Lee Valley Tools now offers the deluxe version of “To Make as Perfectly as Possible” at a special price ($329 CND) for Canadian customers.
You have Robin Lee of Lee Valley to thank for this. He reached out to us and made a special order of these books in an effort to get them in the hands of woodworkers who would appreciate them.
So if you’re in Canada, this is a great way to get this book shipped to you.
Details on the Lee Valley website.
— Christopher Schwarz
The following is excerpted from “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture,” by André-Jacob Roubo, translated by Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue.
“Roubo on Furniture” is filled with insights into working wood and building furniture that are difficult or impossible to find in both old and modern woodworking books. Unlike many woodworking writers of the 18th century Roubo was a traditionally trained and practicing joiner. He interviewed fellow craftsmen from other trades to gain a deep and nuanced view of their practices. He learned to draw, so almost all of the illustrations in this book came from his hand.
In addition to the translated text and images from the original, “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture” also includes five contemporary essays on Roubo’s writing by craftsmen Christopher Schwarz, Don Williams, Michael Mascelli, Philippe Lafargue and Jonathan Thornton.
As far as the manner of joining panels, after they have been dressed or smoothed, according to whether they are more or less thick, you begin by trimming them and making them equal width, observing to eradicate all types of sapwood, knots and splits, after which you set them up according to the different widths that they should have. You should take precaution to put the planks of a similar color together, the narrowest (which we name alaises) in the center [of the panel], and the edges of the plank that are softer [wood closer to sapwood] should be used in the groove joints [in the frame]. After they have been thus set up, you begin making the joints by cutting the grooves, then you make the tongues. After having taken the precaution to position the plank where you have made the groove against where you wish to make the tongue, to see if both of them are truly straight, then you make the tongue. When the wood is thick, you trim the back of the tongue by chamfering [it] with the half-plane [ jack plane], so that the plane [the tongue plane] is easier to push. When the wood is rough and very thick, you need two workmen in order to push it, as I said in speaking of planes of two pieces, but the more it can be done by a single workman, so much the better for the work.
It is also necessary to take care that the joints be straight on the edges of the panels and that they fit equally on each side of the groove, even when the work is just a facing [a decorative panel, not structural]. Joints thus well brought together prevent the air from penetrating and, consequently, from warping the panels.
After having made the joints with all the precautions that I spoke about previously, you glue them together; and for this, you disassemble the boards from each other, after having numbered them, so as not to confuse the panels of one panel with those of another. After this, you heat the joints so that the heat opens the pores of the wood, preparing them better to take the glue and hold on to the joints. It is necessary, however, to pay attention that the wood not be too hot because it will dry the glue too promptly and prevent it from holding. As for the glue, it cannot be too hot [in other words, the hotter the glue, the better] because the heat makes all the glue components finer and delicate [less viscous] and consequently better to penetrate in all the pores of the wood.
The glue that Joiners use is called hard glue, which is of two types, namely that of England and that of Paris. These two types of glues are made with the sinew and feet of beef that you boil and melt into gelatin, after which you mold it into sheets of 8–9 feet in length by 5–6 in width and 2–3 lines thickness. When it is completely dry and it is of a good quality, it is both hard and also fragile as glass. That from England is the best, not only because it makes half again as much profit, but also because it holds better and its color being a clear yellow means that is does not appear in the joints when they are well done. You also have the glue of Paris that is not so strong, is black and muddy and it always shows in the joints, no matter how well made.
When you wish to melt the glue, you begin by breaking it in little pieces and you put it to soak in some water for 5–6 hours, after which you melt it on a fire in a copper cauldron.
You must observe not to put [in] too much water at first because it will remove some of its quality. You must also take care to stir it up with a wooden stick while it is melting, and when it is completely melted you let it boil on a low fire so as to make it re-heat. You should never leave the glue unattended once it begins to boil because at this time the force of the heat makes it froth and boil over out of the cauldron, which you prevent by adding a little fresh water when it is ready to boil over. The glue is easy to spoil and becomes tainted while you are melting it. That is why this task is best left to one individual man.
Dry glue is sold by the pound, and woodworkers who have a lot of work take care to provision it so that it always remains dry [unspoiled]. When you wish to melt it, you should take care not to melt too much at once, that is, you must not have melted more glue than you can use in eight days, especially in the summer because it molds and loses its quality. You heat it in a copper pot, which has three feet and an iron handle. The feet should be splayed to give it a stable position, but [they should] not [be] hooked and elevated at the ends because being thus configured [the cauldron] is subject to carrying some of
the hot coals with it and to making [coals] fall in the wood shavings [when moving the cauldron around the shop], which is greatly to be feared. Cabinetmakers use a double-boiler pot, in the outer chamber they put the water and the glue in the inner one. This way of heating the glue is called a bain-marie [hot bath] and is very convenient because the water being very hot maintains the heat of the glue longer, while preventing the glue from burning at the edges of the pot, Figs. 12 & 13.
When the glue is hot, you spread it on the joints with a brush made of wild boar hair, which should be more or less large according to different works. Look at Figs. 14 & 15. Then you drive the joints together with a mallet. When there are many joints [complex joinery with many joints being assembled simultaneously] and you fear ruining them with the mallet, you turn them over and hit them on the bench, lifting first one end of a panel and making it fall straight with force on the bench. Then you do the same at the other end, which you continue to do until the joints are perfectly in place. Then you put them flat on the bench where you stop them using a bar/straightedge of the full length of the panel [that is] secured with holdfast, and you tighten the whole panel with clamps or on edges with clamps and bars, which holds them all along their length and closes them. Bar clamps are iron tools which are made of a bar of iron where the end is curved in the form of a hook, which passes through another piece of iron which is called the foot of the clamp, which glides along the length of the bar according to how you judge appropriate. The end of this clamp is curved in the form of a hook, as is the other end of the bar, and is textured at the face like a rasp, so that it [will] not slip when you tighten it but it [instead] holds onto the wood.
The mortise or eye of the jaw should be as accurate as possible, especially on its width, and be made a bit slanted on the inside of the foot on the side of the hook, so that when the bar clamp is tightened, the foot will always be at a right angle to the shaft, as least as much as possible. The end of the shaft/bar is hammered back to create a ridge [is “mushroomed”] so the hook cannot get past or get lost. Like most of the regular clamps you cannot remove the moving foot, Fig. 16.
This tool serves to hold the joints for both panels and for assembled pieces. You close it by hitting on its movable foot with a mallet below the bar, and you loosen it by hitting the latter on top with the hammer, that is to say, in the opposite direction. [It operates in a manner conceptually identical to the holdfast.]
The length of the bar clamps varies from 18 thumbs up to 6 and even 8 feet in length. As for the width of the bar, it should be from 9 lines up to a thumb-and-a-half, according to the different lengths, and their thickness should be two-thirds of the width. The foot should exceed the upper part of the bar by 3–4 thumbs for the smallest, and from 6 thumbs for the largest. The iron of the bar clamp parts should be soft and without any type of welding, especially the foot, which should be forged with all the care possible.
It is good that joinery shops be well furnished with bar clamps, especially those shops with many workmen, which is very convenient for accelerating the work. There are shops where there are up to 20 lengths of bar clamps of all sorts. When the work is of such great width that one cannot close it with bar clamps, you use a marking rod of wood, which is called a notch for elongating sergeants [bar clamp extender], which is 3–4 thumbs in width by 8–9 feet in length and a thumb-and-a-half thickness at least. At one end is made a hook, made equal to the width of the wood, which serves to close the work. On the other side of its width, and in the opposite direction, are many notches placed at 12–15 thumbs from each other, in which you place the end of a bar clamp, which is tightened on the other edge of the work. You must pay attention that the notches are made at a sharp angle, so the bar clamp jaw stops there and does not come out, Fig. 17.
There is still another way to clamp panels, which is done with wooden tools called straighteners [ from the verb etreindre, or to close tightly]. They are composed of two of pieces of wood called twins of 4–5 feet in length by 4–5 thumbs in width and 2 thumbs thickness, in which [at] 6–8 thumbs from the ends is pierced a squared mortise of about a thumb-and-a-half, which is in the center of its width, and through which you pass a shaft of 8–9 thumbs in length.
In the upper part of straighteners are pierced two or three other mortises similar to the first ones through which you pass another shaft of the same shape and length as the first one, Fig. 18.
When you wish to make use of straighteners to clamp a panel, you begin by placing [the parts] between the two twins, resting the panel on the lower inserted shaft. You then press the twins together to hold the panel flat. You then insert the shaft through the mortises above and closest to the panel, and with a mallet drive in a wooden wedge between the panel and the shaft.
There must be two straighteners at least to clamp a panel, and when it is long enough, you really should make use of three. Besides, the use of these tools is excellent, because they clamp panels without damaging them, which happens sometimes with bar clamps. But still, they hold the panels very straight, and they leave you the liberty to view them from both sides, which you cannot do when the panels are laid flat on the workbench, Fig. 19.
With all the agony possible, we have decided to slash the price of our deluxe “With All the Precision Possible: Roubo on Furniture” and sell off the remaining stock of this limited volume.
The original price was $550; the sale price is $250 plus $15 shipping anywhere in the United States. We have about 500 copies of the book in stock. Once it is gone, it is gone forever.
Measuring 12-1/4″ wide x 17-1/4″ tall by almost 2-1/4″ thick, “Roubo on Furniture” is the largest and most luxurious book we have printed since Lost Art Press was founded in 2007.
The text is printed on #100 Mohawk Superfine paper, the finest domestic paper available today. To match the fine paper, the images and plates are printed in full color at a linescreen few presses can achieve.
The result is a level of detail and clarity rarely seen in a modern book.
The book’s signatures are sewn, casebound and reinforced with a fiber tape that will ensure the binding will outlast us all. The hardbound boards are covered in a beautifully printed pattern with a cotton cloth cover on the spine. The spine is then debossed in gold and black.
The entire book comes in a custom-made slipcase covered in a complementary-colored cotton cloth.
You can read all about the contents of the book here. And here.
While we are discontinuing the deluxe edition, we will continue to offer the standard “Roubo on Furniture” ($57) for as long as we possibly can – just like the rest of our books. Our goal is that the information will always be available.
Why Sell Off the Deluxe Books?
When we went to press with the deluxe version of “Roubo on Furniture,” we wanted to give it a price tag that was reasonable for a book that is over the top in quality. The initial printing quotes put the retail price at $1,000. The only way to get the price lower was to double the print run to 1,000 and take a smaller profit on each sale.
We decided to drain the bank account and take the risk. For the most part, things worked out. We sold about 400 copies, which inched us into the black. But during the last few years, sales haven’t covered the costs of storing the books.
Most publishers would pulp the books, or sell them to a discount bookseller. Instead, we’re going to put them on sale for woodworkers.
The deluxe “Roubo on Furniture” is the nicest book I’ve ever worked on. I still pick it up every week or so to look something up, and I am thrilled by the crisp printing and the beautiful binding. I don’t regret what we did.
And I hope you don’t ever regret missing out on this.
— Christopher Schwarz
P.S. This offer is available for U.S. customers. If you live outside the U.S., we recommend you use a mail-forwarding service, which can receive the book and ship it to you much more economically than we can.
We had to relist our one copy of Deluxe Roubo on Furniture from the Blem Sale (along with a copy of “By Hound & Eye,” plus we still have some “Book of Plates.”) So IF YOU ARE LOCAL or are willing to travel tomorrow:
The books are listed here in Chris’ eBay store. They are all 50 percent off retail. They are listed for pickup only with no shipping options. If you buy one, you (or your spouse, child or buddy) must pick it up on Dec. 23. We can’t ship it to you – we don’t have the boxes or packing material here in Covington. If you beg me (Megan Fitzpatrick) to mail you one, I will say no. So please, please, please don’t make this uncomfortable or weird for us. And especially don’t email help@lostartpress.com. They are dealing with holiday craziness and don’t have anything to do with this blem sale.
– Fitz
The following is excerpted from “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry,” by André-Jacob Roubo, translated by Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán and Philippe Lafargue.
The different Compositions of Dyes appropriate for dyeing Woods, and how to use them
The tinting [dyeing or staining] of woods is of great importance for cabinetmakers, because it is with its help that one can give to woods the different colors, which are necessary for representing all sorts of objects, such as fruits, flowers, animals, etc. However, cabinetmakers always make a great secret of the composition of their dyes in order to preserve exclusivity, and not to increase the number of workers in their trade. From that circumstance comes the fact that most of the compositions that the ancient cabinetmakers used have not been passed on to us, or are presently badly imitated. Those being used presently are defective, or even if they are good, cannot be perfected given that those who possess them hide the process. They keep this information secret not only from their colleagues but even from those for whom the theory could be useful in perfecting the composition of their dyes. This would be much more advantageous than the enjoyment of maintaining a secret, which is not a big thing, but which, even when it is perfectly well known to us, leaves us still to regret the loss of the method of Jean de Veronne, who tinted woods with boiling dyes and oils that penetrated them. This would be a very helpful thing to know, the research of which would be a worthy undertaking for some of our scholars. It is highly wished that one could find the means to use the chemicals having a good tint in the dyeing of woods, because their colors would be more durable. Sadly, the colored parts of most of these chemicals are too thick to penetrate the interior of woods, which is absolutely necessary, so that when working with tinted woods they are all found to be of uniform color throughout their entire thickness and the surface.
That is why in the description of the woods, without the means to which I would like to know the procedure to accomplish the perfect tint, I will explain only ordinary procedures to cabinetmakers, to which I will add some of my own experiences, which is still a long ways from attaining the perfection of which this part can be capable.
The five primitive colors are, as I said above, blue, yellow, red, taupe [brown] and black. Each of these colors is given by different chemicals, which, when mixed together, give the second or composite colors.
The blue appropriate for tinting woods is made with indigo, diluted in oil of vitriol [also known as sulfuric acid], and then put in a sufficient quantity of water.
Yellow is made with barberry, yellow earth and saffron mixed together, or even simply from gaude [this plant, Reseda luteola, is known as weld].
Red is made from the boiling of wool, or even a concoction of Brasilwood mixed with alum.
Taupe is made with walnut husk.
Black is made with the wood of the Indies, the gall nuts and iron sulfate.
Before entering into the detail of the composition of different stains, I am going to give a general idea of the chemicals of which they are composed, so that the cabinetmakers may be less subject to being fooled when they buy them.
Indigo is a type of ash of a deep blue, provided by the leaves of a plant that grows in the Americas and Indostan, and which they sell in little pieces. For it to be good, it must be medium-hard, so that it floats on water, so it is inflammable and of a beautiful blue or deep violet color. Its interior should be strewn with little silver-colored spangles, and appear reddish when rubbed with a fingernail. Indigo is preferred over all other chemicals for staining woods because it is a powder of extremely fine and granular pieces, which are easily introduced into the pores of the woods.
Oil of vitriol or sulfuric acid is the final spirit that one gets from vitriol. This acidic liquor should be very concentrated and be absolutely free of all aqueous parts to be of a beautiful blue color, as I will speak more of later.
Barberry is a little bush of which the fruits, and the bark of the roots are stained in yellow. That from Candie [island off the coast of Crete] has a very yellow wood, and passes for the best.
Woad [this cannot be woad that produces a blue dye] is a rather common plant in France. One boils it in water to extract a yellow liquid, which mixed with a bit of alum, tints very well. Dyers prefer that one, which is the most spare [meaning thinnest] and of a rosy color.
One also dyes in yellow with the yellow wood of which I spoke above page 777. Yellow earth is nothing other than yellow ochre, used by painters.
Saffron is a plant that grows in France, especially in Gatinois [western part of France]. It is the pistil of the saffron flower, which gives these little reddish filaments, or better said, orange, which they sell under the name of saffron, which gives a dye of a golden yellow. For saffron to be good, it should be fresh, of a pungent odor, of a brilliant color and when touched it should seem oily and should stick to the hands.
Alum is a fossil salt and mineral, which is used much in dyeing, whether to set up the materials to be stained or whether for fixing the colors [as a mordant], which it retains all the particles by its astrin-gent quality. The best is that of Rome, which is white in color, and is transparent, a bit like crystal.
Liquor decanted from boiled wool is sold by the wool merchants. In boiling this wool, one gets a decoction of the color rose, which is more or less deep, according to how much water is used to scour the wool, proportional with its quantity.
I spoke up above of Brasilwood, page 771. I will content myself to say here that the decoction of this wood gives off a clear red color, tending toward the orange, and that one deepens its color by adding a bit of alum. Brasilwood from Fernambouc is the best, and they sell it all chopped up at the spice merchants, who sell it by the pound.
The husk of walnuts is nothing more than the first wrapping of these nuts, which one takes off before they are perfectly mature, and which one boils in water to extract a brownish or taupey tint.
Indian Wood, of which I spoke on page 777, gives off a concoction of a deep red, which one stains in black, and when one mixes with alum it stains in violet.
Nut gall is a type of excretion that is found on the tender shoots of a type of oak named “Rouvre.” The most highly esteemed nut gall comes from the Levant [the name given to the countries on the eastern coast of the Mediterranean]. The best ones are those that are the heaviest, and where the surface is thorny. There are both green and black ones, both of which work equally to stain in black.
Ferrous sulfate is a type of vitriol that is found in copper mines. It is the most powerful of the acids, it corrodes iron and copper, and it etches the soft parts with an infinite number of small holes, into which the dye is introduced. Ferrous sulfate is also named Roman vitriol or English vitriol, according to whether it comes from one or the other countries. We make some in France that is, they say, as good as the others. The color of ferrous sulfate [known also as green vitriol] is of a light green: it should be neat and shiny.
Verdigris also works well as a wood dye. It is the green rust scraped from copper sheets. For it to be good, it should be dry, pure, of a deep green and filled with white spots.
There you have a bit of a description of the ingredients commonly used for staining/dyeing woods.
All that remains is to give the manner of making use of them.
The Way of Staining Wood Blue
The preparation of blue with indigo and oil of vitriol [sulfuric acid] is done in two ways, namely, hot and cold. Blue for wood is prepared cold in the following manner:
you take 4 ounces of oil of vitriol of the best quality, that is to say, that it is deprived of all aqueous parts, which you pour into a pint-size bottle, with 1 ounce of indigo reduced to a very fine powder. Then you fill the bottle with water, at least nearly so, and you bottle it very carefully, and you seal the cork with wax. you let it infuse for five to six weeks, at the end of which you can use this stain that will be more or less strong, by putting in as much water as you judge appropriate, always ob-serving to add a bit of oil of vitriol, so the dye will be fixed better. When the dye is to the degree of strength that you need, you put it in a stoneware or glazed earthenware vessel, and you soak the wood in it until it is totally penetrated, which sometimes requires 15 days and even one month of time, according to the hardness and thickness of the wood. The wood can hardly have a thickness of more than one line [1/12″].
Cabinetmakers ordinarily use a stoneware butter pot for putting the wood into the dye, which is very convenient because the shape of this vase enables one to put in rather large pieces, without the need of having a very great quantity of dye.
It is very easy to know when the interior of the wood is penetrated, given that you only have to cut a small piece of the wood about 2 to 3 lines from its end. When the pieces that you want to dye cannot be cut like this, you put with them another piece of the same quality, with which you test the degree of penetration of the other pieces.
The Way of Dyeing in Yellow
Cabinetmakers tint in yellow with barberry, with yellow earth and with saffron, which they boil together. This being done, they soak the wood pieces until they are totally stained. The proportion of these chemicals is 2 liters [in this case the French word refers to “litron,” which is about 79 percent of a modern liter, so 2 modern liters is a much larger quantity] of barberry, 6 “sols” [a French penny] of yellow earth, and 4 “sols” of saffron.
A concoction of woad gives a very beautiful yellow of a good tint, and you soak the wood as normal. When this concoction is added to a bit of verdigris, you have a sulfurous yellow color. Saffron infused in grain alcohol gives a very beautiful golden yellow.
The Way to Dye in Red
Red is normally made with brasilwood, which one boils with 6 sols of alum for each pound of wood. This red is a false tint because it is more orange than red. you can substitute the boiling-liqueur from wool, which gives a very beautiful red, leaning toward rose, which one makes deeper by passing the pieces that you have stained into the liqueur of the mixture of Brasilwood mixed with alum. This makes a very beautiful red, more or less deep, depending on whether you leave the pieces of wood more or less a long time in the dye bath of Brasilwood.
Dyeing with decanting liqueur is done very easily. One only needs to boil some wool dyed to this effect, just until it makes a beautiful red concoction. Avoid boiling too much, because the wool will take back the color that it discharged at first.
The proportion of the liquor of wool to be decanted is 1 pound to 4 pints of water for the first decanting, to which one can add a second, even a third, until the wool renders no more color. The concoction of Brasilwood without alum gives a yellowish red, which is sometimes attractive, and is named “Capucine.”
The concoction of Indian Wood is very red, but it makes a blackish stain, which makes a very beautiful violet when mixed with alum from Rome, as I will speak of it later.
How to Dye Taupe [Brown], Black and Grey
Taupe dye is made with a concoction of walnut husk, which can be more or less strong, as you judge appropriate, always adding to it a bit of alum.
An attractive black is made by staining the wood first in a concoction of wood of India (or Campeachy, which is the same thing). When this first application is dry, you dip the wood in a concoction of gall nut in which you have put some ferrous sulfate, or vitriol of Rome. Sometimes one only makes a single dye of these various ingredients, of which the proportion should be 1 part nut gall, 1 part vitriol and 6 parts of Campeachy, all boiled together, into which you dip the wood until it is penetrated.
A grey tint is made with a concoction of nut gall, into which you dissolve some green vitriol [ferrous sulfate] in smaller quantity than for the black stain. The more ferrous sulfate-cuprous there is, the deeper grey it will be. The normal proportion is one part of ferrous sulfate for two parts of nut gall.
The Way to Tint Composite Colors
The ordinary green stain of cabinetmakers is made with the same ingredients as for the blue, to which is added the barberry in more or less quantity, according to whether the green should be more or less deep.
One can make a very beautiful apple green in staining first the wood in ordinary blue, and then dipping it in a concoction of woad, and that with more or less time according to whether one wants to have a green more or less strong.
Violet is made with a concoction of Campeachy, to which one has mixed some alum from Rome. One can have violet more or less deep by staining first the woods in rose and then in the blue, which will give a clear violet.
If, on the contrary, one wishes to have a brown-red leaning toward violet, one stains the wood first in the concoction of Brasilwood, then in that of the Campeachy.
One can obtain composite dye of all nuances imaginable by tinting the wood in a primary color then in another one more or less dark, so that the stain that results from these two colors reflects more or less of each other. This is very possible to do because one is the master to strengthen or weaken the primary colors as one judges appropriate, whether by reason of what the form of the object re-quires, or even by reason of the different quality of wood, which takes the dye more or less well, or strengthens or weakens the color. This has to be highly considered, and it requires much attention and experience on the part of cabinetmakers.
In general, all the dyes of which I just spoke are applied in cold baths. It is not that many of them cannot be used hot, but it is that because it takes a considerable amount of time for the same dye to penetrate into the interior of wood, it is not possible to use them hot. What’s more, cold dyed wood has much more vibrancy than when used with a hot bath.
There it is, a bit of the details of staining [dyeing] wood, at least those that most cabinetmakers use, or which I myself have employed in the attempts that I have made. These have succeeded rather well, but they have not been followed by a long enough time to be assured of the success of my at-tempts. It would be highly wished that those who are currently making use of these dyes, or who will be using them later, apply themselves to perfect them which, I believe, is not absolutely impossible. Having done this, they would be rather good citizens to not make a mystery of their discoveries, but only succeed by rendering them public.
Cabinetmakers dye not only their woods for veneer to use them in the place of the natural color of the woods. They also use these same dyes to accentuate various parts of their works while they are being worked. As such, these dyes, like the red of Brasilwood, the violet of the Campeachy, the black, etc., are used hot, which is very easy to do because it is sufficient for only the exterior of the woods being dyed. Other than these dyes, woodworkers in furniture sometimes use a type of yellow color for bedsteads, which is composed of yellow ochre and common varnish, or of this same ochre and the very clear English glue, sometimes they even put it in only water, which is of little use.
Before finishing the dyeing of wood, I believe I ought to give a least-costly method of dyeing white wood red, which is done in the following manner:
you take some horse dung, which you put in a bucket of which the bottom is pierced with many holes, and you place it above another bucket, into which falls the water from the dung, as it gradually rots. When it does not rot fast enough, you water it from time to time with some horse urine, which helps a lot and at the same time gives a red water, which not only stains the surface of the wood, but penetrates the interior 3 to 4 lines deep. In staining the wood with this dye, one must take care that all the pieces be of the same species, and about equal in density if one wishes that they be of equal color throughout. This observation is general for all water-based stains, which have no palpable thickness nor even appearance [they leave no residue or any evident change in appearance], which requires the cabinetmaker to make a choice of wood of equal color and a density as I mentioned before. This demands a lot of experience and attention on the part of the cabinetmakers. And with the exception of the way to compose and use dyes, it is hardly possible to give theoretical rules on this part, for which success is not often due to anything but experience, which is not acquired except with a lot of time, attention and work.
