Summer twilight brings the mosquito. In fact, when we go far north or far south, we have him with us both day and night. Rather I should say that we have her; for the male mosquito is a gentleman, who sips daintily of nectar and minds his own business, while madame his spouse is a whining, peevish, venomous virago, that goes about seeking whose nerves she may unstring and whose blood she may devour. … Stranger still, the mosquito is not only a bloodsucker but an incorrigible winebibber as well – she will get helplessly fuddled on any sweet wine, such as port, or on sugared spirits, while of gin she is inordinately fond.
— “The Book of Camping and Woodcraft” by Horace Kephart (The Outing Publishing Co.) 1908
When I talk to furniture geeks about my upcoming book, “Campaign Furniture,” they almost all have the same objection to a book on this style of furniture: “It’s interesting, but your readers won’t be able to get the hardware to make the pieces.”
Au contraire, mon petit chou.
Many of the better hardware sellers have campaign brasses in their stocklists. Talk to Orion Henderson at Horton Brasses – he put together a suite of hardware for my campaign secretary that was on the cover of Popular Woodworking Magazine last year.
Today Nancy Anderson, the owner of Londonderry Brasses, said she was adding several pages of campaign furniture brasses to her catalog. I used Londonderry Brasses for my latest campaign chest and could not be more pleased with the color and workmanship of the hardware.
You can contact Nancy at londonderry@epix.net or 610-593-6239. In addition to the brasses shown here, Nancy has access to many others and – like Orion at Horton – will help track them down for you.
Several other catalogers carry campaign brasses, including Lee Valley. You just have to dig.
So, problem solved. I guess it’s OK to publish this book on campaign furniture.
I dragged the finished teak campaign chest out of the shop this afternoon to get it out of harm’s way down there. Some heavy stuff is about to go down.
I am fairly pleased with the color of the finish and the surface quality of the chest. I went for an old-school texture. You can feel the scallops left by the smoothing plane on the exterior.
But aside from my mild non-displeasure with the piece, the most important comment about the piece was uttered today by my wife.
Lucy looked it over and said: “We get keep this one?”
“Yes.”
“For real this time?”
“Yes.”
That’s the highest compliment from a woman who has seen a lot of furniture go out the door this year.
The only disappointment? My photography. I snapped the quick photo above, which is plagued by parallax and a thousand other words. Perhaps I’ll find the right angle when I shoot some photos of it for my upcoming book on campaign furniture.
On that matter, I finished writing the two chapters on these chests. But I have to set the manuscript aside (briefly) to build another workbench. No, not the massive one from the Barnesville, Ga., French oak project. A different one.
Here you can see the sample board on top of a drawer front that has two coats of shellac on it. The wax makes a difference.
Even when I’ve applied a certain finish 100 times, I still make a sample board. There are just too many variables.
The wood might have some interesting chemicals and colors in it. A finish manufacturer might have changed its formula (looking at you Lily/Valspar). Or you are dealing with shellac, which can be old or have some unexpected hues.
Yesterday I made a sample board using teak that was left over from building the chest. I planed it using the same tools I used on the chest – then lightly scuffed it with #220-grit sandpaper. Then I applied one coat of Liberon Bison Wax, the Tudor Brown color. I call this wax: Creepy Janitor.
I love this wax on open-grained woods. The wax gets into the pores and adds brown tones to the garnet shellac. It is easy to apply and buffs to a low lustre that never looks like someone fingered your project after eating a large basket of greasy Freedom Fries.
But the smell – until it dissipates – gives me the creeps.
It’s a very odd perfumy smell that is mixed with cleaning fluids. I have some more descriptive words for it that involve armpits, a greasy rubbing compound for sore joints and glass kittens, but I know it would get me in trouble with the readers.
The sample board looked great, so this morning I removed all the hardware from the chest. (This takes more than an hour. It’s like undressing a Victorian woman.) I applied the two coats of garnet shellac, sanding between the coats with a #320-grit sanding sponge.
Now I’m just waiting for the shellac to harden up a bit more before I apply the wax. And I’m going to first make dinner so I don’t have that brown goo in my nostrils when chewing.
Summer twilight brings the mosquito. In fact, when we go far north or far south, we have him with us both day and night. Rather I should say that we have her; for the male mosquito is a gentleman, who sips daintily of nectar and minds his own business, while madame his spouse is a whining, peevish, venomous virago, that goes about seeking whose nerves she may unstring and whose blood she may devour. … Stranger still, the mosquito is not only a bloodsucker but an incorrigible winebibber as well – she will get helplessly fuddled on any sweet wine, such as port, or on sugared spirits, while of gin she is inordinately fond.
