Woodworking with Rob Millard

Building a Seymour Breakfront, Part 3

Building this breakfront reminds me of working with sheet goods, because the panels are somewhat larger than I’m used to working with. Because I so rarely work with large panels, I lack some tools that would ease the process, namely a table saw with sufficient rip capacity, or a tracked portable saw. Of course the squaring up process begins with establishing one straight edge, with the jointer plane.  Then the panels were laid out for length with a rule, square and knife and cut close to the layout lines on the bandsaw. Click on any photo to see larger version.

 

 A miter plane makes short accurate work of squaring up the ends, and wetting the endgrain results in effortless, glass smooth cuts. As long as the wet shavings are removed from the plane, the plane will suffer no ill effects from doing this. Now the panel can be sawn and planed to width; leaving that until now, allows you to plane the endgrain and not have to be concerned with tearout, as the plane exits the wood. Here is where a table saw would help, because it is somewhat difficult to get a perfectly parallel edge. To aid in establishing an accurate width, I clamp together two pieces of scrap and use it as a gauge to check for parallel.

Since, all of the pieces have the same height; I began with a side panel to the center section, so I could use it for a “template” in conjunction with the router fitted with a flush trim bit, to quickly and accurately size all the other pieces. The center section side panel was chosen, because it is the widest piece and can therefore be used to size the other, narrower panels. In the same vein, the other panels were sized with the router, after first planing one to size and using it as a template for the others. After sizing the inside panels to the flanking sections, they had  a mahogany strip applied to the front edge, with a rubbed joint. This will form the notch for the doors.

 The depth of this notch has to be checked with the door blank and the scraps of the veneer that will eventually cover the door.(the next blog entry will detail the door construction). The other panels have their notches roughed out on the bandsaw and trimmed to exact size with, the router and flush trim bit.

 

Not having access to the original, I had to guess at the joinery. The joinery choices were also influenced by the changes made to facilitate shipping and installation, but none of these changes affected the outward appearance of the breakfront. From the photos, it does not appear that the drawer blades or the vertical panels are veneered, so this means the drawer blades are not joined to the sides with dovetails, but with a mortise and tenon.

 

 

 Some of the tenons can not be through tenons; those would be on the solid mahogany end panels and front most tenon on the drawer blade of the center section. All of the other tenons can protrude though the sides for maximum strength. The mortises were started with a forstner bit, stopping just short of going all the way through, for the blind mortises, and into scrap wood for the through mortises. Squaring up the mortises is tedious, especially the through ones, but it has to be done accurately. For maximum accuracy, I ran the layout lines on both sides, so I could square up the through mortises from both sides to prevent breakout. This is where I made my first mistake because I neglected the fact that the panels have to be made in mirror image pairs, and one of  the center panels, I scribed the lines on what would be the exposed face. Luckily, I have developed the habit of lightly scribing my lines and going back and deepening them, so it was easy to plane away the errant scribe lines.  The front mortise on bottom drawer blades, are moved towards the back, to accommodate the notch for the door. I thought about using the table saw fitted with a dado blade to form the tenons on the drawer blades, but I ended up using the bandsaw fitted with a rip fence. The waste between the tenons was removed with a scroll saw.

 

The bottom boards are joined to the sides with through dovetails. The solid mahogany sides will be exposed, so the bottom board has a rabbet run on the outside end, which will place the dovetails safetly behind the base molding. I intended to glue a piece of mahogany back into the rabbet at the front edge where it is exposed when the door is open, but I think a stopped rabbet would have been better. None of these dovetails will be visible on the finished piece, so I just laid them out by eye.

I’m a dedicated tails first dovetailer, but with large panels like these that does present a problem, the transferring of the tails to the pin board. To overcome that difficulty, a straightedge board is clamped to the tail board, on the base line of the dovetails, and then the tail board can be clamped in place against this straightedge. Another advantage of this method, is the ease with which the inevitable cupping the in panels can be accounted for while scribing.   

The waste between the tails was removed in the traditional method, but the tough nature of the birch would have taken considerable chiseling to remove the waste between the pins, so I rough cut away most of the waste with a coping saw and used (wait for it) the router and flush trim bit running against a clamped on straightedge; I’ve never had so much use for the flush trim bit as I have had on this job.

The top of the sections have three dovetailed spreaders. Like the bottom boards, these spreaders are rabbeted on the exposed ends, so the dovetails will be hidden by the top. I used pine for all of the spreaders except for the front spreader of the center section, which is birch. Birch was used, because the center “drawer” was changed from being a Butler’s desk, to a standard drawer, to back to a Butler’s desk, with some minor changes (more on this later). I was concerned that pine would lack the strength where lock bolt is mortised into it, so hence the use of birch (I think this was really an unnecessary concern, but peace of mind can’t be over rated).

 

At this point, the mahogany panels were smooth planed and the birch panels were smoothed with a card scraper. Dados for the drawer runners and the shelves were run with the router against a clamped on guide. The shelves in the center section are going to be 1” thick because it will hold a considerable quantity of china, while those in the flanking sections with their shorter span are only ¾” thick.  To provide for some adjustability, three sets of dados were run for the shelves.

To remove any evidence of machine work, I used a router plane and side rabbet to clean up the dados. The dados for the drawer runners were also cut with a router, but I didn’t have an 11/16” bit, so I cut them with a 5/8” bit and then slipped a 1/16” veneer shim between the router base and the guide to widen it. This worked very well, but I had to learn the hard way that after inserting the shim, I had to feed the router opposite direction. The dados for the runners did not need to be cleaned up.

Next, came a step I labored over. I had made a piece for this same customer some years ago, and I don’t think he was happy with the visible and much lighter secondary wood, so I chose to color the birch to mimic mahogany. This was almost certainly not done on the original, but coloring birch to resemble mahogany does have a historical precedent.

Finishing, started with a careful sanding of the panels using a random orbit sander. The scraped surfaces with  with 220 and 320 grit paper, while those that were planed, were very lightly hand sanded with just the 320 grit paper. The grain was raised with distilled water, and the contrast between those surfaces that were scraped and carefully sanded and those that were planed, couldn’t be more stark. The scraped/sanded surfaces suffered from extensive raised grain, while those that were planed, exhibited little if any raised grain. This only reinforced what I have always known, scraping is a rather crude way to prepare a surface, but often the only way, and it is no substitute for sanding. A planed surface is the ultimate, in both texture and flatness. I don’t believe scraping, sanding or planing, individually or in combination has any effect on the ultimate clarity of the finished surface.

With the surface prepared, the panels were dyed with a red mahogany aniline dye. To limit cupping the unfinished sides were misted with water. When the dye had dried, a couple coats of blond shellac were brushed on allowed to dry and lightly scuff sanded. I had originally intended to use Minwax Red Mahogany stain as a glaze to blend the colors of the mahogany, and the birch with its high contrast between the sapwood and heartwood, but that proved to be too red, so Bartley’s Dark Brown Mahogany gel stain was used instead. After the gel stain had dried, a few more coats of blond shellac was brushed on and when ready,  rubbed out. I had worried that having one side finished and the other unfinished would lead to the panels warping, but that proved unfounded.

 

The glue up was pretty straightforward, using hot hide glue, depressed with urea. I took considerable care to square the case while clamping, but when the clamps came off, I was surprised at how easy it was to rack the sections out of square, so that time was effectively wasted.

 

Buliding a Seymour Breakfront part 2

Now with the drawings and cut list complete, its time for the construction to begin. The Mussey book, gives a description of the woods used in the breakfront, but not what those woods are used for. I decided to use cherry for the drawer fronts, birch for the interior parts of the lower case, and pine for all other secondary components.

Click on any photo to see larger version

Due to space limitations, both for the raw lumber and the scraps left over, I only ordered about 2/3 of the lumber. This way I can place another order later and not have as much left over lumber, which can quickly take over a shop and is just added expense. As usual Groff and Groff came though for me. I needed 4/4 20” wide planks of mahogany, and when I first called them, they only had 5/4  32” wide boards. I was not crazy about the idea of chopping a 32” plank down to around 19”  and planning off  5/8”, but you do what you have to do. This bothers me not only from the standpoint of wasting a fairly rare board, but from a financial point too; 4/4 20” boards are about $9-10 a BF and 5/4 32” ones are $15.00 and up. The next morning they called back and told me they had some nice 4/4 mahogany that would finish out to 19” wide, and wanted to know if that would work. That phone call saved me several hundred dollars, and only reinforced my impression of them as a first rate dealer.

I started by constructing the base units. Taking care during the stock preparation phase will pay off at every future step.  I don’t have the space for a decent size jointer and to be honest, the big ones scare me to death, so I will never own one. Instead I use a portable power plane, the modern version of a scrub plane, to flatten one face. But, before any tools are used, I thoroughly wire brush the faces of the lumber to remove any grit, which will prolong the life of the planer knives. Mahogany is typically well sawn and due to its inherent stability remains very flat and true when dried. Birch on the other hand is not as stable, yet this lot was very well sawn and quite true, which made it easy to flatten. The first step is to eyeball the board for any gross humps or cupping, and remove these. Then, with an accurate straightedge, (I use one made from a piece of straight grain cherry), check for straightness and plane accordingly. At this point, the board may very well look flat, but could still have a twist in it, so winding sticks are used to check for this. I have a pair of winding sticks I made from mahogany with holly and ebony inlays, but I prefer two framing squares and an off cut piece of melamine; the melamine placed behind the far square, helps to highlight the deviation or lack thereof, in the top edges of the framing squares. You can view a two part video of using a power plane to prepare stock here.

With one face flat, the stock can be sent through the thickness planer. Scaling the photo, showed the sides measured 11/16” thick, so for uniformity I planed the interior partitions to this thickness  plus 1/32" for later clean up.

The mahogany plank for the sides, wouldn’t fit through my planer, so I flattened one face, with the power plane, taking off approximately half of the total amount needed to bring it to its final thickness; in theory, this keeps the moisture content equal and the plank flat. When used carefully, the power plane is capable of extreme accuracy. I hold it very lightly and kind of glide it over the surface. I also work with, across and diagonal to the grain to keep things flat. The progress is check frequently with a straightedge, winding sticks and a rule. With a face flat, a line is struck from that face, with a marking gauge, set 1/16” thicker than the finished dimension.   That last 1/16” is removed with various hand planes. Starting with a fore plane, the mahogany is planed across the grain; even the most stubborn wood, planes like a dream across the grain, just be sure to have sufficient width that the inevitable splintering will allow the plank to finish out to the desired dimension. Again frequent checking is required with the straightedge and winding sticks. I like to start with the face that was planed to establish the rough thickness. This way the scribe line to establish the final thickness is on the opposite face and the two can’t be confused.  After planing across the grain, I go with the grain using a 30” wooden jointer plane, which is light and very accurate. With an accurately flattened face, it is just a matter of scribing that other line and planing to thickness, following the same procedures for the first face.

The birch has to be glued up to achieve the necessary width. I had asked for 9”-10” wide boards, so I would only need two pieces for each panel. Groff and Groff did their best to fill that request, but most of the boards were in the 8” range, necessitating a 3 piece glue up on several of the panels. The vertical sides for the central base section have a strip of mahogany glued to the front edge because that section protrudes pasts the flanking end sections.

Typically I make edge joints with only hand planes, but lately I have been using the shaper to roughly straighten the edges, by offsetting in the infeed and outfeed fences (think of a jointer laid on its side). This has proven to be very accurate, despite the relatively short fences on the shaper.

I had not used birch in quite a while, and I can’t say it was a happy reunion; birch is notorious for its hardness and revering grain. With more cooperative wood, the edge joints are made by clamping face to face, the boards to be joined and planing both at the same time, which causes any deviation from a true square edge, to cancel out and results in a flat panel. The cantankerous nature of the birch made this a bit difficult, so I planed each board separately, which called for more attention to keep the edges square. The wooden jointer, despite its higher center of gravity, is much easier to “keep” square, and add to that, its 50 º bed angle made short work of jointing the edges. The edge joints were planed with a very slight hollow or spring joint, and joined with hot hide glue, which was retarded with urea. With accurate stock preparation, the glue up will go easily, but some misalignment will exist no matter how careful you are. I like to work with the boards on the floor and use my knee and hands to make slight adjustments to get the faces flush. A few minutes of careful work, will save a lot of effort when it comes time to plane the panels after glue up.

Planing the glued up panels is similar to the mahogany plank, but the panel should already be quite flat and true, so the straightedge, winding sticks and marking gauge won’t be needed.  Start by planing across the grain, which is the only viable option with the difficult birch. With a very sharp plane and a light cut an excellent surface can be achieved by going across the grain. That surface is quickly and easily cleaned up with a scraper plane.

The next installment will detail the dimensioning and joining the panels to make the base sections.

Buliding a Seymour Breakfront, Part 1

Over the next few weeks, I will document the entire process of building a Federal period breakfront, from interpreting photos to make working drawings, through to the finishing. I will include all of the successes and mistakes (hopefully there won’t be many of the latter).

This entry will begin with a bit on the history of the piece, what changes are being made, and preparing the drawings.

The breakfront is in the collection of the United States Department of State, and is on display in the Diplomatic Reception Rooms. It is a massive piece, measuring 89 ¼” high and 96 ½” wide. Several sources attribute the breakfront to the Salem or coastal Massachusetts area, but Robert Mussey (see below for a list of the titles referenced in this article) in his excellent book on the Seymour’s attributes it to them. Whoever made it, it is an impressive piece; appearing quite delicate despite its massive scale.

As with any project, this one begins with assembling the reference materials. In this case there are several fairly good photos of the breakfront, in various books. The Mussey book has the best, in that it is taken straight on , is in color, and has a lengthy description of the piece.  Yet, if using only this photo, you may think the center section is considerably taller and deeper than the flanking sections.  The photo in Treasures of State is of somewhat poor quality but does show the relationship between the center and end sections, and also has a description of the piece. The photo in the Sack book is much clearer, and very accurately shows the relationship, between the center and end sections. A photo in Becoming a Nation is so small as to be of no real value.

Even a careful study of detailed photos, may not result in a true reproduction, because of course a photo will only get you so far, but often it is all that is available. When setting out to reproduce a piece from a photo, I always think of the Iwo Jima Memorial in the Arlington National Cemetery.

There is one error in it, which escaped the attention of Felix de Weldon and others involved in making the statues. By the time work started on the monument in 1951, M-1 carbines had been retrofitted with bayonet lugs, and these were used as a reference, during the sculpting. The original movie of the flag raising, shot by Bill Genaust, clearly shows the carbines carried by Ira Hayes and Michael Strank, lacked a bayonet lug. I bet the rear sights are wrong too, but enough of the obscure history.  So, when I find a missed detail in my work, I feel better, knowing an important national monument isn’t perfect either.

The customer decided not to reproduce the Butler’s drawer. I can understand why, since it has limited usefulness in a modern household. I would have liked to make it, but it would have added considerably to the construction time. The original was built in only two sections, but I’m going to make it in 6 major sections; moving and shipping this behemoth is going to be difficult, not to mention expensive, enough without having it being any more unwieldy than necessary. This approach will cause its own set of issues, but those outweigh the alternative.

Click on any photo to see a larger version

 

To prepare the drawings, I used a dial caliper reading to .001” to measure a part of the photo, for which there is a known dimension. Take that reading and divide it by the known dimension. This will result in a factor that can then be used, to determine any other dimension. For example, the photo of the breakfront in the Mussey book, measures 5.712” high, which when divided by 89.25(the actual height of the breakfront) is .064. Now this factor of .064 can be used to determine other dimensions on the breakfront. As an example, if some part in the photo measures 1.167”, its actual dimension is 18 ¼” (1.167÷.064 = 18.234 which is rounded up to 18 ¼”). Depending on the quality of the lens and how carefully the camera was leveled, there may be some distortion in the photo, so it is a good practice to determine a factor for both the vertical and horizontal dimensions. In this case they were very close, with the vertical factor being .064 and the horizontal .062. If the photo had not been taken straight on, the same method would have been used, but the horizontal dimensions would have been less accurate. In this case a certain amount of interpretation, would have been necessary, based on your sense of proportion; in other words drawing it out full size or to scale and seeing if things look right.

I make a quick sketch to set out the large overall dimensions. Depending on the complexity of the piece, this drawing may be enough to go ahead and start construction. The many components of this breakfront, requires more details and this is best accomplished with a full size drawing. The drawing doesn’t have to be a masterpiece; just good enough to get the details on paper, and have a document to take dimensions from.  Here again, the dial caliper is used to pick out the fine dimensions. To achieve maximum accuracy I use a magnifying glass made for stamp and coin collectors, to insure the particular element is being measure precisely; even a small error in measuring will result in a large error when scaled up.

I make the drawings on brown kraft paper, which erases cleanly and holds up well during construction. I think the real benefit of the drawing is not so much the dimensions, which are of course important, but how the process of drawing them, fixes the interaction of the various parts in your mind, and allows you to “see” things you might not have otherwise. In the case of this project, I found the setback of the flanking cases, was somewhat dictated by how much the hinges for the full overlay doors project past the edge of the door. In a very real way, when the drawings are complete, you have already built the piece.

Despite, complicating the drawings to a degree, I wanted to have the plan show both the upper and lower case superimposed over one another. This means there are quite a few overlapping lines, so to keep things clear the lower case was drawn with a standard pencil and the upper case with a blue pencil. Thus drawn, there can be no discrepancies in the way the upper and lower cases align.    

 

Now with the drawings in hand, I can move on to a creating a cut list; a necessary task, which I nonetheless despise.

In the next installment, I will tackle the stock selection and preparation for the lower carcass.

 

 Becoming a Nation

Jonathan L. Fairbanks

ISBN0-8478-2528-0

Treasures of State

Clement E. Conger

Alexeandra W. Rollins

ISBN 0-8109-3911-8

American Antiques from the Israel Sack Collection, Vol. 1

Details of publication unknown

Thr Furniture Masterworks of John and Thomas Seymour

Robert D. Mussey Jr.

ISBN 0-88389-126-3

Curved inlay for Seymour Table

 

 

For me, the furniture of John and Thomas Seymour is the pinnacle of the Federal period so I was very happy to receive a commission to make a side table based on two examples of their work (see The Fine Points of Furniture by Albert Sack, page 270 and a work table in the White House Collection). I had made a similar table some years ago, which happened to one of the first pieces I felt satisfied with the way it turned out, but there were several areas I hoped to do better. One of those, were the curved inlays on the “turrets”. On that first table, a combination of heat, water and kerfs made with a razor saw, got it to bend, to what is a pretty tight radius. Kerfing sounds crude and it is, but when done with a razor saw and with careful placement of the kerfs, the results aren’t all that distracting.  (Click on any photo to see a larger sample).

Wanting to avoid that crudeness, this time the inlay was made in a circular form. The inlay started as a 2” wide stack of 1/16” maple and black dyed veneers.  With a straight inlay, the stack could made from more layers, but here for the ease of bending, it is only 12 layers thick. The finished width of the inlay has to be a precise 3/16”, so a dial caliper was used to measure the veneers that will form the “bread”, which will sandwich the strips that will be cut from the stack. With their thickness thus determined the strips are cut from the stack with a thin kerf bandsaw blade and an auxiliary table plywood table is fitted as a zero clearance throat, to keep splintering to a minimum. I use a scrap piece of wood of similar density as the stack to make trial cuts, until the proper thickness is arrived at. With consistent hand placement and pressure the bandsaw is capable of extreme accuracy, but I still check each strip to ensure they are all within .005” of the desired thickness.

 

On the lathe I turned a form that has a diameter about 1/8” less than that of the finished turret; this was to allow for some spring back as it would be better to have open the inlay up, than to have to force it to a tighter radius. The strips cut from the stack were pre-bent around the form, which is a nice way of saying I broke them with my thumbs. Here again this sounds crude, but the finished inlay didn’t suffer in appearance. Glue was spread on one piece of the maple veneer, and the strips are quickly put into place, before the moisture in the glue hopelessly curls the veneer. Just as quickly this assembly is wrapped around the form with the strips facing the form, making sure the strips maintain contact with one another. Closely placed hose clamps apply pressure while the glue dries. After the assembly has dried for about 30 minutes, the next layer of the maple veneer is glued in place. The outer black dyed veneer is 1/16” thick and needs a little help to bend to the required radius; so it was lightly dampened and an iron supplied some heat to slowly relax it around the form.  When formed, it too is glued in place with the hose clamps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

With the glue dry, it is time to saw off the individual inlays on the bandsaw. To give a solid bearing on the table, a flat was planed on the form. Because the round form is somewhat difficult to control, the inlays are cut thicker than required, to allow some margin of error.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A router bit run in a climb cut fashion, forms the rabbet for the inlay. Of course some hand work is required in the corners.With the rabbet cleaned up, I eyeballed a line that would miter the straight and curved sections together. The inlay is held in place and a razor blade laid on the line, cuts the miter. Hot hide glue is used to glue the inlay in place, using painter’s masking tape as clamps.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When full dry the inlays are flushed up, with a block plane and a scraper. The scraper has to be perfectly sharpened and used with caution to avoid tearout, always working in from the edge.

 

Flag and Certificate case in walnut

 

While the majority of the items I make are pieces of period furniture, not all are and this flag/certificate case is an example of one. It is also an example of why I should stick to copying period furniture; design is not my strong suit. This is the first such case I made incorporating a certificate, but I have made many cases to hold burial flags with a shadow box below to house decorations and other insignia. The idea for this came from a traveling display of the memorabilia of Major Francis Gray Powers at the United States Air Force Museum, nearly 20 years ago. I haven’t made a burial flag case to sell in many years, because the inexpensive and readily available commercial ones, make them unprofitable, but I have made a few in recent years to give away to veteran organizations. Even when I did make them to sell, the profit margin was minuscule, and I resorted to using scrounged materials; I once built about 10 using red oak casings from a demolished McDonalds.

Like most projects this one, started with a (quick) full size drawing. I originally intended to have the certificate surrounded by an equal sized border, but the drawing quickly revealed this would overwhelm the flag. Being obsessed with symmetry, the thought of having an unequal border around the certificate wasn’t appealing, and I didn’t know what to do. In the end, I turned to the classics and used the golden section to size the frame for the certificate. The results aren’t what I envisioned but at least I can say there was a rationale for the choice.

I chose walnut for the case; I have used oak and cherry, but walnut has a richness that can’t be beat. I always have the temptation to use highly figured wood, but in this case straight grain is best; because the focus should be on the flag, and the molded edge adds some visual interest. After accurately preparing stock for flatness and thickness, it was ripped to 1 ¾” wide, but if I had to do it over again, I would have went with 2” (more about this later). You can click on any of the following photos to see a larger version.

 

I ran the molding with the shaper, using a stack of three 1930’s “miniature” cutters I have. These are very versatile cutters that I use often. When used in sets, the cutters seem to perform better if the cutting edges are not aligned; similar to the concept of helical cutterheads. As the molded edge comes from the shaper, it has a slight ridge where two of the cutters come together. Despite this ridge being small, it is somewhat difficult sand away, so I made a profiled scraper that makes short work of removing it.

 

 

 

 

 

I like to have the grain lines continuous at the joint between the vertical sides and the pitched sections of the case, so this requires a little extra work. At first, all the pieces are treated alike and run through the table saw to create a groove for the glass in the pitched pieces and the start of a rabbet on the certificate case. Then the vertical side pieces are mitered and the resulting pieces marked so they can be kept in the proper orientation. Now the rabbet on the certificate case can be finished. I will admit this operation scares me; this is a fairly deep cut on a somewhat short piece, and the table saw is not my favorite tool. The certificate case is now mitered and glued together, using both band and bar type clamps. Normally I would have reinforced the joints with a biscuit, but the narrow width made this a less than attractive option, due to even the number 0 biscuit being too big and the fence on my joiner not offering proper support on such a narrow piece( I think Ryobi  and Porter-Cable make reduced size biscuits that would have worked well in this application). I could have used a router to cut a stop groove, but that would have involved making a jig, a task I despise, so I decided to reinforce the miter in a rather unconventional method, using a ¼” mortising chisel in the drill press to create a mortise for a spline. Typically a spline would have its grain running at right angles to its length, but in this instance I just made it with its grain running with the length; made this way it still provides some long grain glue surface and the case will not see any stress.

 

 

 

 

 

The flag portion of the case is mitered to conform to the plan, finding the angle of the peak miter with a angle divider and a sliding T bevel for the bottom miter. I dry fitted the pieces together and checked the fit to certificate case. I had to make a minor adjustment to the miter that sits atop the certificate case, with a block plane. When satisfied with the fit, the pieces were glued together using the band clamp and one bar clamp; the bar clamp keeps the long points of the miter flush at the intersection with the certificate case ( I put in some clamping pads to protect the wood). When dry the miter was splined as above.

 

 

 

A 1/8” stopped groove is run in the top of the certificate case to receive the glass, and then the flag portion can be temporarily screwed on. I used 1 ¼” drywall screws to assemble the two sections, but they were dangerously close to poking through, so broke the tips off the screws (for once I benefited from the brittleness of a drywall screw). Here again, the bar clamp is used to keep the miters flush, but this time a band clamp is run over the peak of the flag portion of the case, to firmly hold it in place as the screws are set, Neither of these clamps are exerting any significant pressure; they are just there to keep things aligned. At this point, the case was planed and sanded paying close attention to having the miters come out perfect, especially the ones where two sections join. The molded profiles matched nearly perfectly, but a few areas needed some attention with small gouges and a very careful sanding.

The case was finished as detailed elsewhere on this blog-see the walnut finishing post of September 5, 2008. After the finish was rubbed out, the two sections were joined together for a final time, this time with the glass in place.

 

By far the most difficult aspect of the whole process was folding the flag to have the stars in a symmetrical pattern; I spent at least 2 hours folding and re-folding the flag in an effort to have the stars look pleasing (I’m still not completely satisfied with the results). In the end, the flag is not folded in the normal fashion, which resulted in it being thicker than a flag folded in the proper way. This is why I would have liked to have gone with a 2” deep case; it was quite difficult to stuff the flag in that 1 3/8” deep section of the case.  The flag is held in place with a piece of 1/8” plywood ( I would have used ¼” if there would have been more space). I fabricated and rather crudely I might add, two steel clips, with threaded holes. These were mortised and screwed in place, and the back is held in place with two low profile truss head machine screws. An upside down keyhole shaped hole at was cut at the apex of the backing board, by which the case can be hung on the wall, by slipping it over a single screw.

 

Although I didn’t enjoy making it, I’m fairly happy with the results; those off kilter stars bug me.

 

 

Photography for Woodworkers

I just finished updating an article on photography for woodworkers. I am by no means an expert on photography, but I’m kind of obsessed with it. This is the third time I have updated information on photography, and I’m sure there will be more as I’m always learning something about the subject.

You can view the updated article here.

Rob Millard

Inlaying letters/numbers into wood

Recently I was asked about inlaying letters and numbers. While I had seen this on some Pennsylvania furniture, I had never tried it. The closest I had come, was inlaying knotted bows on a Seymour card table. What those bows and letters/numbers have in common is that if made from a single thickness of  wood,  they would be hopelessly fragile, due to the short grain. By making them from two layers of veneer with the grain direction of the plys at right angles to each other, the finished inlays are only somewhat fragile. (Click on any photo to view a larger sample)

The plys were glued together with hot hide glue, pressing them between warmed boards covered in aluminum foil. The glued together veneer plys are unstable, so it should be restrained by clamping it between boards when not being worked on.

 

Because of the fragility of the letters/numbers, trying to saw the unsupported built up ply would be at best difficult, especially  those characters with internal cuts. To improve the stability, the glued up ply is sandwiched between sheets of thin plywood. I use 1/8” luan plywood, which may be difficult to find, but ¼” luan would work just about as well and it seems to be getting thinner all the time, so the difference in thickness isn’t all that great. The stack is nailed around its perimeter with small brads driven into pre drilled holes. The brads are clipped off with diagonal cutting pliers, and peened flush.  A print out with the desired characters is glued to the stack. I had a hard time deciding if I should have the grain in the characters, running vertically or horizontally. In the end I went with horizontal so the grain in the characters would run the same direction as the piece into which they inlaid. After viewing the finished inlays I think it may have been better if it would have run vertically. This may not have been an issue with holly and its nearly invisible grain, but with the maple used here or with satinwood, it is something to consider.

My variable speed scroll saw is sort of an entry level model, but it does a good job, after a few modifications, and the addition of a couple accessories. I discarded the hold down, which did little to aid in the cut. I also fitted an auxiliary table, to cover the huge throat opening in the factory table. A foot switch allows me to have complete control over the work piece as I start and stop the saw. The last accessory is a magnifying light that facilitates making super accurate cuts.

 

I used a No. 5 blade; this seemed a good balance between a fine enough blade and one that made an accurate cut. Of course the order of the cuts is important, with the first cuts made being the internal ones.  The downside to using the No.5 blade is it can’t turn a very sharp corner, so internal  corners should be approached from both sides, instead of trying to “turn” the corner. Outside corners are much easier; you can just pivot in the waste to turn the corner. Even with the thin plywood to stiffen the stack, it becomes quite prone to chatter as the piece nears being sawn free, which requires placing your fingers very close to the blade. This isn’t particularly dangerous because the scroll saw is pretty sedate as saws go, but it robs you of dexterity. The preferred grip is to have a relaxed hold on the stack with your fingers at the edges, where more controlled movements are possible.

 

Despite my best efforts at accurate sawing, the characters as they came from the saw needed some refining, to have smooth, even profiles. As I said before, the ply construction makes characters that are only somewhat fragile, so care has to taken not to fracture the pieces as the are being refined. To support the pieces while they are filed, I used a “bird’s mouth” more typically used for fret sawing. It was more comfortable, to have this birds mouth clamped vertically in a vise. A very fine needle file was used for these detailed refinements. Larger outside curves can be refined, by pinching the piece with the fingers and running it against a smooth cut mill file. This method has the advantage of being fast and safer, because the force is in line with the thickness of the inlay, with very little chance of fracturing it

With the characters refined, it is now time to inlay them. Positioning of the individual characters is critical for the proper appearance.  The most difficult aspect of the whole process is holding the characters in place while scribing around them. I just held them down with my finger being careful not to let them shift or cut myself with the scalpel. Some of the tighter radiuses are best scribed by making a series of light stab cuts, as opposed to trying to draw the knife around the pieces. After a light scribe is done with the characters in place,  they are laid aside and a deeper scribe is made to fully define the edges of the inlay. I took extreme care not to over cut at the corners, which will seriously detract from the finished product.

 

The recess is routed with a Dremel tool fitted with a carbide end mill. The size of the end mill is dictated by the narrowest part of the inlay, which in the example shown was 3/64”. The depth setting is critical; there is very little margin for error when working with veneer. When routing the recess, I wore a magnifying visor, which made an accurate cut easy, although, I had to stop frequently to blow the dust away. The end mill can only go so far, so the edges of the recess have to be cleaned up with a scalpel and various gouges.

 

After a test fitting, to be sure they will fit, the inlays are glued in place with hot hide glue. Hide glue is ideal for this, because it will fill the inevitable small gaps without interfering with the finish. I used a veneer hammer to force the inlays into place and then placed the warmed board/aluminum foil combination used before, to keep them in place while the glue sets.

Once they are dry, they can be carefully scraped flush, and finished. The example shown here is maple inlays into cherry. To finish it, I applied lye  which darkens the cherry but not the maple. Once dry, some white vinegar was applied, which is supposed to neutralized the lye, but I never had any problems when I skipped this step, but the vinegar does unify the color left by the lye.

 

Making a Newport Pipe Box

    Despite my enthusiasm for Federal Furniture, I appreciate other styles as well; chief among these is the furniture from Newport Rhode Island. I lack the carving skills to do justice, to furniture from this region, so when I saw this pipe box in the Book, Hidden Treasures by the Keno Brothers, I found a piece I could make and it even featured a bit of inlay. Of course it lacks the drama of a Secretary or a Kneehole Desk, but is still a beautiful piece. I don’t recall ever seeing a pipe box in person, so when I checked some reference sources for their dimensions, I was surprised at how large they are. Having noted the range of typical sizes, I proceeded to make drawings of the pipe box. You can download a full size PDF drawing of the box by clicking here . Note in the photos, I used 3/8” stock, but upon examining the finished piece, I felt it was too “heavy” looking, so the drawings show 5/16” thick sides. Given that the typical piece of Newport Furniture is made from superb stock, and this pipe box requires very little material, I chose high quality mahogany. The pieces were re-sawn from 5/4 rough lumber. For some reason 5/4 mahogany is cut more generous than domestic stock, so this allowed for three thicknesses to be comfortably obtained from one piece. The well known stability of mahogany left these re-sawn pieces dead flat, but I still let them “relax” for a day before, milling them. After milling to thickness, the pieces were dimensioned to the finished size with a combination of the bandsaw, jointer plane and shooting board. Particular attention has to be paid to having the edges dead square, so the glue up will go smoothly. The faces that were destined to become the inside were planed with a smooth plane.

    The front panel has the inlays, which may have been maple, holly or satinwood, but I chose satinwood, because I like the way it looks with mahogany. From the photo it is impossible to see if this inlay was just laid in a groove, or if it were glued on the edges of the front panel. I chose to have it glued to the edge of the front, so it extends the full thickness, as I think this would look better, than if it were just laid in a groove, since it is clearly visible at the opening of the box. Thin pieces like this are difficult to clamp, so I used hot hide glue for a rub joint, but just to be sure, masking tape was used as a clamp. (click on any photo to see a larger version)

When dry the inlays were planed flush.

    With the inlays in place and the components to net size, it's time to saw the profiles with the scroll saw, fitted with a No. 7 blade. The sides were taped together and sawn at the same time. Try as I might, I can’t seem to stay on the line, when cutting these large pieces, so some filing was in order to refine the profiles. The profiles were then carefully sanded, to remove the file marks, (leaving behind a few file marks wouldn’t be the end of the world, since it is quite common to see these on period pieces) When sanding, I backed the paper with the file or wooden blocks to maintain the crisp edges; nothing looks worse than mushy details.

The back is dadoed and the front rabbeted to receive interior bottom board. It is critical that the rabbet dado be accurately located so the interior bottom is “level” when it is installed later This bottom board is only butted to the sides, to avoid having to make a stopped dado in the sides. It looked to me that the original had its sub bottom nailed on (3 nails in each side). This seemed a little crude, so I opted to use half blind dovetails to join this piece to the sides. Cutting half blind dovetails in 5/16” thick stock is a bit dicey and the resulting joint is not the strongest, but it possesses plenty strength for this application.

    This is a somewhat difficult piece to glue together. You can’t have a lot of glue seeping out on the inside where it would interfere with finishing, the pieces are thin, and there is noting to register them to one another. I used hot hide glue to rub the back to the left side and the front to the right side. These were allowed cure and the two haves were joined with hide glue with urea additive to extend the gel time. I used plenty of clamps but only light clamping pressure. Neither the sub bottom nor the interior bottom is installed at this time. Hide glue is ideal because it is nearly transparent to finishing and at that magic moment where it is no longer liquid but not hardened it is easily cleaned off.

After the case is out of the clamps the exterior surfaces can be scraped and sanded.  

 At this point I finished the box, including the sub and interior bottoms, using lime to color the wood (see the May 19th 2008 entry on this blog for more information on using lime to color mahogany ) After the oil has cured the filler was applied and allowed to cure. Finishing the interior is a difficult task made somewhat easier by leaving out the sub and interior bottoms, still brushing shellac in that confined space isn’t ideal, so I brushed only one coat of de-waxed dark shellac. This was followed by padding lacquer to bring up the proper sheen, on the interior. I left the exterior with only a coat of shellac over the cured filler. Now the interior bottom is worked in and a small cut brad is driven into the rabbet to hold it in place; here is an instance when pre drilling in essential. This is followed by the sub bottom, which may need light clamping pressure to get everything to come together, which is why I didn’t complete the finish on the outside.

        The drawer is pretty much standard construction, with a few differences. Instead of being housed in a groove the way I’m accustom to, the bottom fitted into a rabbet in the front and is nailed on, I was sure to set these nails below the surface so they did not rub.  Also, the grain runs from front to back, instead of side to side as on full size drawers .The other fairly typical feature of Newport furniture is the drawer sides are slightly rounded on their top edges and are about 1/32” narrower than the drawer front.

 The molded edge on the drawer front could be made with a router, but I used a combination of a rabbet plane and a gouge to shape the molding. This same method was used to make the molded edge on the bottom. After applying the padding lacquer to the exterior of the case, and knocking the gloss down with extra fine steel wool using mineral oil as a lubricant, the bottom was glued on. A pinch of sand in the glue will keep the bottom from sliding around as the clamping pressure is applied.

I’m not sure what you can do with this piece when it is finished, but it was fun to make and looks very nice.

Real Woodworking

     I have been fortunate, getting paid to do something I really enjoy, and I have been even more fortunate in that I have had the customers who wanted to reproduce some very fine pieces of 18^th and 19^th Century furniture. Yet, I get the most satisfaction out of a much simpler aspect of woodworking, the time I spend volunteering at a living history park, demonstrating woodworking. Whether it is just planing off shavings with the kids names on them, or making bird houses and feeders to give away, this is what really excites me about woodworking. As with all things, even among the bright spots, there are things that stand out and in this case, it is making things for the visitors on the c.1876 foot pedaled lathe. Both the kids and adults get a real thrill out of seeing a block of wood go from square to round right before their eyes.  Oddly, it is when the layout lines are made with a pencil being held against the revolving blank that is the most exciting part for the visitors. This experience has made me a better turner, because the lathe is rather taxing for the visitors to pedal, so I have to work quickly and with as little wasted motion as possible. Before this, the lathe was not a real favorite of mine. As long as I could get 4 legs to look alike in a minimum time, I was happy, but I never looked forward to using it. I’m still limited in the use of the lathe, because it is a tool for the creative and that is something I am not.

    At Christmas I make snowmen and Christmas trees for the kids, which they take home to paint. At our Christmas event, I made 38 snowmen/trees in about 4 hours. I had wanted to make a smaller snowmen to hang on the tree, but the combination of the rounded bottom and the stub to hang it by, proved too difficult to make in a reasonable length of time, not to mention the lathe being prone to walk around since it isn’t bolted down, making it susceptible to catching with the skew. I did end up making 30 of these on a modern lathe, to pass out as gifts. The larger snowman is very easy to make and takes only about 5 ½ minutes to turn. You can view a video clip of the snowman being made on a modern lathe by clicking here  The tree takes about the same amount of time, but it is skating on the edge of disaster (at least in my hands) because of it ending in a sharp point. I ruined a few when turning them at home to get the hang of them, but I luckily didn’t ruin any at the Christmas event.

     Like nearly everyone, I’m more or less defined by what I do, so it was nice to find a new dimension woodworking, one I never expected .

Rob Millard

 

 

Federal Inlay Banding DVD Ideas wanted

 

     At a recent woodworking show I attended, I was asked several times if I had a video of making inlay bandings; this is in addition to many such inquiries I have gotten via email. I had not tried to shoot a DVD on making the bandings, because I saw several problems. The problems producing a video of bandings are, they are a little hard to convey and there is such a wide variety of types, which do you pick to show the fabrication of. I’ve tried a few test sessions, and the issues involved in producing them from a content standpoint, have been resolved. That leaves the bandings to choose for inclusion in the DVD. I’m hoping to hear from you, to help in deciding which historically accurate bandings you’d like to see the construction of.

 

     I’m thinking of picking 10-12 examples, ranging from a very simple one, to the seemingly more complex. So, if you have a banding you’d like to see made, contact me, and I’ll try to include it in the DVD. I already have one picked out, for a masterpiece Philadelphia card table, I’m making in April/May. You can see some past examples of bandings I made here.

 

     I’m going to shoot each banding as a stand alone project, so there will be some redundancy in each of the chapters of the DVD. This is the major pitfall in producing a DVD on the bandings; each banding is made in a very similar manner, but each has its own idiosyncrasies. Making them as individual projects from start to finish is, I believe the best way to go. There will also be a chapter on the sawing and inlaying of the bandings, showing their use, in both flat and curved applications.  Because of my workload, the DVD won’t be ready until sometime in February 2009.

 

     While on the subject of DVD’s, I have a new one almost finished; all the scenes are shot and most of the editing is done. The subject is this table.  

 

 You can see more details about it here and also see the special Christmas prices on all the DVD’s.

 

Rob Millard