Lost Art Press

Category: Techniques

Weird Nail Tales

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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I wrote about the following trick to reduce splitting when nailing in “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” Since then, I’ve caught flack from people who say it’s not true. So much so that I’ve been doubting my own shop experience.

Here’s the problem: When you nail together a piece – especially using cut nails or Rivierre nails – it’s easy to blow out the end grain, reducing the holding power of the nail. Driving a tapered nail is a delicate balance. You need the nail to bite hard, so you don’t want to use a huge or too-long pilot hole. But if you use a pilot hole that is too small or short, the nail will split the work and ruin everything. Oh, you also have to account for the wood species and how thick it is.

It’s a balance of factors to get a good joint. (And that’s why I recommend you make a test joint before nailing together anything – especially if you’ve never worked with a particular brand of nail or species of wood.)

All this is a lot of set-up for…

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A common split. This joint was unclamped when I drove the nail.
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Here’s the joint (a few inches away from the failed joint) after the joint was clamped hard while I drove the nail.

Here’s the Trick
If you apply a bar clamp across the end grain of the joint, you can reduce the tendency of the wood to split out the end grain. The clamp has to apply significant pressure for this to work.

Today I tried a variety of strategies as I nailed together a mule chest using 40mm Rivierre nails. All the joints were in Eastern white pine. All the pilot holes were the same diameter (7/64”) and depth (7/8”). And all the holes were located the same distance (7/16”) from the end of the board.

Without a clamp, about half of the joints busted out the end grain (good thing I started at the rear of the chest). When I added a clamp and applied hard clamping pressure – what you would use to close a joint – the failure rate dropped to zero.

I wondered if I needed to have the clamp at full pressure. What if the clamp’s pad simply acted as a wall to prevent the end grain from fracturing? Nope. Clamp pressure – lots of it – was important to keep the joint intact while driving the nail.

I have all sorts of thoughts on why this hard clamp pressure works. But I am weary of theories. If you’ve read this far, give this trick a try yourself in the shop before pontificating in the comments.

Confession: I was greatly relieved that this trick still worked. The internet had made me doubt myself again.

— Christopher Schwarz

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Smoke-painted Furniture

Posted on by saucyindexer
Blanket chest with smoke paint over a while base.
Blanket chest with smoke paint over a white base. 

Soot was one of the earliest materials used by humans to decorate their surroudings. In the late 18th century and well into the 19th century smoke painting was a decorative technique used on furniture. It was cheap and the smoke could be manipulated into a variety of patterns, from waves of haze to leopard-like spots. If you are looking for a different and easy-to-use decorative technique give it a try.

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On this blanket chest the smoke has been smudged and softened before a clear finish was applied. Smoke painting the drawer front inside the chest is an unusual feature.

Small dome-top chest, ca. 1830.
Small dome-top chest, ca. 1830.

White and yellow were the most common background colors used. This dome-top chest with a bright yellow background has the addition of a snappy red trim.

Chest crom Snow Hill, early 19th century.
Chest from Snow Hill, late 18th or early 19th century.

The Snow Hill chest is the oldest piece I found and it looks as though a graining tool was used to manipulate the smoke.

 

This upright chest from New England is dated early to mid-19th century. The painter used the smoke in a controlled manner to achieve a very regular pattern. I would guess that the “smoke trails” were smudged to soften the edges and increase the coverage of smoke.

Although not as common as the white and yellow backgrounds there are pieces with other background colors and they are especially valued by collectors of smoke-painted furniture.

 

A nice blue with a simple pattern and a racy red veering toward leopard spots.

Chests and boxes were not the only furniture given the smoke paint treatment. In the piece below only the table top of a drop-leaf table was smoke-painted.

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If you want to try smoke painting make several sample boards first to practice the technique and determine the kind of pattern you prefer. Smoke painting is not a difficult process but it does involve using an open flame so there are several precautions. These are same precautions you would used when working with any flammable material.

It is best to work outside with another adult, avoid windy conditions and paper-covered surfaces. Have a bucket of water and a fire extinguisher nearby. The tools you will need are a candle and a palette knife or other flat tool. The palette knife is held at the tip of the candle flame to create a sooty smoke.

Apply a basecoat of milk paint to the surface. Use enough coats to get the depth of color you prefer. While the basecoat is still damp light the candle and use the palette knife to get a sooty flame. Hold the still-damp painted surface above the sooty smoke and move it around to create your pattern (this is where the second adult come in). If desired, once the smoke is on the surface use your fingers, a brush or other tool to smudge the soot. After smoking (the furniture, not you) let the piece dry. Apply shellac or other clear finish you normally use.

The gallery below has a several more examples of smoke-painted boxes, chests and a small wall box.

–Suzanne Ellison

 

Grind Twice, Young Chiseler

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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“Do not condemn the cutting qualities of a new tool until you have ground it more than once, as invariably you will find a perfect edge on the second if not the first time grinding.”

— Charles Buck, of Buck Bros., in “A Few Points on Sharpening to Users of Wood Working Tools.” For more on “decarb,” see this old post I wrote.

This is Where we Fight about ‘Fishtails’

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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Here is joint I have not encountered yet. I suppose they are technically dovetails, but I think the construction looks more like tails of fish.

Paul Windle-Taylor of Brittany, France, discovered them at the back of the bottom drawer of an ornate carved Breton armoire made in about 1908 as wedding present by the father of the bride.

“As with much of this rural working, the external work is of fine quality but the intrinsic build is massive,” Paul wrote. “I was struck by the assumed bomb-proofness of the work. This is one drawer back that will not come off!”

What is awesome about this crazy joint is that it does not require glue to stay together. C’est bon!

— Christopher Schwarz

Sticks and Stones and Naked Gnats

Posted on by Lost Art Press

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In our household, we have offered the following guideline to our young girls: Words are not weapons. The only way that words can hurt you is if you let them hurt you.

So, as you can imagine, we allow complete freedom of speech within our walls (though we caution them to take great care with people outside our family). This is the same policy I follow on this blog. I will never write any words here that I would not say in front of either of my grandmothers (God rest their souls). It’s just polite.

This makes it difficult for me to discuss dovetailing on the blog. When I teach dovetailing, I use an awful expression to describe the amount of compression that the joint can and should endure where you drive the bits together. In other words, I try to explain how far away from your knife line you should saw your pins to fit the joint together tightly. Wood compresses. And we should take advantage of it.

So in an effort to describe this tiny measurement, I today asked my students for ideas (after using my foul expression). The students are British, for the most part, and should have some sense of propriety. Here are the three top suggestions.

When sawing your pins, you should saw slightly away from your line – exactly one…

1. Gnat’s firkin
2. Gnat’s chuff
3. Gnat’s nasty

I personally like No. 3 (alliteration is the mark of quality writing). Why they focused on gnats I do not know.

If someone has a better G-rated suggestion, I’d like to hear it. There could be a beer in it for you.

— Christopher Schwarz