Before you download this draft chapter from my next book, “Furniture of Necessity,” please read the following disclaimers.
1. Woodworking is an inherently dangerous activit… wait, wrong disclaimer.
Starting again.
1. This chapter has not been edited by anyone but me. It is rough, both around the edges and in the middle. If an occasional typo or dropped word makes you reach for the Valium, then make sure your prescription is up to date first.
2. The techniques discussed in this chapter might change. When I write, I build some pieces, then I write the chapter, then I build some more. Then I revise the chapter. Then I talk to a bunch of people. Build some more. Revise the chapter. This chapter is far from finished.
3. I have not added the photos or captions. This is the text. The only part where I think you will have trouble because of this omission is where I describe making an ogee. I’ll do a video on that technique in the coming days.
4. You might have questions about this chapter when you are done reading it. I cannot guarantee I’ll have answers.
5. If you build a six-board chest using techniques in this text, let me know if you find a better way to perform a certain operation. Your feedback is appreciated and desired.
So all that said, here you go. It’s a .doc file, which everyone should be able to read.
I get asked (a lot) for a list of my favorite books. The problem is that I have so many books that I use and rely on, that I can’t boil down my entire library to a list of favorites.
I don’t collect tools. But I do have a book problem.
This morning I went through my two rooms of books and pulled the 10 that made a profound change in the way I work or think. You might not like these books. Sometimes you have to be ready to receive the information before it can take hold.
These are in no particular order.
“Oak: The Frame of Civilization” by William Bryant Logan. I wish I had written this book. It is part narrative, part history, part detective novel. And all engaging. If you don’t love oak, this book might change your mind. I’ve read this book straight through twice.
“The Artisan of Ipswich” by Robert Tarule. This book examines the life of Thomas Dennis in 17th-century Massachusetts. This book will help you tie furniture forms to the economic and social structures in which they are created. Fascinating stuff.
“Woodwork Joints” by Charles Hayward. Buy the Evans Bros. edition — not the junky Sterling edition. Pay whatever. This book is one of the foundational texts – even though it’s just a bunch of reprints assembled together.
“The Essential Woodworker” by Robert Wearing. I’ve written ad nauseam about this title. I love it so much that John Hoffman and I worked two years trying to get the rights to reprint it.
“Welsh Stick Chairs” by John Brown. This book made me want to build chairs so badly that I started building chairs.
“The Woodwright’s Guide” by Roy Underhill. I read it in one sitting. I love all of Underhill’s books, but this one is the most cohesive. And it’s beautifully illustrated by one of his daughters, Eleanor.
“With Hammer in Hand” by Charles F. Hummel. One of my prized possessions is an autographed copy of this book (thanks Suzanne). Like “The Artisan of Ipswich,” Hummel’s book puts the furniture and tools in context. This book made me travel to Delaware to see the Dominy shop.
“Illustrated Cabinetmaking” by Bill Hylton. This book is an encyclopedia of furniture forms that explains things in woodworking terms – rather than antique collector terms. It’s a good place to start when you designing a type of furniture you’ve never built before.
“Green Woodworking” by Drew Langsner. This book is like visiting a foreign country, a delightful foreign country. Even if you have been woodworking for decades, this book offers surprises and insights on every page. It will make you more intimate with your material.
“The Chairmaker’s Workshop” by Drew Langsner. While John Brown’s book made me want to build chairs, Langsner’s gave me the information I needed to actually do it. Though I build chairs differently now, I could not have gotten started without this book.
There is something demented and wonderful about painting over completely clear 16”-wide pine boards.
Today I finished up a board chest using some nice old pine boards from Midwest Woodworking. Like all the sugar pine, I’ve bought from Midwest, this stuff is like pine is supposed to be – stable, easy to work and clear.
There is always going to be a small voice in my head telling me that I’m a fool to paint this stuff, but the design really demands it. Once you get the chest assembled, it’s obvious that the grain distracts from the form. The moulding around the bottom of the case looks weird – especially on the ends.
So paint it is.
I was going to scratch a geometric design on the front of the chest, but my test board didn’t come out like I wanted. The geometry was easy, but the scratches didn’t show well under the paint. That aspect of these chests needs some more thought on my part.
The winter 2012 issue of Furniture and Cabinetmaking magazine have called out two Lost Art Press books – “The Essential Woodworker” and “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” – as 12 of the “must-have titles for your workshop library.”
It’s an honor to be in a list of books that includes many of our woodworking heroes, including Charles Hayward, Jim Kingshott, Alan Peters and James Krenov.
The article praises Robert Wearing’s “The Essential Woodworker” as “a seminal text that every single woodworker should have to hand when undertaking any project.” I couldn’t agree more. Wearing’s book is one of the most important pieces of the puzzle in my personal development as a craftsman.
For “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” the magazine says it “makes a compelling case for the use of a traditional tool chest and shows readers how to build it well.”
In celebration of this, we will continue to do exactly what we’ve been doing since 2007. So back to editing A.J. Roubo.
Despite word from Tibet from my milk paint supplier that Agnes the yak was busy assembling her hope chest and flirting shamelessly with a certain strapping young specimen of yakhood, I decided that I needed to take the bull by the horns and get on with painting my six-board chest.
Vinegar, skim milk, a stainless soup pan, spaghetti strainer and a measuring cup.
I poured a liter (quart) of skim milk into the soup pan, let it warm on very low heat to the point where there were just the faintest hints of steam coming off it, and then added 4 cl (1.5 fluid ounces) of vinegar –stirring a few swipes, enough to mix, but no more. This is not a critical thing, the curds will form in one way or another. You can even just let it sit at room temperature, but that will take hours. The important thing is not to bring the mix to a boil.
The fresh cheese.
I did this twice, and the second time I ended up with much less cohesive curds. No matter. After washing, it looked the same. If you substitute whole milk and maybe a little cream, and lemon juice in place of the vinegar, the same process will yield a fabulous farmer’s (or ricotta or quark if you want to be fancy about it) cheese.
The finished cottage cheese, cement/lime-mortar pigment, and hydraulic lime.
You pour out the “cottage cheese” into a strainer lined with cotton cloth, and then rinse it under cold water two or three times. Given that vinegar is an acid used to curdle the casein milk protein and separate it from the whey, this is an important step in that a basic powder in the form of slaked lime or chalk is often added to the cheese, which if not rinsed could cause a chemical reaction that would spoil the mix, at least. Then I added water to a handful of slaked lime with a couple of pinches of borax mixed in. In place of the slaked lime, you could use various kinds of finely ground chalk powder, or nothing. The lime or chalk powder is a filler, and results in a more pastel color. But some just add the pigment directly to the cheese and go from there. The borax is to help break down the casein protein in the fresh cheese, increase the adhesiveness of the paint, and adds some anti-microbial protection.
It took a while to mix all of the lumps out. Would have gone faster with an electric mixer, but that would have been too much for even my remarkably tolerant better half. “Darling, you know I love it when you whip up a new recipe, but if you even think about serving rusty nails and hinges braised in vinegar this evening, you will be sleeping in the rabbit hutch tonight.” We don’t have a doghouse.
The other thing was I used a natural hydraulic lime, NHL3.5, instead of the non-hydraulic lime usually recommended, because that was what I had. It worked OK, but you have to use the paint quickly and stir often because the lime will start into its hydraulic set after a while, and the paint becomes useless.
The chest after two coats.
It doesn’t show in the photo, but I used a little more lime and a little less pigment for the second coat and it gave the chest the slightly two-toned look I was aiming for.
Mostly people use linseed oil for a topcoat over the milk paint to give it a little depth and a slight gloss. I wanted to finish the inside of the chest, too. You can’t use linseed oil inside a chest, especially one that will be used to hold clothes or linens, because it starts to stink after a while. So I opted for some lovely natural shellac I picked up a while back. Just the ticket.
Very slight gloss, nicely highlighting the cross-grain tear-out from the moulding plane. Whoops.
It’s done.
All in all a good experiment. Start to finish, making the paint is about a 20-minute process. There are a number of recipes online. Lots of different permutations, but the upshot is that it really isn’t that critical what you do or which ingredients/quantities you opt for, as long as you make enough for the whole job, or are looking for the slightly two-tone effect.
