Curtis Buchanan Sack Back Day 1

I'm honored to be in Jonesborough, Tennessee, USA starting Day 1 of Curtis Buchanan's Sackback Windsor chair class. I've always wanted to build furniture from freshly felled timber, for a variety of reasons. Nothing quite compares to working with wood 'in the green' as they say. it carves much easier, and the tools involved are so much fun. you learn about cleaving wood directly from a log, and then riving it into smaller pieces that are then taken directly to the shave horse and worked into things like spindles, or arm rests.

In this style of woodworking, the wood is alive. the grain has it's own direction and my main challenge as a novice is to let the feedback of the edge flowing with the grain of the wood dictate what direction to run.

The class consists of 3 students. There is no way to put in words what Mark, Rob and I have been learning within any moving 30 minute window while here. I was too concentrated on watching and doing and note taking to get a lot of photos in. We hit the ground running, and go right into the splitting!

Here Curtis is showing us some nice white oak that had been out in the air too long to be viable and had started to have some surface checking along the radial plane where oak tends to split quite easily. I had originally mentioned honeycombing as a similar thing, but this is an entirely different effect due to improper kiln drying.internal splits forming along the radial plane. i've heard of something called "honeycombing" and have seen this sort of effect in wood improperly kiln dried.

In our class, we start early and get really clear on the basics of wood structure. When talking about splitting wood along it's grain, we use two important terms: Radial plane, and Tangential Plane. Here's a good picture of what Curtis is describing.

Curtis' mandatory syllabus includes Understanding Wood - By R. Bruce Hoadley, which goes into great detail about the physiology of wood, and what it's doing especially in response to changes in humidity, grain direction, etc. Curtis' lays it plain as day that you can't really be a proficient woodworker unless you understand how wood behaves. It needn't be a mystery.

Now today, we're working on the spindles for the chairs, all day. It starts from chunks of white oak that Curtis had reserved for classes. It's particularly good wood as most of us students are going to have enough challenges just getting something approaching useful in a project, having tricky grain issues are beyond folks like me at this point!

When you are breaking down a log, it's done in phases. You start with wedges tapped in with a lump hammer, and this process is called cleaving.

Once you've cleaved your oak into manageble sizes, the next step is to rive it using a froe. Now, as curtis says: "knowledge takes ten generations to build, and only one to loose." The Froe is a perfect example. It's an "L" shaped tool used to deliver very precise instructions to the wood on how to split.

Curtis is a self described "Froe Evangelist", and there's good reasoning behind flying this flag: no other tool can do what a froe can. A froe is excellent at guiding the split line between two sections of wood. Frequently what can happen when splitting is that the crack will get ahead of where the grain naturally runs, but with a froe used in conjunction with a brake, you can guide the split and more easily rive out even pieces. the 2x12's you see in the background below connected by 2 offset dowels are what is called the brake.

Here, he's initiated a split with his froe and has it supported in the brake. You use the lever action of the handle to guide the split, and you press downward when in this position. So you orient the side of the split that is "heavier" downward. The heavier side is the piece of wood that the split appears to run away from. it's fascinating. I could take pretty much the rest of my life just riving out billets like this and never grow bored.

Curtis relayed the use of froes primarily in the construction of roofing shingles (roof boards) in this part of the United States. A terrible terrible hail storm in the early 20th century destroyed so many roofs in the region, that during reconstruction, tin roofs became the norm, and the craft of using a froe ebbed away, lost from one generation to the next. However, the tool's application has been invigorated by chair makers needing this kind of tool to efficiently process wood for chairs.

the rest of the day was devoted to incrementally refining spindles from the rived pieces. It's too complicated to put into words here, but the joys of using a foot operated shaving horse to hold the wood, shaping with a razor sharp draw knife, and all the time the increasing scent of white oak bringing me back to the barriques holding Napa and Sonoma Valley wines is irrefutable. it's intoxicating. i didn't want to leave and was overcome by my very senses.

If I were to relay one message about the technique it would be about "maintaining your references". First you ahve to find the tangential and radial plane on two faces of your spindle blank. It requries letting go, and using the force, Luke. Do a few thousand and it will be natural. For us it took a while. You then create tapers along the same facets, and then incrementally form an octagonal cross section along the entire length of the spindle. This then goes into a kiln overnight for spoke shave fun tomorrow.

I am overjoyed to be here. I remember a few good things about my life back home, like sarah, and our two cats and my garage.

I'm happily lost in the process.

Ok, this is one of the great pleasures about being here, I have to tell this little story, there were many such as this today

Curtis has a few egg hens on his property, and they live an idyllic life with plenty of room to scratch, but a new rhode island red arrived on the scene which had the others clucking and inspired to test their wings, jumping over the fence. I relayed a story from my youth about having similar problems with our bard rocks and that, as kids, one of our chores were to clip their wing feathers (an inch or so from proximal end) to prevent them from being able to fly. As luck would have it, one of the students, Rob, is a Nevada veterinarian, so we had an impromptu remedial session to keep the hens in the coop.

bedroom armoire and chest of drawers finally done, installed

here is our clothes storage furniture as of this morning installed. it's done. done is good.

it replaced this temporary solution established in 2016 during an aggressive remodel of the kitchen, and bath. a wall of depressing chaos over the foot of our bed. but this is what you deal with when you insist on making all of your damned furniture.

my last blog post left off with showing the chest of drawers ready for finish, the armoire casework was completed before, and only had the drawers to complete here, in the same style as the chest

I picked up a few 3/8" rare earth magnets with metal cups that are secured with screws. these would be the cabinet door closures. they work nicely. next time i might just go with veneering over them so that they're not visible and dont "click" when they contact the door. also, as an aide to extract the magnet should i need to, i filed a slot into the side of the cup, and then fabbed a small hook from a piece of coat hanger to pull out the magnet. works.

I can't get past the milk paint layering technique that i discovered by reading/watching videos on windsor chairmakers like curtis buchanan and peter galbert. and so i set forth on another laborious and mostly unsatisfying endeavor on finishing these pieces using a black washcoat, burnished over a red one. THis time I used powdered milk paint from the old fashioned milk paint company. it i think sands better than the premixed stuff by general finishes, which to me handled much like an acrylic paint, and would gum up my abrasives when burnishing it.

anyway, black, is a merciless paint to work with. it stunned me how many small blemmishes stood out. i have a lot to learn about card scraper technique, and being more careful to be mindful of plane chattermarks. i used a cambered plane iron on the smoother. it leaves a pleasing ripple along the fibers which shows in the light and when you run your hand along the edges.

Red in the substrate. first layers of milk paint do not instill hope, but subsequent layers will improve. I sanded with 400 after the initial red coat, and scuff sanded the following layer of red. after that, a wash coat of black, and then another one.

I used some worn out 400 paper, but mostly a few scotch brand abrasive pads and then #000 steel wool for final burnishing. and then a couple layers of general finishes armrseal. the overall effect was not quite what i had in mind with some patches of black scrubbed off more than others. but the red is still very subtle underneath. it shows through on the edges of the handle facets and in a few surface patches where i scrubbed too hard. i denfinitely would like to try this finishing schedule again, but perhaps on something with a bit more assertive grain, such as pine. maybe oak? I'm kinda tired of poplar.

Bedroom Chest of Drawers in the white

Slow and steady progress on the chest of drawers for the past couple months. Today, I've got it pretty close to ready for the milk paint. overall dims are 59,1/2" L 32,1/2" H and 20" D.

This began in sketchup initially. The idea was something very very simple where I could learn about frame/panel casework with a hard-to-do-for-me interior webbing to hold 9 total drawers. it has to hold our non-hanging clothing, and have the smallest possible volume for our bedroom. I chose poplar because it's cheap and works fairly easily, and will be painted using a thin black-on-red painting schedule with a oil topcoat.

I was negligent taking photos of progress up to here. just picture 400 board feet of poplar getting milled and cut to final dims and a few draw-bore m&t joints

here we see the lower rail piece, along with the interior webbing layers mortised into the sides. I created 1" tenons on the webbing pieces to draw-bore the whole assembly together. it works pretty well and requires no supplemental clamping. I wish I had decided to do this for the bottom rail members as well, but it did not occur to me at the time.

notice the little stubble tenons on the top of the 4 posts. these will receive the top of the carcass! indeed, I wanted to avoid having any sort of skirt around the top, and instead use the top as a structural member. it adds a lot of worry to the overall build but I like the reduction of stuff going into this assembly.

here I've put together the vertical webbing materials, which will be attached to the horizontal members via stopped dadoes that were not easy to set up on the tablesaw. Also a first glimpse of the top. I camber my finest Japanese smoother to lightly scallop the top captured panels and add a pleasant texture to the top.

Need to replace our gate to the back yard

So this access gate on the side of our house was kind of janky when we moved in in 2008, but today, it's down right awful. I use the gate enough that it makes sense to replace this with something that will work nicely, won't drag across the pavement and feel like it's going to jump off it's awful hinges at any moment.

I had some notion of a field gate much like Roy Underhill demonstrated in one of his episodes with real mortise and tenon joinery. But first I need to make sure the hinge post is still serviceable. It is a 4x6 pressure treated stick of wood set in concrete at the base that still appears to have some years in it. I'll try salvaging this. If anything it would be nice to have some sort of attachment about 3' off the ground to the house. It would *really* help stiffen the post, and I think it's feasible since the house's cripple wall reaches up this high, so I could just drive in a few long skrews to attach a firing block between the post and the house siding. maybe?

I'd use this type of hook-strap hinge, fully threaded through.

See where I'd apply a spacer block to brace the hinge post. I was thinking of using some spare teardrop siding from the house to attach upside-down to the house proper so that the surfaces mate better. Do I apply caulk to prevent water intrusion?

douglas fir base for finial of a lost artist

my long time comrade in arms and bikes, sean of 10-digital had a neighbor who passed recently. i met the man once during an open house. he was an artist, and had completely transformed his west oakland loft into a studio. These lofts are arranged in a way such that the east facing walls are covered with glass. He had a very large curtain in silk (i believe) and a long stout rod to hold it up. Whoever acquired the place, removed this assembly, and abandoned it on the sidewalk, to my dear friend's horror.

sean recovered the fabric, and one of the large finials that had been threaded into the ends of the curtain rods, and asked me to somehow provide a base for this to display in his home. They were about 6" in dia x 12" tall. So here we are with a 9" dia base roughly 1,3/4" thick with a 3/4" round nose bit applied to the edge. haven't figured out the finish yet. maybe nothing, maybe wax, maybe a bit of oil. maybe paint?

some time spent mocking up the base in cardboard to get a sense of the proportions. The finial was a moulded piece and has some 1/4x? threaded shaft on its base that would skrew into a 3/16" hole just fine with some wax coercion. We originally thought to make the base ovoid, but i quickly realized the base needed to be someting that provided stability, no distraction. stay out of the way of the finial.

I used a few tricks to make the circular cut on my band saw with a plywood sled that I ran along the fence at the 4.5" radius, before clamping to the deck. there is a wooden dowel pin in the plywood sled that feeds about 3/8" into a hole bored into the base to hold it in place and spin freely. after moving the fence out of the way, i was able to cut a circular base from the fir. It is riddled with some sort of wood boaring insect's holes, so i will have to run this wood through the oven to be absolutely sure nothing infects sean's house!

I used the same plywood sled to rout the edge corner detail here. note the use of a fast clamp "cleat" at the aft end of the fence that i could butt the sled up to for support while i pivoted the assembly into the spinning bit. This way felt like i was in good control of the cutting, and was able to take a clean cut in 3 passes. After this, it was just finish sanding.

Just in case he wants to hang this off the wall, i fabbed up a small aluminum cleat that is inset from the base (so that it doesn't scratch the table). Just in case he wants to hang this on the wall somewhere. It works fine with a washerhead skrew