carving an oak panel

Yesterday my intention was to carve this oak panel for a wainscot chair & photograph many of the steps showing some decision-making that happens when tackling a detailed carving…but then I saw that several cameras here had dead batteries all at once. So while the batteries were charging, I began the carving. All I got of the beginning is this Ipad photo, showing some of the initial V-tool work.

It’s a big panel, one I’ve been saving for I think about 4 years. The carving inside the margins is 12 3/4″ wide by 15″ high. That’s a huge piece of riven oak. This one’s perfect – dead straight all the way from one margin to the other. I’m going to miss it when it’s gone. I started with a vertical centerline, and then struck an arc with a compass that defines the arch at the top. From there, I used some chalk to get the gist of the pattern I wanted. The urn at the bottom I outlined by striking two circles left & right of the centerline, then connecting them with an upper & lower tangent line. From there, everything else is freehand. Next I figure where that vine is that comes from the urn and flows outward left & right then splits in half. The top half connects up to the arch; the bottom  half winds down to form a large round flower. All you need is what I call “approximate symmetry.” The points where the vine splits and goes up & down you can find with a square across the board, then measure out from the center – so the left & right agree.

Once one of the batteries charged, I shot a few photos. Here’s most of the V-tool work done.

After the V-tool work comes background removal. I always use a Swiss-made #5 gouge. It’s about 1/2″ wide. Mine has slightly rounded corners, making it easier to get in & out of places. They come from the manufacturer dead-straight across.

The big flowers aren’t V-tool work. I struck circles to locate them, then use a couple different gouges to strike the outlines of the petal.

In this next photo, I’m using a #7 gouge to define some leaf-shapes that blend out from the vine. Just below where I am working (above in the photo, but below on the panel) is a mistake – I beveled the area where these leaves will go on that vine. Better to define the leaves first, then bevel. Less fragile that way.

Now you can see some of these leaves cut out above the vine – and I’m just about to knock out some background on the next batch.

Then using a few gouges to layer the flowers. They’re hollowed in each petal, and have an inner & outer row of petals.

After a bit, all the roughing-out is done. Then it’s just picking at details. This is where I got yesterday. I’ve started to try to track my time for various operations – it’s been years since I’ve done so. From the blank panel to this was just under 3 hours – a long time for one carving.

Today I finished it. Using the gouge bevel up to give the petals a bit of a bevel themselves.

There’s lots of these shapes cut into leaves all over.

As always, the general notion is “no blank space.”

The finished panel. total time was about 3 3/4 hours.

A question I get a lot is “where can I get designs/images to carve from?”

I’m working towards part of the answer to that question being “from me…” – I’ve been drawing patterns a lot for the past year or so, since the book Joiner’s Work has been done. The drawings started as a coloring book. Then that idea got shelved, and now the idea is sets of loose sheets showing patterns for rails, panels, box fronts.

Here’s an example – this is the design I started with for the wainscot chair panel. I drew it full-scale, based on a couple of related panels. I combined bits of this one with bits of that one. But when I got to carving, some things changed. Nothing major, but here & there some details were easier to fit on the drawing than on the oak. The V-tool is wider than a pencil point. The drawing is a place to begin – that’s all. Now that I figured out what urn I wanted in this panel, I can finish the drawing!

 

You can see the cover of the book is a related panel – that one’s part of a bedstead. Narrower, so less detail.

Here’s the link to the book at Lost Art Press https://lostartpress.com/products/joiners-work

trestle table frame

Time for my wife to start her flowers indoors. Last year, she started them on top of a chest I want to haul out to the shop to finish. So I made a trestle table frame to take its place. Looking at this photo, it looks crazy-out-of-whack. I had checked it before I left the shop and those two top rails seemed to be in a plane. We’ll see when I go to put a top on it.

It’s ash, quartersawn. 2″ x 3 5/8″. I had a few lengths of them laying around, leftover from something, I can’t even remember what. I wimped out and made the mortises by boring and chopping. They’re 1/2″ wide, by the width of the stock –  3 5/8″. Here, I need to lean a little to my right when I bore this.

Seven 1/2″ holes per mortise.

Then chop ’em out. This is how I first learned to make mortises way back before I learned joinery. It works. I chose this method because this was dry, sawn stock. Not as reliable as the riven stock I usually use. It’s mostly clear and pretty straight grained, but still more character than I usually use. 

Making tenons was just as usual, saw the shoulders, split the cheeks. More paring than on riven stock. But nothing too dramatic.

Paring with a large 2″ framing chisel. This is the long stretcher that runs between the uprights.

Chamfers and lamb’s tongues are typical for this sort of work. Saw the stop.

I chop back toward the stop with a chisel, held bevel down.

Then drawknife the chamfer. Carefully with the sawn grain. Wiggle here & there.

This is the lamb’s tongue. The photo is completely foolish. If I shot cutting it, you wouldn’t see anything. Bevel down, scoop as you strike with the mallet. The chisel handle is tilted up high to begin with, then quickly comes down as you knock it forward. I like it when the lamb’s tongue comes out just proud of the chamfer.

Then drawbore it & wedge it. The drawboring is nothing new. I use two pins per joint. These pin holes were 5/16″ or so.

The mortises for the wedges – I started with a 9/16″ hole, then chopped it beyond the layout line towards the shoulder. (this makes sure the wedges bears on the upright, not on the inside of the mortise) – Then the outside end of the mortise is chopped at an angle. very slight. Eyeballed, not measured.

Then make extra-long wedges, drive them until they stop, then you know where to trim them. I chamfer all the ends of the wedges, as well as the protruding end of the stretcher tenons.

Because this table will see some dirt, water and other debris – I’m just going to put three 1 x 8s on it for the top. If it ever becomes a real table somewhere, I can always add a true top to it. The frame is about 4′ long, the top will be nearly 6′. I think the whole frame was somewhere in the vicinity of 10 hours. It looks it. I could have made a bit neater job of it, but it wasn’t necessary. I wanted to get it done quickly, yet still have it strong & functional.

the next wainscot chair

I’ve been working on some blog-housekeeping lately, with more to come. I re-did some of the drop-down menus at the top of the blog. A couple new pages just show examples of things like carved boxes, wainscot chairs, chests, etc. On the side menu there’s a link to the page at Lie-Nielsen for the videos they produced of my work.  I think there’s 8 of them now, including the new one about making a shaving horse. I have some of the shaving horse one for sale still, or you can get them from LN.

Meanwhile, I’ve just started another version of the chair above. The wainscot chair isn’t in the book Joiner’s Work, but I did shoot a DVD with Lie-Nielsen about building one. Making the rear posts is as “un-green-woodworking” as you can get. The wood is fresh, wet, all that. BUT – it’s non-supportable in an ecological sense. The back posts are hewn and planed out of a large piece of oak. Most of which ends up as chips. Here’s a side view, showing what I’m after.

Here’s how I shaped them this week. The bolt I shape them from is about 4′ long, and initially maybe 6″x 6″. There’s one on the sawbuck in the right of this photo. I’m using a hatchet to remove the bark first.

This is a case where I work the tangential, or growth ring plane first. Now using a joiner’s hatchet to get a relatively clean surface to lay out the shape on.

I lay the chair stick on there, and shift it this way & that to get the orientation the best I can. There’s compromises happening with grain direction. I’d like the upper part to follow the fibers, but then I’d need an even bigger bolt to start with. So shift it some more.

Using a froe to knock some excess stock out of the way.

In the shop now, having planed the surface some, re-do the layout of the shape. But there’s one problem down at the foot. The riven shape falls away, so I had to shift the stick over some more.

The detail showing how the stock is tapered under that surface.

There’s a lot of back & forth between the planes, the hatchet and layout with the chair stick.

 

A chalk line to mark out the width of the stile – then hewing it to nearly that line.

I almost gave up this indoor chopping block. It’s in a tight space & I don’t often use it. But I’ve had this particular one since 2001 so I figure I’ve kept it this long…

checking the front face above the seat, I want it flat along its length. There’s going to be joinery in two planes there, and carving too.

The front face both above & below the seat level are mostly defined now, and I’ve laid out the back line to this post.

The easiest way to hew that rear section is to cut reliefs in the wood along the layout lines. These saw cuts go down to a depth, then I hew to them.

I’ve switched to a smaller hatchet, this one by Julia Kalthoff https://www.instagram.com/kalthoffaxes/?hl=en. I’m using it to knock out the blocks between the saw kerfs. Several saw kerfs takes most of risk out of this step. You can do it with one, right at the junction between up & down. But more kerfs helps.

I set it on the bench now on its face to work the back surface.

A holdfast grips it down to the bench, and I shimmed under the foot at the other end. Then went at it with the scrub plane. Flipped it end for end to do the same to the top end.

The first one took forever, because I was photographing it. The second one went more quickly. About halfway through the 2nd one, I switched from using the chair stick as reference to using the first post. More important that they match each other than getting them to agree to the stick. I timed the 2nd one and it was 1 hour & 5 minutes from the split-out section to the finished post. All the steps above included. Now these (and the other parts for this chair) will sit for a month to six weeks to begin drying at the surface. Then I’ll work them along, planning to work on this chair at Fine Woodworking Live in April. http://www.finewoodworkinglive.com/ 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

new small toolbox

In between a few recent projects I made a new small toolbox. Pretty early in the year for me to cut dovetails. It’s white pine, 11″ high, 12″ x 28″ on the outside of that lower skirt. Made it to replace an open tray that housed my boring tools and jigs for making JA ladderback chairs.  It was a great amount of blank space that bothered me, so you can see I started laying out some chip carving on the front.

But I can switch stuff out & travel with it too. Those snappy iron handles by Peter Ross make me want to pick it up.

There’s a till inside, for bits, line levels and other small stuff. Till lid is American sycamore.

One long divider inside, to separate the bit extenders we use in for boring the chair posts, the oak blocks for holding the posts when boring, etc. I’m going to make a removable tray to sit on top of that stuff next.

 

But I couldn’t leave it at that. I have two joined stools I’m coloring recently, so have been making a mess with milk paint. I had some mustard paint around that wasn’t going to make it on the stools, so I put some on this box. Then began the carving. I like chip carving, but don’t have the discipline to do the perfect job you see many doing these days. It’s too slow. Mine are best viewed from a distance.

Here is the toolbox with the open tray it’s replacing. And some of the stuff that’ll go in it.

And open.

It’ll never look that good again, it just got shoved under the other workbench. And there it will gather dust & get kicked around. That’s why I built it with the skirt to reinforce its construction. The chairmaking tools – braces, drawknives, bit extenders – are heavy. My mid-1980s Japanese-style toolbox is just to the left of it under the bench. In that are mostly student tools – extra spoon carving tools, random metal-bodied plane or two, extra braces, etc. Usually I move all that stuff to a temporary box when I travel. Now that will stay put & the yellow box will become the schizoid tool box. At home one thing, on the road another.

Here’s the toolbox that doesn’t move. I built it after Chris Schwarz wrote his book about them. And painted it too. I couldn’t bear to look at all that blank wood. I see from the links below that was January 2012. Time flies.

https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/01/18/a-solution-to-too-much-blank-space/

https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/another-day-of-painting/

 

Tim Manney’s shaving horse at Plymouth CRAFT

Last weekend Tim Manney came down to Plymouth from Maine to teach 6 Plymouth CRAFT students how to make his shaving horse. Tim;’s version is well-known now; he had an article in Fine Woodworking about it, (issue #262, Jul/Aug 2017) and in the same issue Curtis Buchanan was quoted as saying that he thinks he’s spent over 20,000 hours at a shaving horse, and that Tim’s is the best he’s used.

Tim’s main focus is that the horse can be built with everyday materials; but carefully-selected everyday materials. It’s almost all 2 x 6 or so material, some thinner stuff and a little bit of hard maple. This course was a bit of a departure for Plymouth CRAFT in that some of the work was prepped ahead of time by Tim, and there were even some machines invovled. Mostly a drill-press. Here’s some of the shots I got during the class.

Stacks of parts prepped by Tim.

Jake trimming some of the first glue-ups, the leg-to-rails.

Tim sneaking underneath, showing how to adjust the leg assembly prior to clamping the glue-up.

Tim marching down the line, checking on progress.

Winding sticks helping to line up the front & rear legs.

This was our first time running this class. We kept class size small. That gets a lot of attention, and lots of detail. Here David and Andy work together to line up the clamps on Andy’s horse. Craig must be on deck.

Half of the dumbhead assembly set up in place – to check its placement and glue-up.

This is the next step – the full dumbhead base now. It gets wedged below the “bed” of the horse.

Tim demonstrating layout for the wedge mortise.

Craig cleaning up the mortise with a chisel.

David has a small smirk on his face, as his horse is coming together.

Diane was amazing – absolute new woodworker, dove in the deep end. Now she’ll be off to a great start.

Not quite done, but nearly so. This one still needs the work surface under the head.

We got done in time to bring in some green wood & distribute some drawknives so everyone could test-drive their creation under Tim’s direction. Paula Marcoux & I shot photos of the group as they worked their horses for the first time.

Tim has measured plans available for his shaving horse, and we’ll get him back sometime to do this class again. First he has to recover. Here’s his shaving horse plans web-page https://www.timmanney.com/work/shavinghorseplans 

Plymouth CRAFT’s website – so you can sign up for the newsletter for future workshops – https://www.plymouthcraft.org/