Seventh Week of Furniture Making School - July 22 - 28 A standing night stand is such a contrast to a stack of boards; it looked so good and people began to comment about it. There was so much left to do, but now we were obviously moving toward completion. There was a drawer to make and fit, a door to make, mount and fit, a drawer pull and a door pull to design and craft, faux pegs to add for accent, a top to be made and finish to apply to the entire project. That’s a lot. Making the drawer seemed simple enough, even though it was a bit non-traditional. Rather than hide the joinery behind the face of the drawer front, typically using half-blind dovetails, this drawer was designed to emphasize the joinery. Instead of half-blind dovetails, which you cannot see until you open a drawer and look at either side, this drawer had a few bold finger joints which were proud of the face of the drawer by1/8 - 3/16”. Additionally, the edges of the fingers were pillowed - rounded over - so as to present a softened presence. The finger joint motif, though not with protrusions, was followed at the back of the drawer because the drawer was small enough that this approach was acceptable. Additionally, the drawer had to be fitted to the glides and the drawer front had to be routed to mirror the plateau and caprock pattern of the door rail immediately below it. The latter was a bit of a challenge, but some trial runs on alternate wood allowed me to work out the problems. The solution involved a lot of handwork and careful tweaking of both the drawer front and the top door rail. What I learned from this is that I need to redesign the templates before I do this a second time. I resolved that when the piece was finished I would trash the templates. Next time this step will be much easier. Side tracking on the phrase “next time” involves a bit of a story. This night stand is a prototype for two night stands I will make for Linda and me, except that the next two will be of mesquite and Texas ebony. One will have a left handed door, the other right handed. I’ll have Jim Bean photograph them and use those pictures for marketing. I do have out-of-state clients who need two of these; I do hope they will agree! Additionally, there are several iterations - with door, without door, drawer or no drawer, multiple drawers, shelved, adjustable shelf or shelfs as well as a variety of woods. The basic design can also be modified to reflect a different style. It is a very adaptable concept. When our class went to Thos. Moser earlier in the course, I was struck by their use of ash as a secondary wood for drawer sides and bottoms. Historically, drawer sides and bottoms, as well as other non-visible elements, have been constructed of secondary woods. In North America, often that wood is poplar because of its low cost, ready availability and suitability to the task. I prefer the look, feel and hardness of ash and chose to imitate Thos. Moser. I believe it brings the overall sense of the piece up a notch. The drawer back and the bottom of this piece are ash; because the drawer sides protrude through the drawer face on this drawer, I had to stay with cherry on them. The drawer went together nicely and fitting it with a hand plane was very pleasurable. A slight bit of bowling alley wax on the glides made it slide in and out perfectly. Both Aaron and Austin complimented me on the fit. Considering the challenges of making a drawer fit properly, this was a really nice compliment. The door itself went together reasonably well with a minimum of tweaking. Once the door fit the open space below the drawer properly, the big challenge was to mortise for the hinges and hang the door. It was time for Austin to jump back into instructor mode and lead an extended discussion about a “chicken strip!” Because of the outward tapering of the leg, and the setback of the front, the door could only open 90 degrees. We knew that going into the building of the project, but the thought from Austin was that we would add his famous “chicken strip” and extend the angle of swing for the door. The more we looked at it and considered the implications, the more we gravitated back to leaving it at 90 degrees. Had we known that going it, I would have precut the hinge mortises before I began gluing up the stand. As it was, cutting those mortises was going to be more challenging. Austin just smiled and I set about getting it done with a trim router. Once done and fine tuned by hand, we screwed the hinges to the door and to the leg and began the process of further fine tuning the fit of the door to the opening with a hand plane. The door came on and off several times, but eventually it was perfect. The door was removed one more time for adding the African blackwood plugs and adding several coats of finish. Cherry has a tendency to have a somewhat blotchy appearance when oil finishes are applied. To preclude much of that, I washed every piece of the night stand, often far ahead of assembly, with a coat of super blonde shellac cut thin. Once dried, I sanded the finish off and, over a period of days, hand applied coats of an oil based tung oil varnish, Waterlox. The process was well underway by the time I got to the drawer and door stage. Also underway and concurrent with the application of Waterlox to the night stand, I was also laying out, mortising and installing the African blackwood pegs. Even though these pegs are faux and completely non-functional, they are representative of where plugs might have been applied if the project had been made using real pegs (pins) in the drawbore method. I’ve always loved the appearance of dowels or pegs which hold furniture together and in Greene & Greene furniture they reach the zenith of their application. My interpretation on that style, Greene & Gruene, makes appropriate use these dark, highly polished pegs set strategically and proud of the surrounding surfaces. I love them. Also coincident with all these processes was the designing and crafting of bold drawer and door pulls. I made them of cherry to match the night stand and inlayed across the the top surface was a highly polished strip of African blackwood. The pulls are sculpted on several layers and strategically set into the drawer and door off-center. By the end of the week, great progress had been made, but there was much left to do during the last week approaching all too quickly.
Posted on: Sat, 07 Sep 2013 14:24:32 +0000
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