Katy has made another couple batches of her soft wax, which you can purchase on her etsy store. Each tin is $12 and contains approximately 4 oz. of wax (by volume).
Katy makes the wax in my basement shop, She packages it up and even designed the label.
The wax is based on an old French recipe and a fine polish for the interiors of woodwork (and exteriors – I love it on chairs – though it is not designed for high-performance situations).
Note that the wax is not for your beard, mustache or lizard.
Speaking of lizards, modeling the wax today is Brunhilde, Katy’s chameleon companion. Yes, Brunhilde is named after the princess in the legend (and the movie “D’Jango”).
All the legs featured in “The Anarchist’s Design Book” are octagonal or square in section – this makes them easy to make without a lathe. For this chair design, I decided to turn the legs but make the shape simple enough that you could shave them if, again, you are lathe-less in Louisiana.
This shape of leg is a modernized bamboo turning. The top section of the leg tapers and flows into the leg’s tapered tenon. The taper begins 6-1/2″ from the top of the leg and tapers from 1-1/2″ to 5/8″ at the top of the tenon. The bottom section of the leg tapers to 1″ at the floor.
This profile looks nice with the 12.8° taper I use on my tenons. However, if you use a different angle, I’m going to show you how I laid out the leg so you can design it to suit your tools.
First I made the leg blanks into 1-1/2″ x 1-1/2″ x 19″ octagons. I chucked them in the lathe and turned the leg to a straight cylinder (note that after you get the leg dimensions figured out you can skip this step to save time).
Then I marked the length of my tenon (3″) on the leg and turned the tenon very slightly oversized. The tenon starts as 1-1/16″ in diameter and tapers to 5/8″ at the top.
With the taper roughed in I took a straightedge and held it up to the taper and eyeballed where this taper would end at the full diameter of the leg. This guess is about 6-1/2″ from the top. I could have drawn it out in CAD, but I like wood better than pixels.
I marked the cylinder at 6-1/2″ from the top of the leg and then turned the remainder of the top taper to that point. Note that I turned a small groove where the tenon began. This is an important mark when you shave the tenon to its final size.
The rest is easy. I turned the bottom taper from the 6-1/2″ line down to the bottom of the leg. The bottom of the leg is 1″ in diameter. In the photo above I’m looking for humps with a straightedge.
Then I removed the leg from the lathe and used my tapered tenon cutter to shave the tenon to the perfect shape and size. It took only a few turns to do. When I shaved the legs in the tenon cutter I stopped cutting right at the groove I turned in the leg.
Then I sanded the legs (avoiding the tenons) with #180-grit sandpaper and got ready to leg up the chair. That’s tomorrow’s entry.
After a year of burrowing deeper than our Kenton County moles, I’ve decided to attend a few events this year to see old friends, repay some favors and do some research during side trips. The following is a list of places where you can hurl rotten garbage at me without coming to my home.
Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event, Braxton Brewing, Covington, Ky. March 10-11, 2017
We’ll have the Lost Art Press storefront open on one of the two days (probably Saturday). And will be organizing a barbecue/beer/Hammerschlager event at Rhinegeist Brewing across the river. Details to come. If you attended last year’s event at Braxton then you know it was a hoot – probably the biggest Lie-Nielsen Hand Tool Event I’ve been to.
Handworks, Amana, Iowa May 19-20, 2017
Handworks is the S%^&. Period. End of story. Get there by any means possible. We will be there with books and tools. This year I promise not to die.
Dictum classes in Germany Build a Sawbench, June 12-14 Build a Mallet and a Marking Gauge, June 15-16
These are the only two classes I’m teaching in 2017. Heck they might be the only classes I teach for the next decade. I owe the good people at Dictum a huge personal favor. These two classes are my way of repaying them. If you’ve never taken a class at their Niederalteich location, I highly recommend it. Many of my favorite stories begin with the line: “We were at the gasthaus in Niederalteich when Brian….” The classes are taught in English. The eating is in German.
Lie-Nielsen Open House July 7-8
I have so many friends who attend this event that it’s difficult for me to skip it. The Open House is always a wonderful weekend of food, woodworking and axe throwing. Bring your family and they’ll enjoy it as well.
European Woodworking Shop Sept. 16-17
Again, this is one of the few events that one simply cannot miss. The Cressing Temple barns inspire woodworking awe (and regular awe). There are always lots of fun makers, tool dealers and English-types at this well-organized show. And the food! I’ll be there.
Please note that this blog entry does not mark my return to public touring and teaching. This is probably too much activity already, and next year I will burrow in deeper.
When I finished up writing “The Anarchist’s Design Book” in January 2016, there were two projects that I wish I’d included: a staked armchair and a staked settee.
At the time, my designs for these two pieces were still juvenile. Well maybe that’s not correct. They were too complex to be presented in a book aimed at simple forms. So I set them aside. During the last 12 months, I’ve completed these two designs and began building the staked armchair this week.
For the armchair, I finally got the arm shape to my satisfaction while drinking a beer in a Cleveland restaurant (that’s the 45-second sketch above). While the arm is dead simple, it has an interior curve that echoes the curve at the back of the seat and a bevel on the front that repeats the bevel on the underside of the seat.
I’m going to photograph the construction process and share it here on the blog. After I get this armchair built and I also finish the settee we might add them to the next printing of “The Anarchist’s Design Book.” (If we do that, we will offer free downloads of the new chapters to all previous purchasers, no matter where you bought the book.)
This armchair will be made with sycamore and hickory left over from the last chair.
After reading hundreds (thousands?) of historical woodworking texts I have noticed a mantra for making furniture: Use wood that is well-seasoned.
It’s fantastic advice. Perhaps it’s even the starting point for all fine furniture making. But does it apply to building your workbench? If we follow the historical texts, then yes. I have yet to find any old book that says: The stock for your bench can be a little (or a lot) wet.
And yet, here’s the problem that I have discovered after years of building benches. Thick stock (6”, for example) can take way more than a decade to dry. I’ve cut into 6”-thick slabs that had been air-dried for 13 years that were more than 60 percent moisture content (MC). That’s way above the 6 percent recommended by many books.
Should one wait 50 more years with these slabs? Use MDF instead?
After working with massive wet slabs for the last seven years or so, I offer this recommendation based on personal experience – not on historical research or anything I’ve gleaned from my library:
Use wet wood for your benchtop. Even if it has been seasoned less than a year, you’ll be OK. Just be prepared to flatten the thing. And don’t be an idiot about your undercarriage (that sounds like advice to my teenage self).
Here’s my strategy with wet slabs: Use a species for the benchtop that dries readily, such as red oak. For the undercarriage, use wood that is at equilibrium moisture content. Because these components are rarely more than 3” thick they can be kiln-dried.
This combination works well in my experience. The undercarriage is dry. It won’t shrink. But it acts like a frame for drying the top, which shrinks around the joints on the tops of the legs.
Yes, the top will distort a bit as it dries. But you’re a woodworker – flatten the sucker.
But when the benchtop finishes drying after a few years, you will find it to be glorious. Slab tops don’t move much (if at all) after a few years in the shop. They just sit there like a machinist’s reference surface.
I think it’s worth the effort to find a slab. And I think it’s worth the effort to work with a wet one.
The last few wet slabs I’ve worked with came from North Carolina sawyer Lesley Caudle. He sells kits for workbenches that are inexpensive and ready to go – you just have to pick them up or work with Lesley to get them trucked to you. (You can email Lesley at lesley27011@yahoo.com.) Don’t be alarmed if the benchtop was cut less than 12 months ago. Embrace it.
