“Everything new stalls because there is precedence for the old.”
Category: The Anarchist’s Design Book
My First Time Using Soap Finish: Notes & Warnings
One of my favorite stories is how the writers for “The Straight Dope” column sent a fake hand-lotion recipe to the “Hints from Heloise” column – mixing vegetable shortening and sugar. Heloise printed the recipe and added that she’d been using the concoction for years.
Go ahead. Go to the kitchen and try it. I’ll wait here.
I’ve been reading a lot about the Danish “soap finish” these last few months, plus the chemistry and history behind it. A lot of this research will be included in my forthcoming book (which, by the way, will have a new title, so I’ll call it “Formerly the Furniture of Necessity”).
This week I made and used a soap finish for the first time, applying it to an ash chair that also will be featured in the book. I like using the finish a lot. It’s basically an oil finish (from vegetable or animal oils) that leaves a waxy residue behind that can be buffed up. I’m going to put the chair into hard use in the house to see how it holds up and report back.
This post is to encourage you to give the soap finish a try, and to dispel some of the questionable advice I’ve collected on it.
First, on the sheen of the finish. While aged soap finishes I’ve seen on Hans Wegner chairs are indeed dead-flat, a new soap finish looks much more like a wax finish. I’d call it semi-gloss.
Mixing the soap finish is easy. I recommend you make a very small batch to get a feel for the different results you get from mixing soap flakes and boiling water. You can get everything from a soup to a bowl of exploded jellyfish to a stiff paste. A stiff paste is what I was after.
For my first batch I used one cup of soap flakes and one quart of boiling water. This recipe was a cruel joke. It made a grey soup that was suitable for washing clothes, not finishing furniture. When I applied it to wood it mostly made the wood wet and not much else.
Next I tried equal parts soap flakes and boiling water. This made the blown-up jellyfish parts (I hate jellyfish; I got one in my swimming trunks once and it burned my delicate parts). Even after I let this mixture cool, it didn’t make anything I was eager to apply to finish. It was too runny.
So I took an approach that I recommend you try: Boil a cup of water and pour about half of it into a cup of soap flakes. Mix it and see what happens. If it’s too runny, add soap flakes. If all the flakes haven’t dissolved, add a little water.
The result should be stiff and meringue-like. After it cooled it became a little harder and less mushy.
How to apply it?
You can put it directly on the wood, but I found that to be messier than the process recommended by Caleb James. Essentially you make a rubber like you would for French polish. Take a dollop of the soap and put it in the middle of a soft cotton cloth. Wrap the soap and twist the “tail.” The soap soaks through the cloth as you press it against the wood, applying a nice film after a few minutes of work – your body heat from your hand and the friction soften the soap nicely.
After the soap dries for a few minutes, buff it with a clean, soft cloth.
Some people have reported that the finish raises the grain. I didn’t find that. Perhaps they were using soap soup.
More on the soap finish as it develops.
— Christopher Schwarz
Where to buy soap flakes:
- Dri-Pak Pure Soap Flakes
- Pure Soap Flakes Co.
- GreenHome
- And many other retailers. Look for stuff that doesn’t have fragrance or other additives. You want lye and oil.
Printer, Pen, Sketch, Cut, Repeat
When I work on a complex design, such as this simple chair, I find the best way to modify the design is to take photos of the project from all angles, even awkward ones. Then I print them out and start sketching on them.
This process saves me hours of prototyping. In this case, I’m working on the crest rail of the chair, mostly the angle that is cut on the ends and its overall length.
For me, this is easier than modeling complex pieces in CAD. I know it looks primitive, but it works surprisingly well.
— Christopher Schwarz
A Step Forwards or Backwards
“Helped by the increasing use of machinery, which made short work of complicated curves and serpentines, (Edward Barnsley’s) work became the last word in cabinetmaking skills, surpassing that of any previous century, and it found a ready appreciation amongst a growing clientele and an interested public.
“Only time will tell if this switch in emphasis in mid-stream was a step forwards or backwards.”
— Alan Peters, “Cabinetmaking: The Professional Approach, 2nd Edition” (Linden, 2009)
‘When Are You Opening a School?’
We aren’t. So you can stop asking poor Megan Fitzpatrick at Popular Woodworking Magazine that question and start getting the same answer from Brian Clites, your new moderator (brian@lostartpress.com). He’s happy to be abused.
So what are we going to do at the new Lost Art Press headquarters in Covington, Ky.? Well first we have to close the deal on the building next month. Then we’ll get to work on a few mechanical issues – leaks, condensation problems and some basement drainage.
After that, the building will become the offices of our small publishing company with workstations, a photography studio, proofing and scanning stations, our research library, an 1890s wet bar and a hand-tool workshop on the ground floor.
No school. Promise.
This building will allow us to have some public events. I hope to have a book release party for “The Furniture of Necessity” there next spring in our biergarten, and it will be open to the public. Also, the library and shop will be available at times for hands-on research (more details on that later). But it absolutely will not be a school.
Last week I spent a day measuring the entire building, plus the outbuilding and biergarten. I’ve posted a few photos here of the ground floor spaces. The two floors above are very nice, but as they are occupied by tenants, I’d like to keep those private.
Here are some details:
- The storefront is on the corner of West Ninth and Willard streets in a quiet residential area of Covington, one block off Main Street and one block off Pike Street – the main commercial street in the city. Willard is nice and tree-lined, with 11’-wide sidewalks.
- The front area of the storefront is huge, 26’ wide by 39’ deep. That space is almost three times the space of my current shop. And it has 11’ ceilings.
- The large bar attached to the north wall stays with the building (the plywood bar will be removed). The oak bar is either original to the building or is at least contemporaneous to it.
- Behind the brick archway is another room that measures 16’ x 13’ – this will either become the library or a guest bedroom, depending on whether Lucy or I win the leg-wrestling match.
- And behind that room are bathrooms and a utility/slop sink area – 10’ x 17’. The fate of this area also rests on the results of the pay-per-view leg wrestling match mentioned above.
- The biergarten measures roughly 24’ x 14’ and is enclosed by fences and the wall to the garage/machine room.
- The garage/machine room is 19’ x 23’ – bigger than my current shop.
It’s an exciting – and totally frightening – time for us. Lucy and I have been planning for this moment for more than three years. But it’s like having a child. Nothing can really prepare you for what’s ahead.
— Christopher Schwarz