a reminder & some wainscot chair photos

Yesterday I went shopping for some quartersawn oak for my carving class this spring at Lost Art Press – this is the reminder that tickets for that go on sale tomorrow, Thursday Jan 12 at 10am eastern time. https://www.tickettailor.com/events/covingtonmechanicals/827443/#

Today I’ve been shifting those boards around trying to find space to store them in the shop. More of that tomorrow. By mid-afternoon I had enough and turned to some housekeeping in my photo files. I was trying to organize the folder “chairs” – I think I have “boxes” mostly sorted. I found a chair I totally forgot about that has some carvings on it that might show up in that class.

detail PF chair 2013

This is a chair I “made up” = in that it’s not a copy of any particular 17th century wainscot chair. I took the measurements from a surviving chair, but super-imposed carvings on it from here & there. I made this back when I worked in a local living history museum, but have no memory of what it was for, where it went, etc. It’s certainly the last one I made there.

PF wainscot chair 2013

The format of the chair was taken from one I copied some years before that. Made in Hingham, Massachusetts, descended in the Lincoln family – this is my copy of that chair – now in the public library there. You can go sit in it if you like.

Lincoln chair, red oak, walnut & maple

That carving in that chair is unlike most others – most of it is done with just a V-tool. Maple & walnut inlay for the barber pole accents.

carved panels and crest rail Lincoln chair

These chairs are beastly to sit it. Worse to lump around the house, they weigh a lot. I made one in 2020 that I kept here, much to my family’s chagrin. It’s the best carving I’ve ever done – so I’m hanging on to it. This one is almost a verbatim copy of 2 chairs attributed to Thomas Dennis – one at Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts and the other at Bowdoin College Museum of Art in Brunswick, Maine. I have made 4 versions of it – this time I made up the rear panel and changed the crest rail’s pattern a bit.

PF wainscot chair 2020

Here’s the panel.

panel, PF wainscot chair, 2020

One of the exercises in that class in April will hopefully be strapwork – the carvings with the connective bands running through them – like the vertical panels in the first chair – or the top rail of this chair

strapwork carving on top rail, crest rail above that

But for a comfortable wainscot chair, nothing beats this next one – another chair I made a few times. I guess I made this one about 20 or more years ago. Bob Trent showed me the original it’s based on and that led to me writing an article about it once. https://chipstone.org/article.php/347/American-Furniture-1998/A-Seventeenth-Century-Carpenter%E2%80%99s-Conceit:-The-Waldo-Family-Joined-Great-Chair

But the carving on this is nothing to speak of – the others have so much space to fill. This one is different in many ways.

3 legged wainscot chair

Carving video; the lunettes

I plodded my way through another video edit to go along with the Carving Drawings – this one the lunette above. I can’t match Daniel for speed, and this one had two good camera angles, but the sound levels dip when I switch to the canon camera view. But all the steps are there, some in detail. And it doesn’t cost you anything, so it’s worth it.

I have one more to shoot from that first group, and already have some of the next series underway. Jeff Lefkowitz and I are working on those drawings now. The first series of drawings is here, https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/carving-drawings-17th-century-work-from-devon-england-and-ipswich-massachusetts-set-1/ and this video below shows what they contain –

Carving the Lozenge panel

Daniel & I worked out editing the first video of panel carving to accompany the sets of drawings. This panel is one I have never carved on video before, nor have I covered it in print.

When I shoot these, I’m the camera-person as well as the carver. That means I get to ruin things two different ways. I shot these in late July, and here two-plus months later, I found out that for one section the camera was not in focus. So when I get to the free-hand stuff outside the diamond, there’s not much detail about what I’m doing. But I think you can see it pretty well. I was very happy with raking light across this one. So much so that we only used the views from one camera. It’s long, like most of my videos so far. If you make it to the end, or scoot through to the end, there’s a gallery of about 4 variations on the pattern.

I still have copies of the drawings for sale – https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/carving-drawings-17th-century-work-from-devon-england-and-ipswich-massachusetts-set-1/

Working now on set # 2 – I’ll keep you posted when they’re coming along.

How I go about re-carving a bowl

It’s a bit challenging re-carving a bowl. I started these in ages past by essentially winging it. Then getting to watch Dave Fisher make bowls for the past 4 years told me two things. I’ll never make bowls as nicely as Dave. And I can get them better than these were when I shelved them. If you want to see him work, Fine Woodworking recorded a lot of video of his bowl carving. I subscribed just for that and it’s worth the price. Then everything else on the site is gravy. https://www.finewoodworking.com/2017/11/02/ep-1-finding-the-bowl-within-the-log

I didn’t shoot the whole step-by-step; but here’s some of what I did. The main area I needed to address on these bowls was the bulky over-thick bottoms and end grain. First I needed a new lengthwise centerline. I snug the bowl between two boards, then shift these around so they are parallel and touching the widest part of the bowl. Take a couple measurements, fiddle around a bit, then mark out a centerline. From there, I can follow Dave’s layout for an oval on the bottom.

I didn’t shoot a true “before” image; but you can see the new layout on the oversized, too-rectangular bottom of this butternut bowl.

The whole premise of this week-long exercise was to quickly determine if these were worth saving. So large tool, in this case a Swiss-made #5, about 35mm wide. And a heavy mallet. Big chunks coming off quickly is the goal. If I’m going to ruin things, I want to do it right away.

After roughing it out with the mallet, I switch to hand pressure to fine-tune some of the shape.

Different bowl, same area, same problem. In this case, I have a large #2 gouge, thus almost flat. I’m using it bevel-up to round over the underside of this tulip poplar bowl. You can only go so far with this tool. Once the cut begins its approach to concave instead of convex, you need to flip it over to bevel-down again. And then I use a bent gouge, with more “sweep” or curve to the blade. Usually a #5 when I’m using the Swiss tools.

Here’s a detail of that cutting action.

 

Here my left hand is snugged inside the bowl, and my thumb is pushing the tool down into the wood. This helps keep it in the cut as I push forward with my right hand.

The butternut bowl. I did have a “before” photo after all – before I whacked off that sapwood rim.

Now its shape is defined, and I want to go back over it to fine-tune the texture.

There’s still a few bowls left to work on, but one is for-sure gone for good:

I worked on five different bowls this week, and all of them are at the “just-about-done” stage. Soon I’ll have them for sale, along with some spoons, boxes and I don’t know what else. They can’t go back in the loft.

why did this take so long?

First it was walnut. Then Alaska yellow cedar. Now this. Maple? What’s next? What happened to oak? Nothin’ – it’s just not a suitable wood for this item. This project is another case of “why did this take so long?” – not so long to make, but so long to get around to.

I have hated this cutting board for as long as we’ve had it.

Clunky, boring – just awful. I made a small plain cutting/serving board years ago, and my wife & I both use it regularly. But it’s as simple as can be…it’s better than the one above…but…that’s not much of a yardstick.

When it’s in use, or needing cleaning, the other one is the store-bought thick piece of junk. In September I spent a couple of weeks watching Jogge Sundqvist work, and was inspired to finally rectify my displeasure with this kitchen beast. I didn’t want to copy Jogge’s cutting and serving boards verbatim – so time went by and I sort of let the notion go.

Yesterday I finished up some carved panels a bit early, and had some time leftover. So I planed up this long-waiting piece of Norway maple (Acer platanoides). And carved the back of it. So when it hangs on the wall, it’s a showpiece, then when you get it down to work with it, you flip it over & chop away. It’s radially-riven stock. I usually keep some around for making applied turnings for case furniture. 

So like the spoon rack that was on the blog the other night, this is a mish-mash. 17th-century English design, on non-oak wood, for a simple cutting board. Who decorates this stuff? The English for one – here’s a particularly goofy item:

16th century trencher, Metropolitan Museum of Art

 It’s a round trencher with painted design and poetry on the “back” side…the story is these were used for small servings after meals, then the people at the table would flip them over & recite the inscriptions. They weren’t for display, when not in use they were stored in a turned lidded box.

Historical precedent or not, now we have a new cutting board at home. And I can take the other one to the dump. One more hand-made item in, one more mass-produced item out. I feel better…

 

Two spoons left, along with baskets and boxes, https://pfollansbee.wordpress.com/spoons-baskets-furniture-for-sale-november-2015/  There’ll be more in a week or so.