Bean the Shop Cat is here to report that Katherine Schwarz spent a few days this week making and packing a fresh batch of soft wax, and it is now available in her Etsy store.
Aw geez…are you using me for marketing again?
Instructions for Soft Wax 2.0
Soft Wax 2.0 is a safe finish for bare wood that is incredibly easy to apply and imparts a beautiful low luster to the wood.
The finish is made by cooking raw, organic linseed oil (from the flax plant) and combining it with cosmetics-grade beeswax and a small amount of a citrus-based solvent. The result is that this finish can be applied without special safety equipment, such as a respirator. The only safety caution is to dry the rags out flat you used to apply before throwing them away. (All linseed oil generates heat as it cures, and there is a small but real chance of the rags catching fire if they are bunched up while wet.)
Soft Wax 2.0 is an ideal finish for pieces that will be touched a lot, such as chairs, turned objects and spoons. The finish does not build a film, so the wood feels like wood – not plastic. Because of this, the wax does not provide a strong barrier against water or alcohol. If you use it on countertops or a kitchen table, you will need to touch it up every once in a while. Simply add a little more Soft Wax to a deteriorated finish and the repair is done – no stripping or additional chemicals needed.
Soft Wax 2.0 is not intended to be used over a film finish (such as lacquer, shellac or varnish). It is best used on bare wood. However, you can apply it over a porous finish, such as milk paint.
APPLICATION INSTRUCTIONS (VERY IMPORTANT): Applying Soft Wax 2.0 is so easy if you follow the simple instructions. On bare wood, apply a thin coat of soft wax using a rag, applicator pad, 3M gray pad or steel wool. Allow the finish to soak in about 15 minutes. Then, with a clean rag or towel, wipe the entire surface until it feels dry. Do not leave any excess finish on the surface. If you do leave some behind, the wood will get gummy and sticky.
The finish will be dry enough to use in a couple hours. After a couple weeks, the oil will be fully cured. After that, you can add a second coat (or not). A second coat will add more sheen and a little more protection to the wood.
Soft Wax 2.0 is made in small batches in Kentucky. Each glass jar contains 8 oz. of soft wax, enough for at least two chairs.
I did not build this for the cats. But I’m not sad that Olivia likes it.
I have a small flower garden in front of my house, and after years of being annoyed by having to sit down on my porch to don an old pair of running shoes for weeding (and checking them for spiders first, because they lived on the porch), I finally broke down and bought myself some garden clogs. They’re easy to slip on and off as I walk in and out the door, which is great, but I don’t want to leave them on the porch (they are much more likely to take a walk than my nasty old running shoes). But then I got annoyed by the amount of dirt I was tracking into the house, and bought myself a galvanized steel boot tray. But…just inside my front door is an HVAC return, so the boot tray had to go across the hall, and well…that was a good excuse to build a piece of furniture* to hold it – something that could fit just inside the door to make it easier to stow my clogs, and provide enough space underneath to allow for air flow.
Before all I built was tool chests, my M.O. was to find a Shaker piece that I like and modify it to suit my space, needs or both. So I went back to my old ways and spent a few days leafing through the various Shaker books in the Covington Mechanical Library.
I had almost settled on a washstand when Will Myers dug up a photograph of a piece illustrated in “The Encyclopedia of Shaker Furniture” by Timothy D. Rieman and Jean M. Burks (Schiffer, 2003), and in volume 2 of Ejner Handberg’s “Shop Drawings of Shaker Furniture and Woodenware” (Berkshire Traveller, 1975) – a “Bake Room Table” that was in the North Family Dwelling House at Mount Lebanon. I liked the drawings, but didn’t fall in love with the form until I saw the (unique) table in a photo.
Will found this photo (by William F. Winter) in “Shaker Furniture: Craftsmanship American Communal Sect” by Edward Deming Andrews and Faith Andrews (Dover, 1950).
The shelf that cuts across the side cutouts was, according to Handberg, probably added later. And what are those round cutouts at the back? Maybe it fit around a pipe of some kind?
The original, at 66″ long and just more than 28″ high, looks lighter and more graceful than what I made, but I didn’t have the space to copy its size. And I chose to make the cutout at the feet a bit shorter so that I could fit the shelf (my entire reason for building the piece!) above the void. I also skipped the support at the front between the drawers; the overhang on my top wasn’t enough to require it. Still, it was the starting point I needed – that, and the size of the boot tray it was destined to hold.
I also changed the construction, with a 3/4″-thick solid dust board (or perhaps it should be called a drawer support, given there are no drawers below it?), dadoed below the drawers instead of the nailed-on 2-1/4″-wide rails front and back, and nailed-on runners (if Handberg is correct). That last decision was a tactical error; the wider board provides more protection against racking…so I ended up pocket screwing (go ahead – come at me; there are period pocket screws in plenty of Shaker and other period work) a rail behind the drawers and under the back of the shelf (likely overkill, as I am wont to do).
I don’t typically do “proper” drawings/models (notice the lack of dados). I want to see just enough of the form to be able to decide if the proportions work for me. (The height is 30″.)
And instead of classic Shaker wooden pulls, I used iron ring pulls, to match the iron nails that attach the top. As a result of its almost-square form, size and metal hardware, I think my result skews a bit Arts & Crafts.
It’s a simple build for a simple customer. Were I building this for a more discerning end user (i.e. one that is paying me), I’d probably use sliding dovetails to attach the dust board/drawer support (and possibly use a web frame instead of solid wood there) as well as the drawer divider, and inset the back rails in grooves. And my drawer dovetails would be better.
The Build I started by gluing up the side panels and drawer support. All the wood that shows is cherry, but I glued up the drawer support from a 5″-wide or so piece of cherry on the front, and poplar behind. (I guess it does show at the back to the cats, but they don’t care).
This side and drawer support are all approximately 3/4″-thick…but I don’t know for sure. Once it was flat and close enough to 3/4″, I called the pieces ready for glue.
Then I marked out the dado locations, and played around with the curved cutouts at the bottom – and I ended up with curves that are slightly higher than what I drew. I cut them out on the band saw, then cleaned up the cuts with a combination of the spindle sander and sandpaper (#120 and #180) wrapped over a piece of the cutout (a sanding “fid”) to clean up the rough spindle-sander scratches.
The bottom curve is what I drew on the screen – it was too round. To my eye, it looks better with an 1-1/2″ or so of a straight line at the feet.
Then, I sawed the walls of the dados (which are a 1/4″ deep), knocked out most of the waste with a chisel and cleaned up the dado bottoms with a router plane (there’s a video here of this process, should you care to watch).
With one side arranged dados-up on the bench, smear a bit of glue in the dados, then put the shelf and support in place. Brush glue in the mating dados then put the other side in place on top. If the shelf and support are held tightly in well-fit dados and not moving around once they’re in their housings, it makes glue-up a lot easier to handle by yourself. If your fit is too loose, knock a wedge or two in on the underside to push out any gap and tighten things up. After the glue is dry, you can use a chisel so cut off the protruding end of a wedge (or, if it’s below the shelf at the bottom where it won’t show, just leave it).
Then, lift the assembly to get clamps across it front and back at the dado location and check it for square … then foolishly move the now-quite-heavy assembly off your bench and onto the floor by yourself because it will look better in a picture that way. Be sure to then complain that your back hurts.
If you do move it, check it again for square. If things aren’t quite square, a foot at one bottom corner and a bit pulling or pushing at the opposite top corner can easily shift things (usually). Once it’s square, walk away until the glue is completely dry.
After I took the clamps off, I realized I was being boneheaded; the piece needed some wider horizontal members to keep it from racking. So, I pocket-screwed 3″-wide rails between the sides at the back above the drawer support (poplar) and below the shelf (cherry). Then, the right side developed a slight cup at the top front – and I was afraid it would get worse. So, I pocket-screwed a 3/4″-thick x 3″-wide piece of cherry about 1/2″ back under the front of the drawer support. Uh … it’ll create a nice shadow line.
Tangent: I should have known things would go at least a little bit wrong. Some of the cherry I used for this piece is cursed. I’d bought the 5/4 stuff in mid-2017, with plans to build a Stickley 808 server for a Popular Woodworking article. I was seduced by the wood’s curly grain and remarkably low price … even though I knew curly cherry could be a right royal pain in the butt at the best of times, and that the low price indicated it was already misbehaving. But … so pretty!
I commissioned reproduction hardware from John Switzer at Black Bear Forge, and stickered the wood to acclimate for a month or so in the PW shop. Then I surfaced it to 7/8″ and glued up my panels. It all looked fabulous. For about a week. Then all the panels developed a gentle cup. OK – I could flatten it again, and build the piece out of 3/4″ instead of 7/8″. It happened again. So I put the panels aside and decided to build the server out of white oak, just like the originals. I bought the oak … then I was no longer employed at PW.
Those cherry panels left PW with me, and they’ve been in the basement at Lost Art Press ever since. (John’s gorgeous hardware has been in my basement ever since.) Chris recently used one of the panels as a desktop across trestles. And after flattening it and putting heavy stuff atop it, that panel has remained flat; I thought the curse had been broken. Chris says he’s protected from it there is no joinery involved in his setup.
The curse was not broken – but the addition of a front rail seems to have at least overcome it. For now. But never forget that wood hates you.
After the clamps were off, I marked centerlines on the drawer support and 5″-wide drawer divider, then clamped the divider firmly in place, and countersunk screws to hold it in place from underneath. It is simply butted tight to the underside of the top.
Use a square to align the divider to the front, then clamp it in place before drilling pilot holes for screws (I used three screws, though two would likely suffice).
I had a beautiful wide piece of cherry from C.R. Muterspaw for the top that I sure wish I could have used at full length. Not only was cutting it painful, but I think a longer overhang to either side added lightness – but rendered it not fit for purpose.
IWally liked the longer top, too – more real estate for treats.
I cut a small roundover on each end of the top’s back rail, sanded it, then glued it in place to the back of the top. I could have gotten away with leaving it off from a functional POV, but I wanted the extra overhang that offered for the front edge.
I then dithered over best to attach the top, and after considering the use of traditional buttons (which would require 1″ shorter drawer sides and backs to accommodate their attachment), had decided on figure-8 fasteners (which would require drawers sides and backs only 1/8′ or so narrower than the fronts), when Chris talked me into using blacksmith-made nails. I liked the way they looked on the cupboard in “American Peasant,” so…
The only great-looking nails we had (they were made by Mark Kelly, a blacksmith at Mt. Vernon) were 2-3/4″ long; I really should have used 2″ nails. It was a bit scary to drill so deeply into the cherry sides. But I got away with it… or so I thought for about 14 hours. I did a test drilling setup for tapered pilot holes, and after successful tests drilled my pilots and hammered the nails in place. They looked great. Whew! By the next morning, a small split developed at one location. But you can’t really see it without bending down and looking closely. And I’m not showing you.
The customer is dismayed but accepting of the flaws. (I blame the curse.)
Further adding to the flaws count: It turns out I didn’t get the divider perfectly centered; the left opening is 1/16″ smaller than the right. So I fit each drawer front and back to its opening with a No. 51 shooting plane. For those who don’t already know, a tightly fit drawer is key to smooth movement. These have maybe a 1/32″ reveal side to side. (And wood movement won’t be an issue, as that will be top to bottom, where I left about 1/16″.)
Another tangent: Years ago, I erred on the side of too loose, and those drawers bug the bejeezus out of me to this day. It’s this piece – the drawers, which have just under a 1/8″ reveal on both sides, rack every time I slide them in. Yes, I have some thin UHMW tape…no, I have not yet applied it even though I know it would likely solve the problem.
A smart person would have made the sides of a length to allow that back rail to serve as a drawer stop. I need to glue in 3/4″ thick blocks.
The drawers are half-blind dovetails at the front and through dovetails at the back (the tailboards are on the side, so that the drawers can’t be pulled apart in use). The only advice I have on cutting drawer dovetails is to run the grooves for the drawer bottoms before transferring the tails to the pin boards. That way, you can stick a shim of the right size in the grooves to help align the pieces (a trick I’m pretty sure I learned from a Chris Becksvoort article in Fine Woodworking).
The drawer back is 3/4″ narrower than the front, to allow the bottoms to slide in underneath it. The bottoms are 1/2″-thick paint-grade plywood, rabbetted to fit the 1/4″ wide x 1/4″ deep grooves. I cut a slot in the center back, then nailed it to the underside of the back to keep it from moving. (A more discerning client would get solid wood, sized to allow for expansion and contraction – but that’s not an issue with the plywood.)
I cut half-blinds so rarely that I can’t remember if I prefer to secure the board vertically in a twin-screw vise or flat on the bench to make the cuts. These were cut in the vise – but I think my overcuts end up longer – thereby making the waste in the corners slightly easier to remove – when I clamp it flat to the bench. (Yep, I know lots of folks pooh-pooh overcutting. “Whatev,” as the kids haven’t said for some time, now. There are plenty of period drawers that employ overcuts; I’m in good company.)
Regardless of how you make the saw cuts, chiseling out the waste is a matter of working back and forth between the baselines and creating square surfaces on both faces. And a fishtail chisel can help you get into the corners.
And to finish things off, instead of leaving blue-tape pulls in place for years, I decided on traditional iron ring pulls (32 mm). Simply drill a hole where desired to fit the staple legs, then bend each leg back with a pair of pliers, and hammer the staple legs in place. I decided to locate the pulls slightly above center. I taped off the location, marked the hole, then drilled it over a backer board so as to avoid blowout on the backside.
The finish is soft wax 2.0 – easy to make, safe to use and simple to re-apply if it proves necessary. You’ll find directions for making and using it in Chris’s latest book, “American Peasant” – a free PDF download (see pages 65-7).
Now that my new piece is at home and in use, I’m confident the Curse of the Curly Cherry is finally broken … as long as the drawers and tray stay in place, covering up that cursed wood. (But I remain leery of using the two panels still in our basement!)
I admit it’s a bit of shame to cover up that lovely curly cherry on the shelf…but it was the only way to break the curse.
And if I ever get to make this again, well, I’ve identified all the problems! If I call this one a prototype, maybe the mistakes won’t bother me as much. (They will. That is my curse.)
– Fitz
*aka a procrastination technique to put off building a pantry cabinet or the bookcase for the bottom of my staircase.
Every time we get questions about our setting jigs, I joke that I’m going to start making them to sell. Had I done it years ago, I could probably now afford that paint job my house needs…or at least afford some fancy cat treats!
The questions have ticked up recently, due to the publication Christopher Schwarz’s book “Sharpen This.” But I still can’t bring myself to make these jigs, ’cause it’s so easy to make your own. But also because different honing guides require different placement of the blocks (it has to do with how far the blade projects)… and I don’t have time to make these for every guide out there. So here’s how to make the one we use, for our Lie-Nielsen honing guides:
Screw two pieces of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMW) to a block of plywood. Done. No magnets. No magic.
OK, OK…here are a few more particulars:
The 1/2″-thick plywood block is 4-1/4″ long x 2-1/8″ wide. (Other sizes would work.) We like plywood because it is unlikely to warp as much as solid wood.
The 1/4″-thick UHWM plastic is left over from another project – but it’s the perfect thing for this. It doesn’t get munged up as easily as a block of wood when you register a blade against it, so it lasts a lot longer. The two little blocks of UHWM are 1″ wide x 1-1/8″ long.
The plastic is screwed in place with brass screws, because they won’t rust.
The 35° block is 7/8″ from the front edge; the 30° block is 1-5/32″ from the front edge.
Those are the only two angles at which we hone/polish 99 percent of our edge tools (and really, we mostly use only the 35°). But if you want a lot of angle choices on your jig, Lie-Nielsen Toolworks has a free download for a fancy one. But we don’t do fancy when it comes to tool sharpening – ’cause making them dull is a lot more fun.
To use it, register the blade against the block, then tighten the jig. Easy, fast, repeatable.
But what if you don’t have a Lie-Nielsen honing guide, or you want different angles? Well, you’ll just have to figure out the proper projection to get the setting block in the right place. Here are two ways to do that.
Put a blade in your guide, then put a Tilt Box on the blade and register the bevel against a flat surface. Adjust the guide until the readout matches your goal angle. Tighten the guide, then measure the distance from the body of the guide to the end of the blade. That’s the distance from the guide’s body the setting block should be secured to the setting jig’s base.
The Tilt Box II in use.
Or put a blade in your guide and register the existing bevel against a flat surface. Put a protractor upright on that same flat surface. Align the business end of the blade with the center of a protractor (make sure the 0° on said protractor is on the edge – they aren’t all). Adjust the guide until the angle matches the one you want.
A lot of what Nancy writes about in her forthcoming “Shop Tails” centers on conditions. The myriad conditions she lived in as a child and teen, from a traditional suburban two-parent home that went through some of the same cultural shifts as the world at large in the 1960s to an English boarding school to a small London flat. She writes about the conditions of her varied work environments, and the conditions agreed upon and sometimes imposed on by employers, employees and clients. She explores the conditions in which she found her human and non-human partners, and the way their actions and interactions helped and hindered, informing who she is today.
Film director Werner Herzog said, “I think it is a quest of literature throughout the ages to describe the human condition.” It’s perhaps the not-so-hidden quest of “Shop Tails,” too, even if that wasn’t Nancy’s initial intention. Her essays within will make you laugh. They will make you angry. They will inspire you to create something beautiful (a piece of furniture, a garden, a better relationship, a home). They will break your heart. And they will stay with you.
On the lighter side of the human condition here’s an excerpt from Chapter 14, “Alfie and the Cat Whisperer (2012).” It begins with working conditions that are utterly undesirable all thanks to a sweet and small pale-grey tabby with an oddly pinched face. Enjoy!
— Kara Gebhart Uhl
Not long after I adopted Tom, the gray tabby kitten I brought home with Lizzie in 2004, he developed a terrible case of diarrhea that sent us to the vet. It turned out to be feline infectious peritonitis. I did my best to keep him hydrated and comfortable, hoping he’d recover, but his condition just got worse. I had him euthanized when we were finally past the point of hope, then buried him among the daffodils behind the shop. Fortunately, Lizzie had escaped contagion.
I wanted to adopt another male tabby. I returned to the shelter, where the cat room was again beyond capacity. To accommodate the overflow, the staff had put a couple of crates in the lobby at the front of the building, across from some monstrous rabbits, evidently bred to exceed the size of the largest Maine coon cat. Perhaps the idea behind this exercise in genetic engineering was to improve a rabbit’s self-defense options by making a single bunny capable of smothering a cat to death simply by jumping on top of it.
In one of the crates nearby I spotted a small pale-gray tabby. “Alfie” was printed on the label. He was a skinny guy, his face oddly pinched. His eyes had a far-off look that struck me as wistful, as though he was begging Take me – though in retrospect I realize the look was a sign of ill health. I filled out the paperwork, and the next night I brought him home to be my shop cat.
When Daniel and I arrived at work the following morning we realized Alfie was suffering from some sort of digestive problem. Small brown puddles of diarrhea were scattered across the floor; the smell was so acrid it burned our eyes. “I’m not going in there,” choked Daniel, reversing back out through the door. After filling my lungs with fresh air, I dashed in and started the cleanup. I opened the windows and turned on a fan, but even an hour later the stench was enough to turn our stomachs.
I took Alfie to the vet, who prescribed a course of antibiotics – sadly, all for naught. The poor cat slept, ate and shat. This was no ordinary defecation. We’re talking epic shitting. One of us would turn off the sander, only to hear a sickening sound like that of a sex worker at an all-night pancake place attempting to squeeze the last dregs of ketchup from a plastic bottle at 5 in the morning. Twenty years before, a customer had told me to burn a candle as an antidote to nauseating smells. I took to burning crumpled sheets of newspaper, setting up miniature pyres around the shop and lighting them as necessary, hoping my insurance agent wouldn’t show up for a surprise inspection.
“You know, this is really not OK,” said Daniel after a couple of weeks. “You can’t expect people to work in these conditions.”
For the last five weeks we have been shooting and editing a long-form video on how to build a stick chair using simple tools (plus a few – mostly inexpensive – specialty tools that make the job easier, which are covered in the video) with wood from the lumberyard.
The video clocks in at more than four hours long with 18 separate chapters that cover all aspects of construction, from selecting the lumber to applying the finish. The video will be available to stream or download (without any digital rights management). Above is the trailer, which says “Available Now” at the end; you’re getting a sneak peak – it’ll be available on Aug. 15.
Purchasers will also receive a digital file with full-size patterns for the chair shown in the video, which can be printed out at any reprographics firm or office supply store. Plus, notes on the sizes of the chair parts and sources for tools used in the video.
The video will be released on Monday, Aug. 15. For the first two weeks, we will sell it at an introductory price of $50. After that introductory offer, the video (and its downloads) will be $75.
This is our first in-house video for Lost Art Press. For previous videos we hired professional videographers, video editors and sound technicians. While that process produced a slick-looking product, the filming process was difficult and exhausting. Hiring a professional crew is expensive, and so there was always a rush to get the thing shot because of the hourly bill.
Thanks to new technology and a lot of practice on our part during the last two years, we now are confident we can produce high-quality video (and sound) without hiring a crew. As a result, this video was shot in painstaking detail and took five weeks. (It usually takes me two-and-a-half days to build a chair, so this was a sloth-like process.)
We were also able to incorporate graphics and details that had to be glossed over with a professional crew.
This, however, is not cinematic art. (Your spouse will likely sleep through parts.)
I consider the “Build a Stick Chair” video as a companion to “The Stick Chair Book.” But not a substitute. The book took about 56 weeks of work and goes into details that are impossible for a talking head to explain on your television. But the video shows bodily motion in a way that print never can. Some things about chairmaking are so simple if you can just see the process unfold before your eyes.
I’m not saying you should get both the book and the video. Instead, start with the one that appeals to you most. If you are a visual learner, the video is probably the correct choice. If you are first a reader, the book is what I would recommend.
Above is a short trailer I put together that shows some of the processes that are explored in the video. There is a cat in at least one shot.
Thanks to Harper Claire Haynes (our summer intern) who did the bulk of the shooting and editing. And Megan Fitzpatrick, who filled in every day and helped immensely with getting the video into its final semi-polished form.
Last word: Don’t expect a flood of long-form videos from us. Our first love is books. But when we can do a video (and it we think it will help people) we now have the technology and skill to do it.
