“Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don’t need you.”
— James Michener
Category: Techniques
Tool Chest Finish: Make it Stick
When it comes to finishing a tool chest, I feel a bit like Henry Ford. I like any tool chest finish as long as it’s paint.
That said, my finishing procedure outlined in “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest,” has bemused some readers. It shouldn’t work – adding a water-based product to a thing covered in oil, right? It seems like the folly of painting a live duck with latex.
Well it does work. But before I get into the details, let me say that my goal for finishing the chest was to have a chest that was mostly black with red below on the rubbed-through areas that will inevitably occur.
You don’t have to do this. You can go to the store and get some latex paint in any color and go to town on your chest.
But here is what I did and why.
1. Raise the grain of the bare wood with a wet rag and sand down the nibs with #220 sandpaper after the water has dried. This will result in less grain-raising when you apply the water-based paint.
2. Apply two coats of milk paint, sanding between coats with a #330 sanding sponge. This will give you a chalky look. Even a little pastel-y. You can leave it like this and be done. Or you can go on to the next step.
Milk paint is easy to use – just follow the directions on the box. If you want to get great results, Mike Dunbar wrote an article about how to use it in Popular Woodworking’s February 2010 issue. It is, hands down, the best explanation for best practices with this paint.
3. You can now go one of three ways. A) Add a coat of wax and be done with it. Wax will remove the chalky look. B) Add a coat of boiled linseed oil. Oil will remove the chalky look and add a little amber. You can stop after the oil, or you can let it cure and add more paint over it. C) Go right to adding more paint of a different color.
I added oil, let it cure and then applied more paint. Why? I didn’t want the chalky look to show when the topcoat rubbed through.
4. Add another color of paint. It can be milk paint, latex or oil-based paint. All three will stick just fine to paint or cured oil. If you use milk paint or oil-based paint, the top color will be quite durable. I didn’t want a durable topcoat. I wanted it to wear through sooner rather than later. So I added two coats of black latex. After six months of use, the paint is starting to wear a bit at the corners – it’s not dramatic like a crackle finish.
So there you have it. No matter what painted finish you choose, it will look great – after it gets beat up in your shop for a while. Pristine tool chests look wrong to my eye, probably because there are so few of them.
— Christopher Schwarz
Make a Table or Stool: Part 1
Design brief: Before commencing on any design other than a copy a design brief must be prepared. A design brief is a collection of all the data relevant to the construction and use of the article and the design is based on this information. The brief can best be produced by writing down as many questions as possible about the job, and then by experiment, research, measurement or judgment, find the answers to these questions. For example, questions about a coffee table might include the following:
Where will it be used?
Who will use it?
How many people will use it?
What will it carry?
How will people sit at it?
What will be its top shape?
How high will it be?
What will be its basic constructional form?
What will be the finish?
What wood is preferred or is available?
Will the top have any special finish?
Will a shelf or rack be required?
Design sketch
The answers to these practical questions will give the worker the length, the width and the height required. From these three figures a number of design sketches may be produced and the best one selected (Fig 90, for example).
Working drawing
From the design sketch it will now be possible to build up a working drawing. For items of coffee-table size a full-sized drawing is an advantage; larger items must of course be drawn to scale. These full-sized drawings can be drawn on decorator’s ‘lining’ (ceiling) paper. Before making a start the following table of ‘finished sizes’ should be consulted (Fig 91).
The sawn sizes are those used by the timber yards when sawing logs into boards. The finished sizes are those to which the sawn boards can be planed, either by hand or by machine. This figure is both the maximum which can be obtained from the sawn board and also the size marketed as a planed board. In planning component sizes these sizes should be kept in mind in order to use wood with the greatest economy. A reduction of thickness of 1mm (1/16in.) may afford a considerable cost saving.
The working drawing (side view) (Fig 92) is built up as follows. Draw the ground line (A) then draw the top of the table (B). Consult the finished sizes and draw in the top thickness (C). Mark this off to length (D). Consider the overhang and draw in the outside edge of the legs (E). Consult the finished sizes again and draw in the leg thickness (F). The top rail (G) is drawn in next, wide enough to give a good joint but not wastefully wide. This can be made narrower if the extra support of a stretcher rail is given. The end (width) view can be similarly drawn. To save space this can be superimposed on the front view (shaded area).
When a proper mortice and tenon construction is to be used (as in this example) the length of the tenon must now be ascertained. This is easily done (Fig 93) by making a full-sized drawing on graph paper. Finally the inside edges of the legs can be tapered below the joint. This design retains the simplicity of an all-right-angle construction.
To obviate frequent reference to a drawing in the early stages it is convenient to produce a cutting list (Fig 94) and to work solely from this in the early stages.
Finished (i.e. final) sizes are used in the list, which avoids allowances being added at several stages in the work. Unfortunately, although there are only three dimensions there are many more names for them, e.g. length, height, width, depth, broad, thick, and so on. The three to be used are length (the distance along the grain), thickness (the smallest dimension) and width (the intermediate size). Width and thickness are often the same size.
To avoid confusion components are often lettered, as in the first column. The remaining columns are self-explanatory except for the blank one. A tick here signifies that the component has been sawn out. A cross tells that the piece has been produced to size and is ready for marking out.
— Robert Wearing, from Chapter 2 of “The Essential Woodworker”
Some Dovetails from the 15th Century
When I first learned about dovetails, the tale was that this mechanical joint was one of the things that helped transform the squat furniture of the Jacobean era into the soaring vertical styles of the 18th century.
The problem with that tidy story is that dovetails turn up in early furniture and other carpentry constructions, suggesting that the history of the joint is far more complex than most people suspect. I’ve seen evidence of dovetails in Egyptian woodwork.
While at the Victoria & Albert Museum this last week in London, I broke away from my family to examine some of the furniture treasures there. An Italian chest from about 1500 caught my eye. Displayed in the museum at floor height, you couldn’t really see how the walnut chest was joined. I crouched down, and its delightful dovetails became apparent.
Now back in my office I have photos of interesting paintings from the 14th and 15th centuries that show dovetailed chests, but the dovetails are widely spaced and probably poorly represented by the artist (e.g. in some of the paintings the joints clearly wouldn’t be possible in a three-dimensional universe).
These Italian dovetails look very unusual to the modern eye. The maker of this chest had to join planks that were easily 1-1/4” thick. The dovetails are extremely thin and equally spaced. That is, the widest point of each tail was about 1/2” wide. And the widest part of the pin socket was also 1/2” wide. The spacing between the tails was extremely tight – perhaps 3/32”.
Other interesting details for joinery nuts: The top edge of the chest began with one very big half tail, and you could clearly see baseline marks on the sides of the chest, but not the front.
The joinery was A+ from a modern perspective. The chest wasn’t heavily stained or colored, so it was easy to see the remarkable fit of the pins and tails. I hope my work looks this good after 500 years.
I suspect this chest was built for a wealthy individual’s valuables. The chest is inlaid inside and out, according to the museum’s description. And it has two sets of hinges, two sets of locks and a false bottom compartment.
I wish I could have opened it and poked around the inside of the chest to get some more details, but they frown on that at museums (speaking as someone who has been the object of multiple frowns).
But at the very least these photos of the exterior continue to help fill in the often misunderstood relationship between furniture styles and furniture joinery.
— Christopher Schwarz
A Little Dab Will Do You
I like non-drying vegetable-based oils. Not just for frying up chicken, but for keeping rust at bay in my basement workshop at home.
What’s not to like? For nearly 14 years these oils have kept rust at bay on my hand tools in a damp below-grade space (with the help of “woobie,” and “spawn of woobie”). Well, I hate the little plastic spray bottles that these oils come packaged in. The spray mechanisms get gummed up. And the oils that come in lotion bottles end up depositing their load if you tip them over.
So years ago I went old school: tin oilcans. These little fellers were used for oiling sewing machines and the like and cost me all of $4 (I paid a premium because I bought one that wasn’t all gummed up). They work great with camillia and jojoba oils, the hippie-style hair tonic and skin moisturizing oils of choice these days. The oilcan shown in the photos is about 2″ in diameter at the base.
Have you ever used an oilcan? They are brilliant. Turn them upside-down and … nothing happens. Turn them upside down and gently press their little tin bottom and oil comes out the spout. After a few squirts you’ll become a master at dispensing just enough oil for a saw, a block plane blade or a handplane sole.
And best of all, antique stores and eBay are littered with oilcans. Heck there are probably a few in your attic.
Throw away the gummy plastic spray bottles. Turn to the tin side.
— Christopher Schwarz
