I’ll be in Anchorage, Alaska – at least hope to be – from Feb. 28-March 6 to give a presentation on Western Shaker furniture, then teach two hand-tool woodworking classes.
It’s expensive not only to fly folks in to teach, but to have the wood shipped in – so I need a few more students than usual to make it viable for the club.
The first class – the Boarded Bookshelf from Christopher Schwarz’s “Anarchist’s Design Book” – is a two-day: Feb. 29-March 1 ($425). The second class – the Dutch Tool Chest – is a three-day: March 4-6 ($450).
So if you’re in the Anchorage area, or want to take a trip that could involve not only woodworking, but the start of the Iditarod, please consider signing up! Note that the registration fees include the wood – which makes these incredibly inexpensive in comparison to classes in our shop (I dropped my cut to a crazy low rate because, well, Alaska! Iditarod!). For more information and to register, visit the Alaska Creative Woodworkers Association website.
We use a lot of finishes in our workshop, from soap to shellac, but the one we recommend for beginning finishers is one we mix up ourselves.
It’s what Bob Flexner would label an oil/varnish blend. We just call it our shop finish.
During the last 20 years, I have developed some preferences as to the raw materials I use, but feel free to ignore those. Almost any brand of raw material will work. Here we go:
1 part Minwax Helmsman spar urethane, satin sheen
1 part boiled linseed oil
1 part odorless mineral spirits
Mix up the three liquids in a mason jar and you are ready to go. Apply it in thin coats with a clean cotton rag. Wipe it on and continue to wipe until the coat is as thin as possible. There should not be a visible puddling or pooling of liquid anywhere. You are wiping it almost dry.
Let the finish dry (it usually takes a couple hours). Use an extra-fine sanding sponge (usually #330 grit or so) to remove any finishing nibs. Apply another coat and repeat the process until you achieve the look you want. Two coats is the minimum for me and is what I use for workbenches and shop appliances. Furniture usually gets three or four. I have used as many as 10 for a customer who wanted a more plastic look.
Why This Finish?
The varnish offers a bit of protection against spills and stains. It’s not a thick film such as lacquer or a built-up shellac finish. But it does offer enough protection for a chair, bookcase or cabinet. Tabletops, which live a hard life, usually need more protection.
The boiled linseed oil offers a little color and will continue to add color as the piece is exposed to oxygen and sunlight. I like this yellowing. It’s what old furniture looks like.
The mineral spirits thins the varnish and oil, making it easy to spread the shop finish out to a thin and even coat with great ease.
Why These Raw Materials?
I prefer the Minwax Helmsman spar varnish (satin sheen) for a couple reasons. It’s easy to get at most home centers and neighborhood hardware stores. Its major competitor (here in the U.S.) is Varathane Spar Urethane. The Varathane works fine, but it smells a little stronger and takes longer to dry (usually an extra hour or more in my experience). It also gives a milky appearance to the mixture, though that doesn’t seem to change the look of the finished object.
I don’t have a preference for which boiled linseed oil I use.
As to the mineral spirits, I always strive to use odorless mineral spirits. It costs more but has fewer volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and almost no smell.
The Results
Aside from the protection that this finish offers, I like the low-sheen, hardly there aspect of the finish. It looks like wood does when it has been freshly planed. To your fingers, it doesn’t feel like the wood is wrapped in plastic. And it’s difficult to mess up when applying it. I’m sure it’s possible to mess it up, but I haven’t seen it happen yet.
— Christopher Schwarz
A shop stool. The seat is finished with our shop finish. The base is finished with two coats of General Finishes’ Milk Paint in Coastal Blue.
Anyone who has read “The Anarchist’s Tool Chest” or worked in my shop knows that I dislike French-fitted cubbyholes for tools. I prefer my tools to roam free and migrate amongst my tills as they rise and fall in importance to the job at hand.
I still think this way, but this morning I took a small step to both corral my pencils and tip my hat to my Lie-Nielsen 60-1/2 block plane. I added a small oak divider to keep my pencils, knives and 6” rules in one spot. And I added a smaller divider for my block plane at the other end of the till.
The pencil divider has been a long time coming. I hoard my mechanical pencils, rules and erasers and the like (you have to in a group shop or you will end up pencil-less). And like Nesquik or Tang, they soon dissolve into the rest of the till, hiding under the other tools and becoming invisible.
The divider for the block plane is simply an admission that this block plane has been with me for 23 years and isn’t going anywhere.
The dividers are oak scraps that I secured with headless brads only. So if this turns out to be a bad idea, it’s reversible.
One other small tip: to restrain and protect valuable tools, such as my sliding bevels, I keep them in small cardboard boxes. The boxes can migrate (a good thing) but they never become invisible (also a good thing).
While building the Staked Low Stool this weekend during a class, I discovered a significant keystroke error in my text. I also noticed an inconsistency between the cutting list and the text.
So yesterday I rebuilt the stool to confirm there weren’t other errors (there weren’t).
Here are the two known errors:
On page 92, the correct resultant angle for the stool is 21°, not 11°.
On page 99, the correct size of the legs is 1-1/2” x 1-1/2”, not 1-3/4” x 1-3/4”.
We will include an errata sheet inside every copy of the expanded “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” That sheet will also include a url for downloading a corrected chapter. The chapter will be updated electronically for customers who purchased the pdf.
This week we pushed out updates to almost all of our books that are available via pdf. So…
No. 1: Please don’t worry, the emails aren’t a scam. They are indeed from us.
No. 2: What changed? This is a technical update – we didn’t change the editorial content. Instead, we added Bookmarks and interior navigation links to make the pdfs easier to use. When you open the pdf, you can click on the icon that looks like a bookmark on the left side of the screen and you’ll see all the chapters listed there. Click on a bookmark and you’ll jump to that point in the text.
We also added interior links from each book’s Table of Contents. Go to the Table of Contents in any of the new pdfs. Click on the chapter you want to read. You will go there.
We also added the image of the book’s cover to the pdf (if it was missing). This is a cosmetic change.
No. 3: Why did you do this? To make the pdfs easier to use for you and us.
No. 4: I bet you added DRM or other sneaky stuff to watch me in the shower. No, we did not. We just made the pdfs easier to use. We also reset the counter for your downloads. So if you had reached your limit, it’s now reset to zero.
No. 5: What if I didn’t get an email for a pdf I own? Chances are that the notice was sent to an email you aren’t using now. You can log into your account at our store and you’ll see all your downloads that are available. If that doesn’t work, you can send a note to help@lostartpress.com.
