If you haven’t bought a Tooley Park scriber, this is the week to do it. This little tool is handy for marking chair and table legs for final trimming, plus scribing cabinets and countertops to irregular walls. And it’s on sale for 20 percent off until Feb. 8.
The sale applies only to the scribers (not the accessories). The scriber I use is the original Fat Boy (FB) scriber in black. It’s available in five other colors.
It’s a well-made tool that works elegantly and is built in the UK by a furniture maker. Highly recommended.
Peter Galbert just released a new 8-hour video on making his Temple Chair (from either green or kiln-dried wood). Along with his expert instruction – and Peter is one of the best teachers I’ve ever encountered – you’ll get a handbook, as well as full-sized pdf plans drawn by Jeff Lefkowitz.
With the finishing complete, the appearance of wear is believable along the seat, sticks and comb.
The following is excerpted from John Porritt’s “The Belligerent Finisher.” This shows the first two steps (surface preparation and adding color) before he goes on to burnish, stain, paint, shellac, oil, dent, wax, and add the finishing touches. It sounds overwhelming but the process is such an incredible transformation that you can’t help but to want to give it a try.
Porritt, who works from a small red barn in upstate New York, has been at his trade for many decades, and his eye for color and patina is outstanding. We’ve seen many examples of his work, and it is impressive because you cannot tell that any repair or restoration has been done.
His techniques are simple and use (mostly) everyday objects and chemicals – a pot scrubber, a deer antler, vinegar and tea. How you apply these tools – with a wee bit of belligerence – is what’s important.
The book is lavishly illustrated with color photos that clearly explain the process. With the help of this book, you’ll be able to fool at least some of the people some of the time with your own “aged” finishes.
While similar to its cousin behind it, this chair features a square-cornered seat and a backrest that is straight. Soon, many of these crisp lines will be eased by burnishing.
This second side chair is made of oak. The seat is white oak and the rest of its parts are red oak. Because I built this chair using American species, the grain is quite straight and regular. With Welsh stick chairs and other vernacular forms, the wood is often quite gnarly. So my goal with this chair is to add quite a bit of texture to make the chair more interesting.
To help the chair look more like an old survivor, I used young, small-diameter trees. These were available to me after the workers came through. Now they’re all using wood chippers, which is most unfortunate – certainly for me. The grain of these small trees has more character than large-diameter trees with long-straight trunks.
In addition to the texture, I want the chair to have a nice chestnut brown color to the wood that looks like it has been covered in green paint – a common color on old chairs. In the areas where the sitter would rub against the seat, the green paint will be worn through. Plus, like all chairs that have had a long and interesting life, this chair will have lots of burnished surfaces.
Just like with the first chair, this chair was finished straight from the tools – no sandpaper. Plus the tenons and any pegs have been left a little proud, which makes them easy to burnish.
Give the piece a good soaking with water to raise the grain and soften the wood a bit.
Surface Preparation. I begin this process by giving the chair a good soaking with water, which will raise the grain and soften it. I immediately follow that with the nylon brush, which is chucked into an electric drill. This is the first step to adding texture, as the nylon bristles wear away some of the softer earlywood in the oak.
You could probably get the same effect with a wire brush. As you go over your chair, spend more time brushing the areas that would contact the sitter, including the seat, sticks, backrest and the leg ends.
The nylon brush adds texture to the piece by gently wearing away some of the softer earlywood. Focus your efforts on the areas that contact the sitter.
It may seem strange to hear about using the nylon wheel brush to take out the soft earlywood and then burnish it to get a surface skin. The thing with old surfaces is they have undulations. Sometimes these are like a fine ripple, a movement to the surface where the wood has shrunk, expanded with moisture, or been abraded by time so that there are ridges and troughs. It’s not a surface straight from a cutting tool, so the brush action gets movement intothe wood and the burnishing pulls it over to consolidate it. A good, used, worn surface that reflects light in an uneven fashion.
Sample sticks are a roadmap for your finishing process and show you how the different colors and chemicals will interact. It can be helpful to label each sample.
Add Color. Before I start adding color to a piece, I’ll make sample sticks using scraps from the project itself. This prevents unwanted surprises.
The first coloring step requires us to first add tannin to the wood. Then we’ll add a solution made with vinegar and steel wool, which reacts with the tannins to give a nice, aged color to the wood.
Add tannins to the wood by brushing on a solution of black tea mixed with household ammonia.
To make the tannic solution, first make a batch of strong, black tea that you steep overnight (do not add milk or sugar). With the tea at room temperature, add some household ammonia – the final mixture should be about 10 percent ammonia and 90 percent tea. (Use ammonia without added soap.)
The ammonia seems to help drive the tannins into the wood.
Once the mixture is applied, I follow that by going over all the surfaces with a heat gun. The heat gun raises the grain and speeds the process along. If you aren’t in a hurry, you can let the tea flash off on its own.
The vinegar and iron solution should turn the wood a blackish color. If no color appears – or it is weak – use a stronger solution.
Now it’s time to add the color. The solution is made by dissolving a pad of oil-free steel wool in a jar of household white vinegar. I make mine in a large lidded jar. It usually takes three days to a week for the metal to dissolve. I also like to make batches in different strengths. You can make a stronger color by adding more steel wool to the solution.
I brush the solution on with a chip brush. If the wood does not quickly turn a brown/black, you should use a stronger solution. Set the chair aside and allow the solution to dry.
As I write this, in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, hundreds of attendees and a dozen or so presenters are enjoying the waning hours of the 27th annual “Working Wood in the 18th Century” conference. This year’s theme was “To Furnish a Town: High, Low, and In-Between,” and I was honored to be asked to reproduce for it a piece in the museum collection, a late 18th-/early 19th-century dovetailed blanket chest.
And I was very much looking forward to the other presentations, including CW joiners Bill Pavlak and John Peeler talking about the evolution of style and construction on drop-front desks and dining tables. Curator Tara Chicirda on how 18th-century homes were furnished (and how we outfit those same spaces today). Conservator Chris Swan on how furniture surface decoration and finish has changed over time. And lots more. I love this stuff! (Heck – I even bought a new car in large part so I didn’t have to worry about mechanical issues while driving from Cincinnati to Williamsburg – that’s how eager I was to go!)
Check out the wave on those sweetgum end boards!
I’m not sure if the CW folk consider this chest by an unknown maker as representative as “low” or “in-between,” and I didn’t think to ask. (But because I’ve never met a shell carving I wanted to carve or a marquetry panel I was slavering to make, it’s safe to assume they asked me as a representative of the vernacular, so not high.) Once I got a closer look at the chest, I categorized it as a “high low,” or “low in-between.” The joinery and simple design was well executed, and the dovetails were evenly spaced and well cut…but no city joiner would have chosen sweetgum (Liquidambar styraciflua) as one of the primary woods for this piece. You know how we often say, “Wood hates you?” Well sweetgum loathes the very thought of your existence.
The maker used Southern yellow pine for the front, back, top and plinth; the sides and bottom are sweetgum. Notice the dovetails pulling apart at the sides. That’s the sweetgum working its warped magic. These dovetails are all wedged (the wedges are in the middle of each pin). In most species, that would lock the joints together for generations. I suspect these started pulling apart not terribly long after construction…because I got the same wavy and exciting drying in my sweetgum boards within a day of surfacing it – after it had been carefully dried, allowed to acclimate, flattened in stages to allow for moisture exchange and to accommodate movement, and generally treated like I would care for a sickly kitten: carefully and lovingly. Then the kitten poops on you.
I had to work around the splits – there was but one slab. What you see is all you get!
I was lucky to find a wide slab of sweetgum at C.R. Muterspaw (it’s not typically a commercially available wood), and Shea Alexander of Alexander Brothers tracked down, cut and dried some gorgeous SYP for me. I needed stuff wide enough for single boards for the front, back and ends – those big boards were a lot easier to find 225 years ago, I’m guessing (or not…the original maker scabbed on narrow pieces to the top and bottom to make up the overall width – but maybe that was just poor planning).
This was a big pine tree; the planer is a 20″. And the shop smelled like a Southern forest for days afterward (yum!).
The biggest problem I expected from the pine was sap, and of course I got it. I had to wipe my saw down with mineral spirits after every couple of cuts. But I also had a little trouble with the SYP splitting – so I incorporated that into my planned stage show. I cut and fit all the joinery in our shop, kerfed the pins for the wedges on all but the fourth corner, and cut the plinth pieces and moulding blanks for the underside of the lid (the original had some kind of moulding nailed on around the sides and front, though it’s now missing). I’d finish up the kerfs on stage, then assemble the chest…and enjoy the audience gasps as the SYP split while I tapped in the wedges. I figured if I anticipated the split, it might not happen – a reverse psychology play, if you will, on “man plans, the gods laugh.”
I was so close to ready!
But gosh did the gods laugh…
Two weeks ago, as I was finishing up the prep on my chest pieces and making lists of the tools to pack for the trip (in my Dutch tool chest, of course!), I slipped on an icy Covington city street and snapped my ankle in three places. So instead of driving my new car to Williamsburg, I’m sitting on my couch (crutches within grabbing distance), with my ankle elevated above my heart and recovering from surgery. (Good thing I’ve plenty of editing to keep me busy in the coming weeks!)
Thanks, Zach, for letting me steal your IG snap (but did you have to take one where all my wrinkles are showing?!).
I wasn’t able to do the presentation I’d planned (obviously), but I did manage to cobble together a slide show with voiceover – thank goodness I took lots of pictures of both the original chest and my own build process – and the folk at CW made it work (thank you to everyone there!). Then I Zoomed in for the Saturday morning session, and took questions afterward. (It’s weird to watch yourself on screen.)
I plan to get back to the chest build in a few months – I hate leaving things unfinished. I just have to hope the sweetgum pieces haven’t in the meantime warped into hyperbolic paraboloids. But I rather expect them to.
In the meantime, I’ll be here on the couch, writing and editing. The only ones happy about all this are Olivia and Toby.
The islands in this garden, though small, punch above their weight in visual impact.
This is an excerpt from our newest book “Good Eye” by Jim Tolpin and George Walker.
Symmetry has the ability to lead the eye to a focal point. Artisans have understood and exploited this across the globe.
Like their counterparts in the West, traditional artisans in China, Korea and Japan understood symmetry and used it extensively in their designs. By symmetry, we mean creating designs that display a mirror image both left and right. Symmetry is found throughout nature and universally admired in the beauty of a human face.
Examples abound from the East of architecture and furniture that employed symmetry to lead the eye and create a harmonious aesthetic. This common mastery of symmetry perhaps contributed to the European embrace of furniture designs from China in the 18th century.
Yet, there was something quite different developing in design from Japan: the use of asymmetry. One of the best ways to understand it is to think about the sand gardens that are sometimes called Zen gardens. The carefully raked sand is a small ocean, and off to one end an island of rock juts up from the waves. It’s a visual surprise by which our eyes cannot help but be captivated.
Asymmetry employed in this fashion imparts a sense of surprise and wonder. It can give a design a lift in an unexpected place, sort of like cruising along a smooth highway and driving over a bump. Not a bump that jars the suspension but enough to awaken your senses. Japanese furniture makers employed asymmetry along two different paths – simple and complex asymmetry. Simple asymmetry is uniform, like that sand ocean in the garden, with one element of surprise sprouting up to complement the design. Consider a simple chest of drawers, with a bank of drawers laid out in a regular symmetrical pattern, with one unexpected asymmetrical drawer or door to add a bit of the unexpected.
The small asymmetrical door at the bottom of this chest breaks up what might be a monotonous composition.
Let’s take a look at a traditional tansu chest that employs this use of asymmetry. One of the hallmarks of this type of asymmetry is how powerfully it captures the eye immediately. When you look at the piece at top right (above), did you find your eye pulled to that small asymmetrical door in the lower corner?
Let’s take a look at what lies beneath this traditional tansu chest of drawers.
Simple Asymmetry – Form
The governing form is a square that sits inside the sides, top and base at the bottom of the case. The drawer configuration actually tricks the eye and it’s not apparent that this is built around a simple square.
Simple Asymmetry – Define
The artisan divided the height of the square into three equal parts, and that bottom part gives us the module and also the height of the bottom drawer. They used that module to divide up the two bottom drawers into a pattern of proportional asymmetry. The width of the longer bottom drawer (two parts), along with the width of the small door (one part) is the asymmetrical spark in the design.
Simple Asymmetry – Refine
The height of the base uses the height of three of the horizontal dividers, stepped off to size the heavier base at the bottom. The heights of the top three drawers occupy the top two parts of our square form. These drawers are graduated. We cover this method for adjusting drawer height in more detail in chapter 7.
Contemporary Design Inspired by Simple Asymmetry
This simple use of asymmetry has several lessons for the contemporary builder. First, we can take a symmetrical design and add a bit of delight by introducing one small element of asymmetry. This small element can stand out due to its unusual size. But it can also stand out with a variety of visual treatments that captivate the eye. That asymmetrical drawer or door could also be an open space instead of closed. Or the door or drawer face could be a different kind of wood. The overall case and drawers might be made entirely of cherry, and one asymmetrical drawer might be made of maple. The asymmetrical element could also display a different texture. Finally, and possibly the most captivating visually, is to employ something like that island jutting up in the midst of our sand sea. By that we mean employing a design with a uniform background and inserting an unexpected island.
At right (below) is a mirror frame with a small shelf to hold keys and other small items in a foyer or entryway. The frame is a “floater,” which means the mirror is centered inside the frame with a gap, so a dark shadowline surrounds the mirror itself. The small asymmetric drawer could be a different wood or have a different texture than the adjacent open space.
Other than the mirror itself, the eye is drawn to the small drawer in the corner.
Complex Asymmetry
The second way these artisans employed asymmetry is more complex. By that we mean that they used asymmetry to drive the entire design. This use of asymmetry is not so much to display a subtle surprise. Instead, it’s used to give a design a distinct look or personality. Let’s look at a complex asymmetrical design, a stair-step tansu chest.
When you first look at the chest at right (below), what do you see? Is it the stair steps that rise up? Can you see how the different elements in the design vary in both height and width? This is how this use of asymmetry is so captivating visually.
When we look at this design, there are a few elements that are a mirror image, but taken as a whole, this is not a design governed by symmetry. Oddly enough, the square drawer on the top and its mirror image on the bottom are separated diagonally from each other at the extreme ends of the design. If you look closely at the proportions and the diagonal lines in Jim’s deconstruction, it’s clear that this was designed around simple proportions and geometry. Yet, it’s a collection of dissimilar elements assembled together with its own unique personality.
This stairstep tansu chest takes asymmetry to another level. Yet it still has symmetrical elements woven within.
Complex Asymmetry – Form
Similar to the earlier chest, this one is built around a square – but it is not obvious due to the overall stairstep configuration that grabs the viewer’s attention. The overall height from the bottom of the lower drawers to the top of the case is divided into four parts to establish the module.
Interesting to note: When simple wholenumber proportions are used to lay out a design as in this deconstruction of the tansu chest, diagonal lines usually intersect important boundaries.
Complex Asymmetry – Define
All the major elements of the design are either fractions or multiples of our module. The lower drawers are one-half module in height. One-fifth a module defines the width of the dividers, two-fifths gives the height of the base. Module segments define the steps rise and run.
Contemporary Design Inspired by Complex Asymmetry
Complex use of asymmetry also has some lessons for the contemporary builder. It offers the possibility that an entire design can employ asymmetry using simple proportions and geometric shapes. Many combinations of asymmetrical pairings can be employed along with mirror-image symmetrical elements sprinkled throughout a design. With that in mind, let’s take a look at an asymmetrical design inspired by a mid-century modern design by Charles Hayward.
This cabinet also mixes symmetrical elements alongside asymmetrical elements to create an interesting form. The proportions are deceptively simple.
It begins with form, governed by a rectangle that’s a simple six parts high by seven parts wide. One sixth the height is the module.
The front elevation has an asymmetrical layout in the configuration of the large doors. The full length door is three modules wide, and the pair of shorter symmetrical doors combine to occupy four modules of the horizontal space. These four modules also govern the overall length of the two upper drawers. The case sits one-and-a-half modules off the floor. The drawers are one-module high.
This design employed a secondary module to size the widths of the two asymmetrical drawers at the top of the case. The secondary module is based on dividing four parts into three spacings and giving the width of the smaller drawer one part.
Going Deeper with Proportions
We’ve looked at some ways designs can be organized with simple whole-number proportions. In some of our examples, we’ve looked at using a secondary module. The use of a secondary module was actually quite common in traditional work but no group of artisans had a better grasp of its use than the Shakers. Perhaps that’s why their designs have such a universal appeal. In our next chapter, we’ll take a closer look at some Shaker work and how they used a secondary module to give their designs a spark.
