On Friday I attended a meeting of the Rochester Woodworkers Society. This meeting included a lecture by Thomas Pafk . Thomas operates his shop and custom furniture business in East Aurora, New York – just outside of Buffalo. He designs and builds custom furniture in many styles but, is most influenced by the Arts and Crafts style. The most unique aspect of his designs is his use of veneers which appear somewhere in every piece that he builds.
The East Aurora area is also the home of the Roycrofters, a group of artisans following the philosophy of Elbert Hubbard and preserving the ideals which made the Roycroft Campus a center of the Arts and Crafts Movement. Thomas is also one of the few people recognized as a Roycroft Master Artisan which allows him to use the Roycroft “double R” symbol on his work. To become a Roycroft Artisan one must submit his work to a jury comprised of Roycroft Master Artisans who judge it based on the following criteria:
- High quality of hand craftsmanship
- Excellence in design
- Originality of expression
- Professional recognition
- Continuing artistic growth
Periodic reviews of all Roycroft Artisan’s work are mandatory in order to maintain the integrity of the movement. To maintain their status, Artisans are reviewed yearly and Master Artisans every five years.
Thomas is degreed in modelmaking and spent the early part of his career doing work for architects. As his career evolved, he took on freelance work including built-ins and kitchen cabinets. Eventually he gravitated toward furniture and discovered veneering. Living in close proximity to Certainly Wood (one of the best sources for premier veneers) has definitely influenced his progression as a woodworker. Thomas uses veneer in some way in every piece of his work. He feels that the use of veneers really opens up the design possibilities and he describes his work as Arts and Crafts for the 21st century – more modern and contemporary. He does all original designs rather than reproductions though, his work is most certainly influenced by the roots of the movement and designers such as: Harvey Ellis, Charles Limbert and Rennie McIntosh. This influence is evidenced by his heavy use of tapers and arches. In addition to his Arts and Crafts work, Thomas also does some work in the Art Deco style.
During the lecture Thomas, showed many examples of his work and noted various construction techniques as well as the specific use of veneers to enhance the designs. Very often in his designs he will use veneers on panels in the construction. This does two things: it allows for a very solid construction because the panels do not need to float and it also promotes the use of contrasting wood types to highlight specific design elements. For some of his curved pieces Thomas will actually laminate up layers of veneer in a form to create the piece – this allows him to use the most beautiful veneers for the outside faces of the piece. Some examples of this technique were in slat backs of some of his chairs and also in some bow front and Art Deco tables. Thomas noted that in doing veneer work you need to be a bit anal about grain matching but, making this effort results in pieces that set themselves apart from normal solid work. In his veneer work he uses Unibond exclusively for gluing. MDF is his most common substrate because it is flat and stable however, he has used many things including foam for very light weight structures.
Thomas’ lecture was very interesting and informative. I have not done much in the way of veneering however, after seeing some of Thomas’ work and hearing his philosophies on using veneer to enhance the design possibilities I am feeling that this is something that may be worth a try on a project in the near future. Also, it’s funny that I live only about 60 miles away from East Aurora yet I have never been to the Roycroft Campus. Looks like there may be a Woodworking roadtrip in my future!
For a while I have been contemplating getting a smoothing plane to add to my slowly growing arsenal of hand tools. The Queen Anne Side Table project that I’ve been working on caused me to revisit this idea. The issue I was having with the smoothing plane decision was which one to get. There are many possible choices: new vs. vintage; standard angle vs. low angle; dedicated or multi-purpose. If you think about it too long, you can really develop a case of paralysis by analysis!
I had been giving some serious consideration to two of the Veritas planes: the Low Angle Smoother and the Bevel Up Smoothing Plane. I have the Veritas Low Angle Block Plane and also the Veritas Medium Shoulder Plane and they are both beautifully made and well performing tools. However, I was not sure whether to get the dedicated smoother or the low angle smoother which could also be used with a shooting board. My immediate need was for a basic smoothing plane but, I did not want to look past the other possible uses of a multi-purpose tool like the low angle plane. The other thought I had was to try for a vintage smoothing plane in need of a little work, while saving a bit of money for the multi-purpose tool at a later date.
I decided to check Ebay for some possible smoothing planes that might be easily rehabbed into service. I ended up finding one that looked like it was in reasonable shape. I bid on it and ended up winning the auction! I paid for it and it was in my hands within a few days. Never having purchased a vintage tool on Ebay before, I opened the package not knowing exactly what I would find. What I received was a Stanley Bailey #4 Smoother that was most likely manufactured in the early 1930′s. It’s condition was just as described.
There was a bit of rust on the plane and what looked to be minor pitting, but all of the parts seemed to be in good shape and looked to be very serviceable. The knob and tote were both intact with no cracks. After a quick examination with a straight edge, the sole looked to be fairly flat and true. The sides were not 90 degrees to the sole but, since I was not planning to use this plane with a shooting board this was not a real issue. In the pictures, you can see the plane as I received it (click for a larger view).
I ‘ve tuned a couple of planes in the past, but those were new Record planes that needed some work out of the box because of inferior manufacturing. Rehabbing this vintage #4 smoother was uncharted territory for me. I disassembled the plane completely and examined the parts closely. Luckily, there were no surprises. However, I quickly realized that the first step in the rehab process was going to be to take care of the rust. The pictures show all of the parts after disassembly.
On the Internet I’ve seen several folks effectively eliminate the rust on their planes using an Electrolysis technique. I was contemplating this technique but decided to look for some alternatives. In doing so, I stumbled onto the information for a few rust elimination products. One product, called Evapo-Rust, was sold at Auto-Zone and had a money back guarantee. This stuff was supposed to be environmentally friendly and reusable as well. I decided to get some and give it a try thinking that if it did not work I could always go the electrolysis route. To use this product all I needed to do was to soak the parts for 30 minutes or more depending on how much rust there was. The hardest part was finding a container that could hold the plane body for soaking! As you can see in the pictures, I ended up cutting up an old soda bottle. I soaked the screws, blade and chip-breaker first to see how well the process would work.
After about an hour, I removed the parts, rinsed them with water and gave them a light scrubbing with Scotch-Brite. All I can say is: I’m amazed at how well this stuff worked and how easy it was to use. I gave the de-rusted parts a light coating of 3-in-1 Oil to keep any surface rust from forming. Next to soak were the plane body and frog assembly – I left these in the bath over night because of the amount of rust on both. The next morning after a rinse and a quick scrub, they both looked great! The frog received some oil and the plane body got a coat of paste wax on the sides and bottom.
With all of the parts now relieved of rust, I set out to rework the edges on the blade and the chip breaker. The blade had a small amount of pitting on the back and a few significant nicks in its edge. I started the process by flattening the back on my water stones. After getting the back in reasonable condition I went to my Jet Wet Sharpener to remove the nicks and to put a fresh bevel on the blade. I recently got this tool during a super sale at Amazon.com. I could not justify the price of the Tormek Wet Sharpener (even though it looks to be a very well-made tool). However, during the sale this Jet Sharpener was available for the equivalent of a couple of good Water Stones so, I decided to give it a try. I’ve been reasonably pleased and it does speed the sharpening process. This situation was no exception. Within fifteen minutes I had ground a new primary bevel of 25 degrees and a micro bevel of 28 degrees. The last sharpening task was to grind the chip breaker so that it had a crisp edge where it contacts the back of the plane blade.
With the de-rusting and sharpening completed, I decided to see how the lpane might perform without doing anything more to it. so, I assembled the plane. I fiddled with the placement of the frog until it was in a position where it was just ahead of the back of the plane mouth – this assured that the blade was totally supported by the frog and did not contact the back of the mouth. I adjusted the chip breaker to sit back from the blade edge by about 1/32″ and installed the blade. After advancing the blade slowly while taking swipes of a Cherry board I was making nice shavings and leaving a polished surface on the face of the board!
I think eventually I may want to invest in a thicker iron for this plane and maybe a new chip breaker, but all in all I would say that this effort was a success. I received a good specimen to begin with and I did minimal work to rehab it into working order. Best of all, I have a new tool to use now and saved some money toward another tool in the future. If it always goes this well, this could get addicting…
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them here using the comments link at the end of the post, or email me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.
Tags: rehab, restore, smoothing plane, Stanley Bailey #4 smoother, vintage plane
With all of the leg mortises completed and the knee blocks cut, attached and shaped, the next task at hand was to cut the tenons on the aprons of the Queen Anne Side Table.
I milled all of the stock for the aprons, top rail and drawer front in a single session at the jointer and planer. This assured that all of the apron stock would be identical in thickness. When cutting the pieces to size, I saved the offcuts to use for test pieces when cutting the tenons. The first step in machining the tenons was to make the shoulder cuts. This was done using the miter gage at the table saw. The tenons are to be 1/4″ thick from 3/4″ stock. So, the key here was to set the blade height just lower than 1/4″. This left a thin web to trim when fine tuning the tenon thickness and avoided cutting too deep into the tenons. In the pictures (click for larger view) you can see all of the aprons with the shoulder cuts completed.
With the shoulder cuts completed, it was time to cut the cheeks of the tenons. It took a bit longer to do this than I had anticipated – not because I had any issues in doing so but rather, I decided to make a new tenoning jig for the table saw in order to complete the task. A couple of years ago I made a tenon jig that used the miter slot as a reference point. It had a movable carriage on top that allowed for the workpiece to be moved closer to and farther away from the saw blade in order to vary the width of the tenon. This sounds like a workable premise for the jig however, in operation the carriage had too much play and did not always lock down parallel with the blade. The result was tenons of unequal thickness. This time I decided to take advantage of the accuracy of the Biesemeyer Fence on my table saw. The new jig rides on the fence body and has both a cam clamp and a quick release clamp to keep the work secure as it is moved through the blade. It was definitely worth the trouble to build this jig – it worked flawlessly and I had all of the tenon cheeks cut in minutes!
In the picture you can see my “micro adjuster” for the tenon thickness. 
As I mentioned earlier, I used cutoffs from the stock for my test tenons. After the initial setup, I cut a test tenon and tried it in a mortise – it was just a bit too thin. To micro adjust the tenon thickness, I clamped a block to the fence with two thicknesses of paper between it and the fence. Then I loosened the fence, removed the paper, butted the fence against the block and locked it down. After cutting both tenon cheeks in the new positon, the result was a tenon about 1/64″ thicker than before and a perfect thickness for some final fitting later.
Because of the height of the table aprons, solid tenons would be problematic for dealing with future wood movement in the table. The best approach here was to split the tenons into multiple smaller tenons to allow the aprons to move with future changes in humidity without cracking. I did this by measuring the tenon locations directly from the leg mortises and cutting the tenon shoulders on the table saw with the miter gage. In the picture you can see the divided tenons. This left a step of removing the waste adjacent to the tenons on the aprons. I did this by cutting close to the shoulders with a Japanese Dozuki saw for the outer pieces and a coping saw for the pieces in between the tenons.
The cuts with the Dozuki and coping saw left rough areas in need of some minor cleanup. This was accomplished by paring with a sharp chisel to yield clean tenon shoulders. With the tenons cut to size I needed to round their corners to fit the router-cut mortises. After some quick work rounding the tenon corners with a file, I was ready for a trial fit for the aprons. As expected, there was still a bit more fine tuning to be done as each tenon was fit to its respective mortise. The best tool for this job is the shoulder plane. With this tool I was able to sneak up on a perfect fit for the width of the each tenon by carefully shaving the cheeks of the tenons until they slid perfectly into their respective mortises. For the dry fit, the shoulder plane also excelled at shaving the tenon shoulders perfectly square so that the aprons fit tightly against the leg posts and the table carcass was square.
In this picture of the dry fit it looks as if there is a major color variation between the back and side aprons and the rest of the table – in reality these came from another board and they are a bit darker however, not nearly as much as it appears in the picture. I may try to get the other parts into the sunlight for a tanning session to give them a bit more color to see if I can even things out. Hopefully, I won’t have to wait until July for that opportunity…
As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them here using the comments link at the end of the post, or email me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.
Tags: coping saw, dozuki saw, mortise, table saw, tenon, tenon jig
I’ve been progressing on the legs for the Queen Anne Side Table. In my last post, I had shaped the feet and reworked the heel transitions on the legs. This left the tasks of adding and shaping the knee blocks, cutting the mortises and trimming the posts to final size to be done.
The first task was to mark and cut the mortises. I had left the tops of the legs sized to the full square dimension in order to make marking and cutting these mortises easier. Of course, doing this before the knee blocks were added also helped out with the ability to clamp the legs and to machine the mortises. There are four mortises on each of the rear legs and three on each of the front legs. These mortises will accept the tenons from the table aprons. The front legs will also receive a dovetailed recess to house the top rail above the drawer but, I have chosen to leave that operation until after I have the rail milled to size and the aprons completed.
Normally I would cut these mortises with my router mortising jig (see this post for info). However, when I tried to use that jig with these legs, I discovered that my router was extended too far away from the edge guide and it became unstable in that orientation. I contemplated using the drill press to rough out the mortises assuming that I would follow up with a chisel. However, after a practice run using that method I was not satisfied and returned to the router for another alternative. I opted to clamp each leg in my bench vice and to route the mortises using the edge guide alone. 
The only down 
side to this method was that I lost the assistance of the stops on the jig so, I needed to be careful to stop routing accurately at the ends of each mortise. The fact that I had left the tops of the legs at the full dimension made this process much easier. Once I got going, the routing all of the mortises went very quickly. While I have done mortises many times using more traditional methods, I really like doing mortises with the router. Once the process is nailed down it is very quick and accurate and the mortise walls are very smooth assuring a good glue joint. An added benefit is that with a shop vacuum connected to my router there is very little clean up to do!
After the mortises were completed, I needed to finally cut down the upper posts on the legs to their final dimension so that the knee blocks could subsequently be added and shaped. With the extra material at the tops of the legs, there was no room for that shaping to be done. 
This was a simple operation at the band saw with one significant detail to be addressed. Because of the shape of the legs, the two faces of the posts needed to be cut in a specific order. In the pictures you can see that the leg was first oriented with the knee down toward the band saw table while making the first cut. After that cut was complete, the leg was rotated counter-clockwise 90 degrees to complete the second cut. 
This allowed for flat faces of the leg to be placed against both the fence and the table during both cuts. These two cut faces make up the outsides of the posts and will be smoothed once the aprons are cut and fit.
With the machining completed on the tops of the legs, it was time to cut, glue and shape the knee blocks. Knee blocks are typically attached separately at this stage because there is no good way to cut the entire leg (with the knee blocks) out of a solid piece of stock – even if they were cut from a solid block, a lot of stock would be wasted in the process. I started this process by examining the offcuts from the leg blanks that I had saved for suitable pieces to use. There are six knee blocks to be made in total (two for each front leg and one for each rear leg) . While examining the stock for these pieces, I tried hard to match the grain on the legs with the grain on the knee blocks. Of course, this was hard to do exactly, but attention to this detail will result in a better looking piece in the end.
With the stock for the knee blocks chosen and cut to rough size, I traced the pattern onto each piece using the template that I had made earlier. I chose to cut this pattern out first and to then scribe the leg profile onto the knee blocks. Because of the shape of the knee blocks I ended up having to create a template on a piece of paper to trace onto the profiled faces of the blocks – this was necessary because I needed to keep the flat side against the band saw table while cutting the leg profile. In retrospect, I should have made these cuts in the opposite order but, with a little thinking there was an alternative way to get the job done.
In the pictures, you can see the process of gluing, clamping and rough shaping the knee blocks. It turned out that clamping these pieces to the legs was a bit cumbersome – even trying to use the offcuts as clamping blocks did not work well. The resulting glue joints are not my best, but they are certainly adequate.
Shaping these curves followed the same process as the rest of the legs. Lots of rasping, filing, chiseling and a little sanding. In the picture you can see the shaping completed with the legs sanded to 150 grit. After the aprons are made there will be a bit more refining and sanding to be done, as well as cutting the dovetailed recess in posts for the top front rail but, for now the legs are complete.
I have started to the process of milling the stock for the aprons, the drawer front and the table top. The joinery on those pieces will be the next task at hand. Until then, if you have any comments or questions, please leave them here using the comments link at the end of the post, or email me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.
Tags: cabriole leg, file, knee block, mortise, Queen Anne, router, router mortising jig
After a brief trip out of town last weekend, I was finally able to get a bit more time in the shop. I had previously left the legs for the Queen Anne side table in a rough state with the feet turned and ready for some serious shaping work.
You may recall that I had previously drawn some lines on each face of the legs to help guide me during the shaping work. The first set of lines started at the center of the leg near the ankle and then followed the curves up toward the knee at a consistent offset from the edges. The second set of lines also followed the curves from ankle to knee but, these were spaced about 5/7ths of the way from the edges to the first set of lines. The result, as shown in the picture, was four lines on each face. When viewed across a corner of the leg, the two closest lines to each corner denoted an area to be chamfered and the next set of lines helped to define the outer extents for rounding the corners of the legs.
The first step in the shaping was to create a chamfer along each corner between the first set of lines. This chamfer needed to be widest at the ankle and to taper to nothing as it approached the knee of the leg. I started these with a sharp chisel and then 
moved on to using a coarse rasp. 
These initial chamfers were done along each of the four corners of the legs.
Once all of the corners were roughly chamfered, it was time to continue the rough shaping with the rasp. The first area to work was the ankle. The idea was to roughly shape the ankle to a nearly round cross-section. Once the ankles were rough shaped, I continued with the rough shaping moving up the leg toward the knee. 
The round 
cross-section at the ankle gradually transitions to a square with rounded corners as you approach the knee. All of this shaping was first done with the coarse rasp, then it was repeated with a fine rasp and then a file – the pictures show this process at the ankle area. For now, the area from the knee up is left unshaped. Those areas will be further shaped later after the knee blocks are attached so that transition will be smooth.
Once the shaping with the rasps and files was completed, I took some time with a card scraper and some sand paper to smooth the shaped areas of the legs (you can see all of the tools that I used for the shaping in the picture). 
Overall, I liked what 
I had except for the area where the heel transitions into the foot. In the picture you can see the results of my initial efforts. I wanted a less abrupt transition at the heel than I had so, I set things aside for a couple of days and pondered the best approach to altering the legs. Of course, my concern in making any changes was that I have consistent legs when completed but, also to not remove too much material – once it comes off, you can’t put it back on! 
I did some sketches on paper of what I thought this area should look like and then attempted to mark the legs to reflect my sketch. With rasp in hand it was the moment of truth – I started again with a rough rasp to ease the transition at the heel. Once I started I began to be able to see my way through this process toward then end result and the anxiety lessened. After rasping, filing scraping and sanding I could see the results of my efforts: a much more gradual and pleasing looking transition.
Though the shaping of the legs is not yet completed, the next step in the process will be to cut the mortises into the upper leg posts to accept the aprons. Once the mortising is complete, I will be able to cut down the upper leg posts to their final dimensions and then I can attach and knee blocks and complete the shaping of the legs.
Until then, I’d like to wish everyone Happy Holidays and a healthy and prosperous New Year! As always, if you have any comments or questions, please leave theme here with the comments link at the end of the post, or email me at thecraftsmanspath@gmail.com.
Tags: cabriole leg, chisel, file, Queen Anne, rasp, scraper, shaping
