent dry fittings.
Using PVA I glued up each leg.
In the end I had two leg assembles shaped and fashioned, and joined, glued, and assembled. This was an important moment as I exerted my full weight on each individual leg to make sure they would hold.
They did.
Some friends have a century-old painted wicker rocker that is a prized accent on their front porch, and one of the rockers broke. Several times.
I find that many of these old rockers are made from “run of the mill” lumber which can be good or bad, and when they are bad there is just no fixing them. So, I made a new one.
I began by tracing the remaining sound rocker on a piece of 2x framing lumber and band sawing the bottom profile into the 2x and ripped a number of strips from the same 2x board to build up a new laminated rocker (the only time I have used the table saw in a couple of months).
Using the just-sawn contour as the form, I laminated a four-ply rocker from the strips using yellow PVA as it was going to be exposed to the porch environment. I clamped it all together, wrapped in wax paper to make sure it comes apart as it should, and let it sit until the glue was hard. A couple days later it popped free just fine.
Pinching the rough laminated piece in the four dogs of my vise I planed and shaped it in just a few minutes.
My first step was to clean up the glue squeeze-out with a plane which took 30 seconds per side.
Once that was done I traced the original rocker again to determine the front to back taper.
With a spokeshave I achieved the desired taper line in a few minutes.
Getting the holes of the right size in the right place, I finished off the project with some final shaping with spokeshaves and rasps, and it was ready to be sent home.
A few days ago I returned to Mordor on the Potomac for the completion and assembly of the c.1900 gigantic portrait of the Chinese Dowager Empress. I was astounded at the change in the painting by my colleagues Jia-sun and Ines who, along with a legion of others, transformed it into a sparkling image.
My role in the day’s festivities was to affix the locking corner cleats I had fabricated for the frame.
I used double tapered cross battened cleats to make sure the corners do not come apart unless you want them to.
I beat a retreat as fast as I could back the the mountains. It was a great project, and it is unlikely that I will ever be conserving a painting frame quite like this one again.
It was more than a week into Spring, and being this Spring the sun rose to reveal an inch of icy snow coating everything the morning we were to visit the incomparable Conner Prairie historic complex, one of the nation’s premier enterprises of historic reenacting and interpretation. Once the slop was scraped from my truck we were on our way; one advantage was that the bitter cold kept the crowd small and we had the place nearly to ourselves.
One of the highlights was the timber frame barn in the Conner homestead. The main cross-beam is a gargantuan oak timber more than 12” x 24” x 40 feet long (the historic carpenters there figure the tree trunk was more than eight feet in girth) and the longitudinal mid-rafter beam was an 8×8 perhaps 70 feet long.
I especially enjoyed our time in the carpenter’s shop, where my wife and I were the only visitors. This allowed for a lengthy conversation with the proprietor about tools, wood, and their lathe. He showed it to me and allowed me a turn.
It is a magnificent shop-built machine with a 300-pound flywheel that can get away from you fast! Since I am a head taller than “Mr. McLure” it was very awkward for me, but I could see one of these fitting into the fabric of The Barn.
In the center of the one end was the impressive work bench, which had been built in the shop in years past. A copy of no specific documented model, it is instead a combination from a historically accurate vocabulary.
It seems to be about two parts Roubo with one part of Moxon and a dash of Nicholson. The six-inch-square oak legs are capped by a four-inch slab top, and the fixed deadman is stout as well. There is no real woodworker in America who would not be delighted to have this beast in their workspace. I know I would.
If you are going near the Indianapolis area, take a peek.
As is often the case for the second day of a three day workshop, the atmosphere was one of quiet work and little instruction or lecturing. Since the objective for the day was to get everyone’s parquetry assembled and ready to glue to the plywood base, there was lots,
and lots,
and lots of gluing parallelogram lozenges down to the kraft paper.
As usual, whenever somebody got theirs ready to go they jumped in to help the next person get theirs ready.
In addition, we needed to get the loaves of banding glued up to slice first thing in the morning of the third day.
Finally everything was glued up and we called it a day.
Last weekend I taught a three-day workshop on creating this parquetry panel a la Roubo for the Kansas City Wood Worker’s Guild, a delightful host if ever there was one.
All you’ve heard about the Guild, its membership, and space is true and then some. they are positively at the top of the food chain studio-wise with a nice lecture space, and complete bench room, and a machine shop to die for.
The first day began with a discussion of the project in general, but more importantly several specific tasks to get things started. First was the construction of two jigs necessary for the cutting of the 60-120-60-120 parallelogram lozenges that comprise the parquetry. One of the Guild members had prepared all the baltic birch plywood to make them, so all we had to do was cook some glue and assemble them.
Next came the ripping of the lumber into the veneer strips from which the lozenges were cut.
Following that was the cutting of lozenges. By the hundreds.
Since the pattern is first assembled and glued precisely onto heavy kraft paper, the needed to be divided exactly on both axes.
Finally came the assembling and gluing on the paper. this is actually more difficult than it seems and can be quite a challenge for newcomers until they get the knack of it, something I will be addressing in a blog in a week or so unless the spirit moves me to make it sooner.
More tomorrow.
About a month ago, a mere three weeks before I was set to leave for Woodworking in America, I received a note from Jay Christian, Program Chair for the Washington Woodworker’s Guild, reminding me of my presentation to them on the evening of October 15. Immediately I checked my calendar and smacked my forehead. I enjoy presenting to the Guild and have done so close to a dozen times over the decades, but this one presented some scheduling problems.
The evening for my scheduled presentation coincided with my plans for packing so that I could depart for Cincinnati the next morning. Given the late date of the reminder, I felt there was no way I could ask the Guild to reschedule and so I simply proceeded with the presentation as scheduled.
My topic for the evening was the steam bending of parts for the construction of the Gragg elastic chair, one of the favorite research projects from my nearly three decade long career at the Smithsonian Museum Conservation Institute. I’d shown the chair at a previous meeting’s “Show and Tell”, and they invited me back to show exactly how I was doing it. I will be blogging extensively about the two Gragg chairs I am building over the winter.
Much to my delight my protégé Daniela was able to arrange for her husband to watch little Pedro so she could attend. That was exceedingly helpful as she and I had worked out a choreography for the necessarily rapid forming of these complex parts.
A demo of this type requires a large inventory of materiel, tools, and devices, including my petite bodger’s shaving horse built from a recycled half log that used to be a door header from a log barn and a variety of scraps from the wood pile.
Another favorite fixture is my shaving beam that can be clamped to a work surface. The beam has a mondo cam clamp at one end and a tiny wood screw at the other, so I have a lot of flexibility to either pull or push a tool against the work piece. It is a genuine favorite accessory, and is used extensively when preparing the stock for steam bending.
I covered a wide range of topics including harvesting, and demonstrating splitting, and riving, shaving, and planing the oak stock.
The tight serpentine form of the major side element for the chair — it begins at the crest rail of the back and ends as the front foot — requires bending straps to help everything bend without breaking.
Once the piece has cooked properly, in this case for about 20 minutes once the steam chamber gets to proper temperature (about 180 degrees or a bit more) out it comes. It is as hot as you would expect, and often I use welding gloves.
To make things move more quickly I marked out the locations for the straps on either side of the element, and we quickly clamp them in place with Vice Grips. We only have about 60 seconds to get everything done. We almost hear the clock ticking in our brains as we get going.
At thirty seconds I’d better be wrapping up the first curve, setting up for the opposing second curve. Haste is not helpful if it is jerky. I have to work steadily but quickly.
By the 45 second mark I need to be working on the second of the serpentine bends.
The last step is to tighten the wood screws that inflict the return sweep onto the bottom of the front leg at the 60 second mark.
Done! This bend went perfectly.
While I had hoped for a 9PM conclusion, between my longwindedness and the audience’s enthusiasm it was more like 10.30 before we got all wrapped up and on the road, and 2.30 Wednesday morning before pulling up at the cabin. The next morning we unloaded, reloaded, and spent nine hours driving through the rain to Cincinnati.
Photos courtesy of Barry Ingram and Joel Jacobson
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