ARCHIAS DOMESTICVS

Bois D'Arc, Osage-orange, or Horse-apple (Maclura pomifera)

2011-08-07T20:07:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago I found myself stuck in traffic behind a tree-trimming crew pulling a trailer filled with the remains of a bois d'arc tree they had just cut down. They had sectioned the 18" diameter tree into approximately two foot lengths. I couldn't believe my luck. I followed them into an apartment complex parking lot where I convinced them to throw the sections into the back of my truck and when I got home, I put a new blade on my big Delta 20" bandsaw and cut them down into smaller boards that i could sticker and stack for later use.

In all honesty I had no idea what I was doing. I used a makeshift fence on the bandsaw, but the cuts came out mostly irregular--not much better than freehand. The tree was split in places had a big hollow spot that must've been the ultimate cause of its demise. I should've cut slightly thicker slabs and avoided the heart of the tree, but I didn't. Nevertheless, it has been been interesting to watch the wood as it has aged. It turns a beautiful, deep butterscotch color. The end grain is quite striking.

I was looking for just the right application for it when I noticed an advertisement on e-Bay for custom-made totes. I shot Mike Wischmann (eBay member ID: salwisch) a message and arranged for him to make some tote and knob sets for me out of my bois d'arc for a very reasonable price. I am thrilled with the results!

I've got more uses in mind for my bois d'arc. It's not as difficult to work as I'd been led to believe. I think it contrasts nicely with walnut and I'm thinking my next furniture project will incorporate bois d'arc in a variety of interesting ways.

More to come.

Now this is a toolchest!

2011-05-08T23:19:00.001-05:00

Chris Schwarz released a new video today to advertise his upcoming book, The Anarchist's Tool Chest. The tool chest he built for the book is stunning. Enjoy:

http://blip.tv/file/5120353

While I'm waiting for the book to come out, I've decided to tackle Ron Herman's saw bench. I took some pictures of it at the woodworking show back in October. In his saw sharpening class he said that it was built to fit him and should we attempt one of our own, we should build to suit too. It's actually a cross between a saw bench and a work bench--It's got dog holes drilled in it to accommodate bench clamps.

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Recently, Popular Woodworking published a picture of Ron's bench in anticipation of a new video they are working on with Ron. I roughed out a Google Sketchup drawing of it on Friday, and bought some dimensional lumber (yellow pine) yesterday and started work. May's going to be a busy month outside of the woodshop, but I should have some pictures of my version of Ron's bench soon.

A fascination with Toolchests

2011-04-17T00:20:00.002-05:00

Last October I flew up to Cincinnati for the three-day Woodworking In America Conference (WWIA 2010). The list of instructors was incredible--a veritable who's who of woodworking--authors of countless articles and books I've read through the years and the toolmakers and furniture builders they've written about. We were encouraged to bring our tools and participate in the hands-on sessions.

As much as I wanted to participate in the hands-on sessions, getting my tools there was going to be quite a challenge. The airlines place a 50-pound limit on checked baggage. Which tools should I take? What kind of tool chest would survive the flight with its contents intact? I started by laying out my tools on graph paper to get some sense of how big to make the tool chest and where the tools might go.

I decided to build a toolchest that was a mashup between one used by Frank Klauz as described in an old Popular Woodworking magazine article and a musician's flight case. Although it would lack the period look of a nineteenth century toolchest, the flight case design would be rugged enough for air travel.

The box went together quickly enough but as I started arranging my hand tools inside it I was surprised to discover just how heavy they were. The box I had built was capable of hauling 200 pounds of tools! It was way too big for the task. I abandoned this course and gave the box to my oldest son, but not before taking some pictures of it with my hand tools arranged inside it in the manner in which I had originally intended to use it.

I needed a fresh perspective, and I could think of no better place to start than Dowd's Tools (Garland,TX). Lynn Dowd was kind enough to show me a wide range of toolchests and toolboxes in his collection. I took lots of pictures and measurements, and I left with some very good ideas.

I settled on a "job box" design. Mine would have to be a bit more elaborate because I needed more drawers than was typical to any of the boxes I saw in Lynn's collection. I needed a way to organize the things I would need for the classes that I planned to attend: Dividers for design class, tools for laying out and cutting dovetails, hand saw sharpening acoutrements, and so on. As the day of the conference approached, I had only managed to whittle down what I wanted to take to 70 pounds, so I offloaded enough into my personal luggage to keep the shipping weight of the "job box" right at 50 pounds. You should have seen me at the airport, shifting things around on the floor in front of the check-in counter, sawdust spilling all over the carpet!

In the end, the fuss was all for naught. Very early on day 1 of the conference I discovered that there were so many people in attendance and the benches and work areas so scarce that there really was no room for any "hands-on". I was so disappointed that I shipped my tools home by UPS that very night.

As I recovered from my disappointment, I took note of the toolchests that Roy Underhill and Chris Schwarz and brought with them to the show.

When I got back home, I searched through my books to find plans for a traditional toolchest. I found exactly what I was looking for in "The Practical Woodworker" by Bernard E. Jones (1920), and I had just enough reclaimed ship-lap pine to build it.

But just about the time I started work on the Jones-style toolchest, my middle son asked if I could build him a coffee table for his college apartment. Coffee table? "How about a chest?" I asked him. It would be much more functional for the nomadic life he was leading and besides, it would have a big brass lock and key. He loved the idea--especially the brass lock and key part.

Chris Schwarz (Lost Art Press & Popular Woodworking) recently announced on his blog that his next book, "The Anarchist's Toolchest" will be shipping soon. The teaser pictures he's posted on his blog are quite impressive. If it's anything like his books on the workbench, it will be well worth the wait. And I imagine I'll be building another toolchest--this time for me--soon after I read it.

1839 Schoolbox (with bullet)

2010-05-06T23:55:00.002-05:00

Every project is a journey. Finding the bullet buried in the mesquite wasn't the only surprise along the way to completing this one. For the lid I pulled the scruffiest, rough-cut walnut board from the stack, ran it through the planer and out popped a spectacular flame-curl. It has to be one of the prettiest boards I've ever seen.

I finished milling the wood to size by machine, then joined the sides with hand-cut dovetails. Not exactly the way it was done in the magazine article, but a good skill-building exercise nevertheless. When I got to the interior, I deviated from the plans even further. What this box needed was trays! And making trays gave me an excuse to use some aromatic red cedar I'd been saving and learn how to make box joints on the table saw. My journey continued.

The curly grain on the lid was so dense I doubted it would take an oil-based finish, so I tried something new there too. I layered on five or six coats of shellac, then applied several coats of wax to protect the shellac. It's an old-style finish that is quick to put on and easy to repair, but I'm not sure I'm sold on it. It seems too delicate for a box like this. I would rather have used my old standby--a mixture of turpentine, boiled linseed oil, and bees wax.

The final stop on my journey took me to the hardware store to find just the right hinges and handles. I picked out several styles of hardware and took them home to see how they looked with the schoolbox, but none of them felt right. Finding just the right handles to go with that bullet was going to be tough. Ultimately, I packed up the box and took it with me to the hardware store and only then, with box in hand, was I able to settle on the hardware: Rustic, but not too rustic and a color that blends well with the wood.

A Surprise Buried in the Mesquite

2010-03-23T02:55:00.000-05:00

This evening I sorted through my stash of mesquite and found a few boards wide enough to make the 1839 Schoolbox featured last summer in Woodworking Magazine. I cut the front back and sides to their rough dimensions, jointed one edge of each and cleaned up the other on the tablesaw. Then I wheeled out my planer--the one I installed fresh blades in just yesterday--and started milling the mesquite to thickness. I had made a couple of passes on each board when I saw this come out of the planer:

From Mesquite Surprise

That little sliver of white in the knot is actually a little sliver of metal. My heart sank. I was sure it was a nail or a screw and my freshly sharpened blade now had a nick in it.

I got out a screw driver and began poking around in the knot trying to dislodge the metal, but it wasn't behaving like a nail or a screw. For one thing, it was, well, softer, and it wasn't coming out. Then it dawned on me that the metal was actually lead, and that was a bullet stuck in the board.

From Mesquite Surprise

The good news is that the planer blade is OK. Now, all I have to decide is whether to hide the bullet on the inside of the box, or let it show on the outside. I'm leaning toward the latter.

Lessons From A Delivery Guy: How to Build Durable Furniture - Fine Woodworking

2010-03-17T14:36:00.002-05:00

I found this blog series on Fine Woodworking and it contained such a wealth of really good, common sense advice regarding furniture design I decided to re-post it here. When we design furniture, or even cabinets, we sometime forget that it has to pass through doors and negotiate tight corners on its way to final resting spot. Great article!

Lessons From A Delivery Guy: How to Build Durable Furniture - Fine Woodworking

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Campaign Table

2010-03-10T01:25:00.008-06:00

My friend Calvin has been carrying around an old fold-up table for as long as I've known him (which is a very long time). He had it when we were students together at LSU, and he'd dragged it with him to North Carolina and back in the thirty years since. But the old table had become so worn that it been banished to the back porch when he asked me to take a look at it. It was a simple pine table, painted olive drab, probably World War II military issue. It was so old the paint had become chalky. A bit of trim had broken off, and the screws that held the whole thing together were beginning to work loose. I wish I had taken some "before" pictures, but I didn't.

The photo gallery shows how the original table looks like now.

I suspect Calvin's "fold-up" table is actually a modern member (probably World War II era) of a family of furniture known as "campaign furniture." Campaign furniture was designed to be easily packed up and moved from place to place, as in a military campaign or scientific expedition. The British, in particular, turned campaign furniture into a higher art form during the glory days of the empire from the late 18th century to the beginning of the Great War. (Interestingly, there is a surprising lack of literature on the style. The one authoritative reference, British Campaign Furniture: Elegance Under Canvas, is a relatively recent publication (2001) and has been out of print almost since it was published.) The most common pieces are tables, desks, and chests (dressers) and while some of it can be quite crudely constructed, there are many examples that have been finely crafted from nice hardwoods like mahogany, trimmed in brass with recessed pulls.

As I folded Calvin's table to carry it home, I knew that reproducing it would make a perfect weekend project. But little did I realize what an interesting challenge it would turn out to be.

Building My Own Campaign Table

When I finally found the time to build the table, I found a nice supply of very wide cypress boards at a very good price. Perfect! I'd always wanted to work with cypress. The initial cuts were all very straight-forward--no fancy joinery. I did half-lap the aprons on to the leg pairs, but like the original I used screws to attach them. After I had assembled both leg pairs, I simulated folding up the legs and immediately discovered a problem.

Apparently I had decided to "improve" upon the original table when I drew up my Sketchup model. My "improvement" was to modify the inside/outside arrangement of the leg pairs and interweave them instead. I thought it made for a more symmetrical design. By interweaving the folded legs, the leg pair assemblies could be identical--except for the location of the slot in the apron used to tie-in the center support. It looked great on paper (or in this case Sketchup), however in practice it made for an Escher-like impossibility.

In the animated Sketchup drawing below, watch the red leg closely. In order for the legs to fold up, the red one has to magically pass through the apron of the opposing side. Oops!

Fortunately, I discovered the problem before the glue had dried on the leg pairs. I took them apart, made new aprons, and glued and screwed the leg pairs back together.

The next step was to install the strap hinges that attach the leg pairs to the table. The hinges turned out to be an interesting project by themselves. Calvin's campaign table had brushed steel hinges, and the only ones I could find at the hardware store were galvanized. However I thought black hinges would look better against the blonde cypress.

My brother-in-law Pete is a chemical engineer and the resident family scientist. I knew he'd have a clever solution, and he did not disappoint. He suggested that I dip the galvanized hinges in a bath of muriatic acid to remove the zinc, then paint them with black grill paint. Pete even provided me with the chemical equation for the process:

Zn (s) + 2HCl (aq) --> ZnCl2 (aq) + H2 (g)

I started by vigorously rubbing down the hinges with acetone to remove any oils and the adhesive from the price tags. I used acetone because it drives off water and evaporates very quickly. Next, I created a shallow bath of muriatic acid and laid a hinge down in it. I left it in about 3 minutes, watching it fizz while the zinc reacted with the acid. Using a pair of pliers, I removed the hinge from the acid bath and dipped it in a tub of water to stop the reaction. After drying it with a towel, I rinsed the hinge with acetone again to drive off the remaining moisture. I repeated this sequence for each hinge before spraying them with a flat black grill paint. Grill paint dries very quickly, so I was able to cover the hinges with several light coats over several hours. Finally, I baked on the paint by "cooking" the hinges in a hot grill for about 30 minutes.

The Center Support

After attaching the leg pairs with the strap hinges, I was left with what turned out to be the biggest challenge: the center support. In the end, it revealed just how cleverly designed the original table was. When the legs are unfolded, the center support acts as a wedge to hold the aprons apart. In Calvin's original there are two brackets that straddle the ends of the center support. Each bracket has a bolt protruding from the end of it that slips into a slot on the apron. A wing nut tightens the apron against the bracket, eliminating any wobble in the table. To fold up the table, you loosen the wing nuts and swing the bolts up and out of the slots as the brackets pivot on the pins that attach them to the center support. The center support then folds down flat against the table top and the legs fold down over it.

That specially-made bracket looked to be a key part of the original table, but I knew finding hardware like that was going to be impossible. Instead, I embraced the challenge of engineering my own solution. I started by drilling a 1" diameter hole through the center support using a forstner bit on the drill press. Then I cut a 1/4" slot in the end of the center support that intersected the 1" hole using a dado stack on my table saw.

Next, I drilled a hole that was large enough to accommodate a threaded insert into the side of a 1" dowel. Then I cut the dowel to length, making sure that the stub was exactly the thickness of the center support and the hole was centered in it. Finally, slipped the dowel into the hole in the center support and threaded a long bolt through the slot and into the threaded insert to hold it in place. The dowel would provide the mechanism for the bolt and the knob affixed to the end of it to pivot out of the way. With one end finished, I repeated the process on the other.
But I had overlooked something critical! What I had missed was the fact that the bracket bridged the gap between the center support and the apron, providing something for the wing nut to tighten against. I assumed that the gap was only there to accommodate the bracket, but I was wrong. The gap is there to provide just enough room for the apron to fold over the end of the center support! If the center support fits too tightly against the apron when it is folded down, it will pin the apron in place in the upright (unfolded) position anyway.

I solved the problem by marking the midpoint of the center support and marking the table at the midpoint between the aprons. This allowed me to quickly align center support between the aprons after I nibbled a little off each end on the table saw. After each cut, I laid the center support on its side between the aprons and aligned the center mark on it with the mark on the table, then attempted to fold down the leg assembly on either side. It took several passes before the gap on each was wide enough to allow the aprons to clear the center support and fold down.

But now there was a gap between the center support and the apron and nothing to tighten the apron against. I solved this last problem by glueing a thin block of wood--just slightly thinner than the gap--to the inside of the apron. Not beautiful, but it worked.

The simple campaign table presented a series of unexpected challenges, but I'm pleased with the results. And now that I've solved the problems it presented, I look forward to building this project with one of my sons.

Quest for the desk of my father (Part I)

2010-03-03T20:26:00.002-06:00

[Note: This blog entry was originally posted in October 2006]
Quest for the desk of my father – Part I

This week I purchased a book by Mark Bridge called, “An Encyclopedia of Desks.” I already had another book devoted to desks by Garth Graves called, “Desks You Can Customize.” Several years ago I picked up Bill Hylton’s “Illustrated Cabinetmaking” mostly because of the section on desk designs. Whenever I pickup an American furniture book, I always head to the section on desks first. There is a reason for my obsession with desks.

When my grandmother died, my father inherited a piece of furniture he called “a secretary.” It was a big and old, a little rickety, and had lots of cubby holes filled with old family photographs and long unread letters. One of the more intriguing things to us kids was that the writing surface of the secretary was covered with a green felt pad that Dad had doodled on when he was a kid. The secretary sat in a position of prominence in our living room, a room we rarely used.

When our family gathered together after Dad passed away, we talked about the various things of his we would like to eventually have when Mom gave up housekeeping. First and foremost for me was that secretary. It wasn’t just because it reminded me of Dad; there was more to it than that. Even though I knew it wasn’t a great piece of furniture, there was something about it. It had nice proportions. I liked the angle of the writing surface. I liked the layout of the interior. It was functional and purposeful.

The next time I went home to visit Mom I did something I should have done years ago—I used the opportunity to make a measured drawing of the secretary and in the course of doing so, examined the desk in greater detail than I ever had before.

Stenciled on the bottom of the desk was “WH Ralph, Furniture Dealer, Fort Collins, Colorado.” My grandmother was from Fort Collins, so that would explain that connection. It must have been hers. The Fort Collins Courier has an online searchable database of back issues, and it didn’t take me long to find the WH Ralph furniture ads in the 1890s editions paper, then discover that the WH Ralph furniture company went away in 1900 when Mr. Ralph sold the business to a couple of fellows by the names of Godfrey and Beecher to satisfy some debts. That meant the secretary predated 1900. It was officially a 19th century piece.

But what of the construction? I’d always thought it was an ill-fitted, rickety piece. As I took down the dimensions, I noted that the frame and panels of the drop down lid were well made. So were the interior partitions. The large front drawer was coming apart in the back, but that was the only real weak spot. I began to develop a new appreciation for the piece.

I knew that the top part of the secretary came off so that it could be moved more easily, but I was surprised to find that each leg consisted of two parts: a lower, turned part and the upper rectangular part that made up the corners of the base drawer enclosure. They were made from different woods, one more closed-grained than the other. But this wasn’t the last surprise the “secretary” had in store for me.

The style of the thing was hard to place. I had thought of it as the quintessential American piece—A stylistic mutt. It wasn’t Arts & Crafts or Mission, or Shaker, or Colonial. (I still have not been able to find a match for it in any of my furniture books. I’m not sure that late Victorian, middle-class furniture is all that popular with collectors.) So, I wrote to a few museums to see if anyone could identify the desk from the pictures I provided and one responded. It turned out, Dad's desk isn’t a “secretary” at all; it is actually something called a “plantation desk.”

Medicine cabinet for two

2010-02-27T00:23:00.001-06:00

After a bathroom remodel that included moving two walls, replacing a shower stall with a footed cast-iron tub, and building a rather unusual sink cabinet that included a column of drawers, all that was left was to build the medicine cabinet to go over the counter. But it's never that easy, is it?

I kicked around a number of ideas before finally calling in the expert. My wife told me her needs were simple. She wanted a larger mirror in the middle with two shallow cabinets on either side with mirrored doors that folded in so she could see both sides of her head when she was doing her hair.

I guess I had been over-thinking it. I drew a rough sketch of the walls and sink cabinet in Sketchup, then drew the cabinet to fit the open space pretty much exactly as she described. The only decorative touches I added were a large cove molding that wrapped around the top and ebony pins in the corner of each mirror. The results matched the rest of the bathroom decor quite well, I think, and my wife has been very pleased with the result.

Lap desk for laptops

2010-02-20T09:57:00.000-06:00

Jefferson's lap desk has always fascinated me. It is elegantly simple, yet functional, and perhaps best of all there is no room for clutter. It is a self-contained portable work center and its small, portable nature restricts what can accumulate on, in or around it.

Plans for Jefferson's lap desk have appeared in several magazines over the years, and I've seen reproductions in a few catalogs. One day, while studying a reproduction the thought occurred to me that with a few modifications, the lap desk might be updated to become the perfect work center for a laptop. If I could hide a port replicator in the back somewhere, only the power cord would be left hanging out of the back. It's small size meant that it could sit on a TV tray or the legs of a butler table. Or two pair of legs could be tucked away underneath then folded out for use in bed like a breakfast tray.

This is an idea with lot's of potential, so I've been gathering photos of examples. And I've even gone so far as to create an initial Sketchup model.

Texas Legislator's Desk

2010-02-06T21:05:00.001-06:00

The Texas History Trip is a rite of passage for the 7th grade class at the small, all-boys, Catholic school my sons attend. The same adult leader has been taking forty-five 13-year-old boys on the trip for nearly 30 years, and the fathers of many of my sons' classmates went on the same trip when they were boys. Over the years the school has accumulated quite a list of rules for the trip--all based on past experience--and the recitation of them at the pre-trip planning meeting with the parents is one of the funniest PTA meetings you could ever hope to attend. "No fireworks, no hair removal products, no snakes..."

Each trip there are only a few slots open for Dads to tag along as chaperons, and I was lucky enough to be chosen for my youngest son's trip in 2008--my last opportunity. One of the highlights of the trip was the stop at the Texas State Capital, and it was during our tour of the legislature that I discovered these desks used by the state legislators. The desks were an interesting design, well-executed, and from fine wood--In short, just the sort of project I'd like to tackle someday.

Mesquite gloat

2010-02-06T14:30:00.002-06:00

Google Alerts is a wonderful thing. I've got it configured to search Craiglist postings for keywords and generate a newsfeed item in Google Reader whenever something new turns up that I might be interested in. This led to me finding my Powermatic bandsaw about six months ago, and recently it has turned up a couple of caches of wood. The first was a enough sapele to build a small chest of drawers for the study. Then this week it turned up a sale of 150-200 bf of mesquite. The seller posted it at 9pm and I received the newsfeed alert almost immediately. When I called the next morning, I was the first to respond to the ad and what a haul it turned out to be.