I’ve been inundated with questions for the live stream Q&A that Chris and I are doing on Saturday at 11 a.m. Eastern on January 30, so I’m afraid we won’t be able to answer all of them before it’s time for our weekly Saturday lunch at Crafts & Vines (outside and socially distanced, of course). So, I’ll be tackling some of them on the blog. Here’s the first.
Q: Where would you recommend for purchasing nails for period pieces?
A: This is an easy one, because as far as I know, there are only two possible answers, and the appropriate one depends on what is meant by period.
From the early 19th-century until the late 19th-century, cut nails were easily available (more easily the later one gets into the century). Today, as far as I know there is but one maker of cut nails: Tremont Nail (now owned by Acorn Manufacturing). So barring reclaimed nails from a salvage place, that’s the only supplier (I think). Tremont nails can be ordered direct from the company, but are available in smaller quantities from some retailers (Lee Valley Tools and Tools for Working Wood among them).
On the left are Rivierre square-shanked nails; on the right are blacksmith-made iron nails.
For period work prior to the early 19th-century, the only truly appropriate choice is blacksmith-made nails. But they are not cheap…so I would use those only when I’m wholly committed to authenticity. For these, make friends with your local blacksmith, and expect to pay anywhere from $1 to $3 per nail.
If, like me, your wallet isn’t quite so well-stocked, consider using Rivierre square-shanked nails. These have the look and shape of blacksmith-made nails but at a far more affordable price. They are available in the U.S. from Lee Valley Tools. Another option is Tremont “wrought head” nails. These are tapered, cut nails, but the heads look kind of handmade (and they’re available in a black oxide finish).
Tremont “decorative wrought head” nails.
— Fitz
p.s. If you want to read a lot more about cut nails and square-shanked nails, and how to use them, I wrote about them at length on the Fine Woodworking blog.
In order fully to understand the workings of the metal plane it is a good idea, particularly for the beginner, to strip down the plane to its smallest component. If you have an old or secondhand plane this is a good opportunity to renovate it. Even if the plane is mis-assembled and maladjusted, no damage can be done to it. Figure 1 shows the structure quite clearly and gives the correct names to all the components. It will be seen that there are three distinct adjustments.
The depth of cut, that is the thickness of shaving removed, is controlled by the cutter adjusting wheel. The wheel running up and down a left-hand thread operates the Y lever. This in turn engages in the Y lever socket of the cap iron (or breaker), which it moves up or down. The blade is secured to the cap iron and is moved by it.
The second adjustment is lateral. The lateral lever has a circular stud at its end. When the plane is assembled it must be made certain that this stud fits into the slot in the blade. Movement of the lever thus moves the cutting edge sideways, preventing one corner from digging in.
The third adjustment is commonly called closing or opening the mouth. The whole frog is moved forward with the blade and the effect is to alter the size of the gap in front of the blade. The lever cap screw should be just sufficiently tight to make sideways movement of the blade with the fingers difficult but not impossible.
I’m not 100-percent sure, but I think Jim sat in on George’s class, “Unlocking the Secrets of Traditional Design,” which covered how furniture is based on a lot of the same proportions as classical architecture (which is turn based on nature – but I don’t recall if he brought that up in the class, or if I’m interpolating from his columns in Popular Woodworking).
I feel a small personal connection with this one; I was there when Jim Tolpin and George Walker met for the first time, at Woodworking in America in 2009 in St. Charles, Ill.
But it might have been George who sat in on Jim’s class, “Measure Twice or Not at All,” which I believe was a talk on the difference between designing for machines and designing for hand work.
Traditional proportional drawing drafted by hand ignores dimensions. It instead relies on simple geometry and dividers to compose an image that conveys the proportional scheme. It employs a vocabulary of proportional notes that we can visualize internally. Because this type of drawing relies on proportions rather than specifications, it moves another step closer to a pure image in the mind. Proportional drawings can provide enough information to execute a build with simple tools; the drawings are organized in a way that meshes with traditional bench techniques. Even if you are adept with digital or industrial drawing, this type of drawing is not a step backward. Instead, it’s a concrete method to begin making that connection with your inner eye.
Our goal ultimately is the drawing that takes place in your head. This is speaking the language of design from the artisan age in its purest sense. It’s what Vitruvius wrote about when he said an architect could see clearly from the instant he conceives it in his mind. It uses a simple language of visual notes to create spatial music to help you acquire the ability to conceptualize internally. This is at the opposite end of the spectrum from the industrial approach – using that ability to spur creativity and provide a practical means of expression. You may still choose to employ modern drawing techniques and (egads) SketchUp, but the goal is to always encourage the flow of clear images from the drafting board in your head.
Make Your Designs Sing This concept of clearly seeing a design in the mind’s eye is a learned skill. Let’s do a little experiment. Take a moment, close your eyes and sing the “Happy Birthday” song silently to yourself. You weren’t singing out loud were you? (If you did, start again and sing it just in your head.) Could you hear it? Think about this for a moment. No audible sound, but you could clearly hear it in your mind. Try this: Sing it silently to yourself again but at a slower tempo. Can you still hear it, only slower? Can you imagine it sung in another voice? How about a deep, clear Nat King Cole version? How about a sultry Marilyn Monroe singing to John F. Kennedy? Can you hear the song played on an instrument? A piano? Try a trumpet. How about bagpipes? Stop! Cruelty alert: Step away from the bagpipes. The point is, you have the amazing ability to visualize already.
fig. 1.2.8. Our task begins by learning to visualize a small set of simple visual notes.
You not only could hear the song, but you could manipulate it, express it with different voices and instruments. I’d venture a guess that if you thought about it, you have hundreds of songs tucked away in that stereo in your head. Chances are, few of you have ever formally studied music. In fact, most of us could not write down the musical score for the song. It’s not about notes you can write on paper, but notes you can hear in your mind.
fig. 1.2.9. The single square (left) is at one end of the scale and the double square (right) is at the other.
Music at its simplest is made up of a handful of simple building blocks we call notes. Musical styles and genres can span a huge range from Bach to John Lee Hooker to ZZ Top. Underneath it all is the same handful of simple notes. Accomplished musicians, including the likes of Yo Yo Ma, practice the musical scales daily. The scales are nothing more than a note sequence arranged to keep a sparkling clear image freshly imprinted in the mind. Do you doubt that a musician develops a heightened ability to imagine music? The reason we struggle to see spatially is that we never learned a set of visual notes.
Close your eyes again and visualize a square. Can you see it clearly? If not, take a moment and draw a square with pencil then try again. Now close your eyes and imagine two squares side by side, one next to the other. Now imagine two squares arranged one on top of the other. Can you see the squares clearly? It doesn’t matter how big the squares are, or whether they float in space. They can be solid or simple line drawings. The important part is that you can see them. Now do the same visual exercises again, only this time imagine a circle. Then visualize two circles, a pair side by side, and a pair one on top of the other. Consider the circle and square to be interchangeable. There’s lots more to say about the circle later, but for now all you need to realize is that they are both easy to visualize. Congratulations. You have just taken baby steps in learning to see. You have just imagined the visual notes that bookend the range of our visual scale. The single square or circle begins the sequence, and the double square or circle completes it. In between are a handful of intermediate notes. The circle and square are the basic building blocks, and though it might seem like a small step to you now, in reality you’ve taken a giant leap toward unlocking your inner vision, and toward making your designs sing.
There are many options for the box that traps the steam and holds the parts to be bent. Schedule 80 PVC pipe works fine, but I think it’s expensive overkill. I’ve seen schedule 40 pipe melt when hooked up to a powerful steamer.
I prefer a CDX plywood box that is barely large enough for the bend at hand. I’ve found that a box with an interior of 4″ x 3″ x 62″ is large enough for almost all of my needs. Don’t bother to paint or seal the wood; you’ll simply be trapping the moisture and inviting mold growth. To function, the box shouldn’t be NASA airtight; as a matter of fact, you should see steam leaking out, which lets fresh hot steam circulate to all regions of the box. If the steam can’t circulate, then you are relying on conduction, which doesn’t transfer heat as well as convection. I keep a thermometer in the top of my box and with this sort of box, the temperature climbs to 210°F. Standard woodworking glues won’t hold up to the heat and moisture so I rely on polyurethane glue, tongue-and-groove construction and screws to hold my box together.
To allow the cooled condensed vapor to drain, the whole box should be at an angle and have a drain hole at its lower end. I usually put the port for the steam hose in the center of the box near the most extreme part of the bend. To prevent steam burns, the door of the steamer should hinge on the side so that your hand is never above the open door. Steam burns come on fast and can do plenty of damage. I usually put the end of the steamer with the drain port on a lid from a plastic tub to collect the liquid that drains out.
Sometimes when life knocks you off your feet, you find yourself in a surprisingly happy place when you pick yourself back up. Such is the case with furniture maker Jeff Miller. Most woodworkers know Jeff’s name through his many articles, books and videos for Fine Woodworking, Popular Woodworking and Wood Magazine. (He also has upcoming articles in Mortise & Tenon and Furniture & Cabinetmaking.) Jeff has taught at woodworking schools across the United States, from the Northwest Woodworking Studio and Port Townsend School of Woodworking on the west coast to the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship on the east, and others – Red Rocks in Colorado, Marc Adams in Indiana, Kelly Mehler’s School of Woodworking in central Kentucky (now Pine Croft) and Highland Woodworking in Georgia. He has presented at Woodworking in America, Weekend with Wood and the Association of Woodworking and Finishing Suppliers, and at more clubs and guilds than he can easily call to mind. He has won numerous awards for his woodworking, among them theDistinguished Furniture Design Award from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum, and for his publications, including the Stanley Golden Hammer Award for his 1997 book “Chairmaking & Design.” The Chicago History Museum has Jeff’s “Spider Handkerchief Table” in its permanent collection. And you will soon find his work on the prestigious back cover of Fine Woodworking magazine.
Jeff calls this intersection “the centerpiece of this rocker: a particular piece of insanity” to design, “and an even worse piece of insanity actually making it.”
So it may come as a surprise to learn that professional furniture making was nowhere on Jeff’s radar for his first 27 years. Music was his passion, and in that department, as in academic performance and his commitment to physical fitness, he was no slouch. For college he applied to the University of Rochester, home to the Eastman School of Music; Oberlin, with its distinguished Conservatory of Music; and Yale. In the end he chose Yale because the curriculum emphasized academics as well as music studies. He minored in literature – Russian, English, French.
While at Yale, Jeff took a semester off and dipped his toes in the field of instrument making, learning from a then-recently published book, “The Amateur Wind Instrument Maker.” Guided by the book’s instructions, he made several baroque and renaissance wood instruments. Looking around his scantly furnished apartment, he decided he could use some tables and chairs, so from plans he made a few pieces he now calls “just awful!” Those projects gave him confidence that he could learn to use a lathe and other tools, as well as make what tools he needed. With experience, he took on better pieces. Friends saw them and asked him to make them some furniture, though he says it was still on a strictly amateur level.
After that semester off, Jeff returned to his formal studies and graduated in 1978 with a Bachelor of Arts in music. Like many musicians, he picked up gigs as a freelance musician in New York City. When he learned the Chicago Chamber Brass quintet was looking for a trumpet player, Jeff auditioned and got the job. He moved to Chicago in 1983 and launched a career as a professional musician, touring the eastern United States and recording a CD.
The recording Jeff did with Chicago Chamber Brass.
A serious runner for both fitness and fun, Jeff was training for one of the runner’s ultimate benchmarks, a marathon, when he noticed his legs were swelling. A nurse friend urged him to see his doctor.
“The next day I was in the hospital,” he says. “They did a kidney biopsy and pretty much within a week my life had changed.” He was 27.
The original diagnosis was lupus, which his doctor thought had caused the kidney disease. Jeff’s mother was visiting from New York at the time; they read that lupus was chronic and fatal. (This information came from an outdated medical textbook and was – and, happily, remains –no longer accurate.) Jeff recalls all too clearly “that moment where I could almost see my mom…mentally collapsing…and the blood drained out of my head completely, and it was just one of those moments where everything seemed to fall apart around me.” The medication to treat his condition made him weak and jittery; he went from running a fast 8 miles to not being able to run across the street. It was clear he could no longer play the trumpet at his former professional level. He left the quintet.
As a therapeutic diversion Jeff took up building furniture in his nurse friend’s basement. He’d work, nap, then go back to it. “It was my salvation,” he says, “a creative outlet that was the salve for losing music – and I felt I was actually better at it than at music.” He was still rather naïve, but he learned quickly. Just as exciting, he adds, “I was also designing, and learning more as a designer, which helped push my skills tremendously.”
About a year after starting in his friend’s basement, he had lined up enough paying work to cover rent and moved to a shop of his own. He split off the front to use as a showroom and kept the back of the building, along with the basement, as a shop. Coincidentally, his shop today is just a block away from his first shop in West Rogers Park, home to many new immigrants; he relishes the everyday experience of hearing seven or eight languages in a stroll through the park.
Jeff’s shop today is in a former post office.
Although Jeff gave most Yale alumni events a pass, he said yes to one in 1986 at the Hilton on Michigan Avenue in downtown Chicago. He’s glad he went; he met a young woman there, Rebecca Wurtz, who was training to be a doctor. “We were talking, and she said, ‘Oh! I have this idea for a bed!’ She sketched something out and I was terribly impressed that she could sketch.” They had dinner and, he says, “just hit it off.” They moved in together and were married a couple of years later. Their son, Isaac, was born in 1993; he’s now in graduate school, training in social work. Their daughter, Ariel, was born the following year. With a degree in creative writing from Oberlin, she is an aspiring writer and illustrator.
“City Bed,” a design based on the bed Jeff made for his wife, Rebecca.
Starting out, Jeff found a lot of people ordered beds. He’d done some work for a local company that made futons, as well as easy chairs for futon-like cushions. After a year or so he moved beyond bedroom furniture to another part of the house on which people proved happy to spend money, the dining room. He started with tables. Inevitably, people asked about chairs. Through what Jeff now calls “an excess of confidence” he began them. As he came up with increasingly sophisticated chair designs and translated them into functional pieces, he gained proficiency. He also appreciated the many lessons that came with the process of making the same piece multiple times: “If you’re paying attention and are critical in terms of design,” he says, “you can constantly improve.” Most of the work was commissioned by local customers, but once he got a website, Jeff began to get orders from around the country.
“Windsor Bed.”
Buried in beds.
Jeff’s first article for Fine Woodworking was on how to build a Windsor bed. He’d been reading the magazine for several years and had learned a lot, so he sent in a picture with a query. After all his academic writing at college, it didn’t feel like a big deal. He got the contract – his first editor was Sandor Nagyszalanczy – and has written about 35 more in the years since then.
A few articles in, Jeff was thinking big. He submitted a proposal for a book on chairmaking and design. He’d completed a commission for 75 chairs ordered by a convent. The first 50, he says, were “this amazing logistical feat” – aside from the slog of repetition, he had to figure out a way to store the chairs once he had them assembled. He started with a stack on one side of the shop, then moved to the other. With his book proposal he included pictures of the stacks, which caught the editors’ eye. Jeff got the contract. While working on the book, he also leapt into the world of teaching, an experience he found useful in conveying how best to write and illustrate the how-to. “It helped me to understand what students needed to learn.” And writing, in turn, “helped me to clarify and refine what I would teach somebody,” says Jeff. The writing, teaching and making came together as “an amazing trio, each feeding the other two.” Ever since, he has found this combo “the most satisfying part of what I do. It’s not any individual element; it’s all three together.”
“Timpani” table. Shop-sawn mahogany veneer and ebonized mahogany.
At this point in our conversation Jeff switched back to his musical training, which he considers invaluable for its transferability to woodworking. First, he says, “as a musician you have to understand that your body is this crucial part of your ability to play. It is your primary instrument. That helped me so much in my woodworking, to understand that the tools were just extensions of what I thought and was trying to express in the wood. Using your body correctly in music and in woodworking makes a huge difference; it informs how you plane, chisel, saw and shape pieces.”
Second, Jeff goes on, “I think of my designs as musical compositions also. That makes a difference in how I think about the piece as I design it and how I build it. So many woodworkers find plans for what they want to build, and then they build. As a musician you’re given a ‘plan’ for a piece of music [the score], and you have to understand that playing the notes as they’re written on the page is just the beginning of turning that piece into a musical expression. The same is true for woodworking. You can build the piece precisely to specification on the page and completely miss what the person who designed it was trying to get across! When you build a piece of furniture it’s more like playing a jazz solo than following specs. You’re choosing how a curve goes, you’re picking wood as part of an artist’s palette. Every nuance is important.”
Third, “understanding musical composition also helps you understand designs in wood. There can be little motifs that appear in both small and large scale. The flow of lines in music is a huge influence in the flow of the lines in my furniture.”
“Arch Table.” Cherry.
Even a cursory click through the gallery at Jeff’s website illustrates these connections between music and design in wood. His pieces are both fluid and sturdily made. The back of a chair curves and swells to hold its sitter; there is rhythm, harmony and crescendo. Jeff’s love of technical challenge – how to achieve a flawless intersection of curving, angled parts in a rocker that must also support its sitter safely and comfortably, how to cooper a hexadecagon for a table inspired by a timpani drum – comes through in each design. And beyond these artistic and technical feats, he has garnered a national clientele – no small feat in its own right.
“Spider Handkerchief Table.”
“Toccata” rocking chair. Ash. (Yes, the arm supports run through the seat.)
But Jeff lives with another formidable challenge, and his example here is no less inspiring. “The kidney disease has been a huge factor in my life for exactly as long as I have been woodworking,” he says: 37 years. “There have been periods of stasis when I’ve been fine; in others, a variety of crises. I lead a very healthy life. Still run and work out. I’m on my feet all day working in the shop. And yet I have been through more than most people I know.”
“The specific diagnosis may have been incorrect, but there was no doubt about what was happening to my kidneys,” he continues. “They were failing.” In 1993, six years after beginning his life with Rebecca, Jeff had his first kidney transplant. “I remember thinking we were just on a roll in the shop. I had two employees at the time. We were working well as a team, had plenty of work.” One day he got a call from the hospital at 3 p.m.: “We’ve got a kidney for you. We need you down here at 7 p.m.” to get ready. “That completely upended my life again. Over and over, there have been things like that.” The transplant was successful and allowed him to get back to work.
Meanwhile, Jeff had become friends with the father of one of Isaac’s preschool classmates. Like Jeff, John was a skier; they went on ski trips together with another friend. In 2002 Jeff’s transplanted kidney began to fail. “I was really pretty sick,” he remembers. But he wasn’t about to pass up an opportunity for great skiing, so he would “just marshal my resources and ski.” One day when they were skiing hard at Vail on one of their favorite runs, John was halfway down the mountain when he tore his ACL. Jeff and his other friend got off the mountain and stabilized him, then took him to the local hospital. That night they were staying with Jeff’s sister and Jeff was huddled by the fire, shivering, when John asked “what do you have to do to donate a kidney?”
“It’s based on blood type,” Jeff replied. John said, “If mine matches, one of my kidneys is yours.” Of course, notes Jeff, “he was high on painkillers and beer when he said that.” Jeff didn’t believe his friend would feel the same the next day. But back in Chicago, John insisted. Jeff’s cousin also offered to donate a kidney, but hers would not have been as good a match.
“It’s this unbelievable thing that he pushed and went forward with it,” Jeff marvels. “How do accept a gift like that from a friend?” John’s operation started in the morning, then Jeff was brought in for surgery that took seven hours. “I’m back in my room…and they force you to get up and walk. John walked in that night. He was a wreck. He said ‘I want it back!’” Of course he was kidding; for him, the act of giving the kidney was what mattered. “He described it as the most important thing he’d done in his life. It made it so easy to accept that gift and be grateful for it.” Five weeks later John was riding his mountain bike. They skied together the following March. But a transplanted kidney doesn’t last forever; John’s donated kidney failed around 2011.
“Stained Glass” chairs. The pattern inspiration came from a stained glass window of modernist design. The backs are solid stacked laminations, scooped out, with routed inlay. Cherry, walnut and ebony.
Now Jeff moved to a new protocol, peritoneal dialysis, which involved “a suitcase-size machine you carry around, and boxes and boxes of fluid.” Imagine driving to a woodworking school and teaching a week-long class with that gear.
And there’s more. “They don’t tell you that your native kidneys, if they shrivel up, can become cancerous. One of the problems with peritoneal dialysis is that you have a tube in your abdomen.” (Apologies to you squeamish types.) The tube irritated his intestines, which led to infections. Sometimes he had to stay in the hospital for 10 days. During one of these stints his doctors ordered an MRI that found kidney cancer. “That,” says Jeff, “was probably the toughest period for me.” They removed the cancerous kidney, only to find, the following year, that the other kidney had also developed cancer.
At this point some might plunge into despair. Not Jeff. Instead, he felt gratitude. “I just feel like I’ve been so fortunate and appreciate so many aspects of what I do, despite the fact that there have been periods of real misery. It’s important to appreciate everything you’ve got. Whatever you get is a gift. So many people wander through life without appreciating that.”
People who find themselves faced with such challenges are “more alive,” Jeff thinks. “There are these moments where…things are miserable, and then all of a sudden they’re not so miserable and everything around you is more wondrous. I can remember moments where all of a sudden I’m walking and [realize] ‘this feels great!’ I can even remember where I was when that sort of thing happened.”
These days, Jeff goes to a local dialysis clinic for treatments three times a week, a process that lasts 4-1/2 hours, plus travel time. (Read that again.) He schedules his appointments in the late afternoons to allow him maximum time in the shop.
“988” chair. Jeff designed and made this piece for a show in Chicago, “Beyond Function: The Art of Furniture.” An experiment in prototyping shaped chair seats, it incorporates 988 stainless steel screws. By adjusting the screws, the user can adjust the fit and feel of the seat.
If you follow Jeff on Instagram you may be as taken as I am by two items that show up occasionally in his feed: Lola the shop dog and his fluting engine. Lola, a blue heeler, belongs to Juan, Jeff’s erstwhile assistant. (Jameel Abraham calls Lola “one of the finest people” he has ever met.) Sadly, Lola and Juan have been out of the shop since June, thanks to the pandemic and then Juan’s decision to attend grad school in furniture at Virginia Commonwealth University.
Jeff and Lola.
Jameel Abraham’s Instagram post from January 27, 2020. “This is Lola, perhaps the most well-mannered, sweet, affectionate animal I’ve ever met. She did exactly as I asked, and happily posed for several photos. She had the most beautiful black and white mottled coat. Her eyes and general manner [were] so full of soul.”
The fluting engine is a device Jeff made based on David Pye’s circa-1950 invention. Jeff was intrigued by the tool, which makes evenly spaced flutes on curved surfaces, inside or out. A bit of sleuthing turned nothing up since the description in “David Pye: Woodcarver and Turner.” Around 2018, Jeff studied the description in the book with a view to making a fluting engine of his own. He puzzled over it for a few months and built one as a side project. The biggest problem he encountered was figuring out the geometry of the cutters, which required a few variations in the grinding, forging and heat treatment to get things right. In action, the fluting engine makes a mesmerizing sound – for a user or spectator, it’s easy to love. On the other hand, it’s “incredibly infuriating” as it requires adjustments for every variation. But such frustration goes with any relationship. Bottom line: Jeff is hooked by the device, the process of using it and the texture it brings to his work.
Mahogany bowl.
Butternut bowl.
As someone at heightened risk of infection, Jeff has been staying close to home since last March. He’s working on a couple of chair designs and a variety of commission work, along with projects of his own. As with many of us, he says “all sorts of design ideas are always percolating.”
In fact, he says, “my head is exploding with ideas. Dialysis takes a huge amount of time and energy. I wish I had more energy.” But Jeff’s glass is full — with “appreciation for being alive, for experiencing things. The sense of gratitude for being able to do what I do is amazing.”
