My first experiments with a runny soap finish didn’t impress me – the wood just got wet and a little slimy. But after watching this movie, I’m trying it again. This time I’m going to let the mixed finish sit for 24 hours before applying it to the wood.
This morning I mixed up a runny solution of boiling hot water and soap flakes (1 cup soap flakes and 4 cups of water). And it’s cooling as I type.
By the way, I got my soap flakes from MSO Distributing. They’re made in England without any additives or fragrance. Delivery was prompt. I’ve also ordered a pound of soap flakes from Pure Soap Flakes to give the USA-made flakes a try, even though they are more expensive than the British flakes.
In addition to our two new products – “By Hound & Eye” and the “Virtuoso DVD” – we’ll be selling two special limited-edition items at the Lost Art Press booth in the Marketplace in Woodworking in America on Sept. 25-26.
First is a joint project between Lost Art Press and Steam Whistle Letter Press in Newport, Ky. Brian Stuparyk, the founder of Steam Whistle, approached us about doing a short run of 500 letterpress posters that are 18” x 12”, numbered and signed.
We don’t want to be in the poster business, but we agreed to this joint project because it will be a useful graphic for your shop wall – it’s all about how to use hammers and cut nails in furniture. Most of the poster’s blocks have been hand cut by Brian and the poster is being printed on his vintage equipment. We’ll unveil the design next week. I’ve seen Brian’s preliminary work, and it’s quite cool.
The posters will be $20. If we have any leftover from WIA (I expect we will) we will put them up for sale in our online store.
The second crazy product is a new T-shirt design from Indianapolis artist Shelby Kelley. Shelby painted the artwork for Revolucion, a taco joint we like. John and Shelby re-imagined some of his wild bandito paintings and added some awesome dovetail saws (the woodworking equivalent of “more cowbell”).
We’ll have a bunch of these shirts at WIA – American-made in gray (correction: Army green) with black printing. We might add these shirts to the store after Woodworking in America. Not sure.
So look for our booth in the Marketplace. Where will we be? Chances are you’ll find us by the bathrooms. At every WIA they’ve put our booth in the back by the toilets. But no, Don, I don’t take it personally.
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.
Soap soup. From mixing one quart of boiling water with one cup of soap flakes.
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.
Our shipment of “By Hound & Eye” arrived from the printer while I was teaching overseas (yes, it was raining there. It was England). So it was only today that I got my first look at “By Hound & Eye,” the new workbook from George Walker and Jim Tolpin.
This book started out as a hair-brained idea explained to me by George Walker over a lunch of fried chicken, fried hominy and a couple beers at The Eagle in Cincinnati. (This is the place where John and I come up with our craziest money-losing ideas. See “Book of Plates.”)
By the end of the lunch, I was sold on George and Jim’s idea. This workbook was going to be the missing link between thought and action. If George and Jim could just convince readers to pick up a pencil and do some simple exercises, readers would take the first steps into a larger world.
But how? Luckily George and Jim were just crazy enough to drag animator and artist Andrea Love into the picture. Andrea, George and Jim created “Journeyman” and his dog “Snidely” as the mechanism to explain incredibly complex geometrical ideas using simple, almost-childlike lessons that I found myself doing, even while editing their rough text.
At that point – when Snidely and Jouneyman were just stick figures – I knew this book was a piece of fried gold. And somehow between classes and crises, we got this book to the printer.
Believe it or not, this was the hardest part of the project. George and Jim wanted it to be an inexpensive, softcover workbook. We don’t do that here at Lost Art Press. We do hardcover. Nice paper. Sewn bindings. Blah, blah.
“By Hound & Eye” would be silly in a high-class presentation. But it had to be a quality workbook if it was going to have our name on it.
So what we made is, by publishing standards, a duck-billed platypus. It’s softcover and the text is printed on uncoated stock. But the softcover is printed with a supermatte coating (very expensive) and the binding is sewn so it’s as durable as our hardcover books. And the uncoated paper is the best stuff we could get (#60 basis weight).
So this tacky workbook ended up quite expensive to make and is nice in the hand. And we still brought it in at $20 retail (really, we should have made it $27….).
We hope that those of you who ordered the book are enjoying it. I think it’s a hoot. But most of all I hope you are giving the exercises a go. That is the key to everything.
In Chris’ recent post, “We Are Equally Crappy,” a few readers asked about marriage marks, also known as a cabinetmaker’s triangle. Above is Monsieur Roubo’s version. Why have boring straight edges on your triangle when you can have curvy, sexy and French?
(Editor’s note: Roubo offers up about 10 of these useful marks in Plate 5. The full translation will be in the forthcoming “Roubo on Furniture.”)
Timber framers used a different marking and matching system. Roman numerals were most often used but there are other variations.
As European carpenters found their way to the New World they brought these marking systems with them. Examples can be seen in 17th and 18th century roof timbers, especially along the East Coast. The top example (right) is from Delaware, the bottom one is from England. I found only one example from South America.
Beasties threatening a home.
The third kind of marking that might be found up in the rafters, around doors, windows and fireplaces is an apotropaios (meaning to turn away), also known as a witches mark.
In 17th centry Britain witchcraft was a real concern. In 1604 King James I wrote, “…for some they sayeth that being transformed in the likeness of a beast or fowl, they will come and pierce through whatsoever house or church, though all ordinary passages be closed, by whatsoever open air may enter in at.” I’m leaving out the bit about women being more frail and more susceptible to…nevermind.
Typical marks to ward off witches were two overlapped Vs (Virgin of Virgins), M (Virgin Mary), MR (Maria Regina), daisy circles, a series of circles and circles attached to letters. You might see all of these letters and symbols combined.
Misericord with overlapping Vs.
Researchers in Britain are cataloging these symbols in churches. Both the overlapping V and the M symbols have been found integrated into carvings on pews, choir stalls and misericords.
The next time you find yourself in an old building look closely and you might see some of these signatures of past woodworkers.
