What a beautiful finish

Returning from a recent exhibition, I thought about many of the questions I’d been asked and how I might utilise this feedback. Then it struck me that the question that cropped-up most frequently was about the finish and how it was achieved. This is a relatively new phenomenon to me and initially I would give a probably not too helpful answer; like, ‘Oh, in the usual way with shellac and oil’. What I had failed to notice is how far removed a hand worked piece with a hand applied finish had become from commercially made furniture. Once all furniture was finished in the same way or variants of; even after spray finishes became more common there was still plenty of hand polished furniture in most homes. Once Mum’s and Dad’s ‘old junk’ was brought up by antique dealers and replaced with 'nearly wood' flat packs, all point of reference had disappeared. New generations rarely get the opportunity to experience what hand tools can do.

A year or so ago I was teaching a nice chap to make a Windsor chair, I think it was his first serious attempt at making furniture. The only power tool he used in the class was a drill, every other process was done by hand. He stood back looked at his impeccable chair and said, ‘I simply can’t believe I did that with hand tools’ I can still see the look on his face. I know he will never look at furniture in the same way again.

There is I feel a renaissance on the horizon, a getting back to quality, but first the public have to re-learn what that quality looks and feels like and happily they are setting out to do that in increasing numbers.

Moving Furniture. Some do's and Don'ts

There are two period armchairs in the workshop at the moment waiting restoration, besides the normal wear and tear, this pair has suffered from careless moving around. A push here and a pull there probably didn’t seem to be causing any damage, until one day they just toppled over. I thought this a good topic to discuss, because although its important, it’s also so mundane it tends to get overlooked.

Whether you are moving house or just re-arranging a room, moving furniture is not necessarily as straight forward as it may appear. Furniture, even well made furniture can sustain damage if it is subjected to forces for which it was not designed. This easily happens when we are in a rush, or we try to do the impossible on our own.

Furniture is designed to carry weight, either just its own, if purely decorative, or a combination of its own weight and that of something placed on it or in it. Weight is a downward force and a quick look at any piece of furniture will show how it is assembled to counteract force in a downward direction; for instance the position of different components and the direction of the grain running through them. Closer inspection will expose different weaknesses to forces acting from other directions. This is not a fault; after all we want our furniture to be elegant as well as functional, not something resembling a Sherman tank. Therefore furniture is designed to perform it’s designated function and if it is intended to move it will be on wheels.

It’s safe to say that if the piece to be moved is larger than a side chair it will need two people to move it, or some sort of equipment, such as rollers or a trolley as well as a means of lifting. Furniture standing on the floor should never be pushed, especially if on carpet as this will always result in some kind of damage if not breakage, this damage may not be apparent immediately. When lifting always grip a main structural element, never a top or an arm. Remember to empty cupboards and remove drawers, make the unit as light as possible before moving. This is good for your health as well as the health of your furniture. Lift chairs by the lower rail of the back if there is one or by the seat rails, never by the arms or the crest rail. The accompanying photo shows a Louis XV armchair, this would have been a heavy chair when fully upholstered; it has been pushed on carpet and lifted by the arms. I think the picture speaks for itself.

Wood a Sustainable Energy

Timber for furniture making is only one of the many different and varied products produced by woodland. Saw mills, who convert trees into planks and other dimensioned timber, are only interested in the tree trunk. Once this is carted away the head of the tree, usually all that part above and including the first branch, is left. This can amount to a considerable amount of wood, in the case of a mature oak tree almost half of the total timber. This timber is too misshapen to use economically in the workshop, although choice pieces may be of interest to a bowl turner; it does however make excellent firewood.

I’m very enthusiastic about this other side of woodland use; it’s a truly sustainable way of providing cheap fuel for those living in the countryside and to a lesser degree even for those in towns. Townies may need to invest in smokeless wood burners making a larger initial investment necessary and additionally the firewood will be more expensive, because of distance. Add to this the messy business of stacking logs and dealing with fire ash and one may wonder if it’s worth the bother, but only until you have enjoyed a real wood fire. The smell, the crackle of the logs, even the heat is different and if you ever cook with it you will be sorry when summer arrives.

Being a real hardcore wood addict, I not only work with it, but do most everything I can with it. It heats my workshop, cooks the family meals and runs the central heating; if only I could power a generator…humm?

Being fortunate in living next to woodland I cut and fell my own wood February/March and haul it back to the house after 1st July, the day I pay the forester. This amount is a fraction of that charged by commercial sellers, but then I have invested in equipment and time and they have to make a living. However, I have to tell you that it is one of the nicest feelings to sit in a warm home eating a meal you have grown yourself all heated and cooked with wood that you cut and hauled.

Nearly all forest woodland has been tended by man for thousands of years, providing tools, furniture, houses, boats, charcoal for industry and of course firewood. Sadly most of these activities went out of fashion after the first world war resulting in many neglected forests and woodlands; more so in the U.K. than in France where many traditional trades still survive. As many people are now discovering, the modern age demands that an exacting price be paid and those who sold it to us do not have the currency. Now many people are themselves looking to alternatives in our tried and tested heritage.

Those in the UK can find more information on forestry here : http://www.woodlandheritage.org.uk/

There are other side benefits gained from all this activity, not least the care of the woodland itself, providing many kinds of resource for the community,in addition to this working woodlands will support more wildlife than those left to dereliction.

Shaker Rocking Chair

A friend of mine recently asked me to make a few replacement parts for an impressive French walnut armoire that he is restoring. By way of compensation he suggested he gave me a rather sad looking # 7 Mount Lebanon rocking chair that he had acquired locally. Looking at the condition of the chair, most people would probably think this was not much of a deal. It’s true the rockers are missing along with the shawl rail, the bottoms of the legs are rotten and woodworm have been feasting on other parts. If this was not enough, someone thought it a good idea to hide the original ebonised finish with white paint. Then cover the seating tape with calico, in fact they did this in reverse order so that they could paint most of the calico at the same time. Never the less I was delighted and immediately agreed, it’s probably the best chance I will ever have of owning a real Mount Lebanon Rocker of this vintage, c1880. I imagine a good one would fetch about $3000, but I couldn’t be sure in the present economic climate. Its not likely that another would turn-up locally, so crating, shipping to France with insurance maybe half as much again. Then again this aspect doesn’t really interest me so much as the chance to work on an iconic chair that I have copied so many times; I find this prospect more exciting than owning a new one. It’s going to make a really interesting project and I shall be featuring it here, as work progresses. The other items in the picture are a few pieces of Shaker ephemera and more about this later. My friend, Roy of the wardrobe, is researching Shaker history and has turned-up many interesting artifacts and as yet unknown facts about the Shakers and France. Unfortunately I'm sworn to secrecy until he is in print, so I must ask you to be patient.

Why wont my antique repairs stay stuck?

The arrival of two very different chairs this week, both with loose joints, highlighted this sticky problem and prompted me to write about it in greater depth. It was previously covered in part by another article; however it is such a common occurrence I thought it deserved to be dealt with more thoroughly.

All the joints of one of these two chairs had failed and were loose; they had been in this condition for some time and remained untouched, which was good. Because this made it a relatively easy job to dismantle, clean the joints, re-glue and smarten up with a little shellac and wax. Result, a happy client with a modest repair bill.

The other chair, owned by a very nice chap with a tube of glue, was quite a different matter. This also had failed joints, but in this case my well meaning client had squirted glue into and around every one of them. The back splat, had also received some of his attention after what looked like a nasty break, trouble was it had been glued-up with some small bits missing. If you have read my article on chair repair, you may think I’m starting to sound like a broken record. Well sorry about that, but this is the single most frustrating thing that I come up against on a regular basis, making tedious work for me and a large bill for my clients; and it’s just not necessary.

Most people do not understand what makes a bond; this is due to all kinds of wrong information that has been passed down through the ages. It started off as good advice, but like ‘Chinese whispers’ it gets changed a bit each time it’s repeated until it just ends up as nonsense. I can give you an instance of this, when much younger I remember being told that you should rough the wood of a joint to make sure the glue got a good hold. This little gem probably grew out of the fact that craftsmen laying traditional veneer would use a toothing plane (plane with a serrated blade) to score the surfaces of the timber being stuck. The real reason they did this was to flatten the two surfaces without the risk of tearout, always possible with a conventional plane especially when working on difficult timber. Although antique veneer is usually much thicker than the modern equivalent, faults like tearout if uncorrected would telegraph through to the surface. The tiny serrated teeth of the toothing plane are able to take multiple minuscule cuts much in the same way as sandpaper, but at a rapid rate of work. Today’s craftsmen mostly use a power sander, or if like me with one foot in the past, use either as the situation demands.

The people I really blame for most of this confusion are the glue manufacturers with their ‘’Bonds stronger than the wood itself’’ type of advertisements. This leads to the belief that there is some sort of integral strength in the glue itself, wrong. Things stick together when they are perfectly matched and have a surface that is perfectly smooth. Place two sheets of clean glass together and you will prove this for yourself. Theoretically if we could make perfect joints we wouldn’t need glue at all, but as we can’t we need the glue to take-up all the little imperfections and make the glued pieces feel like they are a perfect match and can’t bear to be apart.

You are probably at this point beginning to realise why so many repairs end up failing. As in the case of my glue toting client, whose chair joints hadn’t been dismantled and cleaned by washing the dirt, wax and dust of decades out of them. All this had been allowed to remain and get between the new glue and the timber, not to mention the old glue which would not be compatible with anything out of a tube.
The new glue just can’t work because it doesn’t get near the timber to iron out all those little imperfections. What it does do however, is cover the old hide glue that would easily wash off, with an impervious coat that later takes any amount of work to remove without doing damage to the timber.
Final note; There is absolutely no reason why you shouldn’t tackle your own repairs providing you abide by the golden rules. Never make a repair on a piece of antique furniture that can not at some later date be reversed. Hide glue is known to last centuries and can with the application of heat and humidity be reversed easily. If you do not have the equipment to use traditional hide glue you can find Franklins liquid hide glue in most good woodworker’s supplies.