Mentors and Teachers

This weekend I did a booth at the Woman's Club of Wilmette Antiques Show. A form of self promotion I have not done in many years.  A lot of people asked if I thought it was worth the effort.

Tools and Materials

From my perspective, I met a abundance of people with concerns and questions that I hope I answered in a way that helped them with their concerns.

While obviously I was there to hawk my services and find more work - I have to say that my favorite moments were spent giving away what some would call "trade secrets"

After the first day, standing there for hours on end with no tangible product to sell and only myself as a spokesman  - for myself. I jokingly referenced my first grade teacher Sister Zacchaeus,  saying that she would be proud that I had managed 8 hours of "show and tell" with out hiding in the cloak closet.

The half and half chest

Then Sunday at the show, I ran into my youngest sons first grade teacher -  who thanked me again for coming to her class and bringing all the wood samples and tools. I had forgotten that moment it was over 14 years ago -  and it struck me as an odd coincidence.

The opportunity to offer or share knowledge -  freely and openly -  is without a doubt  - truly a blessing.

To all of my mentors and teachers throughout the years, my sincere thanks for instilling in me a thirst for knowledge and importance of sharing.

The Rosewood Sofatable (fini)

Finished.

Its not often in your life that you are given the opportunity to apply your craft at this level or for such an extended period. A gratifying and memorable time for which I am grateful.

The Rosewood Sofatable (part 3)

Fabrication
The actual construction of the table involved numerous techniques, which covered a multitude of disciplines.

Knuckle Joints -wooden hinges

The main carcase involved a variety of joinery methods from dovetails to tenons. The knuckle joints for the leaf supports were particularly challenging.


Aptly named for their similarity to intertwined fingers, they are in fact simply a wooden hinge. Carved to allow free movement of the sections and pivoting on a steel pivot...exactly like a door hinge.

Close up of the completed joint

Dovetailed Drawers

Dovetial Joint: "A series of pins cut to extend from the end of one board interlock with a series of tails cut into the end of another board. The pins and tails have a trapezoidal shape. Once glued, a wooden dovetail joint requires no mechanical fasteners."  from Wikipedia

The hand cut dovetails were fashioned into the White Oak drawer sides with a coping saw and then cleaned up with a dovetail chisel.

A time consuming but gratifying operation.

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Stringing
 
By far the portion of the construction that presented more than its fair share of headaches was the radius-ed boxwood stringing for the legs and the corners of the top. The material I had selected was commercially available boxwood inlay 3mm square. A perfect dimension for the straight sections, bending them to a curve was problematic.

I first attempted to persuade them into the correct radius using a violin rib bending iron. The heat from the iron and the steam produced is quite effective on the thin maple material used for the "ribs" or sides of a violin. After several trial runs, it became obvious that the 3mm thick boxwood wasn't impressed at all with this technique. 3mm was just too thick and the stringing kept shattering into smaller sections.

Given the boxwood apparent desire to be in smaller sections. I ripped 1mm x 3mm thick strips from a board of solid, using the bending iron to get the approximate curvature in each section and them gluing up 3 of these pieces around a dowel,  turned to the proper radius. Each of these assembled corners was them cleaned, trued and cut to fit in its proper place. The corners for the top were done in a similar fashion using a slightly different jig.

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Veneering

As seen on ebay

The veneer was applied to the ground work using a traditional hammer gluing process. The veneer and the ground work are first "toothed". Using a wooden plane, with the blade held almost perpendicular to the surface, the toothed blade both levels the surface of any minor irregularities and adds a surface that is more conducive to adhesion. After toothing the ground work and the veneer are sized with diluted hide glue and allowed to dry completely before proceeding.

Hide glue is made up full strength and applied hot to all the surfaces, using a veneer hammer (seen with the blue handle) the veneer is essential squeegeed down onto the surface and the excess glue is pushed out at the edges. A sticky, messy and slightly smelly operation. Other than the advantage of being historically accurate, the process allows for repositioning and adjustments even after the glue has set. Small bubbles that may occur in the panels can be easily reheated and pressed flat.




Small weight and masking tape can also be used on irregular surfaces to coax the veneer into place until the hide glue cools and gels.

In the case of the curved veneer on the top of the legs I applied sizing to the pieces and sandwiched them between layers of wax paper wrapped around a stain jar. 

The inside boxwood line is glued in place after the center field has been applied and trimmed, and then the cross-banding is applied in the same manner in small sections, with each piece hand fit to the one next to it.

Proceeding around the perimeter until the cross band is complete.

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Stringing part 2

After all of the veneer has been laid and dried, I set about cutting in the stringing the highlight all of the edges on the piece. Using a violin purfling cutter, ( I know mixing my violin training with my furniture work) I cut a channel into all of the leading edges and glued the previously made corners and strips in place. Again using masking tape and the occasional clamp to hold it all in place until dry.

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The Rosewood Sofatable (part 2)

Materials

Buxus sempervirens

Dalbergia cearensis

 The original table was a wonderful wood collection starting with Kingwood (Dalbergia cearensis) for the main panels, the top was cross banded with Tulipwood (Dalbergia frutescens). All of the leading edges were strung with a contrasting Boxwood (Buxus sempervirens) inlay.




As "luck would have it" over the years I had collected a small flitch of Rosewood, at least 60 years old and cut thicker than more modern materials, The knife cut tulipwood was easier to find in a matching thickness but even though boxwood for stringing is available commercially, I could not find any that fit the requirements. So it was purchased as timber and re-sawn to the needed dimensions.

Dalbergia frutescene

Swietenia macrophylla

All of these materials were "hammer veneered" to a solid mahogany groundwork in a traditional process using hide glue. (more on that later)

Later in the process

The Rosewood Sofa Table (part 1)

Start up

Some time back, I was contacted by a customer in possession of a late Georgian English Rosewood Sofa Table. The table, while in near perfect condition, presented a problem in that it would not support the weight of the clients equally valuable and important Remington Bronze Sculpture.

 The original intention of the client and his designer was to have the Sofa Table altered by shortening the original dovetailed drawers in order to make room for a support beam to be installed under the top in the center of the frame. While this would have solved the immediate dilemma it would have destroyed an almost perfect antique and severely affected it value.

Never being one who enjoys decimating cultural artifacts, I instead suggested that we take detailed measurements of the original and make an adapted reproduction that would retain the aesthetic quality of the original and sell the original to another collector thus preserving its integrity. Given the monetary value of Georgian Sofa Table, this was also the most economic solution.

Frame adaptation

In addition to shortening the original drawer length to allow for the addition of the support beam, the adaptation also added a stretcher between the legs, thus adding additional structural support.

While the original form did not include a stretcher it was still in keeping with the period style.

Without even cutting into any materials the process of measuring every part of the original  and creating a working set of drawings was a challenge in and of itself.

Overview

Top Details

Next up
material selection and fabrication....

Vegvísir

- A lesson in orientation.

My nephews Nick and Alex Kleeman and their friend Dave Green left on September 18^th to circumnavigate the globe in a sailboat they have christened Saltbreaker.  When they were in Chicago for their local going away party this summer I was looking for something meaningful to send along. While “Stumbling” on the internet I came across a symbol called a Vegvísir.

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Vegvísir

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A Vegvísir (Icelandic 'sign post') is an Icelandic magical stave intended to help the bearer find their way through rough weather. The symbol is attested in the Huld Manuscript, collected in Iceland by Geir Vigfusson in 1880 (but consisting of material of earlier origin). A leaf of the manuscript provides an image of the vegvísir, gives its name, and, in prose, declares that

 "if this sign is carried, one will never lose one's way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known".

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Seemed damned  appropriate to me, but I had no way of presenting something to them on short notice, so I gave them a printout of the symbol and offered to inlay it into a plaque that they could hang in the cabin of the boat.

Within minutes the two of them came back and asked if they could FedEx me the center panel from the hatch of Saltbreaker to inlay the symbol into. A much cooler idea  - and thus began the wanderings of their hatch, without boat or water.

The first 2100 miles of the hatches journey would have been pleasant and uneventful had I not given Alex the wrong address. When he emailed me the tracking info I looked it up and saw that it had been delivered, just not at my house. Luckily the wrong address I gave him was only across the street at a neighbor whom I know, unfortunately they were out of town that week, fortunately someone was picking up their mail, and unfortunately the FedEx package wasn’t a part of what they had picked up.

A day later panicked and despondent I was sitting on my porch and looked across the street to see a brown package with a FedEx logo sitting on my neighbor’s porch.

Apparently even with only the intention of inlaying the Vegvísir “one will never lose one's way in storms or bad weather, even when the way is not known".

After collecting the materials I needed I set about inlaying the pattern.

The brass I purchased was manufactured by K and S Engineering in Chicago, Its readily available at most hobby and craft shops. But did not come in a size (8” x 8”) that would allow me to cut the symbol from one solid sheet… so I bought several smaller sheets that would allow me to cut each trident individually.  This would present a problem at the center – but I had an idea.

The brass as purchased is way too tempered to allow cutting with a standard jeweler saw so I needed to anneal the material before cutting the pattern. I heated each section as evenly as possible to almost red hot and allowed them to air cool back to room temperature.

 

However after setting up my scroll saw and trying a few test cuts it became apparent that it would take an impossible amount of time to cut out the details.

On a whim I tried a 1/8” scroll blade in my newly upgraded band saw. The new Carter rollers held the blade flawlessly and enabled me to accurately cut out the pattern.

With all of the pieces cut,  I set about hand chasing the edges to remove the saw marks and correct any irregularities.

This proved to be a larger task then I had expected but went forward without a hitch.

Now that the pieces were done and ready for inlay I need to decide how to pull all of the individual sections together at the center. My first instinct was a simple brass circle, but while scrounging through my collection of inlay materials,  I found a large Victorian Mother of Pearl button that I had purchased over 30 years ago. Mother of pearl would be more than fitting as a center but this was Black Pearl. Typical rose and white hues at most angles but jet black from oblique.

 Black Pearl!
 Perfect!

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Cleaned and true, I spot tacked the all of the sections in place with cyanoacrylate. 

 

Secured to the groundwork,  I traced along all of the edges with a hand sharpened blue spring needle and the repeated the process with a micro scalpel. With the outline scribed as close to the pieces as possible I removed them from the surface.

Taking plain white chalk, I highlighted the pattern I had incised and began the process of inlaying the brass.

 

After setting the router depth to within a 32^nd of the thickness of the brass, I used an eighth inch down cut spiral router bit to remove the waste as close to the chalk line as possible. 

Using several micro chisels I cleaned up the remaining incisions.

With the entire pattern completed, I washed the surface of the hatch and all of the brass with acetone to remove the surface oil and glued all of the sections in place with West System Epoxy.  

When the inlay was dry the clamps were removed. The surface was first filed to flush and then sanded through 100 to 220 grit.


A final coat of varnish and we were set!

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Orientation Orientation Orientation

I sat back and admired my handwork, but something was speaking to me and I couldn't quite place it. I looked at Alex's note marking this end up on the hatch and it struck me.  I had printed out the talisman with what I saw as the prominent symbol at the top, assuming the dominant character to be North. Given my rather weak knowledge of Icelandic iconography, my assumption was...well... 180 degrees wrong.

So an upside-down compass and good luck charm on a sailboat leaving to circumnavigate the globe?

I don't think so.

What followed was painful and essentially a duplication of the proceeding procedure.

This is what Monday feels like

Ahhhh

The last 2100 miles were courtesy of my Sister Lisa, Nick and Alex's Aunt. She took the hatch back to them in her suitcase, for the cutting of the bowlines.  4200 miles before even setting sail. 

In reflecting upon my minor adventure with the hatch and the Vegvísir,  it occurs to me that despite the misdirection at the start, the hatch still found its way to me. And after I thought I had completed the task, the hatch told me otherwise. Now truly complete and pointing properly North the hatch has returned to its berth, to serve its true purpose. 

Never underestimate the wisdom of the wood.

As of this post they have traveled some 40 miles down the coast of California with months and miles and adventures ahead of them. I wish them all and more, and envy the future they have cast and own.

Photo: Jay Kleeman

To quote their Mother Sara, who was herself quoting Mark Twain:

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover. "

--Mark Twain

Photo: Ben Kalina

Second star to the right... straight on till morning

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Follow their progress
http://www.saltbreaker.com/blog/

If you have Google Earth installed you  download their path here
Saltbreaker.kmz

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Rob's Vegsivir guides us past Point Conception.

Point Conception
October 23 2011

"We rounded the point at midnight. Midnight is supposed to be the calmest time to round, but we weren’t having such luck. The weather station registered a gust at 40 kts (sustained was in the upper 20′s). Main sail down, and jib furled (rolled) to the size of a twin bed but we were still going close to max speed. Imagine holding your bed sheet up from three corners and having enough wind to pull 12 tons of boat through the water at 7mph."

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December 14, 2013
Two Years and three months at sea ....

"It's still looking good! Thought about polishing it ... but the weather wear suits it well."