Clock a la Voysey

That’s Charles Frances Annesley Voysey, of course, the English architect and designer. Some 120 years ago he was also a major player in the Arts & Crafts movement’s response to the perceived vacuousness of Victorian factory wares. A member of the Arts Worker’s Guild, C.F.A. Voysey designed buildings, wallpaper, fabric and furniture over a long career. Refusing all attempts to be lumped with pre-existing categories he developed a particularly British aesthetic that shaped the efforts of many who would follow. In short, he was big. Many of his buildings still stand but his work, today, is largely appreciated in museums with some residual demand for wallpaper and small furniture reproductions.

C.F.A. Voysey (1857-1941)

My current interest is in one of his clocks. Around the turn of the twentieth century Voysey conceived a couple of shelf clocks that have since become design icons. On first impression these cases appear downright Dr. Seussian but upon closer examination their statements (and beauty) come through.

C.F.A. Voysey shelf clocks

For this Project, I was looking to make an heirloom clock as a gift for my niece Hannah and her fiancé Jake on the occasion of their upcoming nuptials, and the dark wood specimen shown above caught my attention. Minus the three-tiered “superstructure”, this would still be an impressive clock and one that might situate itself better with surrounding keepsakes on a mantle. Poking around on the internet for a better picture I happened upon a specially commissioned version of this clock, constructed sans steeple, for sale at a high-end British antique gallery. Dating from 1921, it is reputed to be Voysey’s final clock and came complete with a 100 year-old, hand-drawn diagram as provenance. Irresistible!

Ebony clock case plans (1921)

Design

a la (Fr.) prepared in the manner of.

Translating the dimensions from this reduced-sized printout to a full-sized plan was a treat, aided substantially by the HxWxD numbers found on the Museum of the Home’s website. The 2024 version would be 9 1/2 inches tall and carry the proportions of the original features throughout. However, I planned to alter some of the details. For one, the radially symmetric dial with Arabic numerals would be replaced. This dial configuration, used extensively to good effect with Roman numerals, always seemed a bit wacky to me when used with “Arabics”, as was the practice a hundred years ago. I think it’s the upside-down “6” that bothers me most. Orienting all numbers upright would be my change here. And, since I planned to make the case from figured, quarter sawn white oak, the shaped moldings present in the original would be replaced by simple chamfers so as not to overcomplicate the look. I would strive to keep everything else true to design but with some additional changes in material.

“Clock a la Voysey” rough sketch

Materials

The original clock face did not have visible winding arbors and I also wanted to preserve this clean look. It must have been wound from the back through the sliding door feature. Further, the new clock would not have room for a pendulum and so a movement employing a balance wheel (think: pocket watch) was used instead. This new fangled invention (c. 1675) was used as an alternative to the pendulum (c. 1656) to govern the rhythmic escape of a clock’s potential energy. Both were invented by Christian Huygens, although in typical fashion Robert Hooke would claim to have conceived of them first. (He may have a beef here, but that’s a topic for another post.) Happily, I could find a movement that both wound from the back and employed a balance wheel, along with hands, key and special clock mounts from my favorite clock shop, Clockworks. The movement also used a bell instead of a gong. I’m not sure about the original, but a bell seemed fitting for this compact clock.

Clock parts

That takes care of the insides. For the outside, nearly every other material would be different yet still sum to an honorable version of the original.  To start, the exotic ebony would be replaced with white oak, stained to mimic the “Centennial” finish of Stickley mission furniture; still dark, but sustainably so. In that vein, the ivory inlaid dial face would become acrylic; something simpler (and legal). The plan was to also replace the copper hands with some golden colored metal, and the round bronze feet with either brass or wood. I wanted to see how the case looked before making some of these final calls. That original was some clock indeed!

Original Voysey clock

reproduced from the dealer website: Hill House Antiques & Decorative Arts

Dimensioning

The framed panel design of this clock case makes construction a bit more involved than a simple box, but not complicated. The only challenge looked to be the rather unique sliding door that makes up the back of the case. Anyway, that’s 19 oak parts in all, which were dimensioned to specifications using leftover boards from the No. 220 Project (details kindly omitted by the author).

Case parts

This clock Project has one operation that falls midway between Dimensioning and Assembly: face making. During their heyday, clocks were manufactured in massive quantities and the metal or paper dial faces were, by necessity, also mass-produced to keep up. Not so with Arts & Crafts clocks, where each face was typically created on the clock, one at a time.

The original version of our clock used inlaid material for the numerals and tick marks and that’s what I wanted to use, as well. However, with no time to learn this craft I resorted to the use of late-twentieth century technology, the laser cutter. Now, I had no time to learn the workings of this machine either but my son, Andrew, was already a master and had access to a good one, thus a collaboration was formed. My part of the co-labor involved securing the dial design on Etsy in the form of a .svg file and, later, coloring the wood. Andrew did all the rest.

Here’s how it went. A 1/8 in. thick mdf board unto which a white oak veneer had been applied served as the clock face material. This was then covered tightly with masking tape and the clock face pattern burned through with a laser cutter, previously programmed with a right-sized version of the dial pattern. A second 1/8 in. mdf board was then glued beneath. The numerals and tick marks could be laser cut in a similar fashion from an adhesive-backed 1/8 in. thick white acrylic panel. It was so easy that a duplicate was made … just in case.

Laser cut clock face with acrylic inlays

Once the components were delivered to the workshop, the face board, including the tiny wooden interiors of the 4, 6, 8, and 0 (taped to the bench) were dyed, glazed and then varnished similar to the procedure used for the clock body (see below). Next, it was time to inlay the dial. This was accomplished by removing the tiny release paper from the adhesive on each acrylic part and then gently tapping those parts into their place on the dial - all 81 of them. Following this, the numeral cavities were filled with their dyed wooden plugs. There is a delicate rhythm to the inlaying process which Andrew got very good at by the end.

Laying-in the dial face

I have to admit, the result was better than I had expected. The face looked wonderful!

Crafted clock face

Next, I had to figure out how the clock movement would mount inside the case. Enlarging the laser-cut hole for the hand shaft at the drill press was easy, but because that shaft was quite short, the 1/4 inch face board proved to be too thick. When pressed together, the winding arbors and the three attachment nuts hit the back of the dial preventing the hand shaft from protruding far enough beyond the other side. To remedy the situation I was able to mark these touch points on the mdf and then carefully drill & chisel 1/8 inch deep cavities so that the metal pieces could snuggle themselves into the back of the face while the shaft poked through the front. This was a dicey maneuver after having put so much effort into the dial, but it worked out.

Cutting-out divots on the back of the face to accommodate the mechanism

Now that the mechanism was mated with the face I just needed to find a way to firmly secure it into place. For this I swapped-out the clock’s three flat mounting plates for dog-eared versions and installed those backwards compared to their usual configuration. This produced a 5/8 inch gap between the mounts and the framing of the case which I could fill with scrap oak spacers, thus giving substantial material to screw the works into. These scraps were glued to the inner sides of the case frame which was dry-fitted for the purpose of drilling the pilot holes to complete an operation that, with apologies, was far easier for me to execute than explain.

Clock mechanism mounted to the framed face

Assembly

At last it was time to put the pieces together. I started with the spherical brass feet, which were purchased online as “knobs” from a cabinet hardware shop. Wooden knobs would also work, but I had grown fond of how the bronze material made that original clock appear dauntless. They mounted with bolts recessed and inserted at the corners of the beveled base board and worked perfectly for this purpose.

Brass feet in place

Next the case was assembled. The two sides were glued-up first (four frame parts and a panel, each), followed by the door which had been previously notched for a finger hold to facilitate opening. Then the front and back rails along with the clock face were glued to complete all sides of the box.

Case glue-up and door

At this point, a cardboard mask was fashioned for the face to protect it during all subsequent operations. The sliding door was then worked into smooth operation by hand planing and sanding the various contact points. It will be waxed at the very end to enhance the glide. The rest of the case was planed and card scraped to level all of the joints and then the whole case was sanded to 180 grit.

The final assembly step was to join the case “box” with the top and bottom boards. This was accomplished by first gluing some scrap oak blocks to the inside of the box along the top and bottom. Once dried, the exposed block surface would then be glued to the top and bottom boards, themselves. It might have been proper to use a couple screws here, but I think glue will be enough. In the end, I waited to fasten the top until after the finishing steps were completed simply to make things easier to handle.

Pre-finish glue-up (case, top and door)

Finish

With everything but the clockworks in place it was time to finish the wood. I decided to leave the interior unstained, but would apply a varnish coat there to avoid uneven water exchange between the inner and outer sides of the boards, which could invite warp. On the exterior I was aiming to create a dark brown body with highlights of darker grain and lighter rays; a uniquely rich look, only accessible with quarter sawn white oak and a bit of finishing care. To create what the L. & J.G. Stickley catalog called their “Centennial” finish I used the 4-step Jewitt process described in previous posts: dye (dark mission brown)/seal/glaze with gel stain (Java)/varnish. I used two coats of the glazing on this one as I found that the rays were still too “wild” for my taste following the initial application. After the final varnish coat, the top was glued into place and it came out well (if I do say so).

All that remained was to re-mount the works and fiddle with the hands some. First, I needed to change the color of those black hands and so I gave them a spritz of metallic gold spray paint. They now match the ball feet and provide a better contrast against the dark dial. The mechanism was screwed into place and, gratifyingly, everything operated properly within their cozy confines. Next, the hands were mounted and the minute hand adjusted to synch up the bell strike with the hour. With this balance wheel movement there is a small, threaded bolt near the top of the works that is used to adjust the speed and I spent a week or so fiddling with this to achieve accurate timekeeping. A final wax of the door edges then completed the clock. Voysey rides again!

Clock a la Voysey

Congratulations Hannah and Jake! Time to enjoy a wedding.

Screen Play

The interior of our 73 year old ranch-style home is a pleasant space, made even more so by a series of renovations conducted over the decades. By the time we purchased the 2019 version, several walls that had once partitioned the dining room and living room from an adjoining bedroom were gone. We enjoy the wide open expanse of this living area, but there is one nook, used as an office by the Chief of Domestic Operations, that would benefit from having its own space. She didn’t want a new wall, just a room screen. That’s the Project here.

First, let’s consider the room screen. Thought to have been invented in China during the 4th century B.C., screens have a considerable past. While I would venture that very few homes use a screen, today, we all have had encounters with them, either live or in photographs, so they are not that far removed from the present. One can readily conjure scenes from old movies where dressing screens played a major role, or from Japanese woodblocks where papered screens were used to divide rooms. They always looked nice and practical, didn’t they? Indeed, screens are useful objects that for some reason we rarely choose to use.

Kitagawa Utamaro, The Silver World (Gin sekai 銀世界) Japan, 1790.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Design

Unlike proper walls, screens are a part of the room’s decor, which means they need to fit in. Our screen will be like those from early twentieth century America, modest and made of wood. Gustav Stickley was a fan of room screens and sold two designs in his catalog for years. They were priced around $25 at the time, but I see one example listed today for $9,500 on an antique dealer’s website. Hmm … !

Screens offered by Gustav Stickley in the 1909 Catalogue of CRAFTSMAN FURNITURE

Of the two Stickley screens, No. 91 seems the best suited for a living room. The long waist of paneled oak is striking, however, sheepskin is not right for our purpose. Restored versions of No. 91 often have replaced this material with a linen or burlap panel but we wanted to admit some light into our sectioned-off space and so our version will possess wooden slats. I sketched a plan that included a mullion and a couple of shaped slats in each upper panel and it looked right.

Room screen: rough plan

Materials

All that is needed to construct this screen is quarter sawn white oak, some double-acting hinges and glue. I picked up the lumber at Highland Hardwoods and got the hinges from a nice online store called Furniture Knowledge.

Screen materials

Dimensioning

Each section of the screen contains 13 elements, which are made in triplicate to form the whole - a little production run, of sorts. The joinery is not complicated: a few mortise and tenons with some grooves for the flat panels and slats. The primary objective is to make all parts flat and straight so that, in the end, the screen stands with integrity. I had to work some to make the semicircular slats, but in general, once a tool was set up to produce an accurate cut, part preparation went quickly. Captioned pictures below give you a feel for the process.

All frame components planed to 1 inch thickness with the raw panel wood lurking in back

Cutting grooves into stiles at the table saw

Creating deeper mortises within the leg grooves to house the rails

One of the joys of working with wood is to celebrate the grain. Quarter sawn white oak, in particular, is rich with grain character and I find it is important (enjoyable!) to harmonize the grain flow, color, rays and flecks of adjoining parts when possible. It gives the wooden components an additional purpose and helps to create a personality for the piece. With 3 versions of every part, each containing two sides and two vertical orientations there are many permutations to consider in selecting which eight frame members go into each of the three sections, and why. Fortunately, with quarter sawn oak there are no wrong decisions, just ones that are more right.

Frame parts grooved, cut to final length and assigned to their respective sections (A,B,C)

After creating tenons for the rails at the table saw, the methodical process of planing cheeks and cleaning mortises was conducted to achieve a nice and snug dry-fit of the frame parts.

Dry-fitting the frame together

Next it was time to make the thin panels; these would be fashioned to tuck snugly within the grooves created above. 4/4 boards chosen for their grain figure were cut to rough widths at the table saw, run through the thickness planer just enough to get an even surface and then resawn into two slices at the band saw. The best 15 of these boards were then thickness planed to 5/16 in. and assigned to the respective sections.

Rough-cut panels of proper thickness

I used the trusty circle-cutting jig to create the semicircular openings in the upper panels. First, small wood scraps were glued along one edge at the circle’s center to facilitate drilling a pilot hole at that position. These panels were then taped together and cut as pairs at the band saw. Worked well.

Book-matched panels with pilot holes ready for cut-out

Cutting a pair of panels at the band saw

Getting close to assembly, it was time to card scrape the mill marks from all surfaces and trim the panels to their final dimensions. A subsequent dry-fit of the sections, one-by-one, gave assurance that all would go well during the glue-up.

Dry-fitting all parts in section C, while sections A and B look on.

Look closely at the picture above and you can see that a groove is visible in the frame by the semi-circle opening. This does not belong here and, with a bit of effort, could have been avoided during part prep. Instead, I chose to fix things at this point using leftover wood from the circle cutting step. Here’s how it went.

The small scraps of wood used for drilling the jig holes were, earlier, affixed using water-soluble glue. Thus, soaking the discarded cut-outs with water for a couple minutes followed by a sharp rap with a chisel was all it took to cleanly liberate the oak “half moons”. I then used the table saw to rip a 5/16 in. strip along the flat side of all six discards. These were exactly the right length to glue back into the exposed groove of the dry-fit sections. Upon disassembly, the proud surfaces were hand-planed flush to the frame.

Creating a “groove filler” at the table saw

Assembly & Finish

I began the finishing step prior to the glue-up. As the panels will be left to float in their grooves any shrinkage of these, over time, would risk exposing bare wood were they to be finished only after assembly. A primary coat, applied now, eliminates that possibility. Stickley’s Craftsman furniture employed ammonia fuming or other stains to color the wood, but I decided that a simple oiling would be all the finish needed for this Screen. The inspiration comes from the English Arts & Crafts designer C.F.A. Voysey. Working at the turn of the twentieth century he directed that his furniture be left unfinished or, at best, lightly waxed. Voysey was particularly adamant about this, and who am I to argue? Today, his oak furniture pieces look absolutely stunning; simple shapes enriched by naturally aged surfaces. That’s what I’m going for here, using boiled linseed oil as the agent.

“If you want to set my teeth on edge, talk about staining wood - especially brown. … I refuse to fume or stain it. It is best as Providence made it and I will not be a party to its degradation.”

– C.F.A. Voysey

All went well during the three glue-ups and, once cured, a hand plane was used to even up the seams along the top edge.

Scene during glue-up - the thin panels sporting a coat of oil.

The next step was to peg the mortise and tenon joints using oak dowels. Eight, 5/16 in. diameter pegs per section would be needed and these were pounded out from scraps at the dowel plate. Three drilling jigs were also constructed from leftover wood to ensure that the top, middle and bottom pegs were positioned identically within and between the sections.

Pounding out pegs

It was now time to complete the finish. I chose to do that with the sections propped upright so that both sides could be oiled at once. The first coat was applied to all surfaces, and after a couple days to cure the frame members received their second coat. Buffing with a gray Scotch brite pad followed by a cotton cloth gave the wood a smooth surface with very little sheen. The color is now a bit darker than raw wood and the grain character is enhanced some, though not enough to have triggered Voysey (I hope).

Finishing the sections

The final assembly step was to install the hinge hardware. Section “B” is the star here as all six hinges attach to it. These were affixed at appropriate intervals with screws and then the other sections mated alongside. I had never worked with double-acting hinges before. They are an ingenious invention and easy to mount, using a 1/4 in. spacer stick between sections to keep everything even.

Mounting the third section using double-acting hinges and spacer sticks

That completes the room screen. It now stands, nice and practical, between our office and living room, while adding life to both spaces.

Room “screened”

Tavern Clock Heir

I have a good friend, Bob, who is a tireless entrepreneur and small business owner, with a day job besides. Happiest when busy, he has recently leased some maker space and is establishing a new workshop there. Soon Bob will need a workshop clock to help him compute the amount of time that has elapsed since he was expected home. I aim to satisfy that need with a new twist on the classic Tavern Clock.

First, some background on the clock. According to Martin Gatto’s wonderfully informative website, Tavernicus, Tavern Clocks are a distinct type of British wall clock that you may also know as Act of Parliament Clocks. They date back to 1715 and had evolved through several recognizable forms prior to their eventual extinction around the turn of the nineteenth century. Beautiful and bold, the defining feature of Tavern Clocks is their enormity, often having dial diameters measured in feet. These clocks were created to hang on the walls of Taverns and Inns to provide a reliable time reference for patrons waiting to catch a coach, or adjust their personal carriage clocks. As such, they needed to be accurate and easily read from a distance, both of these traits being enhanced by size. I was unaware of their existence prior to a recent London visit when I happened upon one at a Kensington clock shop that took my breath away. Encountering a Tavern Clock at eye level was like seeing a sauropod skeleton for the first time. Did these things actually exist?

Tavern Clock looming over the lesser species at Howard Walwyn Antique Clock Dealers

I soon developed an urge to make one of these giants, especially the round-dialed, dark and gilded breed that roamed The Land of Hope and Glory, c. 1760-1780. However, I could not fathom an excuse for such folly. Then I scaled-down a classic American clock during a recent Project and it hit me that if I really cut down the size of one of these guys I could make it relevant today. It wouldn’t actually be a Tavern Clock, but perhaps a suitable twenty-first century heir.

Design

As mentioned, there were a few distinct styles of Tavern Clocks that served the changing tastes of Georgian times. Gorgeous all, these were essentially defined by the face shape, trunk shape and material and I invite you to consult Tavernicus for a better description, including their blog which lists a stimulating rundown of recently traded examples. Toward the end of their reign, the dark chinoiserie decorated cases were superseded by beautiful brown mahogany. One day I may make a mahogany version but I wanted to start out with that black “japanned” look. Also, I had been reading about methods to ebonize wood using iron and this clock case would give me the chance to try that technique, too.

First, I needed to see more examples of Taverns so that I could settle on a design. The intention was to get a feel for the form and then cop features from a few nice ones to create my “own” version. When trying to virtually inspect furniture or clocks I have found that auction websites are the best. Auction houses need to show-off the inside and outside of their lots, and so one can gain a wealth of useful anatomical information from the various poses on display there. For run-of-the-mill clocks in particular, eBay is a boundless fount. A workshop clock need not be gussy and so the main features of my design were taken from the two simple examples shown below.

Tavern Clock exemplars

By the way, that brown clock on the right is over 7 feet tall! and lists for $15,300. Mine will be just over 2 feet tall and probably less valuable. Like the example on the left it will possess a round wooden dial with a similarly proportioned door. The trunk will sport a decorative element along the side, similar to that featured on the right hand example. The bottom will be closed up as in these examples, but lacking the trim line. Even without a firm idea on how to treat the edge of the circular face, a rough plan could be drawn that allowed construction to start.

Working plan

Materials

I chose red oak for the clock case as this wood is loaded with tannins reported to behave well during the ebonization process. A couple of planks leftover from an earlier Project were enlisted to the cause.

Red oak stock

Quartz clock movements are the best for dusty workshops and I picked up one, along with the appropriate hands, from an online dealer, Klockit. I tried my best to match the distinctive Tavern dial design in stencil form (Roman numeral hours with Arabic minutes along the chapter ring) and found one of those on Etsy, of course.

Non-wooden parts

Dimensioning

The familiar quartet of miter saw, jointer, table saw and thickness planer were used to rapidly convert the flat sawn oak boards into meaningful part stock. The clock face is comprised of three, 3/4 in. thick boards glued together. All other parts are 5/8 in. in depth and it is only the thicknesses that were fixed at this stage, the lengths, widths and joinery features would be established during the proceeding, high-value cuts.

Oak parts in the raw

One-by-one the raw parts were refined into clock case components. This involved shaping grooves, tongues and rabbets with a dado blade at the table saw, a bit of chamfering at the router table, and then cutting all parts to their final lengths at the miter saw.

Case components ready for assembly

Portions of the door frame and door were cut with the aid of a circle-cutting jig at the band saw. The round clock face was also cut there using the same, 6 inch radius setting. To house the works properly, a 3/16 in. deep cavity beneath the center hole was carved out using a hand held router.

Cutting the door and door frame at the band saw with a swing on the circle jig

Following some experimentation on scrap wood I came up with a suitable edge profile for the face which was then carefully cut at the router table. I used a 1/2 in. radius cove bit to lighten the perimeter and then eased the backside with a round-over bit. Rotating the inverted face board along the bearing on top of the bit while also registering against the starting pin and a wooden stop made this an easy and safe procedure.

Shaping the edge of the clock face at the router table

To complete the woodworking portion of this Project, I drilled a larger hole in the face for the clock shaft and then cut mortises into the door frame for the hinges. Assembly came next. The case was pretty easy to glue-up in the prone position and, once cured, a few dowels were added to further secure end grain joints. Finally, the wood was sanded to #150.

Glueing the case

Finish

All that remained was to color the wood black, paint the dial in gold and then assemble the clock parts - coloring the wood being the most interesting step here. It is likely that black lacquer was used on the originals, applied lightly in many layers, to “coat” the piece and effectively smother the wood’s grain. I like wood grain, and so my goal was to color it black with retention of character. Paint was out of the question, and the typical petroleum-based stains would not blacken things enough. Modern dyes or even Japanese ink would likely work, but I was intrigued by results I had recently seen using iron to color wood black in a process called “ebonization”. This trick is intended to make common, tannin-rich woods such as oak look like their exotic cousin ebony (Diospyros ebenum). Let’s review the chemistry.

There are many references to ebonization in the woodworking literature, but the most thorough treatment I have found is a recent paper by Robert Q. Thompson in the Japan Wood Research Society’s Journal of Wood Science. In this work, a study of several common iron (II) and iron (III) salts revealed that the reaction of iron (II) acetate with wood tannins gave the darkest and truest black color. By comparison, commercially available iron salts possessing a chloride, sulfate or gluconate counter ion gave an undesired blue or green tint to the blackened wood. Certainly, acetate was the way to go and, fortunately, iron acetate is easily prepared in the kitchen by the reaction of steel wool as an iron source and white vinegar (aka acetic acid) as a source of both protons and acetate ions. Thompson even provides a simple recipe for this.

Add 170 mL of distilled white vinegar to 2 grams of #0000 steel wool in a glass jar; stir occasionally for 5 days and then pour through a coffee filter to remove any solid residue. (Important note: hydrogen gas is produced during the iron oxidation step so be sure to poke a hole in the top of the jar lid.)

When the resulting colorless solution is applied to a tannin containing wood, such as red oak, the iron (II) ions bind to the phenol groups lining the tannin structure (see below) and rapidly autoxidize to form iron (III). These iron (III) acetate-tannin complexes absorb almost all visible light, giving a deep black color as a result. Thompson shows that this all occurs within the first 60-80 microns of the wood surface (human hair width). But that’s enough!

Chemical structure of a typical tannin. The phenol groups (-OH) of the gallic acid rings complex with the freshly formed iron (III) ions.

Still with me? Here’s how things went in the workshop. With the clock face and door removed, all case parts were coated with the homemade iron (II) acetate solution using a foam brush. I applied a good amount of liquid with each stoke but not enough to leave puddles. Within a minute the wood goes gray and then continues to darken so that after 45 minutes it is a uniform black color - truly remarkable. I let things proceed until thoroughly dry (3 hrs) and then, following a light sanding, applied another coat as before. This made the wood a darker black color and I decided to stop the process there. How easy is that!

Disassembled case prior to the iron (II) acetate wash

Following two applications of iron (II) acetate

The grain of red oak has many fine crevices that are difficult to darken by this process, presumably due to surface tension effects of the aqueous solution. To catch these I first treated all parts with a wood sealer (Seal-A-Cell) followed by a light glaze using a dark brown gel stain (Java). Now uniformly colored but with the grain still on display, I then applied two coats of a satin wiping varnish (Arm-R-Seal) to seal it all up. Black is beautiful!

Next, I used the stencil and gold spray paint to create the dial pattern on the face. I also painted the hands a golden color. Not gold leaf, but still striking.

Clock dial and hands

To complete the project I fixed a small brass knob to the door front, reinstalled the hinges and then mounted the door back into the mortised case. On the original, this door provided access to the pendulum and weights, but on my version it merely conceals a storage compartment. Next, the quartz movement and hands were a cinch to attach to the dial front. Bob will need to get at the backside of the works to set the time and replace the battery, and so I decided to mount the round face to the top of the case with a hinge for easy access.

Hinged face allows access to the clock mechanism

And that completes the 21st century “Tavern Clock”. This scaled-down version serves as a workaday wall clock today, and also a reminder of magnificent timepieces past.

Tavern Clock heir(loom)

Best wishes, Bob. Enjoy every minute!

Bob, clock and me.

Back to Nature

Yellow birch in autumn

A good friend of mine, David, has a sweet Winnebago/Mercedes camper van and an ambition. His camper van, Isabella, he uses to explore the wonderful New England forests, his ambition is to convert the drab doors and drawers of that camper into beautiful wood. Now, I gather that upgrading features on these campers is a popular pursuit; and why not? It gives you the chance to customize your living space on a scale that is more approachable than a whole house. In a larger sense, replacing factory components with high end gear has long been a passion of the maven class, but the ambition here was different … better. It was about getting back to Nature.

Isabella in the wild

Design

This would not be the first upgrade. During an earlier makeover, the owner had covered the original gray linoleum-like door and drawer surfaces with cork, and had also swapped-out the plastic latches for those bold, stainless steel clasps used in boat cabins. This took the vibe in a more earthy direction and also created an appetite for natural materials. As a next step, it was thought that replacing the cork for actual wood would add interest and also brighten the space. The scope was 4 drawer fronts, 3 cupboard doors and a large, bi-folding lavatory door.

In discussing the Project we agreed that it should be an easy endeavor, especially if we were to reproduce the dimensions and edge profiles of the parts being replaced. The plan was to create solid wood drawer fronts and doors. Today, these parts are typically made from manufactured wood products (e.g., plywood) for reasons of structural integrity, but we hoped to get away with using the untamed material so as to capture the best of Nature. For the large, bi-fold lavatory door the strategy was to create a 1/4 in. thick wooden veneer which could be applied, just as the cork was, onto the existing door’s surface. It would be too much to ask a solid plank door of that dimension to stay true, and this way we could most easily utilize the locks, vents and piano hinge of the plywood original.

Image from within the camper showing some of the cork clad doors/drawers.

Materials

Our goal was to select a light-colored American wood, loaded with character and easy to finish. Oak was the quarry as we entered Highland Hardwoods, that cornucopia of quality lumber. And their flat sawn oaks were indeed “nice”, but also a bit sedate. With only small door and drawer surfaces to work with we were looking for plenty of wood grain action. The hard maple and hickory were “interesting” but, with their reputation for being tough to work, we took a pass. Likewise with the rustic white oak, “lovely” but too much of a twist risk for this application. Unexpectedly, we happened upon a fetching pile of yellow birch (Betula alleghaniensis). These flat sawn, curly planks had it “all”, with sharp contrasts of heart and sap woods, and a grain feature that popped like terrain on a topo map. Sold! It’s nice to exit the lumber yard with confidence.

Curly Yellow Birch

Dimensioning

The methods for constructing the smaller doors and drawer fronts were essentially identical. During this process, the existing components would be used as templates before being discarded. This approach not only provided correct positions for the new hinge/drawer attachment screws and latch openings, it also made shaping the exact edge contours a snap. Here’s how it went.

1. Prepare a board by thickness planing stock to 3/4 in. and cutting to rough dimensions. For the larger pieces, two or three such boards were glued together with the aid of biscuits.

2. Drill holes all the way through the original drawer front/door parts at all attachment screw points.

3. Using screws, attach the original door/drawer front to the back of the prepared board employing the same attachment holes utilized by the drawer fronts, and adding a couple screws, as required, for the doors.

4. Trace the outline of the template in pencil and drill all hinge screw holes into the doors using the guides prepared in step 2., then unscrew the template from the piece.

5. Cut out the shape at the bandsaw, staying just wide of the pencil line.

Cutting out a rough drawer front at the bandsaw (note the attachment screw holes)

5. Reattach the template with screws and then cleanly shape the perimeter at the router table with a flush trim bit using the template as a guide.

Trimming the wood edge flush with the template

7. Drill-out the latch hole using a 2 inch Forstner bit at the drill press, and then unscrew the template.

Drilling the latch hole using the template for positioning

8. Repeat these steps for all seven of the drawer fronts and doors.

Dimensioning complete for the 4 drawer fronts

Even with those glue-ups for the wider pieces it all went rather quickly. We encountered a couple incidents of tear-out at the router, which might be expected from this curly grained wood, but these could be adequately repaired and the overall results looked great.

Small doors completed

On to the lavatory door. To make the veneer pieces we would need to re-saw a couple of long planks in two, producing 4 boards that could be thickness planed to 1/4 in. and then mated back together along their edges. Even with a good bandsaw, slicing a 6 foot long, 8 inch wide hardwood plank down the spine can be a challenge. David stopped by to assist with these cuts and then remained to play catch on the thickness planer. All went well.

Resawing a birch plank

Slimming-down the veneer boards

Now for the aesthetic part. There are a few choices to be made when pairing up four panels on a door like this.

1. To book match or not? Certain grain patterns lend themselves to the kaleidoscopic thrill of book matching; that is, orienting a pair of boards opposite each other like pages in an open book. While the mirror effect can be dramatic, there’s a price to be paid in chatoyance, a grain-dependent optical phenomenon which, in book matching, typically makes one panel appear darker than its mate. We favored the extra drama. When book matching there’s also a decision for which edge to use as the mirror plane. I’ve always found that the grain gives you the answer here, as one permutation generally transcends the other, which was again the case.

2. What’s the sequence? Since the resawn veneers come in pairs (e.g., AA, BB), and this door has four panels, side by side, there are two different book match sequences to consider: AABB or ABBA. Taking the central piano hinge of the door into account we opted for the “big picture” book match of AB|BA. The central pair (BB in this case) was selected as the one with the best pattern to reflect.

3. Up vs. Down? After settling on the eye catching stuff this final decision is more a matter of propriety. There are two possible board orientations, related by 180°, and you want to select the one that will not make the grain appear upside-down. A furniture design maxim is to have the grain “heavier” at the bottom, soothing our natural sense of upward growth. (Look around your house and you will notice this on chests of drawers, door panels, etc.) To do otherwise would sire a freak of Nature. There is a lot to think about when building responsibly!

The final pattern, all things considered

To complete the door, each AB pair was glued together and then the seams leveled smooth with a card scraper. These constructs were prepared 1/8 in. longer and wider than a half panel of the existing door, the excess material to be trimmed following assembly.

Glueing together an AB veneer panel

Assembly & Finish

Assembly of the bi-fold door involved adhering an AB panel to each individual door section, one at a time. We used a version of LIQUID NAILS® for this (LN-2000) dispensed from a caulk gun and, again, David was on-hand for this operation. Taking turns, he would dole out a couple beads of adhesive onto the linoleum door which I then frosted smooth using a notched trowel. With the wooden panel laid “goodside-down” on the shop floor, a disassembled door section, laden with a full tube’s worth of adhesive, was brought over top and carefully laid in place. Boxes of books were employed as extra weight until the adhesive dried and it all went well.

Applying LIQUID NAILS® to a door section.

Door panels being bonded to their veneer under a couple hundred pounds of books

Once the veneer was attached, the remaining tasks were to trim the edges and then re-create the original openings for mounting hardware and vents. I removed the extra veneer about the edges using a hand held router and care. Given the propensity for tear-out with this wood I needed to go slow while maintaining the router perfectly upright. To assist with the second requirement, I fashioned a wooden “outrigger” to mount the router on. Keeping that outrigger board flat to the door surface as the router was slid along the edge was easy and ensured a true cut.

Trimming the edges with a flush trim bit and outrigger

The various openings were then re-created using a combination of hand drill, sabre saw and chisels completing the woodworking part of the Project.

Book matched door panels

The drawer fronts, doors and veneered door panels were taken back by David for final finishing, and he did a terrific job. To begin, all parts were sanded to #220 grit and then the sharp edges broken for a smooth touch. To get the most from the curly grain, the outer surfaces were further sanded step-wise, #320 then #400, producing a super smooth polish to the wood. Following this, two light coats of gel polyurethane were applied. This brought out the colors nicely, making the wood seem alive. Lastly, to get that perfect “feel” a coat of wax was rubbed-in and buffed.

Final assembly was a matter of (David) re-installing the stainless steel clasps and other hardware before mounting the parts back to their original positions within the camper. While difficult to capture in pictures, the finished doors/drawers add a cozy warmth to Isabella’s interior. Feels Natural.

"I like to section hike the Appalachian Trail and the Long Trail and I frequently refer to topographical maps in my adventures. When I saw the wood we chose in the lumber yard, the grain immediately reminded me of the maps. I love that the finished project allows me to think of hiking whenever I see the wood grain inside." 

David

Room with a View

First of all, I did not write this blog post, nor did I create the table it describes. These are the work of my good friend, Brian Jones. Here’s the backstory.

A while back, Brian inquired whether I had any plans for a work table that he could execute with the collection of hand tools he uses for home repairs. The answer was essentially: “Probably. But wouldn’t you rather have a nice table, instead?” He took my curt response in the manner intended, and after some further discussion he also took me up on an offer to come build his table using my tools. In taking on this Project it was implied that he would be responsible for the blog post, as well - both turned out great.

Room with a View

by Brian Jones

Adjoining our pre-Revolutionary home in Dover MA, is an old New England carriage house. On the second floor, slide-windows overlook conservation land that is the roam of deer and coyotes, together with bluebirds and (it is said, though I’m yet to confirm) bobolinks. I want to perch up there, pondering the view and charting my own roamings, like a tricorned explorer in the captain’s cabin of an old Galleon, pondering the horizon. However, the bottom of the windows are 53 inches above the floor-boards.

And so, the desire for a high-stool ‘map table.’ One that reflected the solidity of the beamed space and of the intentions that would be conceived on its surface. Surprisingly an aged example of something along these lines proved difficult to find and so I asked the advice of an old friend, Mark Goulet, who now hones his craft in the woodworking heaven that is the Red Top Workshop. Mark proposed that he guide me through the process of building such a table; an offer as generous as it was welcome, given my complete lack of woodworking knowledge. What would be better than communing through a New England winter, while working on this project? The neighborly enterprise seemed itself in keeping, with the lineage and life of the old carriage house.

Given Mark’s passion for the Arts & Craft style and ethos, he quickly suggested we re-dimension a Gustav Stickley dining table design for this purpose, which seemed perfectly in keeping with the aim. The plan then was for me (and initially, my son Neil) to spend several days through the winter, over at the Red Top Workshop, being initiated into the wonders of woodcraft and testing Mark’s reserve of patience and forbearance.

Table No. 622, Gustav Stickley

From: Bavaro, J.J. and Mossman, T.L. The Furniture of Gustav Stickley (1982).

We liked the simplicity and heft of ash and last October travelled to a New Hampshire yard to select the lumber. With a few tweaks of the plan to accommodate dimensions of the available timber, we were ready to kick off.

Our first introduction was to the jointer, thickness planer and band saw, to prepare the pieces that would be combined to form the square legs (below). Mark explained to us some basic elements of doing things right, like reading the grain in order to feed the wood in the optimal direction to minimize tear out, and careful entry/exit from the planer to minimize sniping. This very first step, converting raw lumber into clean, true-squared sections, is a magical transformation for the novice to witness. To look at a stack of raw lumber and be able to visualize how the elements of your construction will emerge is truly a skill born of experience.

With that done, we needed to create a mortise in each leg, to accommodate the bottom rails. This meant an introduction to dado blades on the table saw to carve out each half of the mortise (Gustav took a harder route to creating this joint). The table saw is an unsubtle implement, but effective. Mark’s methodical and unhurried approach seemed ever more important around this ferocious tool. After re-jointing the half-legs, the next new tool was the biscuit joiner, which set us up to glue and clamp, to provide the first look at the solidity of the whole leg (below).

Our next task was to create two rails that would tenon into the mortise in each leg. After again preparing and dimensioning the lumber, we used the dado blade to do most of the work hewing out wood to craft the tenon, which we then finished with chisels and hand planes, iterating against specified leg mortises to create a sharp, tight fit (below).

Having achieved this to our satisfaction, we turned to making the two chunky “cleats” that would support the table-top and be mortised to accept a square tenon at the top of each leg. This comprised, for each case, preparing, dimensioning and gluing two sections of wood, to form the basis of a deep, solid cleat. With that complete, we set to creating the square mortise and tenon between the top of each leg and the respective cleat. This involved careful labor with the band saw to create the tenons, and the experience of a new device in the mortiser to create, well, the mortises. The resistance of ash was experienced directly during the mortising, with the act requiring a bit of muscle on the lever of the mortiser and generating significant heat in the wood and bit, with ejected shavings showering hot on the hands. Of course, all four tenons and mortises were each whittled to their matched finishes by hand chisel, ensuring a tight clean fit (below). The last act for the cleats was to run an angled cut with the miter saw, to shape a long and elegant bevel at each end. 

Paring the stop mortises on the underside of the cleats

Next, we returned to the H-stretcher. Creating the longitudinal stretcher required forming a long, broad tenon on each end of the prepared plank. This we did with the combined application of the dado blade and band saw (below). 

Each rail needed itself to be mortised to accept the longitudinal stretcher. Our initial plan was to use the mortiser to do this. In principle this was a fine plan but driving the mortiser bit through such a depth of dense ash proved a step too far. The heat generated began to char wood before the full depth could be achieved. So, we reverted to Plan B, drilling a series of holes with a Forstner bit on the drill press and completing the task with hand chisels. Again, we carefully fitted the designated mortise/tenons by hand chisel and sanding. The dry fit of the frame was looking good (below). 

We then turned to the table-top. We started with a first pass jointing and planing of the five planks, cut at excess to required length. One of the advantages of hand-crafting is the ability to make precise choices along the way about what shade and grain you want where, what ‘imperfections’ add character and which should be hidden. The raking afternoon light in the workshop provided an unforgiving magnifying glass for that process. That came to the fore with the table-top and we carefully designed the pairing and placement of the boards we wanted in the final surface. Having debated and concluded, we set to work carefully and iteratively jointing and planing the paired edges, to create seamless contact along the entire length. Achieving this is one of those tests of craft and commitment to quality, in which Mark set the standard. Having done that, we pulled out the biscuit joiner again to put three biscuits in each seam. We first glued and clamped the outer two pairs of planks and left them to cure. At the next session, with the help of Joung (Mark’s wife) to move and stabilize the unwieldy jenga, we glued and clamped the three segments in one go, to create the full five plank width. This required Mark’s longest pipe clamps and unbolting and moving his workbench to make space. 

Closing in on the finish there were a few tasks left. With a combination of patience+hand plane and dowel plate+grunt, we fashioned eight short 5/8” dia. dowels to pin the rails to the legs. Grunt was also needed to drill out long holes through the legs to accept the dowels, but achieving a pretty nice fit in the end. A finishing cut on the ends of the stretcher took that back to final length. We also created mortises and tusks here that would firmly stitch the whole thing together. Then the project’s final cut, using the track saw to make two smooth long cuts across the width of the table-top, to take the ends back to length. During one of these cuts a slight obstruction delayed the sweep of the saw and caused a little saw burn on the edge. Being a craftsman, this gnawed at Mark overnight, so he did a final dust cut pass on that edge the following morning.

And before we knew it, we were just left with finishing; breaking edges, scraping, rounds of sanding and finally two coats of Arm-R-Seal wiping varnish. Even this straightforward process contained two revelations for the novice. Firstly, the near miraculous use of an electric iron and damp cloth to remove minor dents where the wood fibers were yet intact. Pure magic. And secondly the lovely simplicity and effectiveness of a cabinet scraper, to make the first pass smoothing. Seeing the final grain blossom on application of the varnish pulled back the curtain on the art of ash. 

Carriage House Table (39”H x 60”L x 36”W)

We countersunk a series of table-top fasteners and carefully squared up and marked screw positions in the shop. It was then time to transport the table parts and assemble in situ, which went without a hitch. And so, this ‘map table’ now sits among aged oak beams, commanding a bucolic view, ready to inspire the roaming mind. 

What a privilege and a pleasure to spend time through the winter, learning, creating and talking with Mark under the Red Top. Patient and deliberate working of wood, to the quiet accompaniment of Blues music, the smell of the wood stove and the shifting light slanting across the fields. A pleasure too, to share hand-crafted lunches with Joung and Mark, along the way, talking about everything from bats to life in Korea. Communing through wood. Surely something familiar to the pre-Revolutionary residents of this old house.

Seeds

Found along a garden wall in the Cotswolds

My annual reflection and some thoughts on the year ahead follow.

Productivity at the workshop in 2023 was on par with prior years but with much more variety. In sum, ten Projects were completed, and these included a couple restorations, a T-shirt and a yet to be revealed clock. Non-furniture Projects like those restorations remind me of the days before the Red Top when home repairs and sprucing up antique store finds were my thing. Now with a shop full of machines, I had gotten away from these rewarding jobs where a tool box, some glue and a can of varnish were all that was needed. Working to make clocks and furniture provides a nice constructive outlet, but refinishing a worn chair remains a worthy endeavor. Both seek that thrill of completing something special.

Of the past year’s builds I have to say that the No. 220 Prairie Settle was my finest. When I began that Project in September of 2022, I worried that it was perhaps beyond my abilities. That one piece took half a year to complete but it turned out well and gives me joy whenever I look or sit upon it. Completing No. 220 also gave me confidence to continue challenging myself in the workshop and at the design desk. A new clock design and a mirror, followed by loving renditions of a marble clock and two East Asian classics provided additional opportunities to stretch. As we begin 2024, fresh lumber for three new Projects is conditioning in the shop.

Tackling new builds is a great way to learn but in 2023 I also hit the books to school myself on the history of clocks and, even more so, Arts and Crafts furniture. Historically a social movement rather than a design style, the ideas that shaped the Arts and Crafts period (1880-1920) continue to edify us as we experience a rising demand for maker spaces and a renewed desire for hand made items. I wrote about one aspect of this movement in win back art and feel very strongly that we must look for and appreciate the creativity in all we do. It is important for our well being, and I now wear that ethos on my back.

The Projects and those additional studies were instructive, but the biggest influence for me in 2023 was the experience of seeing English Arts and Crafts furniture in the museums and shops of their native land. Book illustrations can excite, but an encounter ignites. My memories of those encounters are vivid. Their accumulation has formed new ideas that, like seeds, I expect will germinate as conditions favor.

Happy New Year all!

The Bento Board

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Here’s the story: We wanted to create a Holiday gift for some dear friends. It needed to be small and, since this idea only occurred to us a couple weeks ago, it also needed to be easily made. Recalling their fondness for Japanese culture and looking over a few scrap boards from past Projects I had the idea to build a charcuterie board in the form of a bento box. And here’s how it turned out.

Design

No doubt we have all enjoyed a bento box lunch, made up of small entrees tucked neatly into their own compartments. The Japanese term bento is thought to come from biàndāng, a Chinese word which means “convenience”, and it describes a single portion take-out lunch. In Japan the container for this lunch, also called a bento or bento box, has been around since at least the sixteenth century. This box is a clever invention that utilizes partitions to keep the individual flavors pure and, over the years, design evolution has brought forth dozens of box configurations. What I was looking for was a traditional form that would evoke a bento, even if no compartments were present. If gotten right, this would be a flat serving board that felt like a bento. Searching online I found a picture of a lacquered bento box from The Japan Times that both looked the part and could be replicated with ease.

Bento box exemplar

As far as plans go, a simple reference sketch with dimensions was all that was required.

Make this.

Materials

As it turns out, the intended recipients had earlier gifted me a couple of antique spruce boards leftover from their recent home expansion project. These centuries-old beauties were reclaimed from a Boston factory building during demolition and then repurposed for the construction of cabinetry during their renovation. Anyway, the wood was full of character, cracks and nail holes, and a small chunk off the end of one board would serve nicely here. Some leftover black walnut would be used for the sides and inlay, and I would put some cutting board feet on the underside.

Spruce and walnut stock

Dimensioning

The wood was first cut to rough lengths and then prepped at the jointer, yadda, yadda … No time for a blow-by-blow account, but you can follow the narrative with these pictures.

After the spruce was planed to the proper thickness, it was grooved at the router table and then the surface cracks (age defects) were filled using epoxy.

Due to their perpendicular orientation, the inlay strips were glued in one at a time and then hand planed flush to the surface. (Note square cut nails holes on the edge.)

With the “partitions” in place the walnut sides were cut to final lengths on a 45° bevel at the table saw

Glueing up the sides

Because the two short sides were glued to the spruce’s end grain I wanted to add some additional fasteners. Walnut dowels did the trick. (Note cutting board feet attached to the underside.)

After a final sanding, mineral oil was applied to the surfaces followed by two coats of a hard natural wax.

A final buff and a ribbon finishes the Bento Board.

The Alarm Clock

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I have always appreciated alarm clocks. In addition to keeping time, these fellows let you, the user, enhance function by programming their works. This sets up a charming, human machine symbiosis which is the reason why we buy them instead of the less functional alternative. The current Project is an alarm clock restoration, of sorts.

It seems that among the family artifacts & heirlooms my brother, Mike, happened to acquire the guts of an old, 1940’s electric alarm clock that once belonged to our great uncle Louis. As with many family keepsakes he doesn’t remember how he assumed ownership, and I only became aware recently when he presented me with the naked works and a request to build a new case for them. The clock would have been originally clad in Bakelite, that early plastic which we presume was somehow damaged beyond repair, however, the clock face was unblemished, and it appeared to keep good time. This motorized timepiece would have been purchased shortly after electricity arrived to our area of rural Michigan and so I imagine that it was an extra special item in its day. Here’s a picture from the internet showing its original form.

General Electric clock model 7H154

Design

The art deco styling of the original evokes an era of home cooked meals and evenings by the radio. We wanted to preserve that feel, but an exact reproduction, replacing plastic for wood, was not the answer. First, the stocky 4 x 4 inch bedside form would look out of place on a shelf in my brother’s study and, more importantly, I was not sure I could execute the curved case top with success. The solution was to keep the curve element as part of longer, more pronounced “pillars” framing a rectangular chamber that would house the clock mechanism. While still a square 7 x 7 in. on the face dimension, it was anticipated that the illusion of verticality provided by the dominating pillars and the offset dial mount would give a more appropriate look. The motor on this clock generates heat and so the plan was to forego the box bottom and also leave a gap between the sides and top to promote cooling by convection.

Rough plan with front view showing two possible variants of the curved pillar

Materials

The mechanical part of this build was in hand except for two missing bolts used to mount the works to the case. Replacements for these were obtained at the local hardware store. For wood we chose quarter sawn white oak, that mainstay of solidly built furniture from this period. And in the spirit of Reclaim•Reuse•Recycle, a few leftover scrap boards from past Projects would be used.

White oak boards

Dimensioning

The parts for the case were easy to make. I needed four pillars (1 1/4 x 3/4 x 7 in., W,D,H) and some flat panels, thickness planed to 1/4 in. in depth. Some grooving in the pillars would hold the panels, and the seams along the top would be mitered. Just as with the plastic case, this construct would expose no joinery. Although “easy to make”, it required the use of all nine of the heavy power tools in my shop to do so. This included the smaller bandsaw, which was used to cut both the circular opening in the face as well as the curved pillar ends. Can’t have more fun than that!

Cutting semi-circles out of the half faces using a homemade bandsaw jig

Hand planes, rasps and sandpaper were used in the bench room to further refine the pillars and to establish a tight fit of the panels in their dadoed slots.

Test-fitting the front and back panels

It all came together rapidly up to this point. The next step was to create a top to be joined with the front and back panels. The plan was to use mitered joints for this, which meant cross-cutting these pieces to their exact lengths on a 45° angle at the table saw. I cut the top first from a longer board in order to practice getting it right. Next, the front and back were cut to identical lengths. To get the whole thing fit together I also needed to chisel out a small section of the pillars. After marking the cuts with a knife I used a pull saw to make incisions where possible. I then placed a supporting plywood scrap into the groove and chiseled-out the remaining waste. It all went well.

Removing the top corners with a chisel

With the top settled into place I could make a final measurement for the width of the sides. Two side boards were then cut to size and the entire case snapped together nicely in a dry fit.

Dry-fit case

Only two operations remained prior to final assembly, both of which I had yet to engineer: mounting the clock works to the case; and creating a back door. The original clock used two bolts to mount the works to the backside of the case, and that backside contained three openings from which protruded the knobs and buttons used to set the clock and alarm. During design I had ruled against this solution as it would necessitate making the 7 inch tall clock a narrow 2 1/4 in. in depth and I was going for a different look. This look would necessitate a doored opening to access the control knobs. I could still use two long bolts to reach the back of the clock, as designed, but they would need to mount so close to the door opening that it was not considered a robust solution. The chosen method was to mount the mechanism to the front of the case by way of a couple wooden blocks glued to the interior, through which the bolts could be tightened.

Clock works mounted to the front board

Finally, on to the access door. The back panel, having already been cut to size and fitted, was now a high-value component so getting the door right on the first attempt was important. It was decided to cut out an opening in this part and then source the door from another piece of oak, rather than use the waste material for this. However, with no other framing, that door would need to fit as if it were a cut-out and so the plan was to establish the opening and then trace this pattern onto another board to define the exact door shape. A Forstner bit at the drill press was used to bore holes in the back board along the perimeter, followed by a chisel to define the straight edges of the opening.

Chiseling out the door edge

Next, a door was cut out of a prepped white oak board and then the edges were hand planed and sanded to achieve a uniform interior fit.

Assembly and Finish

Glue-up of the remaining parts was straightforward. Once dried, the miter seam was treated with a burnisher to close-up the hairline gap, and all clamp marks were removed with sandpaper.

Assembling the case

To preserve the wood I used Jeff Jewitt’s rendition of L. & J.G. Stickley’s so-called “Aurora” finish: medium brown dye, antique walnut glaze, satin varnish. I think it gives the oak a nice warm feel and still lets the medullary rays shine. After buffing the finish, the clock’s works were installed and tested. Finally, a couple of brass butt hinges and a round brass knob were applied to complete the access door.

Back door

Mike’s alarm clock now has a new presence; bold but friendly, and with a hint of nostalgia for simpler times.

Metamorphosis clock

Korean Stand

Korean furniture has but a few characteristic forms and these have served their storage, writing and dining needs for millennia. Distinct from other East Asian designs, Korean pieces tend to be stouter, less decorative, and more “earthy” than the island or mainland counterparts from Japan and China. And in my view, no form is more unique to that peninsular nation than the book storage and display stand, the so-called sabang t’akja. These stands, about 16 inches wide and no more than 6 feet tall, have several layers of shelves and can exist free of cabinetry, but often they will be anchored by a doored compartment for stacking books. The more utilitarian versions include small drawers, as well.

Korean book storage and display stand archetype (sabang t’akja)

reproduced from: Wright, E.R., Pai, M.S. Traditional Korean Furniture, Kodansha: Tokyo, 2000.

For lovers of East Asian design, sabang t’akja are downright charming. I think it is the combination of a sturdy base supporting the thin, beautifully proportioned shelf framework that gives this iconic furniture its appeal. Of course, the wooden material, joints and hardware all do their part, too. One of my earliest Projects in the workshop was to excise the shelving and just build that bottom compartment; this time I’m making the shelves.

My motive for this Project was to make a display stand so that we could unpack and put out some of our “precious” pottery, and for a moment I seriously considered using all authentic joinery in the process. Sabang t’akja are generally constructed using the so-called “swallow beak” joint. Traditional Korean furniture relied heavily on this method, adapted from the construction trade, for fastening parts. Structurally, it is a modified mortise and tenon joint that creates a solid corner. The “beak” portion serves as a second registry element that, along with the internal tenon, securely mates a pole and a rail, in olden days, without the need for glue or fasteners. It also serves to convert a simple seam into an interesting design element. If you’ve never noticed these on Asian furniture before, you will now.

Example swallow beak joint (not mine)

Alas, that consideration did not last long. I taught myself the rudiments of this joint from a book on Korean furniture making, and my practice joints were “okay” but not good enough for living room furniture. More practice would undoubtedly improve things but I found no joy for me there and I began to dread the thought of sawing/chiseling dozens of these joints to finish the Project. I also happened upon a few pictures of sabang t’akja made with traditional mortise and tenon joinery and that sold me on the path to take here. I’ll master the swallow beak joint one day on a smaller piece.

Design

The display stand, itself, will be a replica of another example found in the book, Traditional Korean Furniture, referenced above. Dating from the mid-nineteenth century and now part of the National Museum of Korea collection, this example stands 59 inches tall and has no cabinet. It is symmetrical, delicate and beautiful to my eye. The dimensions of the poles and shelves were calculated from the photo, below. Replacing the original swallow beak joints (n = 40) with mortise and tenons is simply an elimination of the beak work.

Korean display stand exemplar

Materials

The original display stand was crafted using pine wood for the frame and paulownia for the shelving. These softwoods were employed extensively in traditional Korean furniture making, but I wanted to use hardwood for my version and so I decided to use red oak (Quercus rubra), quarter sawn at the lumber yard.

Red oak stock

Dimensioning

There are only five part “types” in this piece, and that simplicity of structure accounts for its beauty. They are by my nomenclature:

1. poles (4)

2. top rails (4)

3. rails (16)

4. shelves (5)

5. tatami-zuri boards (2)

The poles and rails come first and, with these, there is a specific sequence required for joint creation: mortises before tenons; grooves before shelves. To begin, the oak was prepped at the jointer and thickness planer, and then the poles, top rails and rails cut at the table saw to their final width dimensions (1 in.) but left long. The depth of these parts were set last: the poles and top rails at the thickness planer (1 in.); whereas, the rails were first resawn at the bandsaw and then thickness planed to 1/2 in. To eventually accommodate the shelf boards, a 1/4 in. wide x 5/16 in. deep groove was made in the rail parts using a dado blade at the table saw. All edges were then smoothed a bit with a card scraper to remove mill marks. Things will get finish sanded near the end of Project.

Poles and rails cut to their working dimensions

The joinery starts with the poles and before any of that work is done they first need to be cut to final length and marked. To define the height dimension, I measured down 60 inches from the top of each pole and sliced a 1/4 in. deep groove here on all four sides using the sliding miter saw. The grooves define a 1/2 in. square “core” which will be converted into a tenon to hold the tatami-zuri boards later in the build, but for now I will leave a stub the same dimension as the pole to make the next few operations easier. The poles were then chopped 3/4 inches beyond the groove to give parts of uniform length.

The poles were labelled for their position (e.g., left/front, etc) and then the position of the top mortises were pencil-marked using a ruler and square. These were cut at the mortiser and, since the top rails are thicker than the “inner” rails, they merited a thicker, 3/8 x 1/4 x 1/2 in. mortise, too.

Next, I needed to somehow cut the 32 remaining mortises, all 1/4 x 1/4 x 5/16 in., at regular positions along each rail. Instead of properly marking all of these positions and then accurately hitting the marks with the plunging mortiser bit I decided to try using a spacer jig. This little invention consists of a 1 in. wide oak board with a 1/4 x 1/4 in. mortise cut through it. A 1/4 x 1/4 in. square cherry dowel was then tapped through this glued opening and cut to a 3/16 in. protrusion on either side. Finally, cutting this board to length, 13 1/2 inches below the dowel, gave me my working jig.

Shop-made spacer jig alongside poles

In use, the jig was inserted into the topmost mortise on the pole, which was subsequently seated on the mortiser bed such that the end of the jig abuts the mortising bit. Plunging at this position, then reproducibly delivers a mortise at the appropriate position below the prior one. This 3-step operation (insert jig, chop, slide to next position) is repeated until you run out of pole. It worked well.

Spacer jig “in use” at the mortiser

Next, it was time to fashion the top rails. I cut the previously prepped & grooved stock to a length of 14 1/8 in., giving me the desired span plus room for a 7/16 in. tenon on both ends. The tenons were cut in a two-step procedure. First, a finishing blade at the table saw was used to cleanly define the shoulders on all four sides.

Top rail lengths defined

From here, a dado blade and cross-cut sled were used to form the tenon cheeks at the table saw. Coming off the saw they were still a bit too thick, but could be easily chiseled down to size during a fitting operation with the poles.

Top rails tenoned

It was now time to make the tenons on the rest of the rails. The pole mortises were cut to a depth of 5/16 in. and so the tenons on both ends should be just shy of this length. With the same span as the top rails, this meant that the rails would need to measure ~ 13 7/8 inches in total. All 16 rails (plus a couple extras) were chopped to this length at the sliding miter saw. The tenons were formed in a manner similar to that described above and then chiseled for exact fit with their assigned pole. Dry-fitting the structure confirmed that everything was square and correct.

Dry-fit poles and rails

The shelves were next, all five prepared in an identical manner. First, a 7+ inch wide, 5/4 oak board was cut into four, 18 in. long sections and one edge of these made flat at the jointer. Each board was then re-sawn at the band saw into three, ~3/8 in. wide panels, giving twelve in total. The panels were then made uniform to a 1/4 in. depth at the thickness planer, and the ten best were taken on to the next steps.

To complete the shelves, the half-panels were first paired-up and the interior edges of each were made uniformly square at the jointer. The boards were then individually chopped at the sliding miter saw to uniform lengths and ripped at the table saw to uniform widths before the pairs were reunited again, this time with glue (and clamps). Next the surfaces were smoothed with a card scraper and sandpaper, each panel was then cross-cut and ripped to a 13 7/8 in. square using the combination of track saw and table saw, and the corners notched-out at the band saw to accommodate the poles. I applied one coat of the Danish oil finish to the selves at this stage. Now, should any shrinkage of the shelves occur after the final finish, it would not expose bare wood.

Shelves complete

That leaves the tatami-zuri boards. These 1 x 5/8 in. boards run between the front and back legs and serve two purposes: they contribute to structural fitness; and also act to spread the load, saving wear and tear on the tatami, that rush floor coverings found in East Asian homes. For these it made sense to reverse the proper order and complete the pole tenons before cutting their mortises. Excess material below the previously sawn grooves was eliminated with a dado blade at the table saw to yield a 1/2 in. square tenon at the bottom of each pole. After marking their positions, through-mortises of this dimension were then cut from prepped boards. In this operation it is best to leave the tatami-zuri boards longer than the final dimension, as cutting a mortise too close to the ends can result in catastrophic tear-out of the wood. (This is a fact!) Following a dry-fit, these boards were marked and cut to their final length.

After one last rehearsal of the assembly process the rails were hand planed to be smooth with their adjoining poles and then disassembled so that all surfaces could get their final sanding. Glue-up proceeded in a swift and methodical manner. I wanted to get all 31 parts put together with glue in the joints while the piece laid prone on the bench, and then flip the construct upright for a final square-up before applying clamps. This required that the glue remained fluid “enough” during the 20 minute procedure, and then harden after clamping. Employing spousal assistance it went pretty well.

Clamped-up stand

Once dried I lightly sanded the structure to erase all clamp marks. To finish the piece I gave it a thorough rub-down with “natural” color Watco Danish Oil. I like how this product livens the grain of red oak while leaving a soft touch and no sheen. Two coats, applied over two days was all it took to complete this satisfying build.

Korean Display Stand reproduced in oak

And our pottery collection now has room to breathe, again.

On display

Thank you Dad and all Korean War era veterans for your selfless sacrifice on our behalf.

Cotswolds Pilgrimage

“Rural England is too absolutely beautiful to be left out of doors - ought to be under a glass case.”

Mark Twain (1872)

I have to agree with Twain’s sentiments of 151 years ago and, in fact, there’s a lot about England that remains “too absolutely beautiful”. Let me show you.

Lately I have gone deep into Arts & Crafts - the movement and, in particular, the furniture. It started with an appreciation for the American, Gustav Stickley, and his Craftsman ideals. There’s certainly plenty for me to learn (and make) in this area but, interested to know the background for his work, I also sought out examples of earlier, English Arts & Crafts pieces. Hmm, I have to say that first impressions here did not enthuse. In general, I found these pieces to be unappealing and, if taste needs a reason, it seemed they possessed “too many notes”. In fairness, I was consulting art pieces and my naïve eye was hooked on square and functional forms, where wood, itself, was the decoration. Vive la difference! But then I read Nancy R. Hiller’s English Arts & Crafts Furniture and became devoted to the form. Nancy Hiller (1959-2022) was a remarkable artisan and insightful writer who used step-by-step reproductions of three iconic furniture pieces in her book to reveal both the Art and the Craft of turn-of-the-century English furniture. It’s an informative and compelling read.

A wonderfully enlightening book

Attracted by the furniture I subsequently became interested in the movement. That is, how was it that these novel forms became important, if not popular? Who designed/fashioned these objects during that brief, 30 year burst of creativity? And what were they trying to achieve? To be sure, there are larger questions in this world, but those were mine. Of course, the answers are all out there in biographies (my favored genre), and to start me off I found some good ones on John Ruskin and William Morris. I also became aware of other works that were either inaccessible or unaffordable, given their location in British bookshops. That predicament, on top of a simmering curiosity, sealed our next vacation destination. We were headed to England to feel the environment, to see the furniture, and to secure reference works of the Arts & Crafts period.

While there are several geographical areas (so-called “schools”) in Britain associated with Arts & Crafts furniture making from the period of ~1880-1910, a region known as the Cotswolds is, arguably, the most important. This magnificent region of rolling hills and villages has been home to humans for over 6,000 years. In fact, it is the largest designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) in Britain, covering 787 sq. miles and a popular tourist spot for non-furniture lovers, as well.

The Cotswolds, located in England between London and Wales

While planning our trip, my wife and I had two primary destinations in mind: The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum in Cheltenham, which houses an important collection of Arts & Crafts furniture; and the villages in and around Chipping Campden, where several major designers of the Cotswold School worked. We were certain to happen upon other meaningful sites, but those were the anchors. Our trip began in London where destinations such as the Victoria and Albert Museum also beckoned. What follows is not a day-by-day journal, but just some captioned pictures, intended to give an appreciation for the area, the furniture (and the clocks). I hope you find them interesting.

The original adjustable “Morris Chair” designed by Phillip Webb. Copied by many, and catapulted to stardom by Gustav Stickley; this is an important early piece. (Victoria & Albert Museum)

Magnificent chair, desk, clock and river rug by C.F.A. Voysey (V&A)

High-backed chair by Charles Rennie Mackintosh of the Glasgow School (V&A)

Frank Lloyd Wright chairs, likely influenced by Mackintosh and other Arts & Crafts designers(V&A)

Sideboard by E.W. Godwin. While striking, it represents a gaudy crescendo to the Aesthetic movement, where ornamentation served no other purpose, that pre-dated Arts & Crafts (V&A)

Korean horse hair gat (hat) and box from the late Joseon dynasty. The lacquered bamboo box is as beautifully crafted as the furniture from this period. (V&A)

Scene through the window at Hill House Antiques, in Kensington which was unexpectedly closed when we visited.

Japanese inspired Tavern Clock from among the many amazing pieces for sale at Howard Walwyn Fine Antique Clocks in Kensington.

The British Museum has an extraordinary collection of important clocks, including this “portable” regulator case clock, taken across the world in the late 1700’s and set up in a field to time an eclipse event.

— intermezzo 1 —

Sharing The Cotswold Way, a scenic 102 mile footpath that skirted our B&B, stretching from Chipping Campden to Bath

A couple interesting chairs found “in the wild” at the Winchcombe Antiques Centre

Left to Right:

Bookcase and desk by C.F.A. Voysey; Chair by (I do not recall); Music cabinet by Benson and Sumner (Wilson Museum and Art Gallery, Cheltenham)

Portion of a coffer by Earnest Gimson. Reportedly, he was in the process of applying the white gesso prior to painting when he passed away. (Wilson)

Settee by Sidney Barnsley (Wilson)

Cabinet with exquisite metalwork by Charles Robert Ashbee. Along with Gimson and the Barnsleys, above, Ashbee was an important Cotswold designer who worked in Chipping Campton, Gloucestershire. (Wilson)

Piano by C.R. Ashbee (Wilson)

— intermezzo 2 —

St. Faith’s Chapel, in the village of Farmcote, Gloucestershire, just down the lane from our B&B.

A volume from the Works of Chaucer designed and printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press (Wilson)

Cabinet designed to house the Kelmscott Chaucer works by C.F.A. Voysey (Wilson)

Dresser by Ambrose Heal (Wilson)

— intermezzo 3 —

The eponymous Ebrington Arms, that lovely village’s pub in a building that dates back to 1610 was our home for the final leg of the trip

At the Gordon Russell Design Museum, once part of his furniture manufacturing workshops in the picturesque village of Broadway, Worcestershire.

Dresser No. 229 by Gordon Russell (GRDM)

The Paris Cabinet No. 157 by G. Russell. It was awarded the Gold Medal at the Paris Exposition in 1925.

Chair No. 280 by G. Russell with beautifully executed chamfering, typical of the Cotswold School.

Two Document Chests No. 617 where Russell kept all of his numbered drawings, with Glove Box No. 495 on top (GRDM)

Sideboard and radio case by G. Russell. This sideboard, an icon of mid-century modern furniture, is sometimes called “the double helix” but since it was designed in 1951, two years before Watson & Crick’s DNA structure, I think that is an attribution in retrospect.

I know what you’re thinking, “Please make it stop.”

Scene from the churchyard at Saint Micheal’s and All Angels Church, Guiting Power, Gloucestershire

OK, I will.

I’ll just close by saying that, in addition to the “too absolutely beautiful” sights, this was an inspiring trip for me as a maker. To see the important Arts & Crafts furniture pieces in their own land is to capture them in a way that will last a lifetime. iPhone pictures taken within cramped museum spaces cannot do the job, but they at least serve as reminders. The gorgeous Cotswolds, their charming villages and friendly people surely influenced the furniture designed there, and they also made our trip a smashing success. I even got my reference books!

Lasting inspiration!

A Beloved Board

Here’s a new one; a good one, too. Last week I had a customer bring me her cutting board and asked, essentially, “Can this board be saved?”. It seems she uses, daily, the same hardwood cutting board that had belonged to her mother, and all the years of chopping were beginning to show. One is easily drawn to this board. While not an expensive item, the value bestowed by memory made it priceless. You know the feeling. This project is about restoring that beloved board.

View fullsize

View fullsize

The goal was to make the board “better”, that is, flatter, smoother and less wobbly while keeping the character intact. I started by sizing up the physical attributes and reason for its unsteadiness. Putting a straightedge to the top revealed the primary defect, a 1/4 inch sag over the 12 inch width caused by wear, warp and also failure at the joints. It turns out that this “board” was made up of three smaller boards, which were coming apart at the seams.

Daylight above the sagging board

At this point, all thoughts of cosmetic restoration were abandoned, it now appeared that reconstructive surgery was in order. Sanding/planing, the outer edges deep enough to achieve a level work surface would produce a cutting board with a pronounced belly that still wobbled. The new plan was to remove the legs, slice the board into three at the seams and then plane the top surfaces flat while also removing a layer of worn-out wood. Re-gluing the parts back together and then finish sanding would give a flat, and hopefully attractive work surface for a few more decades of service. I would restore the legs, too, but decided to leave the underside relatively untouched to keep some patina and that sweet Dansk® trademark.

The first job was to cut the legless board into three parts at the band saw.

Dissected board

The three boards then were run, individually, through the thickness planer several times. This revealed their composition to be maple, and also produced hard, useable wood on the surface, again.

After one pass ...

After two passes ...

After 5 passes

With a clean, flat surface in hand, the rough, band sawn edges were then made square at the jointer. Next, the undersides of the boards were skimmed lightly using an orbital sander to clean the surface, and then, to give the new joints a better life, I decided to add some biscuits before glue-up.

Biscuits in their slots

Reassembly using waterproof glue

Once the glue dried, the surface was card scraped to level the joints and then sanded smooth to #220 grit; the edges were treated similarly. Next, I scrubbed the board using a mild detergent and let it dry. This served to raise the grain, which was hand-sanded smooth again. Finally, all of the corners, made sharp by the resurfacing process, were rounded-off.

The legs turned out to be a lost cause. Like fossils within a rocky matrix, the recessed rubber feet had petrified over time and became one with the wood. I found it was too difficult to chisel-out their remains without also damaging the frail wooden legs. And since those feet would need to be replaced anyway, it seemed best to just create four new legs from some scrap maple lying about the shop. This also permitted me to make one of the legs slightly taller than the others to compensate for warp at one of the corners. Stainless steel screws were used to mount the legs and feet which now sat square and firm on the bench.

Standing proud again

A couple treatments with food grade mineral oil, smoothing with a red Scotch-Brite pad in between, completed restoration of the beloved board.

While not the typical Project, this was a very satisfying effort. After witnessing the metamorphosis my wife put in a request for her boards be sanded and reshod, too, so the story has two happy endings. What shape are your boards in?

The T-Shirt

Picking up on a prior post, let me share a new endeavor with you.

After reading my recent analysis of a William Morris quote, you might be thinking: “Wait! If ‘win back art’ is such an important mission, how come I am only learning about it now, some 150 years after it was proposed?” I was thinking the same thing, too; and then it began to gnaw at me. Not that it matters, but I’ve never seen the phrase on a poster or a T-shirt where it might raise awareness, or at least expose itself in places we expect bold ideas to reside. To me that felt like a miss. And so I decided to design that T-shirt - why not?

Design

Now, I have never created a T-shirt before but I have watched my sons make several. In high school they had taught themselves the craft of screen printing and occasionally turned our basement into a “sweat shop of friends” cranking-out fund raising shirts for their school’s bands. I had always admired their stick-to-it-iveness on these projects, as well as their skills, and it continues to inspire me. My plan for the current shirt was to stop after the design phase and project manage the rest of the endeavor using trained professionals.

“Winning back art” in the basement (2010)

Following a discussion with my friend, Bob, and a brief internet search, I learned that there are plenty of companies out there ready to create custom printed shirts for those with an idea and extra cash. Heck, they’ll even supply the idea; they really just want to make T-shirts. With an idea in hand, all that’s required is: 1. a properly formatted file of your graphic; 2. a method (direct print, screen print, embroidery); 3. a position for printing (front/back); 4. an ink color scheme; 5. a shirt choice (style/color); and 6. the quantity (by size). They also need a credit card number, which I imagine one is happy to supply after having successfully burrowed all the way to level 7. Seriously, the whole thing is made as simple as possible. Now understanding the process, and with a couple production companies in mind, I set about creating my design.

The graphics for this one will just be text. Easy, right? … you try it. The challenge here is that, if all you have is text and you want your message to stimulate something, you had better get that font right. Fonts are the product of typography; a complex & nuanced art form, or a cunning & manipulative science depending on your perspective. And perspective - the way we look at things - is key. After all, you are trying to send a message that will stick!

Fonts help the message stick

And here’s where fortune smiled upon this Project. William Morris was, himself, a self-taught typographer. During his printing days at the Kelmscott Press, a high end book publishing business and the last of his creative endeavors, he developed three new fonts (Golden, Troy and Chaucer), as well as a series of elaborate initial letters for use at the beginning of chapters. Morris thought carefully about typefaces and was among the first to use photography in their development. His most treasured of the Kelmscott types was Troy. Described as “semi-Gothic” this design was modeled after a few of his favorite medieval typefaces. In his own words, Morris intended Troy to “redeem the Gothic character from the charge of unreadableness which is commonly brought against it”.

Morris’s Troy font

I decided to make Troy the font for this shirt and found a free download for my Mac. I also downloaded the William Morris Initials font too, just for fun. As to the actual design, my idea was that the text could be displayed on the back of the shirt in three lines. I started with no capitals as the quote, itself, was merely a sentence fragment. However, Morris did choose to capitalize the word “Art” at all instances in that 1884 pamphlet. Anyway, a bunch of iterations were sampled, six of which are shown below.

Trial designs

They all looked fine but, in order to pick one that I would be willing to live with, I needed to think more deeply about the function of the font.

1. The font should make the words memorable, and spark interest - all designs check that box.

2. The font should make the message unambiguous - uh-oh. There is potential for confusion with the unpunctuated fragment “win back art”, due to the polysemantic nature of the words back and art. For instance, given the dorsal location of printing, might one wonder about some sort of “back” art contest underway? What does it take to win it? Or, a reader might ask: who is this Art guy? Is he being held hostage? It’s tricky. I think a no caps version could serve here as that assigns “art” to be an improper noun, but that also happens to be the most boring choice. Using color for the capital “A” in Art would properly focus attention on that word, instead of “back”, and perhaps indicate it to be other than a person’s name. I liked that. A red colored initial letter was used frequently during the heyday of medieval monastic calligraphy. However, according to Fiona MacCarthy in her captivating 1994 book, William Morris: A Life For Our Time, Morris did not favor this practice and only used it on one occasion when publishing a collection of poems by Wilfred Scawen Blunt, a middling poet who at the time was also moonlighting as Morris’s wife, Janey’s, lover. Hmm … Despite the dubious endorsement, I think that is the right choice for this shirt. As a final touch, I tried giving the text a background block so that it might look good on dark colored T-shirts, as well.

And that is where I left things for the summer as I worked to finish some deadline projects and jetted off on vacation. Back in June, I had told my sons of the idea, thinking they would get a kick out of it, and even shared my test creations for their comment. They must have feared that I would let this idea languish for they secretly took it into their own hands and finished the Project for me. Much to my surprise I was gifted with the T-shirt on my recent birthday. What a nice surprise! They used a T-shirt vendor this time, and also added a new “Red Top Workshop” logo, in Troy, on the front. I love it, and plan to print more (let me know if you are interested).

Thanks Ben & Andrew!

The Karabitsu

Here’s an interesting item that’s been on my build list for a few years. It’s a modest sized chest from Japan that I will use for storing firewood next to the hearth. Like most Projects, a little background research is rewarded with new appreciation for the enduring influence of former times. The story follows.

Karabitsu (or kara-bitsu) is a Japanese term that reportedly translates to '“foreign coffer”. I’ve also seen it expressed as “Chinese coffer” or “Chinese chest”, and some believe that kara may even come from kan which, for a time, was a word used to refer to the Korean peninsula. I don’t think we need to propagate confusion here, though. According to the book, Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry, the karabitsu has existed as a recognized form in Japan since the Nara Period (645-794) and I would imagine that “foreign” in eighth century Japan pretty much meant “Asia”, anyway. Still, it is curious that no non-Japanese examples of the “foreign” coffer pre-dating the Nara era have been found. The term wa-bitsu (Japanese coffer) dates back to the year 1050 and describes a legless form of the karabitsu. Even alongside the “native” wa-bitsu, and the wealth of tansu forms that followed, the karabitsu remained popular in Japan for centuries, serving as storage chests for special objects, often highly decorated with inlays or painted lacquer. I discovered this form while perusing the wonderful reference book: Traditional Japanese Furniture, A Definitive Guide, and there are many fine karabitsu examples to be found on the internet. Some versions sat on tall legs, often six in number, which grew stouter as the form became more ornate. It is a striking chest.

Karabitsu example reproduced from: Koizumi K. Traditional Japanese Furniture, A Definitive Guide, K. Koizumi, Kodansha International: Tokyo, 1986.

Design

My karabitsu would sit on four legs and be unpainted. That makes it closer to the eighth century original in form, and, as fortune would have it, an example from that time still exists. It seems an imperial warehouse on the grounds of the Todai-ji temple in Nara, dating from that eponymous period, was discovered to contain four intact furniture pieces, and included in these was a karabitsu from which the construction techniques could be gleaned. Quite a find! I show a photo of that piece along with an exploded-view diagram below (reproduced from Tansu: Traditional Japanese Cabinetry).

Earliest known karabitsu?

Anatomy of an early karabitsu

I’ll use this plan as a starting point. The corner joinery was my biggest question and it appears they used simple “box joints” here. I’ll do the same. Iron nails were used to attach the leg pieces to the sides and a brace ran between these legs to support the floor board. The legs of the original also contained cut-outs through which rope could be threaded, allowing the chest to be carried by two people using a cross pole. Instead, I’ll opt for the decorative metal handles used on later examples and lengthen those legs a bit for height. Likewise, I will hinge the top for ease of access, as was the practice in subsequent centuries, and mine will also have a floor board housed within a dadoed groove for strength. In the end, the design will have a few changes brought about by what has become possible with new tools and materials over the millennia, but not wholly different from ancient times.

Karabitsu firewood box, rough plan

Materials

The thirteen hundred year-old karabitsu used zelkova (a member of the elm family) for the legs and cryptomeria (Japanese cedar) for the box parts. These are common woods in Asia, used extensively for tansu and other furniture pieces. However, they are not common in North America and so I would need to find substitutes. I wanted to use special wood for this chest; something that would look nice with a simple oil finish and that would be resistant to insect damage. I decided to try Spanish cedar for the legs and Southern cypress for the box. Not common boards, but ones carried by my favorite yard for unusual lumber, Goose Bay Sawmill and Lumber, Inc. For the handles I would use some authentic hardware picked-up on my last trip to Korea, and I would source the hinges from an Etsy-based craftsman.

Spanish cedar and Southern cypress boards (in lock-down)

Dimensioning

Construction on this Project divides itself neatly into three jobs: the box; the lid; and the cradle (for lack of a better descriptor). They should be made in this order, too, for the dimensions of the box dictate those of the subsequent elements.

the Box

To make the box I first prepped cypress boards to be 5 in. wide, 5/8 in. thick and “square” all around. Before cutting to final length, though, I needed to make a decision on where each board would be placed. I wanted to show off the wonderful grain, of course, but do so in a way that would alternate the orientation of the growth rings to reduce the effects of warp. Once the position puzzle was solved each board was labelled with tape.

Cypress boards positioned and labelled

In order to form the box joints, the top and bottom boards from the front and back faces and middle board from each side face were cut to their exact lengths, 24 and 15 in., respectively. These define the length and depth dimensions of the box. Using a dado blade at the table saw I then created a 5/16 x 5/16 in. rabbet on the backside of both ends of the boards. When mated at the corners, these would form a double rabbet joint, a bit stronger and better looking than the butt joint connection found in a typical box-jointed case. With the “long” boards rabbeted I could make an exact measure of their interior spans, which would define the lengths of the “shorter” boards. Weaving together side boards of alternating length serves the function of a box joint, mating edge grain with edge grain, to form a stronger glue bond. The shorter boards were cross-cut to size and then dadoed to form the same rabbets on their ends. One final cut to house the plywood floor board was needed prior to assembly. For this, I used a dado blade at the table saw to create a 1/2 in. wide x 5/16 in. deep groove near the bottom of the four lowest boards. A piece of 1/2 in. furniture grade birch plywood was then cut to fit the final dimensions. Lastly, I added biscuit slots along the board edges to assist in the assembly.

Box parts cut to final dimension

Assembly of the box proceeded in layers, beginning at the bottom. There are no box joints nor biscuits in this layer and so the floor board is the primary reference for squareness. It was sequentially snugged into the glue-filled groove on each side board and this construct was then squared-up by adjusting the diagonal dimensions across the top. Once all was good, clamps were employed to hold everything tight during the cure. Getting the first layer “right” is key.

Glueing and clamping layer One

The second and third layers stacked on easily with the biscuits to keep everything aligned. After all of the glueing was finished, the sides were hand planed a bit to level everything off and then 3 cherry pegs were inserted on the ends of every long board, in keeping with the Japanese method. The whole body was then sanded to 220 grit.

Completed box

the Lid

The lid for this box will consist of a platform top surrounded by trim around the edges. The original karabitsu appears to have had the top resting atop the “trim”, which acted as a surround for the box. But, since I would be using hinges to keep the top in position I did not require the surround feature and so I decided to use the trim to hide the end grain of the top boards and overlap just a bit with the box when closed. I also decided to make the trim from Spanish cedar to provide a bit of color contrast there.

Construction of this element was simple. I first prepped four cypress boards to be 4 in. wide, by 5/8 in. thick, by 25 in. long. The boards were then positioned to get the desired grain orientations and biscuit slots were cut to assist during assembly. Following glue-up, the ends were trimmed to 24 1/4 in. using a track saw. I prefer this tool to the table saw for cross cuts on large boards such as these, given that I do not have an extension on my saw’s table, however, the rip cut to fix the top’s width at 15 1/4 in. was performed there. Once cut to the final size the platform was sanded to 220 grit.

Platform complete

There are many ways to hinge a lid of this type. My desire was to not show hardware on the exterior of the chest, and so I opted for full inside mount strap style hinges, procured from the Lock and Box Shoppe, a small business found on Etsy.

To attach the hinges I first knife-marked their ideal location along the top edge of the back side and then scribed a 1/8 inch depth mark at this location. The knife marks were sawn down to the scribe line and the interior portion removed with a chisel to create mortises. The result of this operation is to allow the top to sit level when closed. The hinges were then inserted and the screw holes drilled into the back of the box. Next, double-stick tape was applied to the strap portion of each hinge and the lid was laid down carefully into position. With the hinge now taped to the interior of the lid it was lifted free of the box and screw holes were drilled into the lid. The hinges were then temporarily affixed to the lid with a couple of steel screws and this was placed back on top of the box. With my wife, Joung, supporting the open lid I was able to temporarily mount the interior hinge straps with a couple more screws. Everything worked as it should.

Hinged lid in place

Lastly, it was time to fashion the trim. For this I sliced a 1 3/4 in. slab from the side of a 5 ft. long, 2 in. thick Spanish cedar plank. This was re-sawn at the band saw into four ~1/2 in. thick boards which were subsequently thickness planed to a 3/8 in. depth and then ripped to a final 1 1/2 in. width at the table saw. For the joinery, I decided to hide the two front corner seams with miters. Assembly started by cutting the front strip to length on a 45° bias and then fastening it to the top board using finishing nails and a bit of glue. Next the two sides were cut to length and added. The back, ripped at a narrower, 5/8 in. depth to accommodate the hinges, was applied last. Once everything was put together, the top edge was rounded-off and the other edges broken to feel smooth while looking sharp. This completed the lid.

Box and lid

the Cradle

The cradle is my name for the four legs and “chassis” that supports the box. The legs are the stars here so I decided to fashion those first and then figure out the rest of the joinery afterwards. Karabitsu legs act as “stilts”, whose function, I presume, was to lift the box off of a damp, stone Chinese floor. I wanted them to add character to the piece, but nothing overwhelming. After some doodling, I came up with a tapered flare that looked appealing (see rough sketch). This shape was drawn on a piece of 1/2 in. mdf and then cut-out at the band saw and smoothed with a drum sanding bit at the drill press to provide a template. The leg material came from a Spanish cedar board, prepped to 1 1/2 in. thickness. Tracing the template four times onto the cedar and then cutting out these shapes at the bandsaw gave the rough members in a very simple and satisfying operation.

Rough cut legs and template

Next, I glued sides onto the flat edges of the mdf template to convert it into a pattern which could be employed at the router table to convert the rough cuts to a uniform and smooth shape using a flush-trim bit. The edges were then further refined with a card scraper and sandpaper.

Smoothing the bandsaw cut at the router table

The legs would be connected to one another by stretchers made of Spanish cedar. Here I opted for mortise and tenon joinery to keep everything solid and square. It would be tricky to cut the mortises on the curved leg pieces and so I brought out the pattern once again. After attaching an additional mdf leg this could now be used as a jig to hold the karabitsu legs level during the mortising operation. One by one, the cedar leg pieces were screw-mounted to the jig and then a 1/2 x 1/2 x 1/2 in. mortise was cut at the desired position. Easy!

Cutting the mortise with assistance from a jig

For the stretchers I prepped some Spanish cedar to 1 1/2 in. x 1 3/8 in. and then cut two parts to 16 in. length. The tenons were fashioned using a dado blade at the table saw, with the top face of the stretcher cut back further to also accommodate the box edge. For added strength I decided to connect the stretchers with two 1 1/2 in. x 1/2 in. cedar supports. These would keep the cradle structure “square” in the absence of the box and prevent sag of the bottom board. Half-lap joints were used to attach them to the stretchers.

Dry-fit cradle with box in background

Lastly, the design called for visible pegs along the legs. The legs of the original karabitsu were affixed to the box with iron nails, and as the piece was coming together I had decided to use screws here, instead. Screws applied from the outside of the box could have their heads covered with a short dowel cap to achieve the design intent, but I felt that a screw mounted from the inside was the better approach for securing a board to a post. Thus, the pegs would be purely decorative and maybe just one up near the top of each leg would provide the best look. To accomplish this I pounded out a few 1/2 in. diameter Spanish cedar dowels with a dowel plate and used a homemade jig to reproducibly drill a shallow hole into each leg part. The dowels were then glued into place, sawn flush and hand planed smooth.

Final Assembly & Finish

To begin assembly, the half-lap joints of the stretchers and supports were glued together while sitting on the overturned box. This ensured that they would eventually fit, again, during the final assembly. I then decided to finish all components at this stage to better seal the overlapping wooden parts. The plan was to use some sort of colorless product for this but that hardly narrows down the field of contenders. There are a host of appropriate oils, varnishes and oil/varnish blends available these days and so some research was in order. Never having worked with either wood I first queried online and discovered that both are “well-behaved” and easily preserved in a manner that enhances their look. Great! And while that narrows nothing, it also makes it hard to go wrong. On scrap Spanish cedar I tried some boiled linseed oil (BLO) and a product advertised to be a tung oil finish, which is actually an oil/varnish blend that, for all I know, may even contain tung oil. It’s not like they list the ingredients or anything, and I’ve read that snake oil sharps now thrive in the paint aisle. Anyway, this product sold by Minwax gave a nice, subtle luster, less orange coloration compared with BLO and it did well on cypress scraps, too. I liked the look and so I removed the hinges and got to work.

The underside of the box and the cradle chassis were finished first. Once dried, the chassis was aligned and mounted to the box using 4 stainless steel screws through the bottom board. After masking the tenons with tape, I then gave all the remaining parts three coats of the “tung oil” finish over the course of three days.

Finishing the parts

Final assembly proceeded in this order. With the box flipped upside-down, the four legs were glued to the chassis at the mortise and tenon joint. They were then each aligned to be perfectly upright and held in that position by means of a band clamp. I also used this opportunity to drill two 1/2 in. “air holes” in the back, near the bottom, to guard against any hide-and-seek mishaps.

Scene during glue-up

Before the glue cured, I tipped the piece upright and fixed the legs to the cypress box with one screw, each, applied from within. Next, the hinges and lid were attached as before, using the proper screws this time. Finally, reproductions of a classic Korean handle pattern were added to the sides to complete the karabitsu.

This American version of the “foreign” coffer exudes a new pride of heritage, posted by the fireplace to serve today’s special storage needs.

Fireside friend

L'horloge Cerise

Take this lesson to thy heart; That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.

- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

“The cherry clock” would also be a fitting title for this special Project, a wedding present for my nephew Sam and his wonderful bride Jill, but I prefer the French version, don’t you? It fits, too, for this Project is all about the Americanization of a revered French clock.

Recently, I described the features of an archetypical French marble clock, the favorite of our house. While admiring this object one day it bothered me that in the age of Dick Tracy devices and rechargeable (ahem) “pocket watches” nothing remotely as captivating as this timepiece is being made for sale anywhere on earth. I’m sure there are some specialty clockmakers out there who would differ, but let’s not quibble. The fact is that today it would be impossible to reproduce this nineteenth century gem. Even if a clockmaker could locate the proper marble and some means to carve the decorative patterns, he/she would find the brass and porcelain face very hard to come by, and I would bet the “pendule de Paris” movement, with its conspicuous Brocot escapement, has not been manufactured for over a century. Sadly, with no means of production, the French marble clock will one day become extinct. The only way to re-produce this species would be to conjure up a version using today’s materials. That is the undertaking here.

French marble clock (1850-1899)

Design

Often when trying to copy an antique the craftsperson is left with the task of divining dimensions from an old picture using calipers, a calculator and plenty of conjecture. What made this build so special was that I had the real object before me. In rendering the design I became a portrait artist, obsessing about the details of his subject en pose, quantifying every aspect and coming to know each individual feature of the object I had so long admired as a whole. It was fun! I then took these numbers and drew a rough plan on paper.

The Cherry Clock: rough plan

While the interior construction (i.e., the attachment of marble to marble) remained a mystery, I reckoned that all of the stone elements could be fashioned from wood and then joined in the typical woodworking manner. The clock case would have an interior base made of plywood that, in addition to providing mass to lower the center of gravity, could furnish a platform for the decorative molding to rest upon. This base would ultimately be clad in the same cherry material used for the remainder of the case. My vision is that the lighter-colored marble surround on the original clock could be mimicked using sapwood from the edge of a cherry board.

Materials

This clock would be made from black cherry lumber (Prunus serotina) but not just any version of this native American hardwood. The boards I selected were quarter sawn, for use in constructing a stable box and top, and also a plain sawn plank to furnish the sapwood reveals. Some birch plywood parts were incorporated to provide out-of-sight support.

Cherry lumber (note sapwood along the far right edge) with base box constructed of plywood

The remaining clock components would, as best as possible, mimic the original. These French clocks used a cuplike bell strike, as opposed to a gong, and so I was on the lookout for movements with this comparatively rarer feature. I found a nice one at my favorite online shop, Clockworks, where I was also able to procure a French style key, pendulum, clock hands and grommets. The Roman numeral porcelain and brass dial was impossible to obtain, but a modern replica of a nineteenth century American knock-off was found complete with the characteristic flat glass bezel (thank you! Ronell Clock Co.). They also had the metal back plate I required.

Clock components

At last, with the preliminaries behind us and filled with the exhilarating notion that anything is possible, we take the plunge. (gratuitous wedding analogy)

Dimensioning

This clock case would be built from the inside-out and so the first job was to construct a rectangular plywood box to serve as the base. After joining four pieces together with box joints a few extra layers of plywood material were cut to augment the front and sides. Next, the cherry boards were chopped to rough length and then resawn and thickness planed to 1/2 in. (top, bottom and sides) and 1/4 in. (front, back). This “stock” would be further trimmed and refined during the course of construction.

Clock case components

To build-up the base, a layer of 1/2 in. plywood was laminated using glue onto the sides and front. The sides then received an extra 1/4 in. layer of plywood and the top and bottom of the thickened box was then leveled smooth with a block plane. Next, the cherry sides of this base were cut from quarter sawn stock. Once these were dry-fit into place the first of the two front layers could be measured for exact width. In the end, this layer will largely be covered by another cherry panel; the exposed sapwood edges are the purpose of the underlying board. The light, unstained marble edges of the original case also had an accenting bead carved along the side which I did my best to replicate at the router table. The beaded boards were then trimmed to proper height. The second panel was prepared from quarter sawn stock by edge-glueing two small boards together in a book match fashion and then trimming to the proper height and width. I would still need to round-off the edges before final glue-up but this phase of the operation was all about creating parts. Finally, the back of the base was prepared from two quarter sawn boards and then the back and sides were trimmed to their final lengths.

Base with cladding in place (dry fit)

With the base components in hand, I next needed to create the case tower. Like the base, the tower’s sides and back would be made from quarter sawn boards and the front would have a quarter sawn piece over another cherry panel sporting a beaded sapwood edge. The front and back parts were constructed much like those in the base, except that the half-panels would need an opening cut out for the dial and pendulum access before they could be glued together. The sides and bottom were prepared from thicker quarter sawn stock and joined with a box joint. A shallow rabbet on the top edge of the sides was created into which a ‘false’ top could be inserted to help hold the tower together. In the end, this would be covered by the actual top board. The sides were also rabbeted along their back edge to receive the back board. The dry-fit box could be used to determine the exact dimensions for the front and back panels, which were then trimmed to final width, the semi-circular holes cut-out at the bandsaw, the panel halves glued together, and the parts trimmed to final length at the table saw.

Tower parts

The seam between the base and tower is covered by a cove molding which provides the only ornamentation in an otherwise restrained assembly. It pleasingly elevates the structure, which means that the four mitered joints along its length should be executed with care so as not to distract. But first the molding must be fabricated.

The concave face of the original molding was flatter than a true circle and I also wanted to achieve this elongated profile in my version. I found a router bit online that matched the desired shape and used it at the router table to create the profile from 1/2 inch thick quarter sawn cherry boards. There is a lot of wood to rout (i.e., subtract) here, much more than should be shaved in a single pass, and so to save time I removed the bulk of the cavity with three passes over the dado blade at the table saw before finishing at the router table. The pictures below illustrate the approach. To complete the molding strips the boards were ripped on both edges at the table saw.

Interior wood removed at the table saw

Molding profile finished at the router table

Finally, the top was fashioned as an exact replica of the marble original using a 1/2 in. cherry board. The curves along the front edge were roughly cut at the band saw and then finished with a rasp and card scraper.

Assembly

Time to put the clock together. The first step was modifying the dial pan to accommodate the winding arbors, and this involved accurately drilling two 3/8 in. holes into the metallic pan and number ring. Following some compass and ruler work to fix these coordinates on paper, I then used this paper template and a thumb tack to dimple the hole positions onto the metal dial. The “dots” were then widened to 1/8 in. on the drill press, and these entry holes now allowed for perfect alignment of a Unibit (a step drill bit) which was used to create the wider openings. Grommets were placed within the holes to finish the look.

Drilling the arbor holes with a Unibit

It was now time to assemble the case body. After a final sanding and some edge rounding the base was completed by sequentially gluing the thick veneers about the plywood core. Next, the tower box was constructed by fitting the sides to the ‘false’ top and bottom. The two front layers were laminated together but I decided to leave this piece unattached from the case body, for now, to make it easier to mount the clock mechanism into place. The back of the case will attach with screws during the final assembly step. I glued a couple of cherry “braces” along the bottom seams of the box joint to ensure stability and then the tower was mated with the base by affixing these with screws onto similar wooden braces mounted out-of-sight within the base cavity. Next the dial was attached to the front board using 3 steel screws, eventually to be replaced by brass. I’ve learned to always pilot brass screws with their steel lookalikes to avoid the heartbreak of shear that can otherwise ensue.

Clock tower and base with front panel.

It was now time to test-mount the clock works to the case. The trick here is to center the winding arbors and center wheel shaft within their respective holes while also making sure that the shaft protrudes far enough beyond the dial to accommodate the hands, but not so far as to touch the glass. To get the spacing right for this one I ordered flat mounting brackets and attached these to an extra 1/4 in. spacer board inserted behind the front panel. (It’s reasonable to assume that factory produced clocks had every component sized to perfection prior to assembly, whereas, amateur clockmakers like myself must collect the parts we can find and then figure things out from there. Victor Frankenstein worked under similar conditions.) With the arbors all centered the 6 mounting screw positions were marked in pencil, the clock removed, the holes drilled and then the clock reinserted and fastened into place. Finally, the pendulum was attached, and with a gentle flick the wound clock sprung to life. That’s a nice feeling.

Clock works mounted to front board (clamped in place)

Once assured everything would fit properly during final assembly the clock works and dial pan were removed. The cherry top was then affixed to the tower with glue and some pan head screws, followed by the front panel. Since there is only a narrow glue surface along the edges to support this critical section a wooden support was also installed along the inside top for extra stability.

The final step to complete the cherry clock was to trim the base with cove molding. In this step, five unique molding segments would need to be cut and joined with mitered seams. The tool chosen to cut these parts was my 12 inch sliding miter saw. This is a nice saw but over-powered for the job, and a bit rowdy for cutting the two smaller pieces. Still, using double stick tape to hold the molding in place on the platen I was able to make it work. I spent a day playing around with scrap wood, and another day on an abortive attempt using the real stuff, all in an attempt to get the lengths and angles right. To mate properly with the front edge protrusions a 47° angle was needed for the central two miter joints, a 43° angle for the adjoining piece and 47° again at the corners - or thereabouts. Now, I had earlier prepared an angular shooting board specifically to assist in this operation. These handy jigs allow you to use a hand plane to shave the ends of miter joint components to make the mating surfaces square and accurate. However, forgetting about the front protrusions, I naively fashioned my jig at a 45° angle. To make things work for this Project, I rebuilt the shooting board’s stops at a 43° angle and then used a pie-shaped spacer to compensate during the 47° shaves. It worked!

Shooting the 43° angle on a molding piece, tape and wedge accessories at hand

Everything came together fairly well on the second try; not perfect, but possessing a pleasing handmade look. And with that, the woodworking portion of this assembly was complete. The whole case was then sanded extra smooth (to 320 grit) in preparation for the finish.

Unfinished cherry case

Finish

As I have described in the past, gel polyurethane is my preferred finish for cherry items. If one desires a smooth, hard finish with minimal blotching this product cannot be beat. I used two coats of the satin sheen version on this clock, smoothing with a gray Scotch-Brite pad in between applications. Looks great!

Time to put the clock back together. I started by screwing the mechanism into the backside of the case and then testing that everything ticked, tocked and pinged as it should. Next, the dial pan and bezel were fastened to the front with those brass screws. I now needed to mount the glass into the bezel. In lieu of any actual instructions, the bezel came with four soft metal tabs soldered along the inside rim and the cheeky presumption that nobody purchases these things unless they also know how the assembly goes. Playing their game, I dropped the glass into place and then began bending the tabs inward. I guess the trick is to get the tabs to hold the glass in place while also keeping them out of sight when viewing the dial. I have this same bezel on a couple of my antiques but the tabs are much shorter on these and so visibility is not an issue. I thought maybe mine needed to be cut off, but that does not seem possible with any of the tools in my possession and so they remain lurking almost out of view. My bigger problem was that, held in this manner, the glass is still too loose and it jiggles when opening the hinged bezel. Closer inspection of my antiques reveal each to contain a tiny wad of paper between one or more of the tabs and the glass in order to achieve a secure fit ... paper?!! Paper would certainly work for me, too, but instead I decided to use a couple thin pieces of cherry which I superglued to the inside of two tabs. (I can just picture the scene when, 150 years from now, some clock collector will inspect this piece and mutter, “Hunh! I wonder why they didn’t just use paper here?” It’s fun to mess with “the future” whenever you get the chance.)

Cherry “filler” inserted between glass and tab

Lastly, I mounted the clock hands and then worked to assure that the bell strikes exactly on the hour/half-hour. This is an iterative adjustment of the small bushing located within the minute hand, itself. Once satisfied with the bell stuff, I let the clock run for a few days to see how things went. During this period I occasionally fiddled with the nut at the bottom of the pendulum bob until I was convinced that all parts were conspiring to keep the minute wheel spinning at exactly twenty-four times the earth’s rotational velocity. (Ha!) To finish up, the metal back plate was affixed to the case’s back board which was then screwed into place. Finally, a layer of protective felt was glued to the case’s underside to complete the Cherry Clock.

The Cherry Clock (Amer.)

Congratulations Jill and Sam! Time to enjoy a wedding.

win back art

William Morris (1834-1896)

British poet, author, designer, textile maker, social activist, printer … genius

The well-read might recognize this little gem: “win back art”; first penned by William Morris in 1884, but it’s pretty obscure. The rest of us will have had to look it up, and that’s okay, too. Personally, I enjoy the pursuit. That is, uncovering a good quote and then tracking the creator’s contemporaneous intent before the airbrushers of history have applied their gloss. But be advised, the source and even the existence of many favorite quotes turn out to be apocryphal. Keeps the game interesting! Here’s what I found for this one.

Background

During the late Victorian era, William Morris was a highly influential thinker, artist and craftsman. While admired today as a founder of the Arts & Crafts movement, in his own time he was once branded by a British nobleman as the “poet upholsterer”. Seems there were some that could not abide art being associated with craft. But, 150 years later, the world continues to revere Morris’s work in design, furniture and bookmaking while nobody, not even the internet, can locate that nobleman who probably wishes he was titled Lord Apocryphal.

I came across this quote while reading an article from The Craftsman, Gustav Stickley’s periodical published from 1901-1916 to promote American handicraft and his Craftsman ethos. The Craftsman was a wonderful magazine. You can still find fragile issues in library collections or at used book sales but I read my article in The Craftsman: An Anthology, a book of collected articles edited by Barry Sanders and published in 1978. For the benefit of humankind, the University of Wisconsin has recently digitized a complete collection of The Craftsman and provide it in a searchable format free of charge. The article mentioned comes from the November 1902 issue and is titled The New Industrialism, by Oscar Lovell Triggs, a University of Chicago English professor. We’ll skip his outsider’s thoughts on “industrial betterment” for this post but let his article serve as testament to the continuing impact of Morris, then recently deceased, on social movements of the early twentieth century.

The quote

In his 1902 article, published later that year in book form and co-authored by Frank Lloyd Wright, Triggs refers to Morris’s “win back art” as one of three tenets supporting his (Triggs) “new industrialism”. I was intrigued by this monosyllabic triad, and since Triggs neglected to provide a source, I dug deeper to find their origin. It turns out that phrase first appeared nearly a quarter century earlier in a self-published pamphlet by Morris, titled Art and Socialism. I do not know how successfully that pithy call to action was used in its day, but I propose it could help us, today.

First things first, I am not now, nor will I ever advocate Socialism as a political system. Although never abandoning his cause, Morris, himself, had toned down his fervor in that direction by 1890. Win(ning) back art was sought as a means to restore fulfillment to workmen during their daily labor - that’s all. You see, a social crisis had ignited in the early nineteenth century as new materials and methods appeared with ferocious rapidity (think: steam power, coal, canals/railroads, mechanization, task specialization) and this assault had a most demoralizing effect on the working class in Britain, site of first adoption. Recall your history lessons and you will have a sense for how everything resolved here, but fast-forward to the present where we are reaping the benefits of another onslaught (robots, the internet, instant communication, (coming soon!) artificial intelligence) and you can worry that what has since been termed “hyper-novelty” has, once again, far outstripped our culture’s ability to adapt - to say nothing of Homo sapiens’ adaptability as a species. The rising scourge of substance abuse, violence, suicide and perhaps even the rampant tribalism experienced in the US today have to be connected here, although I have not sought scientific confirmation. Regardless, it is easy to draw parallels between both the origins and cultural sequelae of the Industrial Revolution and the Computer Age.

Action

So, what to do? I believe an aspiration to “win back art” might provide real benefits today. And you might, too, if I ever get around to revealing the significance of that phrase, so let’s get on with things.

Early in his Art and Socialism pamphlet Morris convincingly equates a state of “pleasure” with both “labour” and “life”, itself. He then uses Medieval architecture, thus his reference to “three centuries” ago, as evidence for the impressive handicraft of humans before the era of powered machines, “when men had pleasure in their daily work”. The actual phrase “win back art” was used only twice, mid-sentence and without fanfare, half-way into the work. Importantly, this sentence also serves to define “art” as the pleasure of life. Here is that sentence with the titled quote in context.

“For, though all is not well, I know that men's natures are not so changed in three centuries that we can say to all the thousands of years which went before them; You were wrong to cherish art, and now we have found out that all men need is food and raiment and shelter, with a smattering of knowledge of the material fashion of the universe. Creation is no longer a need of man's soul, his right hand may forget its cunning, and he be none the worse for it.

Three hundred years, a day in the lapse of ages, has not changed man's nature thus utterly, be sure of that: one day we shall win back art, that is to say the pleasure of life; win back art again to our daily labour.”

William Morris, Art and Socialism (1884)

In these elegant paragraphs, Morris implores us to first recognize the inbred need to create that exists in all humans. To labor in the satisfaction of that need is to make “art” by his definition. He then calls on us to reclaim, for our benefit, the pleasure of labor which we are in danger of losing to the callous demands of productivity. Or, put more inspiringly, to “win back art”. I’ll leave you with that interpretation and ask, not rhetorically, what can we do to win back art for the sake of our lives.

Chrysanthemum by William Morris, 1877

Tickin’ Francese

An Ansonia Clock Co. advertisement (c. 1900)

Get it? Tickin’ Francese? Oh, but I do crack myself up! Which is a good thing too, for sometimes I’d swear I am the only person who appreciates my Dad puns (heh, heh … wait …). Anyway, this post is about the Americanization of a classic French entrée clock.

In addition to the dozen or so clocks scattered about the house and workshop that tell time I also have a small collection of antique clocks that tell stories. These wonderful objects, five in total, were collected over the past quarter century as my interest in clocks developed. Four of the five are operational and while they all have special meaning for me, no clock in my collection would be particularly valuable to anyone other than me. My favorite, a late nineteenth century French marble clock, has been keeping our living room on time for the past 18 years. I recently did some digging into the history of that French clock and, like most research efforts, this revealed some unexpected insights.

French marble clock with Abraham Lincoln, a contemporary.

While it is easy (and fun) to study the general subject of “time keeping”, researching clock devices in any depth is more of a challenge. Books on clocks tend to be either pictorial encyclopedias, manufacturer’s sales catalogs or repair manuals. A few general histories are out there, and I found Eric Bruton’s The History of Clocks and Watches to be a delightfully informative reference. But to dig deep into any particular clock the internet is probably the best option; spade that turf long enough and one can accumulate a good pile of consistent-ish information. There are also a few clock repair gurus on YouTube who share their knowledge of these once indispensable, now venerable relics with loving zeal (kinda like that high school Latin teacher) and I invite you to check out Time4clocks as an example. Those are my sources for the following tale.

The plot line is a comparison of clock cases, but the story begins with a desire to understand the history of my particular French marble clock, and for that we need to examine the clock works. That is where the maker and date can be established. Of the many clockmakers producing the distinctive pendule de Paris (clock of Paris) movements in nineteenth century France, mine was made by the most prolific: Japy Frères et Cie (Japy Brothers & Co.). According to this source, in 1806 the Japy brothers, three sons of the industrial pioneer and clock making giant Édouard Louis Frédéric Japy (1749-1812), inherited a first of its kind, single site manufacturing operation for clocks and all of their parts. This firm dominated Europe’s clockmaking world for decades before their over-diversification into products such as typewriters and bicycle parts nearly drove them into the ground. During their heyday, however, Japy Frères made a wide variety of strikingly beautiful timepieces, and among these are the family of so-called black marble clocks. Googling that descriptor gives you an idea of the diversity of production for just this one style.

As far as I can tell, my particular specimen dates to the 1890s. This was determined by inspecting the backside of the movement, ignoring those serial number-like red herrings stamped all about, and interpreting the logo that changed over time depending on which new clockmaking award the brothers chose to plug.

‘Clock of Paris’ movement backside (bell and pendulum removed)

Though certain features, such as the Brocot escapement and exposed count wheel, are characteristic of an earlier era the logo on my movement, declaring the “Gde Med. D'Honneur" (Gold Medal of Honor), was apparently used from 1888-1900. However, given the tenuousness of this dating method, my personal language barrier and the general hazards associated with internet sleuthing, it would not surprise me if it is a decade or two older than that.

Logo close up

Black marble clocks were wildly popular in Europe and Great Britain. And as a nation of immigrants with a fondness for Old World tastes, they were sought after in the U.S., too. Somehow my clock made it across the Atlantic and, ultimately, to a clock shop in Hightstown, NJ where I purchased it in 2005. However, most nineteenth century Americans had to make do with the local fare. The so-called black mantle clocks, presumably a welcome diversion from the prevailing brown wooden cases, were top sellers and all of the big U.S. companies had their line-ups (e.g., Ansonia, W.L. Gilbert, Ingraham, New Haven, Sessions, Seth Thomas, Waterbury). And while some companies imported marble for these, most cases were made from substitute materials. To mimic the French stained marble (largely quarried in Belgium, as it turns out) those crafty Americans used a process called “japanning” to put a black enamel coating on either a wood or metal clock case. Seth Thomas also employed an early type of celluloid plastic, called “adamantine”, to veneer a flat black or even a fake, so-called “marbleized” finish to wooden cases. Resourceful!

After learning about my French clock and its influence on contemporaneous American designs it dawned on me that two of my other antique clocks fell into this same family. The first is a stout Ansonia metal clock, also acquired in New Jersey, that graced the mantle of our lake house there for many years. Purchased in 1998, it dates from the 1880s and was one of the many many black mantle clock designs produced by that firm, founded in 1850 by Anson G. Phelps. I had the 100-year old movement cleaned and oiled at that time and it is still running strong. The dial and hands have been replaced over the years, but that is not uncommon for heavily used clocks. On first glance it bears little resemblance to my bone fide marble clock but it does possess the characteristic brass rimmed, flat glass bezel, the telltale botanical engravings and it was, of course, black.

My Ansonia black mantle clock c. 1885

The movement is visible from the backside beneath the circular cover. Like all American varieties the works are less space-efficient than the pendule de Paris, but sturdy.

Ansonia movement, patented June 13, 1882.

For marketing purposes, many clocks were given names and this one, ironically, was called “Unique”. The case turned out to be a close copy of another one of Japy’s marble clocks. In fact, if you invert the top it is a dead ringer - in enameled iron.

Japy clock c. 1860

(reproduced from liveauctioneers.com website)

The second American black mantle clock in my collection comes via Michigan and my departed Uncle Chuck’s estate. I wish I knew more of its provenance and whether he may have inherited it from an earlier family member but all I can uncover is its horological history. The tattered label identifies it as a clock made by the Sessions Clock Co. This Connecticut company was formerly the E.N. Welch Manufacturing Co., which lost so many assets during a series of factory fires that they eventually had to sell to a smaller firm and was renamed “Sessions” after the new head, William E. Sessions. Perusing the history of various clockmakers it seems that fire was a major “selection event” driving their evolution, worldwide. Apparently, Frédéric Japy’s successful legacy of co-localizing all operations to enhance productivity/affordability also made clockmakers more susceptible to sudden catastrophe.

Back to our story, this early Sessions clock has a black enameled wooden case that possesses fine engravings and an exquisitely ornate dial housed within a brass (or brass-like), flat glass bezel. As with similar clocks from that era, the case is loaded with other metallic gimcrackery. Some of this was meant to imitate bronze features gracing their French counterparts, but the rest appear to be an American fling with rococco-ism that probably merits further research to determine exactly what they were attempting to accomplish. Still, it is a stately looking object on my shelf with a dear familial connection and, unfortunately, a sprung mainspring.

My Sessions black mantle clock, c. 1905

Remnants of the original label

Since the label still references the E.N. Welch heritage, I date the clock to near the corporate sale of 1903. A cursory Google search, once again, turned up its marble doppelgänger of a slightly earlier period.

Japy clock c. 1880

(reproduced from harpgallery.com website)

So that is the story of three black mantle clocks of common pedigree. Variously produced some 120-150 years ago in France, New York and Connecticut, and after some traveling about they now all reside in my Massachusetts home. That’s quite a testament to influence if you think about it. The design of this French clock was so powerful that it was copied across the globe, spawning a multitude of facsimiles wrought from local materials and produced by the millions to be traded even more widely, yet all striving to be the black marble clock. Individually, these clocks are now treasured as heirlooms. Much like a beloved family recipe, they were selected to satisfy a long ago taste, enjoyed in their time, transported across international and state boundaries, and handed down for succeeding generations to partake. Bon appétit!

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Clock No. 1

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I have been fantasizing about clocks a lot lately. They are fun to dream of while working on heavier things. I keep a list of the ones I’d like to build some day that continually shuffle in their mental order of construction, mostly early American classics. Of course, the desire to make a clock completely of my own design is there too, and recently I decided to convert some doodles into a drawn plan. I was looking to make a shelf clock that could serve as a housewarming gift for good friends of ours, and what I was trying to create was a timepiece that could be used in any room. This small clock required a simple case design and one that, although made of wood, would not look “old-fashioned”. It should also be a case that is easily constructed in the event I ever choose to duplicate for sale. Mission and Shaker styles both satisfy these criteria and I was hoping I might create something original that could fit within these canons. I call this design Clock No. 1.

Design

I favor elemental shapes in my wooden objects, things like right angles and arcs. These are disciplined features that, in concert with the material’s “untrained” texture, can achieve a satisfying harmony. Seductively curved mouldings and scrollwork have their place, but they too often compete with the natural character of wood. Circles, with some rectangular joinery will be the theme of this clock. Semicircles will define the bottom edges of the case and thereby create the feet. A box joint will form the connection between the top and sides, and I will do my best to hide the other seams so as not to distract. The clock’s back would be accessed via a door (hinged or sliding, TBD). And in place of numerals I could use dowel pegs made from the same wood as the case; the dark end grain should provide a pleasing contrast.

Clock No. 1 rough sketch

Materials

When building a clock the first decision to be made concerns the movement:  mechanical or quartz?  To wind or not to wind, that is the question, for clock case dimensions are affected by a mechanical movement’s bulk and pendulum swing. All else being equal, I prefer mechanicals for the life that these clocks bring to a home. But the current Project is for a vacation home and that changes things. I know from experience the sorry scene of opening the door to your retreat and being met by a “dead” clock on the mantle.  Admittedly, it is an easy task for the clockwinder to resuscitate and then march the live timepiece through the gong sequence until it, once again, reaches its own meridian. However, this task begins to feel Sisyphean and grows old over time … quartz it is. Battery-operated quartz clock movements are easy to find and I picked one up at a new source for me, the Norkro Clock Co.

I can imagine that this clock would look nice in a variety of woods but, given that it is a lightweight clock with thin walls, I decided to use quarter sawn lumber to reduce the propensity for warp. That decision pretty much limits the choice to those woods commonly milled in this orientation, namely: oak, ash or cherry. I chose cherry.

Clock materials

Dimensioning

To begin, the 3/4 in. thick cherry board would need to be sliced into two thinner boards of 1/4 inch depth. This was accomplished by re-sawing in half at the bandsaw and then reducing these boards further (while flattening) to the exact dimension on a thickness planer. Next, the mill marks were removed using a card scraper and the grain patterns inspected carefully in order to assign stock-to-parts as artfully as possible (i.e., which portions of wood to use for the front, sides, top, bottom and back). Once labelled with tape, including interior vs exterior, the parts were trimmed to their proper widths at the table saw. During this operation both edges of the front and one edge of each side were cut at a 45 degree angle. During assembly these would all come together in mitered joints which, if executed properly, would leave an invisible seam.

After cross-cutting the front and sides to [proper height + 1/2 inch] it was time to cut the semicircular bottom edges. There are 3 common ways to cut circles using power tools and these involve either the router, drill press or band saw. I needed to make semi-circles of two different radii on small boards and for these reasons cutting at the band saw was chosen as the proper method. Way back during construction of the Stationery Chest I made a circle-cutting jig for my small bandsaw that has served me well ever since. Onto this jig, the boards were mounted individually at the circle centers with a bolt inserted at the exact height of the finished front or side piece (this is where the extra 1/2 inch comes in), the jig was slid into place on the band saw table and the board was then rotated in one smooth operation to slice out a perfect semicircle. Slick.

Cutting out the front board in a “clockwise” spin

Once the semicircles were cut, and the bottom 1/2 inch trimmed away, the next step was to fashion the box joint along the top and side pieces. I decided to use the table saw for this operation and this required that I first construct a new jig for the task. The “fingers” of this joint are small rectangles, 3/8 in. wide x 1/4 in. tall, which become the critical dimensions defining the new jig made along the lines of a larger version that I have described previously. This jig, used with a dado stack on the table saw, worked well to reproducibly cut the cavities at fixed distances along the joint edge. Taped together, both side parts were cut at the same time to ensure perfect alignment.

Cutting the box joint fingers

After the sides were complete, the fingers for one half of the top were cut-out. The sides and front were then dry fit and the top was dropped into place to mark its exact width, prior to sizing and then cutting the other half of the box joint. Next, the front edge of the top was trimmed back by the width of the front board so that everything would fit together properly. This happened to also be the width dimension for the interior shelf and so that was cut to size using the same fence setting at the table saw. The shelf, or bottom, is a structural element and would be supported by a shallow groove, easily cut into the side boards at the table saw using the cross-cut sled. The last part to fashion was the door which was cut from the remaining stock to fit the cavity of the dry-fit case. Since the door would have no structural support, I chose to rip the board in half and then glue it back together along the centerline. This corrected a slight bow and should help to ward-off future warp.

Clock case parts

The final operation prior to assembly was to make the clock face. Holes drilled in a 4 inch circle surrounding a central opening would form the dial. These holes would then be filled with shop-made cherry dowels to take the place of numerals. Rather than draw on the face board, I first made a template of the dial on hdf material and then used this to guide a hand drill to make the production cuts. The dowels were fashioned with a dowel plate and hammer using cherry scraps.

Dowel-making with face template in background

With assistance from the template, the dial was created by drilling the 12-hole circle into the case front and then tapping a short dowel into each opening. A small dab of glue was applied to the back of each peg to secure these in place. The protruding ends were then removed with a Japanese flush cutting saw and the face sanded smooth to 220 grit. A center hole for the clock stem was then drilled to complete the clock face.

Clock face (bare wood)

Assembly & Finish

After sanding all of the parts smooth it was time to glue them together. The first step was to assemble the finger-jointed top and sides. These were put together as tightly as possible by hand and then the shelf board was slid into place and the whole carcass squared-up and cinched with clamps. Lying on its back, the structure could then receive the mitered front board which was aligned and clamped firmly into position. It is always difficult to snap a good picture during glue-up, the awkward disposition of clamps and devices evoke a scene in the dentist’s chair during an expensive procedure, but I tried my best in the below.

Case undergoing assembly

Unclamped, the case held together nicely but still required some grooming. The protruding box joint fingers were trimmed flush with a block plane, while the mitered edges were crimped to invisibility using a burnisher. I also trimmed the interior of the 1/4 in. thick sides (down near the bottom) so as not to interfere with the dainty statement of the 1/8 inch wide feet. A few joint gaps were beautified using thin cherry scraps and the whole carcass was then sanded down to 220 grit.

I chose to use hinges for mounting the door at the back of the case. Ultimately, the door will be attached following the finishing steps, but it is best to align and drill the screw holes at this point. I used the smallest pair of brass butt hinges I could find. As a handle I decided to simply drill a 3/4 in. circular finger pull. Clean.

Door mounted on the backside

Finally, I mounted a small rare earth magnet within the cavity that could mate with a hack-sawn screw to serve as the door catch. On to the finish.

I find the character of this wood to be fascinating and so I took some time to experiment with finishes, specifically comparing gel polyurethane with an oil-based wiping varnish (also polyurethane). I wanted to highlight the color variations in the wood, including the patches of punch card-like ray flecks, without inducing the blotching for which cherry is prone. I also wanted to maximize the contrast of the dowel end grain with the surface wood to make the face pop. Working on test pieces, I found that the gel polyurethane imparted a brighter, more orange, color to the wood, whereas the oil varnish gave a greener tint when compared side-by-side. The final surface was also smoother with the gel product (build-up filling the tiny valleys, perhaps?) and so this finish was applied to the clock case and door in three coats.

After the finish had dried, I attached the door hinges and then mounted the clockworks. The final design decision for Clock No. 1 was the choice of hands. The gold colored hands originally purchased for this clock turned out to be too bright, with not enough contrast against the wooden face. I liked the style, but not the finish and so I procured a similar set of hands in black. These did the trick!

Clock No. 1 face

I like this prototype clock and think it has some staying power. That little nine inch timepiece has a presence. The cherry wood provides intricate grain on a scale that does not overwhelm a small item, although oak would also be nice and I now think mahogany would be a rich material to try, as well. I have some ideas for making the joints appear “cleaner” and to also simplify the door mechanics, too. Lots to explore! - next time.

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Mission Line Mirror

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Let’s reflect for a moment on moving house. Mathematically speaking, moving is a binary equation. One night you are sleeping at your old address, and the next you and your belongings are someplace new. Moving-in is more of an asymptotic function; at least it always has been for us. Prior to occupying our mid-century ranch in late 2019 we took the opportunity to repaint all of the walls and give a fresh start to the decor. The “moving-in” proceeded along its usual course: put the essentials in place and install the remainders g r a d u a l l y over time. It has been our experience that the last things to move-in are always the wall hangings. This time, low ceilings and plenty of windows served to minimize the available wall space, which in some ways made it easier to live without, but also heightened the impact of every hanging decision. That sets the scene for the latest Project, a new dining room mirror.

Like many households, we have always had a mirror in our dining room. I think its purpose is to make the space appear larger, but it also adds vitality to the setting and comes in handy for that occasional self-check. A previous renovation had opened up our current dining “room”, yet the space still called for a mirror. However, real estate on the lone remaining wall was too limiting for anything we had in stock and so this potential hanging took its place with the others along that asymptote to infinity. And then I noticed an example of a Craftsman style mirror while reading a book on the Stickley’s. This L. & J.G. Stickley mirror had exactly what was needed: substantial width and narrow height. It also appeared alluringly proper. At the time (1905), Leopold and John George declared that their “furniture was neither Arts & Crafts nor Mission, but ‘simple furniture on mission lines’.”* While clumsy, that expression, likely an attempt to re-characterize the Craftsman™ designs they had blatantly copied from their older brother Gustav’s catalog, still resonated with me.

simple, “mission line” mirror

reproduced from: * Clark, M.; Thomas-Clark, J. The Stickley Brothers; Gibbs Smith: Utah, 2002; p. 135.

Design & Materials

There is nothing special about the design of this mirror, except that prior to discovering it I don’t think I would ever have thought to make one so long and narrow, which I guess does make it courageous in a way. I could not find any measurements for the original but did my best to keep the proportions of frame to mirror (calipered from the photograph) while accommodating the wall’s constraints: approximately 45 in. long and 16 3/4 in. high. The frame would be 2 3/8 in. wide on all sides. As to construction, the joints of the original were most likely mortice and tenoned, but a half lap joint would also work and that’s how I decided to put the 4 frame members together. That’s everything. With the dimensions and joint type settled there was no need for a paper plan. Three board feet of 4/4 quarter sawn white oak, some picture hanging hardware and, of course, the mirror glass were all of the materials required. Simple.

Mirror material

Dimensioning & Assembly

The dimensioning step was pretty simple, too. First, the board was cut crosswise into three sections from which the 2 3/8 in. wide frame pieces were ripped at the table saw. These were then jointed square and thickness planed to uniformity. The four pieces were then chopped to the final lengths and half laps cut on all ends using a dado blade and cross-cut sled. A rabbet for holding the mirror glass was ripped along an interior side of both of the long members and, finally, a couple 1/2 in. diameter oak dowels were prepared by hammering scraps through a dowel plate. These would be used to eventually peg the joints.

Mirror parts

All surfaces were card scraped to remove mill marks and then assigned their positions. Glue-up was easy; simply a matter of clamping all the seams together and double-checking that everything remained square.

Mirror frame assembled.

Just a few steps to go. I wanted to peg the half lap joints squarely in their center and so a simple jig was constructed from scrap wood to reproducibly mark that spot at all four corners. Once drilled, gluey dowels were tapped into the holes and then sawn flush upon drying. The dowel end-grain was further shaved level with a block plane and then the entire frame was sanded smooth using an orbital sander.

The end grain portion of the half lap joints protruded slightly at all corners and so these were shaved flat with a block plane. To give the frame an inviting look, all of the sharp edges were then “knocked-down” using a spokeshave and sandpaper while the corners rounded slightly with a rasp. Then the entire piece was hand sanded using 180 SandNet.

Finally, I needed to make two short rabbets along the backside of the vertical members to complete the housing for the mirror glass. This was done carefully with a router and chisel so as not to ruin the nearly completed piece. I also chose to install the mounting hardware at this stage and then “test hang” the empty, unfinished frame on the wall. This allowed me to get everything straight without having to handle a heavy mirror in the process.

Finish

To fit with the existing furnishings I wanted the oak frame to be darker than the typical, ammonia fumed Craftsman finish. Indeed, all of the Stickley companies employed a range of finishes that they would use to suit the individual buyer or decorating trends of the time. I was aiming for something akin to their “Centennial” finish and followed the 4-step Jewitt process: dye (dark mission brown)/seal/glaze with gel stain (Java)/varnish.

With my part complete, I sought the services of a local glass shop, Northeast Glass Works, to supply and mount the mirror glass into the frame. They did a great job and we now have a mission line mirror to complete our wall.

Mirror on the wall

No. 220: the finish!

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In the fifth installment we (at last!) find ourselves approaching the finish line for the No. 220 Prairie Settle, a version of L. & J.G. Stickley’s 1912 home furnishing masterpiece. Only three jobs remained: some carpentry to create the seat; upholstery for comfort; and finishing to complete the “look”. Aspects of these jobs were conducted throughout the build but are summarized now in this final post.

Job 1: Carpentry

Carpentry on this Project is used in support of the upholstered seats, so let’s begin there. Both cushioned seats (as in the catalog original) and inset seats (like many of the other settles from that time) have been used by modern builders and restorers of the No. 220. This posed the first of many choices to be made. Inset seats give a “cleaner” look but cushions are said to be more comfortable, and since we intended to use this piece every day cushions were selected. That decision then determines the type of underlying frame to be used by the upholsterers. The cushions would rest on a platform that, itself, would rest on a hardwood cleat built around the inside of the frame - all out of sight, in the end. After consultation with the upholsterer (more on him later) the dimensions for the cleat and frame were decided and good old fashioned carpentry was used for their construction. The cleats were made of hard maple (1 x 1 1/2 in.) and attached to the rails, at the proper height, with glue and screws. A center brace of the same dimension was also incorporated using a half-lap joint to tie it all together. Solid.

Maple cleats affixed

Next, a platform frame was constructed of 3 x 3/4 in. poplar boards. This ”figure 8” frame would rest on the cleats and sit 1/2 inch below the top of the rails; the two open areas would be filled with stretched webbing by the upholsterer. I used pocket screw joinery to make the frame. Prior to assembly, the corners were notched to accommodate the settle’s legs and, afterwards, all of the edges were chamfered lightly using a spokeshave.

Poplar frame in place

(what’s wrong* with this picture?)

*(In the interest of full disclosure … about a month after the above picture was taken, after surrendering the platform to the upholstery shop, and after attaching the overhanging arms to the frame I realized that I would now no longer be able to drop this platform into position. To remedy this situation, the webbed frame was reclaimed from the upholsterer, one edge was trimmed back to allow for fit, and then the platform was returned to the upholstery shop so that it could be completed. An extra cleat was “sistered” onto the existing frame structure to support the shortened platform and all was well again. Somewhere Henry Ford is chuckling.)

Job 2: Upholstery

Never having attempted the craft of upholstery I was not about to try it here. Instead, I found a local shop, Marcoux Upholstery, with an excellent reputation that was upheld by my every interaction with them on the No. 220 - mighty fine folk. Leather was selected as the covering material which comes with a whole host of decisions to be made concerning source, grade, embossing and color. Most of these choices are based on personal taste & pocketbook, but the surrounding decor and frame wood influence the color decision. So before we could select a leather color we needed to lock-in a frame color. The brown/wine leather sofa we are replacing goes well with the underlying rug and remaining furniture pieces, and so a leather of this general hue was considered a safe choice. That hue required a complementary wood color. Knowing that there is not a single “correct” color for the wood, I chose not to create too many choices. I also planned to use the Jeff Jewitt process to finish quarter sawn oak that employs modern day materials to match the look of aged, ammonia fumed finishes used in the day. Many color variations are possible with Jewitt’s method, depending on the dye and accenting stain used. To create my spectrum of choices I sampled both a “blank” and three different TransTint dye colors on scrap boards: reddish brown; medium brown; brown mahogany.

Dyed white oak scraps + blank

Following this I conducted the rest of the sequence using antique walnut gel stain on them all. In my mind, every one of the dyes samples could work but, to be critical, perhaps the red was too red and the brown too brown for this piece. The brown mahogany-based finish was the winner for us (but I repeated this one on a larger board, just to be sure).

The chosen finish (far right)

That was easy compared to selecting the leather. I won’t go into all of the details but there are a lot of leather options out there. Again, I’m sure that many of these would work just fine for us, and so following a single elimination beauty contest we hoped that “walnut” in the “reagent” embossed pattern would be one of them.

The winning leather

The rest of this job was in the hands’ of Marcoux. They came with their van to pick-up the unfinished, armless frame and took it back to their shop for measurements. A week later they brought the frame back so that I could work on the arms and finish, and then a couple weeks following that the cushions and webbed platform were delivered. I cannot tell you how pleased I was with their craftsmanship - it all looked great.

Job 3: The Finish

At last the final job, finishing the wood. I took my time here, trying my best to make the wood look its finest. A piece this big will always have a few “trouble” spots, but in the whole I wanted the color to be uniform, the grain patterns to be noticeable and the rays to shine - but not too brightly. Here is how the job proceeded.

1. Raise the grain before a final sanding

Since I will be coloring the wood with a water-based dye I needed to first raise the grain with distilled water and then remove the resulting fuzzy nubs by sanding. I used a piece of 180 grit SandNet on a sanding block for the job. This preliminary step ensures a smoother surface and even coloration.

2. Dye the wood

The TranTint dye (brown mahogany) was mixed at a concentration of 3/4 tsp. per one cup of distilled water and a small cosmetic sponge wrapped in a T-shirt rag was used to wipe it on. An artist’s paint brush was employed to get dye into all of the internal crannies (looking at YOU, corbels). Once the first application was dry the wood was lightly smoothed using 320 grit sandpaper and then a second helping of dye was applied.

Brown Mahogany dye applied

3. Oil the wood

Treating with boiled linseed oil (BLO) is not a part of the conventional Jewitt finish, but I saw a woman post this modification online in describing some Mission-style cabinets she was making and they looked gorgeous. I’m not sure how much this will be noticed in the end, but I thought I would throw it in. Thus, BLO was applied liberally by rag and then the excess was wiped off after 10 minutes. The piece was left to cure for 2 days.

Boiled linseed oil applied

4. Seal the wood

Even with a coat of BLO I wanted to be sure the wood was sealed prior to the next staining step. For this I used a coat of General Finishes Seal-A-Cell product, applied by rag and cured for 24 hours before smoothing lightly with a maroon Scotch Brite pad (synthetic steel wool).

5. Stain the pores

The object of this step is to highlight the unique pore and grain structure of oak. It will also darken the entire surface a bit to produce the final color. This so-called “glazing” step is the signature component of Jewitt’s finishing method. I applied a dark brown, oil-based gel stain from General Finishes (antique walnut) with a rag, rubbing it into the cavities with a circular motion and then wiping away the excess in the direction of the grain. The stain was left to dry for 2 days before giving it a cloth rub-down. While not conveyed well by these photos, each step has served to color the wood, deepen the texture and highlight the contrasting grain patterns.

Seal and glaze applied

6. Finish with varnish

This final step both livens-up the color and provides some physical protection from stains and liquids, but this finish is meant to be invisible and so a non-gloss product is called for. I used General Finishes ArmRSeal wiping varnish, satin sheen. The finish was applied with a rag, lightly, in two coats over two days and with an intervening smoothing rub using a gray Scotch Brite pad. Once it was all dry the piece was wiped vigorously with a cloth diaper to even the sheen. Voila!

Complete at last, this latest version of the No. 220 was hauled (carefully) from the workshop to the living room, dressed with the leather cushions and put into service. An epic build for me and a nice heirloom for the family to enjoy.

No. 220: the arms

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Really? An entire post dedicated to the arms of a furniture piece? Yes. Remember, these are not just any arms.

The No. 220 Prairie Settle from L. & J.G. Stickley was a breakthrough design in 1912 largely because of its arms. On first sight, the size and elevation of No. 220’s wrap around arms command your response to the entire piece. The accompanying corbels and panels, the upholstery, the finish, they all do their part; but those unique arms are why we gasp. Here’s how they are made.

Materials

There are only two components here, both made from quarter sawn white oak. The supporting corbels will be made from the same 4/4 boards as the stiles and rails of the frame. The arms were to be the same thickness, but their 7 3/4 in. width was larger in that dimension than any of the 4/4 boards available at the lumber yard. It would not do to create this span by piecing together two smaller boards and so I sorted through the wider members of their 4/4 S3S (surfaced 3 sides) stock. These are nice boards, pre-planed and so you know the exact grain and ray pattern as you make your selections. Many were 8+ inches in width, however, their 3/4 inch depth meant that they were 1/16 of an inch too thin for what the plans called for, and that’s before I did any final smoothing in the shop. I ended up selecting these. It’s not the end of the world - structure and function will be fine - just a slight alteration to the intended look that I convinced myself would not be noticed by anyone but me (and now, you).

Arm boards

Job 1: Corbels

Corbel is an architectural term describing any projection that juts from a wall to support the weight of an element above it. The arms of No. 220 are supported by the settle’s frame with assistance from seven such corbels spread along the perimeter. Though eye-appealing, these members serve an important function or else they would not belong on a Craftsman design. The plan calls for six corbels of identical dimensions and a seventh, slightly larger one, placed along the center of the paneled back side. I sketched the designs free-hand on card paper after examining pictures of authentic examples (which, again, differed somewhat from the published plans).

Corbel profiles sketched on paper

The larger template was traced onto 1/2 inch mdf board stock and the paper was then trimmed back to the smaller template which was also traced. Next, the mdf template versions were cut-out at the bandsaw and the curves shaped smooth “to the line” using a drum sanding bit on the drill press. These two new “patterns” were then used to trace their shapes (1 large, 6 small) onto prepped white oak boards and the shapes were cut-out at the bandsaw as before. I tried to stay about 1/16th of an inch outside the lines during these cuts.

Cutting out the corbels, two per board

Next, the wood needed to be cleaned-up. A card scraper and 150 grit sandpaper were used to smooth the flat surfaces, whereas, the “cut” edges would be shaved to the line using a flush trimming bit at the router table. In this operation, the mdf patterns made earlier would serve as guides for the roller bearing to ensure that all curves ended up exactly matching the originals. I glued a couple of lips to the mdf patterns that allowed these to be temporarily affixed with screws to the corbel about to be shaped. Worked out well … except that on a couple occasions that little flare near the bottom was, unfortunately, clipped-off in the process. Tear-out like this is sometimes hard to avoid, and the quarter sawn grain orientation only made things easier to rip away. No problem, I just penciled a shallower “upturn” on these two defectives and then drum sanded to the line on the drill press. They say much of woodworking is actually “correcting mistakes”. These’ll look just fine.

Shaping the corbels to pattern with a flush trimming router bit.

All that remained was to create tongues along the back edges for these parts to mount within the previously grooved legs and central stile. This was done using the dado blade on the table saw. Following a final trimming for fit, the corbels were ready for assembly.

No. 220 corbels

Job 2: Arms

These should be easy. The final dimensions are all in hand: the arm lengths are determined by the as-built frame dimensions; and the 7 3/4 inch arm widths were prescribed by the plan. It all comes down to the order of operations and execution of tactics; in short, properly sawing the four 45 degree angle miter cuts. The goal here is to have a uniform looking seam, and one that is as tight as possible. My strategy was to cut one end of the back, say the “right-hand” side, and the corresponding right arm and try to get that joint “correct” before tackling the other side. That way, if a recut is needed, I would still have length to play with along the back. Should everything go as intended each of the corner angles sum to 90, but any deviation from 45 degrees in this first cut would need to be compensated for in the second if both the 90 degree angle and a tight & true seam are to be formed. I’m not sure why this situation bothered me so much before any cutting occurred, maybe its just the scale of things (an 11 inch hypotenuse!). Anyway, because of that scale I decided that the sliding miter saw was the machine to use for making the cuts.

To get started, the board stock was ripped to the correct width and the edges jointed square. Things are too cramped in the workshop to wield a 7 foot board at the jointer and so an antique No. 7 Stanley jointer plane, once belonging to my great-grandfather, was used to square the edges. Andrew restored this beauty a few years ago and it provides smooth & faithful service whenever called upon.

100+ year-old Stanley No. 7 plane and arm board

Time to do some cutting. The first miter was sawn on the back arm and then things got hairy. Not only was it not the perfect 45 degree angle set at the sliding miter saw, the cut, itself, was a bit “hollowed-out” in the center. What’s going on here?!

Cutting the back arm miter

I cut the second board and, again, things were just not right. While these were not fatal imperfections they would need to be fixed before joining. Maybe I should have paused at this point and just switched to using a track saw, but instead I took the route of fashioning a shooting board to correct the situation. Shooting boards are handy shop jigs that are easy to construct. They are used to guide a hand plane tilted on edge to cut along end-grain wood and I always thought I might need one to smooth the sawn edges before joining - only now it was required to also rescue the integrity of the angle, itself. Most 45 degree angled shooting boards are rather small, used primarily to shave the ends of picture frame stock. The challenge in this case was making a shooting board that could accommodate an 11 inch “shave” at the end of a 7 foot board. The typical design was a non-starter for this scale, but the key mechanical features could be preserved in a temporary set-up constructed from a few oak boards, screwed together and then clamped to the surface of my workbench (see below).

Shooting “board” set-up, in use

This “jig” worked surprisingly well. With a re-sharpened plane iron and some patience the skewed quarter sawn end grain was brought back to a flat 45. Not knowing the cause of the original error, I proceeded as planned: cutting at the sliding saw and beautifying that result as best I could at the shooting board until both of the corner joints passed inspection. I have since discovered a mechanical mis-alignment between the saw’s blade and the sliding arm. The machine is currently undergoing rehabilitation at the local Makita service center. I know, ‘it’s a poor carpenter that blames his tools’ - but they should, at least, meet you halfway!

Assembly

One final modification prior to assembly: biscuit slots. “Biscuits”, mentioned in earlier Projects, are football-shaped wooden wafers that assist glue joinery in two ways: 1. by providing a mechanical alignment between two pieces; and 2. by furnishing face-grain mating surfaces, which is particularly valuable when, as in this case, the joint involves end-grain wood - a notoriously poor glue bonding surface. I cut two biscuit slots into each of the angled ends with my handy biscuit joiner. Glue applied into these slots and unto the faces of the biscuit wafers will furnish a strong bond “within” the joined arm sections. I also cut three such slots into the upper rail and back arm board to ensure proper register here during assembly.

Final assembly of the arms would occur on top of the frame. The main object here was to attach the three arm pieces together, paying particular attention to the mitered seams, and since I needed a flat area to do this, it was either the frame or the floor. Also, since the assembled “U”-shaped arm structure would be rather fragile and unwieldy to handle afterwards, I decided to glue the arms to the frame at the same time. This necessitated mounting the supporting corbels in place too and so the whole thing was glued in a single session with assistance from my son, Ben. It went pretty well. I clamped and glued the long back arm section and its corbels to the frame first. After a 45 minute cure this gave a stable base for attachment of the remaining pieces, and it also allowed me to liberate and re-purpose some clamps - always a limiting resource. Next, the remaining corbels and side arms were glued into place. No drama (whew!).

All parts glued securely in place

The clamps were removed the following day and everything looked as it should. To complete the arms, the surface was sanded lightly with an orbital sander and then all of the sharp edges surrounding the arms were broken using a sanding block. A final hand-sanding over all surfaces (150 grit) made everything smooth and ready for finishing.

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