Lost Art Press

Author: meghanlostartpress

Make and Use a Straw Polissoir

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This is an excerpt from “To Make as Perfectly as Possible: Roubo on Marquetry” by  André-Jacob Roubo; translation by Donald C. Williams, Michele Pietryka-Pagán & Philippe Lafargue.

One influential tool that was unknown to me at the start of this project is a polissoir (polisher), which I call a corn straw burnisher. Roubo offers fewer than 100 words describing the tool and its use, yet that tool has fundamentally changed parts of the way I work. As the last tool to touch the surface prior to the application of finish, or in some instances the tool that actually applies the finish, vigorously scouring the surface with it imparts radiance to the substrate that cannot be adequately described. It must be experienced.

Fabricating your own burnisher is fairly easy, and the raw materials are no farther away than any straw broom.

You will need a hank of straws between 1″ to 2″ in diameter. Take your bundle of straws and bind them together with several hose clamps of the appropriate size side-by-side, leaving about 1/2″ of straw sticking out at one end. Leave a little gap between the hose clamps about halfway down the length of the bundle. At this opening, wick in a copious amount of glue all around the circumference and let it sit overnight. Any glue is fine.

Then take a string and tie a loop at one end of the cord. I simply double up the end and tie it into a knot leaving 3″ or 4″ inches of tail. Make a noose from the loop and the string leading to the ball. Place this about 1/8″ from the end of the straw bundle, cinch the noose and start wrapping it as tight as you can without breaking the string. Remove the hose clamps as you work your way down the bundle. When you get to the other end of the bundle (about 1/8″ shy of the end), hold the string in place with a spring clamp. Soak the string wrapping with dilute hide glue and let it set until dry. You can skip this gluing step if your burnisher will be cooked in molten beeswax as the final step. Then reverse the direction of your wrapping (same rotation but now you are working back toward your starting point) to return to the starting point. When you get there, tie off the wrapping string with the tail I mentioned earlier.

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The effect of the polisher on well-prepared raw wood is readily apparent and almost instantaneous.

Soak the whole string surface with white glue or cross-linked hide glue and let it sit. Trim the straw bundle ends as needed. If your goal is to make a dry burnisher, you are done. If you want a wax-impregnated burnisher, melt some wax in an appropriate vessel and allow the wrapped bundle to soak in it until it is fully saturated. Remove the burnisher from the molten wax with appropriate caution and wipe the excess wax off. As soon as it cools to hardness it is ready to be put to work.

— Meghan B.

Malcolm Tibbetts

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UNITY (2002). Curly maple, caretto and many woods from around the world. 25″ diameter. “A five-revolution Möbius style torus,” Malcolm says. “‘Unity’ celebrates the number five. A crosscut of the torus reveals a pentagram (five pointed star). If you were to trace any valley between any two ridges (or trace a ridge), you would make five revolutions before returning to your starting point. Does this make it a Möbius (one edge and one side)? The overall diameter is close to five squared (25″). In ancient times, the pentagram (derived from the pentagon) was a symbol for health and salvation, and in the Middle Ages, it was used as a symbol to repulse evil spirits. As a geometric form, the pentagram is quite significant; the bisected line lengths contain the golden ratio, the number known as phi, approximately 1.618. The number five has always been regarded as mystical and magical, and it relates to the human form. We have five fingers/toes on each limb. We commonly possess five senses – sight, hearing, smell, touch and taste – the list goes on and on. It has been said that, ‘All things happen in fives or are divisible by or are multiples of fives.’ This was a complex and challenging project, but there was relatively very little turning; however, every one of the 100 individual pentagram-shaped rings spent time on the lathe in order to create the matching concave curves. After assembly, the surface contained ridges between every small ring, which required extensive abrasive smoothing, but the final shape depended upon the pre-turning of the components.”


This is an excerpt from “The Difference Makers” by Marc Adams. 

One of the people who had the greatest impact on Malcolm was his grandfather, Rap Gardner. At an early age, Granddad would give him guidance on how to make items with wood. He still remembers making a birdhouse before he started grammar school. From those early days Malcolm always had an interest in woodworking. It wasn’t until after he got married that woodworking became a necessary hobby. In 1976, after scraping together enough money with his wife, Tere, to buy their first home, there was nothing left for furniture. He purchased a Craftsman table saw and converted a bedroom into a shop (there was no garage) and proceeded to make their furniture, some of which is in use today.

In 1993, Malcolm had a shop full of tools and a house full of furniture, so his desire to stay active in the shop turned to woodturning. For the first year, Malcolm turned in isolation. He knew nothing about woodturning clubs, the American Association of Woodturners (AAW) or the fact that there were schools scattered throughout America that offered workshops on turning methods. Turning bowls was a great place to start, with instant gratification, but after turning a few dozen bowls, he found life at the lathe became boring. He started gluing in a few pieces of wood to add some character and color, not really knowing that he was creating “segmented” turnings.

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CROOKED JOURNEY (2015). Peruvian walnut and white-dyed veneer, 8,800 individual pieces. About 14″ dia. “This is a very difficult shape to explain,” Malcolm says. “It’s an endless tubular ribbon. It’s constructed from 10 half-sections of five-sided donut shapes (five full donuts were used). To successfully complete the loop, three different donut diameters were created, with different orientations of the pentagon surfaces. The pentagon cross-sections severely limited directional changes. Each directional change occurs at the vertex of an imaginary decagon (10-sided polygon). The relationship between the five-sided donuts and the points of a 10-sided shape is what made the assembly possible. It was a bit of a head-scratcher to design. Finished with MinWax Wipe-On Poly.”

In 1994, Malcolm discovered there was to be an AAW woodturning symposium in Fort Collins, Col. Because he had the time and the resources he decided to attend and took along a few of his pieces to display in the open gallery. He was so new to turning that he had no idea who any of the presenters were but ended up in a workshop on deep vessel hollow forms taught by Clay Foster. This was his first exposure to professional turning – the first time that he witnessed another person turn wood. By the end of the weekend he befriended a gentleman by the name of Ray Allen, one of the world’s best-known segmenters. Ray was an inspiration to Malcolm and his first real turning mentor. Ray’s work as a segmented turner elevated the craft to an acceptable form of art turning, and it boosted segmented turnings to the collector level. Prior to Ray, segmented turning didn’t have a great reputation due to so many gluing failures and improper construction methods. However, Malcolm saw segmented turning as a truly unique art form that was in its infancy. He was hooked.

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TOLERANCE (2005). Myrtlewood. About 32″ tall. “A complex ribbon form constructed with half-cylinders and half-bowls,” Malcolm says. “The designs, which are pierced through the wood wall and not painted, are symbols used by many cultures throughout history and the endless knot has its own meaning.”

Malcolm then discovered an AAW turning chapter in Sacramento and religiously made the two-hour trip to meetings every month for years. He became driven to learn all he could about turning while creating and developing new processes in his segmented works. By 1997, he became a regular instructor at the annual AAW symposium and eventually became a board member and even the vice president. Although he didn’t become a full-time professional turner until after he retired from the ski industry in 2002, his work was represented at a gallery in San Francisco called the Stones Gallery. Within eight short years Malcolm had gone from a turning beginner to a turner extraordinaire.

During the last three decades Malcolm has developed many innovations such as the porthole feature ring, ribbon construction, dizzy bowls, checkered hollow forms, tubular construction and orderly tangles. His work ranges from tiny jewelry items to outdoor sculptural pieces that require a crane for installation. He, along with Bill Smith and Curt Theobald, are the founding fathers of the Segmented Woodturners, an AAW chapter with hundreds of members around the world that host a biennial symposium. He has written three books, self-produced countless educational videos and has a big following on YouTube.

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A TANGLED WEB (2014). 22″ dia. Inspired by the Sir Walter Scott quote, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, when first we practice to deceive!” “Composed of 12 five-pointed star shapes (pentagons with concave curved sides), arranged in an ‘orderly tangle,’” Malcolm says. “Won the Craftsmanship award at the 2015 Bridges Conference.”

However, his greatest contribution to the world of polychromatic turning is much more than inventing new ways to glue together pieces of wood. Malcolm is responsible for crossing the line between fine woodworking and fine turning. Through intuition, remarkable engineering and clever designs he has transformed the process of cutting, gluing and assembling wood in contorted ways. Then, with the skills of a virtuoso turner, he has proven that the two crafts, woodworking and woodturning, can collide and live in harmony.

— Meghan B.

Furniture Doors

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Splined-and-battened closet door. It’s somewhat primitive, but it gets the job done.


This is an excerpt from “Shaker Inspiration: Five Decades of Fine Craftsmanship” by Christian Becksvoort.

Even before frame-and-panel doors come into widespread use, larger doors had to accommodate seasonal wood movement in one way or another. The most common method was to use a series of individual boards, rabbeted, splined or shiplapped, with small spaces in between to allow movement. These doors, sometimes two or even three layers thick, were held flat with battens on the inside. The battens were nailed, “clinched,” or killed (yes, dead as a door nail). Nowadays, screws are often used instead.

Almost all furniture doors are made with frame-and-panel construction. Let’s go over some of the options. For cabinet doors, a 1/4″ (6.4mm) groove is run into the top and bottom rails, and likewise the two stiles. Panels can be flat, flush on one or both sides, raised, carved, moulded or inset. In any event, if the panel is solid wood, it is allowed to move, or “float,” in the grooves. Some woodworkers purchase small rubber balls to keep panels from rattling. I find that a cheaper and easier method is to center the panel, and drive a small brad (from the inside of the door) through the middle of the rails, close to the edge through the panel tongue, and into (but not through) the front of the frame. A bit of filler, or a tiny wood plug makes it all but invisible.

On fine furniture, the corners of doors are usually mortised, tenoned and pinned, for maximum glue area and strength. On tiny clock or desk doors, a bridle joint can be substituted for increased glue area. Kitchen cabinet shops often use stick-and-cope construction. A moulding profile is run along the stile and coped into the rail end, forming a snug, yet relatively weak corner joint. Alternatively, many woodworkers use dowels in the corners, while biscuits are another alternative. Although stronger than a stick-and-cope joint, these methods don’t have much glue area and are therefore not as structurally strong as a full mortise-and-tenon joint.

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Dovetail batten, visible only from the sides and interior.

So what about slab doors? As stated above, battens are necessary to keep the slab flat. However, I find them cumbersome and gawky looking, and I have been using several alternative techniques. The first is the fairly traditional fitted dovetail batten. It’s flush with the inside of the door, and anchored with a small brad at the center.

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Door with breadboard ends – just like a tabletop.

The second is to make breadboard ends. After all, if you can use breadboards on tabletops and desk lids to keep them flat, why not on doors?

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Hidden breadboard batten, visible from the top, bottom and both edges.

The third procedure is a bit trickier: the hidden breadboard. Cut a groove into the top and bottom ends of the door, and insert the breadboard, or batten, inside the groove. Again, anchor it in the middle.

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Totally invisible batten. Lots more work, but really cool.

Finally, the coolest of them all: the totally invisible batten. Make a core of the same wood as the rest of the door, and rip off strips on both sides. Then cut off both ends of the center section, and groove the edges you just cut. Make a batten of the desired width with tongues along both long edges, and cut it slightly shorter than the center of the core. Glue the whole back together and flatten it. Then glue a face veneer, 1/16″ to 1/4″(1.5mm to 6mm) thick, depending on the size of the door, to both sides. Edge all four sides and you have a stable slab door. Nothing showing.

— Meghan B.

Feet for a Box with a Drawer

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This large box with a drawer below is my interpretation of this rare form from the 17th century.


This is an excerpt from “Joiner’s Work” by Peter Follansbee. 

Now things differ significantly from the basic box. Let’s start with the feet.

I’m no turner; I think of myself as a joiner who does some turning. I only know turning on the pole lathe, so I can’t guarantee that the methods I use will translate to other lathes. The lathe is a simple machine: a moveable “poppet” slides between the beds/rails of the lathe. One upright extends above the bed. Embedded into this and the moveable poppet are two iron points – these are what the turning blanks spin on. A cord wrapped around the workpiece connects to a long springy pole in the ceiling and a treadle underneath the lathe. Stomp on the treadle and the pole bends, the workpiece turns toward you and you can make a cut with your gouge or chisel, which is braced against a tool rest. Then let up the pressure on the treadle, the pole pulls back and the workpiece “unwinds” so you can start all over again. Very rhythmic.

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The pole lathe, like a shaving horse, is a folk tool. Each one is different, but they are all essentially the same – a means to make the workpiece turn so you can cut it into cylindrical shapes.

I sometimes have turned feet from white oak; but I’ve mostly used maple to great effect (maple turnings are typically stained black, said to be an imitation of ebony).

Start with a billet about 16″ long and almost 2″ in diameter. I turn a foot on one end, test-fit its tenon, then burnish it and cut it off. Then re-center the turning and repeat. Or rough out several feet, trim the first tenon, then cut that foot off and re-center and resume turning.

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My view of the lathe. On the left, the moveable poppet secured between the rails, or bed, of the lathe with a wooden wedge. On the right, one upright extends above the bed to form a fixed poppet. I’ve wrapped the cord around the workpiece and it’s tied above to the pole and below to the treadle. The workpiece spins on two iron points. One is threaded to make fine adjustments. Iron brackets running through the poppets support the tool rest.

The foot is a simple enough shape that I don’t make a pattern stick, but you certainly could. I just mark the 2″ height of the foot, with about a 3/4″ long tenon beyond that. Define the shoulder that separates the foot from the tenon with a gouge and skew. If you have a parting tool, that’s an excellent tool for this step. Someday I have to dig mine out and sharpen it, but in the meantime, I use the skew and gouge approach. The foot consists of a pear-shaped cylinder, a cove and a collar. I scribe a line defining the collar and cut in under that with the gouge to begin shaping the cove. I alternate coming in from the left and right to help open up the cove.

After roughing out the shape, a few light shavings bring the final smooth shape to completion. The best surface comes from the skew chisel.

For me, turning is always a lesson in “enough is enough.” I often have a tendency to think I can go back one more time to make it better. This sometimes works, but more often results in disaster. The pole lathe is helpful because it allows me to make mistakes more slowly than a faster lathe.

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Here I roughed out several feet, finished the tenon on the left and will cut that foot off and repeat.

The feet have 1/2″-diameter tenons that fit through two 5/8″ x 1-1/2″ x 16″ slats of oak. I usually turn green wood, so I leave the tenons a bit thick so that when they shrink they will fit 1/2″ holes bored through the slats.

Leave the tenons extra long, too, but with a slight taper toward their ends. Size the tenons by forcing this tapered end into the hole (a test hole in dry hardwood is best, rather than risking deforming the actual piece). This burnishes an impression on the tenon.

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Now the foot is secured in the slat. For my lifetime at least.

Then pare the tenon down to this impressed area. These can go back on the lathe for this trimming, or you can just shave them with a knife or chisel. This is another one of those patience things – if you hurry and drive in a too-tight tenon, it can split the thin, narrow slat. Once the feet are tenoned into the slats, split the protruding tenons from above, then drive a wooden wedge into each split to secure the feet in place.

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I bored a pilot hole for these nails, reaching through the box bottom and just into the box sides.

Saw and pare them flush. Then bore pilot holes through the slats from below and nail these foot assemblies to the bottom. Depending on the thickness of your bottom boards and foot assemblies, your nail might reach through the bottom and into the bottom edge of the box ends.

— Meghan B.

The Card Table

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The grain-painted card table is a wonderful example of vernacular construction and decoration.


This is an excerpt from “Hands Employed Aright: The Furniture Making of Jonathan Fisher (1768-1847)” by Joshua A. Klein. 

The grain-painted card table was a surprising new acquisition donated by a descendant of a Blue Hill family. The donor’s family understands that Fisher made the table for her ancestors, Lucy Stetson and William Wardwell, as a wedding gift in the 1830s. While Fisher’s production (or at least the journal’s record of it) had dramatically slowed by that point, it is, of course, possible that he made this piece.

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The graining was not complex on this table. There was only one application of red-brown pigment on top of a yellow base color.

The construction and graining is consistent with Fisher’s work, but because there are no other card tables attributed to him, no comparisons can be made. Based on the quantitative analysis of Federal period card tables by Benjamin Hewitt, this table could be safely given a northern New England attribution. The construction of the hinged “fly” rail, the square top with ovolo corners, and the horizontal laminations of ovolo corners suggest this may well have been made in Maine. Because Hewitt’s research does not include any documented Maine card tables, this determination is based on the proximity (both geographically and culturally) to Massachusetts.

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The underside of the table shows the construction: half-blind dovetails in the back, and mortise-and-tenons in the front, which are connected by the quarter-circle ovolo corners.

The construction of the ovolo corners were approached in many different ways, but Fisher might have learned the horizontal lamination method by examining a card table that is now in the museum’s collection during one of his many visits to parishioners’ houses.

The grain painting is much less realistic and more stylized than the wardrobe’s panels, but it is similar to the majority of his graining, such as is seen on his boxes. The paint, although originally bold in color, definitely has a New England plainness about it. One scholar has described Maine’s grain painting as “less flamboyant than that of Pennsylvania and New York State productions [and] usually has a reserved, northern air.”

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The simplicity of the card table’s graining is comparable to other Fisher work, such as this box.

Although Fisher never mentioned card tables in his journals, he does write about card playing several times. As a conservative Congregationalist, Fisher took gambling to be a serious sin. The Puritan warnings about squandering your resources and the danger of covetousness made a deep impact on his mind. Fisher recalled one occasion as a child when neighbor boys brought a pack of playing cards over for the evening, “the use of which was then forbidden by law. They played a little, and I attempted to play with them.” Although they tried to hide the cards in the morning, his uncle found them out. “He took me aside, questioned me seriously upon the subject, discoursed to me in a mild manner concerning the pernicious effects of gaming, and cautioned me to avoid it. When he had done, it was not my formal promise, but my secret determination never to take cards in hand to play with them again; and through preventing goodness to this day, I have never done it, and hope I never shall.” Fisher then credited “the interposition of Providence” for having “prevented [his] temporal and spiritual ruin.” This event had such a deep impact on him that he seized the opportunity to do the same for a group of children later in his life. It was when he and his family failed to reach their departing ship that the opportunity arose. Fisher recorded, “…[Our] wheelbarrow… on the way broke down and so delayed us that the vessel had hauled off before we could get our chests on board. My sons took a boat and conveyed them on board. By means of these embarrassments I was led to enter in the evening the cabin of a vessel at the wharf, where I found a circle of youths playing cards and gave them a calm, serious lecture upon the subject. The opportunity for this more than compensates for the embarrassment. Wonderful are the ways of Providence!”

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The ovolo corners were simply screwed to the front and side aprons. Also note the horizontal three-piece laminations that make up the corners.

Regardless of Fisher’s views on card playing, this furniture form was likely used for more than just games. Gerald Ward has noted how these tables were portable, versatile and inexpensive, and also functioned as “important elements of decoration … in the Federal domestic interior.”

— Meghan B.