Steamed Rockers

Beauty is whatever gives joy

Edna St. Vincent Millay

Maybe a little persnickety but the gaps when I let in rockers are driving me nuts.  I didn't photo the gap that was there but suffice to say it was unacceptable.  The problem was that that I must have mis-reamed the legs, leaving the routed slots for the rockers non co-planer.  What to do....

I thought long and hard and decided to steam the rockers and let them into their slots and see what happened. I usually deal with gaps with wedges but the gaps were pretty significant and honestly I wondered if steaming would work..

As you can see the results were spot on. Really good contact between the rocker and the routed slots.  All gaps eliminated and the rockers fit perfectly.

Anyway, I'm happy with the results.

More Chair Seats

Any idiot can handle a crisis, it's day to day living that wears you out

Anton Chekov

It's always difficult, very difficult to predict what chairs will sell.   I like Windsors and while they will always be my favorites, I remember thinking as I was loading for the last show, wow, that's a lot of black chairs.  I like milk paint and the different colors and effects you can achieve with it.  That having been said, I think I should add some different styles with a clear finish to my line of chairs.  Maybe something more "machine" based than all hand tools.  Again, I like using hand tools but classic Windsors may not fit every taste, budget or house.  Long story short, I'm trying to add some chairs that are maybe less expensive and ones that can be easily built in batches of 4 or 6 or more.

Its important when doing batch runs that the machines ( table saw, jointer, bandsaw etc..) all be set up very carefully and all the pieces all be exactly the same size.  If you start adding variances to the pieces, all economy of scale is lost.

Another thing I decided was that obviously the seats cannot be hand carved.  So for this chair design I decided to make a form and then vacuum press the 1/8" pieces to the contour I wanted.  What would be ideal is if the local veneer mill would sell me full size 4x8 sheets of 3/16" veneer.  Then, no glue seams and I could run the seat grain left to right, which would match the grain in the back pieces.  But until I look into that, I simply re sawed some pieces, maple in this case, to a strong 1/8" and drum sanded them and glued them up using my press.  I got my bags and pipe seals and the press seen below from Veneer Supplies.  The vacuum press works great and all you need is a compressor.  Best part is there's a valve that keeps the vacuum constant at about -28 hg.  I used a hand pump one before but it would always lose the vacuum.

Below you can see the chair prototype, a pretty simple side chair.  I hope it works to be a comfortable and visually interesting chair.  I further hope it doesn't look a chair you got at a garage sale for 20 bucks.  Time will tell.

Here is the prototype with the pressed seat.  The seat came out plenty strong even though it's only 1/2" thick.

The legs are going to be bent lamination as well.  I actually had to steam them first, then bend them, then let them dry some, and then I did another vacuum press but more on that later.

Steam Bending Kiln Dried Cherry, Second Try

“I was depressed, but that was a side issue. This was more like closing up shop, or, say, having a big garage sale, where you look at everything you've bought in your life, and you remember how much it meant to you, and now you just tag it for a quarter and watch 'em carry it off, and you don't care. That's more like how it was.”
― Jane Smiley, A Thousand Acres

 First off,  here's a pic of my two latest chairs.  They're the same save for the colors, one is brownish and the other is almost black with a hint of brown underneath.  They are going to a gallery,  The Gallery at Frenchmans's Bay, which is in Somesville, MDI.  I was excited to get in there as there are pieces by builders that I have seen in magazines and such.  In September Tyra, the owner, is having reception so hopefully I'll get to meet some as well.

 As you may remember from my last post, the posts cracked when I tried to steam bend them.   So, I soaked the new pieces for a few days in some water, hoping this would soften the fibers somewhat.

I also steamed them longer and closed the door on the steambox to raise the temperature a little.  I also tried to think of a way to use straps to support the bends.  Time for some honesty...I use straps.  There, I said it.  Wood bends, or rather compresses, a lot.  Wood expands very little, ie it can not be stretched.  What a strap does it turns the whole bend into compression by holding the ends.  But I could not think of a way to use straps.  And then it came to me, sandwich.  I would sandwich the pieces between forms, rather than stretch them around the form.  I do this on the crest rails all the time, more for a more consistent arc than to ward off breakage, but the theory is the same.

So I cut out some sandwich pieces and quickly sanded them and steamed the posts for an hour and a half, and then started the bending.  And it worked!  I had to frig with the clamps a little, but the bends look good.  Of course its a long way from being dried and done, but it's a good (read better) start.

  I also want to thank Ray Duffy, a chair maker from Central Mass, who graciously offered to get me some green cherry after my last bending debacle.  And another thanks to Wilson Burnham for his blog post on axe handles.  I asked Wilson a question about the general shape of axe handles and he took it and ran...great post and great blog. 

Bread Board Ends, Part 2

"Being Irish, he had an abiding sense of tragedy, which sustained him through temporary periods of joy.”
-W.B. Yeats




I've been building tables with breadboards for years now and had usually used full on mortise and tenon along with what amounts to a spline.  It works, and is traditional, but to cut the tenons on a large panel is tricky and time consuming.

I tried then using a Domino, just that but I felt the floating tenons were a little too small, so I now use a different method that uses Domino floating tenons and screws.  Above you can see the mortises cut but not all the way thru.  I leave about 3/4" at the side that contacts the panel.

Above you can see the Domino's that only serve to line the pieces up.  I do glue them into the panel, but not the breadboard.

Here you can see the mortises with the screw holes drilled and slotted out on the backside ( the part that goes against the panel).   Another view below.

 Then line the breadboards up, clamp, and mark the screw holes.  Remove and pre-drill the holes, then finally drive the screws in with a little wax.  I used gold star drive screws, but I think 2 1/2" pocket hole screws would be a better choice.  You may not even have to pre-drill them.

Then cut and mill some plugs to fill the mortise and a little glue then tap them in.  Below, you can see the finished table end.  It really pulls the breadboard tight, and still allows the panel to move with the seasonal changes in humidity.

More of the SAPFM at the CHS

“Don't tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.”

Anton Chekhov

Here are some more attic pieces at the CHS (Conneticut Historical Museum).  Here is a beautiful bowfront dresser.  When I go to pick up my chair in September, I want to get measures of this dresser and the two C-arm chairs in my last blog.  I like high boys and all the veneering but have no place for that furniture in my house.

A couple of Heart Back chairs below, amazing work.  Below are two more, one an antique and one the reproduction from that piece.  I'm not sure who the modern builder is, nice chair though.

A beautiful pie crust tea table.  I could not imagine doing this without a router to hog out the waste in the middle.

In the lecture hall, they had a very nice display of antique tavern signs.  

Here are more current pieces that were selected for the show.  

The two aforementioned heart back chairs.  I think this one was in Fine Woodworking not too long ago.  Speaking of which, I met Mark Schofield at the show and he took a picture of me with my chair. 
And like an idiot I didn't get a picture of my chair.

This museum trip was like the first lesson I received on the way to my English Degree.....show-- don't tell (what's the other lesson Wilson?).   By going to this fantastic museum ( or any museum for that matter) you are shown the pieces of furniture or art or whatever, not told about them thru books or another's idea of them.  Go to the places and see them with your own eyes and feel with your own heart what others will try to tell you.  

SAPFM Gallery Show at CHS

Without craftsmanship, inspiration is a mere reed shaken in the wind.

Johannes Brahms 

As some of you may be aware I had a chair selected for a gallery show at the Connecticut Historical Society  in Hartford.  The show was sponsored and presented by the SAPFM.  Needless to say, I was surprised and honored and very excited to go.

The museum is housed at the Veeder Mansion in Hartford, at the edge of the University of Hartford.  The house/museum is spectacular, built in the 1920's and finished mostly in Mission Style, above you can see the quarter-sawn white oak panels in what was the library.  Mr. Veeder invented the mechanical counter and had a factory not too far from the house, where it remains to this day.

Here you can see the counter he invented,  that's where the money came from.  At my old work, we used this to tally the lumber, so this was really cool for me.  Below you can see the linen fold carvings on the molding if you look closely.

Here is a beautiful painting of the Hartford area.  This whole painting was on one wide pine board.

Rich Mallay, the head of collections, was nice enough to let me tag along when they went to the attic to get a piece for a show and I was blown away.  There were racks and racks of Windsor chairs and high boys and tea tables and dressers and anything else you could think of.

The Windsor below was made by Ebenezer Tracey, a fairly well-known and very prodigious chair maker from Bristol, Conn.  He built a lot of chairs, and I was thrilled to see a writing arm of his. 

Another view, note the leg cut-outs.

Above you can see the trademark Tracey leg.  Note how the bulb above the birds-beak forms a vase, not the straight you see today, and he also did not have a fillet and birds-beak at the top, he simply ran the vase up in what I think is a very graceful sweep, amazing.   The stretcher is a little different, with a squarish swelling and nodes at the ends.  I'm not sure if this is a typical Tracey feature or not.

A couple of gorgeous,  stunning Continuous Arms.  Look at the turning on the arm posts.  

 I will be doing another post ( or more) on this trip.  Thanks to Rich Malley, and Kyle Sprague and Ben Gammel who work at this wonderful museum.  And another thanks to Mickey Callahan from the SAPFM for putting the show together.  More to come. 

 If you are in the area, or looking for a great trip to take, check out the museum and the show that runs through the summer.

Vineyard Table Part 5

O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains! that we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts! 

 ~William Shakespeare, Othello

 I decided to drawbore the legs into the feet.  I will touch briefly on drawboring; magazines recently have gotten a lot of mileage out of this technique so there is plenty of info out there.  Essentially, you cut a mortise and tenon and then drill a hole thru the mortise (not the tenon) and then mark the exact center of the hole onto the tenon.

Then you offset the hole 1/16" or so towards the shoulder of the tenon.  Below you can see how I have drilled the holes, note how the inner hole, the hole thru the tenon, is offset to the shoulder.

Then you ream the hole with a drawbore pin to allow the dowel to more easily start.  I made this pin from a drift pin set into an octagonal ash handle. You can now buy there at Lie Nielsen, among others. 

Then I sharpen the end of the dowel in a pencil sharpener and drive it thru.  Above you can see the tension that pushes the dowel up, even after it is seated.  Old post and beam barns were constructed using this technique; now they just build ugly steel huts.  That sadly is a time gone that we will never see again.

 Above you can see the mortise has been chopped out and below is the tenon, with the wedge slots cut to receive the wedges.  I cut the slots wide to have wide wedges so they would be noticeable from casually looking at the table.  I think that says "handmade".

Here are the wedges driven in and cut flush.  You can see the walnut wedges that should be a nice contrast to the white oak.

Here is the table ready for the fume tent.  I cleaned up the garage and left a window open.  I'll go into the fuming next post but suffice it to say I used much stronger ammonia and significantly cut down the fume time.  And it looks amazing.  I'll post the pics as soon as I get them back from Connie.