Katherine spent the weekend making more non-toxic Soft Wax 2.0, and it is now for sale in her etsy store.
Shown above is Kitty, the oldest of our five cats. And you can see, Kitty is out of craps to give. But she still loves Katherine and Lucy (I am tolerated).
This Soft Wax is my favorite finish for chairs, and I use it on a lot of other projects when I was a low-luster finish that doesn’t create a film between me and the wood.
And yes, this stuff is safe enough that you can use it on your beard. More instructions below!
Instructions for Soft Wax 2.0
Soft Wax 2.0 is a non-toxic 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 using a waterless process. Each glass jar contains 8 oz. of soft wax, enough for two chairs.
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.”
The following is excerpted from “Joiner’s Work,” by Peter Follansbee – in effect a doctoral thesis on processing furniture-shaped chunks of lumber from the tree using and axe, froe, hatchet and brake. Follansbee dives into deep detail on how he festoons his pieces with carvings that appear complex but are remarkably straightforward – plus lessons in 17th-century casework. His approach to the work, which is based on examining original pieces and endless shop experimentation, is a liberating and honest foil to the world of micrometers and precision routing.
The book features six projects, starting with a simple box with a hinged lid. Follansbee then shows how to add a drawer to the box, then a slanted lid for writing. He then plunges into the world of joined chests and their many variations, including those with a paneled lid and those with drawers below. And he finishes up with a fantastic little bookstand.
Punched accents often enhance carved decoration throughout the design. These punches are sometimes just a textured effect, often called “stippling,” in the background, or extended to include stars, crosses, floral patterns and other designs stamped onto the solid foreground of the carvings.
Here’s my main set of punches (Fig. 3.41). From right to left, a 5/32″ nail set, a Maltese cross filed from a large cut nail, a background punch, and a small flower design. All but the nail set are shop-made.
Working metal is one of my least-favorite shop tasks, but I can usually worry my way through making some punches. It only takes a few minutes. The stock is usually pretty soft; the hardest stuff I file is when I use an old cut nail. I have no hack saw, but one would be handy if you’re going to do much of this work. One place it would help would be trimming the length of something like the cut nails if their point is too small a cross-section for the intended design. Otherwise, a grinder of some sort, or some coarse filing brings the end down to a clean and finished blank.
Fig. 3.42
I start the background punch with a piece of stock about 1/4″ x 1/2″ x 3″ long. Make friends with a blacksmith; they have this stuff around. I file a row of lines dividing the punch across the wide dimension (Fig. 3.42). First in half, then half again etc. I use a feather-edge file to start these lines; you could use the hacksaw first.
I angle the feather-edge file by tilting the handle down to start this line. Then I gradually bring the handle up, lowering the file into the cut. I think of this as scoring the lines. I’ll finish them with a triangular file.
Fig. 3.43
Then flip the piece in the vise, and file a couple of lines to define the other rows (Fig. 3.43). In this example, I filed two lines one way, and four the other, creating a punch with three rows of five teeth.
Don’t worry if your lines aren’t perfectly parallel. Get them close and then you’ll work on making things even out with the next filing.
Fig. 3.44
Once I’ve defined the layout with the feather-edge file, I switch to a triangular file to bring the teeth of the punch down to size (Fig. 3.44). Drop the triangular file into one of your slots you just made, and start to work it along. Check your progress frequently – things can change shape quickly. I find I have to tilt my point of view this way and that to catch the teeth in the right light. Aim for small “heads” to the punch’s teeth, evenly sized. Evenly spaced is good, but not as big a deal as size. If some teeth are too big, they won’t make as deep an impression. The triangular file is easy to guide. Keep the top surface of the file level and the other two sides will be symmetrically aligned as they work mating sides of the row.
Fig. 3.45
Variation in tooth size is expected, but teeth that are too big keep the punch from working well. The outer rows on this punch are both too big, especially the one on the right (Fig. 3.45). This is easy to fix. There wasn’t enough room to file another row, so I beveled off the outer corner of the punch, until I brought those teeth down to size. Periodically take the punch from the vise and strike it in a piece of scrap wood. It’s good to be organized so you can keep track of your progress. I wish I were.
Fig. 3.46
Make the accent punches in a similar manner. For the round flower punch I angle the feather-edge file so it’s just hitting at the corner of the punch’s end (Fig. 3.46). I file a notch from the outer edge to the middle, then turn the punch in the vise and file another notch across from the first.
Tilt the file to come across the end of the punch. Sometimes you have to then tilt your head so you can see where you’re going. File a little, look a lot.
Fig. 3.47
Keep splitting the spaces in half as best you can. If it gets off-kilter, split any thicker spaces in half again. At this point, my pattern is out of whack (Fig. 3.47). What’s more important than symmetry is that the remaining “petals” are narrow. The wide parts in this view got filed to split them into smaller bits.
It’s surprising how small the remaining parts are to make the pattern work. It’s mostly negative spaces in the metal to create the impression in the wood.
Some find and use leather punches; I have no experience with them. If they are large enough they should work fine. If the business end of them is too fine, they might not make an actual impression in the wood. An easy way to see if a punch will work is to smack it on various pieces of scrap wood. Lightly on softer woods, harder on hard woods.
NONE SHALL PASS: The notebook where I recorded what I learned at The Windsor Institute. It is off-limits for my work today.
Editor’s note: The following is a short excerpt from “The Stick Chair Book,” which will be released this fall. Among all the how-to chapters in my books, I always try to add some chapters that add a psychological or historical dimension to the Part-A-into-Slot-B stuff. This is one of those chapters.
— Christopher Schwarz
With all the woodworking information available for free these days, it seems unlikely that there are still trade secrets amongst us.
But during 15 years of working with professional woodworkers to get their work published in a magazine, I had a lot of conversations that went like this:
“What kind of dye is that?” I’d ask.
“Red.”
“What brand? And what is the name of the color?” I’d ask.
“Can’t say.”
There were also many techniques that were off-limits. The woodworker would say something like: “This is how I teach it, but it is not how I do it.”
These encounters troubled me. I thought all the secrecy stuff had died off with the European guilds. But apparently, I was wrong. In many ways, I sympathized with the professional. He or she was fighting a horde of amateurs who were willing to undercut the prices of the pros. Why should a professional offer aid or comfort to this amateur enemy?
On the other hand, as woodworker W. Patrick Edwards says, “To die with a secret is a sin.” How will the craft progress if we don’t share what we know?
As I plunged deep into chairmaking in the early 2000s, I found myself stymied by some operations relating to compound geometry. The techniques published in the books seemed entirely too awkward compared to what I knew about pre-industrial woodworking. There had to be a simpler way to do these difficult operations.
I took some chairmaking classes. These helped, but I felt like either:
The teacher was also finding his way in the dark.
They didn’t really want to tell me how they did it.
In 2010, I took a Windsor chairmaking course with Mike Dunbar at The Windsor Institute, along with my father and John Hoffman, my business partner. Dunbar, now retired from the school, had built a chairmakers’ terrarium. You started with the class on making a sack-back chair. Then you moved on to other chair forms. If you wanted to make chairs for a living, you could receive training on business, sales and marketing from Mike’s spouse, Susanna. Plus, the Dunbars, their employees and affiliates supplied students with tools, patterns and wood for amateur and professional chairmakers.
Sack Back in Progress: My father (left) sights John Hoffman as he drills the initial mortise for a leg in a sack-back chair at The Windsor Institute.
It was an impressive operation. Mike and his assistants were there at every step to help you move forward on your chair. The lectures were funny. The workshop itself was gorgeous.
There was one problem, however. The class materials. At the top of the handouts for the class was this warning:
Our students are authorized to use these materials for the making of chairs for personal use and for the making of chairs for sale. We do not authorize the dissemination, reproduction, or publication of these materials in any form and strictly prohibit the use of the materials in the teaching of chairmaking to others.
Again, I felt that same old conflict. There is the urge to protect what you know. But that same urge has caused a lot of knowledge to be stockpiled in the cemeteries.
During my week at The Windsor Institute, I filled a red notebook with all the details of constructing a sack-back chair. I also kept all the handouts from the class in a green folder – both now in my bookcase.
However, I never consult them. I’m almost afraid to read them because they might give me some ideas for making chairs that I am not allowed to pass on to others.
OK, wait a minute. I’ll be right back.
Good news, everyone. I went through the class materials and notes, and I didn’t find anything that was universally mind-blowing. Most of the juicy bits in my notes related to how to build that specific sack-back chair. Whew. I’m glad I don’t build sack backs.
Giving away knowledge has always been a part of my personality. I don’t like secrets. While it would be easy to assign that trait to my time as a newspaper journalist, I know it goes back much further. In fact, I remember the moment I became this way.
In 1977 I was in fourth grade at the local Lutheran school. That year, some of the kids in the higher grades were permitted to dissect sharks for biology class. So, one day when we were called for an assembly in the school’s common area, I hoped (against hope) we were going to see some shark guts or something cool.
Instead, there was some old dude standing in the center of the room, holding a regular piece of paper. We all sat down on the carpet around him, legs crossed. Waiting for the boring session about a dull piece of paper to begin.
He began.
“Let’s say we live in a world where ‘corners’ are the most valuable thing in the whole world. Can you imagine that?”
“Yeah, but I can also imagine some crazy dissected shark fetuses.”
“How many corners does this sheet of paper have? Yes? You? Why yes, you are correct! This sheet of paper has four corners!”
“You know what has more corners? Shark teeth. Rows and rows of flesh-ripping corners.”
“Now, what if a friend of yours came up to you and was really, really sad. Sad that she didn’t have a single corner in the whole world.”
“So, my friend is a circle?”
“What would you do? You don’t want to give up one of your corners. Because then you’d have fewer corners. But you feel really bad for your friend. And so, you decide to give her one of your corners.”
Then the guy holds up the sheet of paper. He rips off one of the corners and gives it to a kid in the front row. Suddenly I’m transfixed.
“Oh look, I gave up one of my precious corners. But now I have five corners instead of four. That’s strange, don’t you think?
“Then, another friend asks for a corner because he has none.
“Another one? How can I lose yet another corner?
“But I decide again to give up one of my precious corners.”
Rip. He hands a corner of paper to me.
“And look. Now I have six corners instead of five!”
The guy continues to rip corners off the sheet of paper and hand them out, increasing the number of corners with every rip.
No one had ever explained generosity to me in those terms before. And though I was only 9 years old (and I still haven’t seen a dissected shark), I was a different person from that day forward. Giving stuff away – money, time, possessions, corners, knowledge – always results in getting something greater back in return. The more I give away, the more I receive.
To this day, however, I sympathize with people who hoard their knowledge out of caution or fear. When you are in a dying profession such as woodworking, giving up your hard-won know-how seems like suicide.
But here’s what I’ve found. If the stuff you know is really good – truly excellent – you could end up like Garrett Hack, Christian Becksvoort or David Charlesworth. Amateurs and professionals will pay to learn what you know through classes. Publishers will pay for you to write it down. You might have a tip or trick named after you.
Or you can remain that bitter man in his shop up on the hill. Perhaps you know how to make buttons for attaching tables to their tabletops in one amazing swish on the table saw. But you aren’t performing that trick for just anybody.
It’s a great trick. One that could change the way everyone works in their shop in the entire world. Right? There’s only one way to find out.
***
The following chapters detail how I build stick chairs. I’ve tried to include every “corner” that I’ve acquired since I first started building these chairs. Also, I’ve tried to give credit to the people who taught me the trick or the operation.
I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few good tricks and the names of some chairmaking friends who have shared their knowledge along the way. If so, I apologize.
My hope is that you will refine these operations and make them simpler, easier and foolproof. And when someone asks you how you make your sticks or your arms or your legs, you’ll be willing to rip off one of your own corners and give it away.
My daughter Katherine has cooked up another big batch of non-toxic Soft Wax 2.0, and it is now for sale in her etsy store.
As you can see, Shop Cat Bean is surprised/nonplussed/inscrutable in his reaction to the new batch of wax.
This Soft Wax is my favorite finish for chairs, and I use it on a lot of other projects when I was a low-luster finish that doesn’t create a film between me and the wood.
And yes, this stuff is safe enough that you can use it on your beard. More instructions below!
Instructions for Soft Wax 2.0
Soft Wax 2.0 is a non-toxic 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 using a waterless process. Each glass jar contains 8 oz. of soft wax, enough for two chairs.
