“He understood for the first time that the world is not dumb at all, but merely waiting for someone to speak to it in a language it understands.”
— “Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke
Warning: This is one of those blog entries that will make some of you wonder why you bother visiting here. You might just want to skip this entry and go play with your safety gear, micrometers and “Chicago Manual of Style, 16th Edition.”
As I’m waiting for the epoxy to harden on the half-scale model of a chair shown above, I’ve poured myself a stiff drink and am raising a toast to Jonathan Strange.
Strange is a magician in my favorite contemporary novel: “Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell” by Susanna Clarke. I’ve been quite obsessed with this book since it came out in 2004. It is, and I do not say this lightly, the most finely crafted piece of fiction I’ve read as an adult. Every footnote is pure genius. And it reeks of a work that has been finely combed over like the garden at Versailles.
(Oh, and If I ever get a tattoo, it will be the silhouette of the raven in the book. Also: I am just as likely to get a tattoo as I am to start vaping my own ear wax.)
So Strange, the radical magician in the book, figures out that to do really interesting magic, one needs to be somewhat mad. The insane kind of mad; not the Lumberjocks sort of mad. As Strange is quite sane at first, he gins up all sorts of ways to induce madness. In the end, it involves cats (naturally) and drinking something awful.
And that describes my ideal writing and design process.
“I’m not going to a party; I’m a writer.” That’s what I tell the nice people at the liquor store when I arrive at the register with two boxes of wine and four six packs of potent beer. The wine is for my wife (also a writer); the beer is for me.
Lucy and I very rarely get drunk. The last time I got drunk was by accident (Note to self: Never drink casually with the Irish.) But Lucy and I do have a drink with dinner and then we have a drink after dinner. Then we write and talk and write.
I know that some odd souls are fantastic writers and designers when they are dead sober. I am not. I find that a drink helps. As does fatigue, stress, incredibly loud music and stupid external constraints.
Why? Who cares why. Feel free to make up a theory. I’d rather just use these tools that have worked (since 1986) to write and design stuff at 5 p.m. that seems out of my league at 11 a.m. And with these tools I don’t have to bifurcate my private parts (thank you, Mayan civilization) or vape my boogers.
So I say to the Stone Saison in my glass tonight: Bring on the madness.
“Most of (Hans) Wegner’s furniture is delivered untreated – only buffed and treated with soap and water, so that the fine wood is ready to become more beautiful with use. Some furniture is delivered with a clear lacquer finish.”
— “Hans J. Wegner: Hacedor de Sillas (Chairmaker)” by Jens Bernsen (Danish Design Centre, 1998)
I’m in the middle of building a new chair design in ash and am planning on finishing the chair in soap and water – a finish that is common in Denmark.
It’s a simple, easy-to-mess-up finish that I first heard about from Bob Flexner while I edited his column “Flexner on Finishing.” You can read a 2010 column by Flexner on the finish here at Woodshop News. For more details, including photos of the mixing process, check out this blog entry from Caleb James.
I’ve seen this finish on some vintage pieces at a couple stores that carry Danish Modern pieces here in Cincinnati. I visited one of the stores yesterday to get some photos, but they had filled the showroom with giant live-edge tables. Dipped in plastic. Not good.
So the photo above is one of Wegner’s pieces.
Like paint, oil or beeswax, the soap finish appeals to me because it doesn’t require special equipment (spraying lacquer) or years of experience (a shellac polish) to execute. It’s a good place for beginners to start when finishing furniture (or floors). I’ll post photos of the finish next month when the chair is complete.
The simplest project in the upcoming “Furniture of Necessity” has required the most study and forethought.
It’s a bookcase, which is a pretty standard piece of furniture. And the typical way of dealing with the different sizes of books is to make the shelves adjustable. I don’t know why, but I don’t like adjustable shelving systems.
Call me a control freak, but the end user can easily set up the shelves to make the whole thing ungainly, top-heavy and dangerous. I’ve seen pieces that I’ve built that were configured so that the heaviest books were up top and the lightweight stuff was perched below. Yikes.
So this design has fixed shelves. There are three shelf-openings for the three primary size ranges of books that I deal with. I end up buying a lot of odd-size books (thank you, daft art directors), and perhaps you do, too. So the openings and the depth of the carcase accommodate the most sizes possible.
The bottom shelf handles the large books, up to an 11” x 17” trim size (which can be a bit larger than that). The middle shelf handles the very odd square books and the American standard 8.5” x 11” trim size (which again is different once you add the cover boards to it). And the top shelf is for the 6” x 9” trim size and smaller.
The other challenge was making the joinery dead-nuts simple. I’ll deal with that in a future post.
Of course, after designing it, my youngest daughter mentioned how this sort of carcase would be ideal for the family’s collection of vinyl records, with the turntable and amplifier on the open top shelf.
Note: Lately I’ve been pouring all of my creative energy into writing my next book (and editing the books of others). And with Jeff Burks on vacation, the content has been a little light here. So here is the draft miniature chapter I wrote on the airplane on using nails.
I’m often asked why I prefer nails to screws. Here are three reasons: Nails look better. They are quick to install with a hammer. And they allow for wood movement during changes in temperature and humidity.
Screws are ugly (I know, this is in the eye of the be-screwer or be-nailer). They should not be installed with a hammer. And they can crack your work when the weather changes – unless you take extra precautions.
That said, properly installed screws hold better. It’s a fact. And they are more accepted by the woodworking elite.
Nails, on the other hand, seem to be the herpes of the furniture-making world. I was taught this hierarchy: Wood-to-wood joinery is the best. Screws are OK. Nails are for rough, temporary or indifferent work.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Nails have been at the core of fine woodwork since Roman (perhaps Egyptian) times. We are just too blind to acknowledge it. Nails are often invisible to the eye – they are toenailed under a shelf or divider. Snaking into a plinth. At the back of a piece and facing the wall.
I see nails as important as the hardware you use for a piece – the hinges, knobs and locks. Cheap nails look like crap. Good nails enhance the piece. But what’s a good nail? Allow me to sidestep the question for a moment and present a historical aside. I would rather show this to you than simply tell it.
Wrought, Cut and Wire Nails Nail nerds (reporting for duty!) divide the nail world into three broad categories based on how the nail was made:
Wrought or Roman Nails: These are blacksmith-made. The nail’s shaft is roughly square in section and tapers to a point on all four of its edges. The head is formed with hammer blows and typically has three facets.
Once you master these nails, they are iron joy. They bend and move readily. They cinch down hard. They will rob your body of a kidney if you don’t have a trust fund. A blacksmith will charge you more than $1 a nail. That will seem like a lot of money until you start to use them in your work. Then you will know that you are being undercharged.
Oh, and they look fantastic.
Cut Nails. In the later 18th century (as near as I can tell), ingenious mechanics developed machinery that could shear out a ton of nails in a short period of time. All that was required was a flat bar of steel and a machine that could “cut” the steel.
Cut nails are a rectangular square in section. In one view of the nail it has parallel sides. In the other view, it tapers. And it usually has a head.
Because of the shape of its shaft, a cut nail needs a pilot hole (except in some soft woods) and has to be oriented a certain way to avoid splitting the work. Think of the nail as a wedge. It is. Apply the wedge so it pushes against the end grain of the top board you are nailing down. Otherwise you are splitting mini firewood with your nail.
If this confuses you, don’t worry. You will do it wrong only once.
Wire Nails. OK, these really are the venereal disease of the nail world. They have a round shaft. They don’t hold for squat. They are cheap. They don’t require a pilot hole. They are the reason people think nails are for rough work.
I avoid using wire nails in my work unless I want them to work loose about a week after I drive them in. Which is never.
Bottom line: I use wrought nails when I (or the customer) can afford it. I use cut nails when I cannot afford wrought nails. I use wire nails to sprinkle the driveway of my enemy.
On the Naming of Nails Nails have a ridiculous number of confusing names. For the most part, I suggest you ignore the names at first and focus on how they look. That will usually tell you what they are good for. For furniture work, we usually use four types of nails.
Brads. This generic name refers to a nail with a smallish head. The brad is used to lock shelves into dados with what is called a “toenail joint.” Or to fasten one piece of wood to another when the head should be small. Because the head is small, the brad’s holding power is in its shank. So it’s not the best nail for attaching a cabinet back or a chest’s bottom boards.
Clouts or Roseheads. Nails that have a prominent head have the most fastening power. They can keep a cabinet back or chest bottom from being pulled off a carcase. The price of this holding power is that the head is quite visible in the finished piece.
Many times this form of nail is used for “clenching,” which is when an extra long nail is driven through two pieces and the too-long tip is driven back into the work.
Headless Nails. These thin nails have little or no head. They are used mostly for attaching mouldings and hold the work in place while the glue dries.
Pins. These are usually wire nails with a head that are used for attaching lightweight pieces of hardware, such as an escutcheon for a lock, or for temporarily holding pieces of veneer in place.
On the ‘Penny Size’ of Nails The origin of the so-called “penny system” of sizing nails is murky – on par with the stories surrounding the “nib” on the tips of old handsaw. Suffice it to say that the reason we still use the old penny system is because it is fecking brilliant.
How long is a 5d nail? (The “d” stands for “penny.”) I think I know the answer, but I’d have to look it up first to be sure. The point is that it doesn’t matter how long a 5d nail is, as long as you don’t use the metric system.
Here’s how it works: When you nail things together you have a top board and a bottom board. The nail enters the top board first and then passes into the bottom board.
So how thick is your top board? Let’s say it is 1/2” thick. Now convert that fraction, 1/2”, to eighths – 4/8”. The top number, 4, is the penny size you need: or 4d.
There are exceptions. When working in soft pine, you should increase the nail size by one penny, or 5d in our example. And the second exception is this: Use your intelligence. If the bottom board is very thin, the particular boards at hand are easy to split, you are clenching the nail or you need massive amounts of holding power, you need to adapt and adjust.
On the Pilot Hole Wrought nails and cut nails usually need a pilot hole, otherwise you will end up splitting the top board. The size of the pilot depends on many factors, mostly how close your nail is to the end of your board and the species being nailed.
My best advice is this: If you are unsure if you will split the work, make a test joint that is identical in every way to the real joint. Start with a pilot hole that is the same size as the tip of your nail. For example, my 4d clout nails have a tip that is about 3/32”, so that’s where I begin.
Drill the pilot to a depth that is only two-thirds the length of the nail’s shaft, otherwise the joint will be weak. If the top board splits, move up a size in bit diameter. Repeat until the joint holds and does not split.
This sounds arduous. It isn’t. After a few projects you will get a feel for the right pilot hole.
One caveat: With wrought nails, I like to use a drill bit that tapers along its length. This greatly reduces splitting.
Driving & Setting Furniture Nails If you’ve done your due diligence, then driving the nails is the easy part. I like a hammer with a 16-ounce head for most nails. For pins and headless nails I use an 8 oz. cross-peen hammer. The cross-peen is ideal for starting the nail without whacking your fingers.
If your hammer has a slightly domed striking face, you should be able to set the nail flush to the wood without denting it (called “Frenching” by the “English”).
Setting the nails is done with a nail set, also called a nail punch. You usually don’t set clouts or roseheads because the head will splinter the work badly. For brads and headless nails, set the nail 1/32” below the surface – and no more than 1/16”. Setting the nail deeper will make the nail hole difficult to putty or it will simply call more attention to itself if you don’t putty the nail.
Nail sets/punches for furniture making usually come in three sizes. Use the one that most closely matches the size of the head.
The above description is the absolute shortest treatise I could write on nails. There is a lot more to learn, but the education should come from the end of a hammer, not a book.
So don’t read another word on nails until you’ve driven a few cut nails or wrought nails using the instructions above. Most of the questions in your head right now will evaporate as soon as you get busy.
“When you come to think of it, settles were the only form of traditional oak furniture that were not used for dining; they were for resting, conversing and drinking. As such, they were sociable, not hierarchical. Unlike other forms of seating, settles did not embody the social hierarchy in which great chairs were reserved for those of the highest rank, joint stools served for (almost) everyone else and forms were for the lowliest – servants children and women.”
— John Fiske, Antique Collecting magazine, September 2013, and “When Oak Was New: English Furniture and Daily Life 1530-1700.”
PS: Apologies for the diarrhea of posts today. I’m emptying a backlog of entries I wrote while I didn’t have consistent Internet access.