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.
Beautiful as always Rob! These pieces also make nice candle stick boxes for a dining room or parlor. You could also hang it beside a fireplace or wood stove to store small kindling, long matches or spills.
Posted by: Bob Rozaieski | March 26, 2009 at 08:18 AM
Great post. I will have to bookmark your site for later reading.
Posted by: stove pipe | November 10, 2009 at 02:13 PM