Ive been on the East Coast the past couple of weeks doing business development (four different city offices in four days) and now I’m in Philly getting ready ready to bring the family back to SF. I spotted this stick bench in a local mall in west chester PA.
Axe handle legs and pitch-fork spindles and its held up to mall patron use.
Apparently it’s been a while because my body is aching after a day of milling. Between the family and work (I created a new product line at work this year) I’ve not really made any progress on my woodworking projects but the family is back in Philly for a bit so I have been catching up a bit.
I spent a few hours cutting out the chair leg blanks and working on the sides of my son’s new bookcase. The new bandsaw is great and has been making short work of everything. Going to be a lot of flattening and squaring in my future.
The first few months of the year continued to be crazy at work but my trial testimony is finally complete and another project hit a major milestone so my workload is back to a normal level. I also decided to turn down a new job in Boston (I think the multiple nor’easters in a row made the decision for me) and since we aren’t moving it was time for a shop upgrade.
I’ve also managed to glue up a few seat blanks (one more to go) and started flattening one.
After work one night I decided the open grain of the red oak needed some color so I mixed up some dark and burnt Cyprus umber with some BLO and painted on a coat. This was less of a stain and more of a very thin oil paint.
The added color worked out perfectly so after letting it dry for two days I sprayed on multiple thin coats of amber shellac and let it dry over night. It’s hard to believe that seat is just plain old poplar.
After living with the chair for a few weeks I may adjust the design some but in the meantime the eucalyptus seat blanks need to be assembled.
After pinning the crest rail and some “making pretty” it was time for stain. I raised the grain with some water and let it dry overnight.
After knocking down the grain I applied some of the same stain mixture from the bench however I poured out the top without storing up the pigment and watered it down substantially.
Last night I applied a coat of linseed oil that was thinned with turpentine (true turpentine).
I’m debating adding some pigment to the second coat of oil, similar to what I did with the bench, but I am not sure yet. I did end up with some uneven staining that I did not notice until it had dried but I’m hoping it will be less noticeable as the process continues.
I finally had time to assemble the first chair. Tomorrow I will pin the crest rail to the spindles and start the cleanup process.
It’s been pretty quiet on the blog lately but that’s because it’s been pretty quiet in the shop. Partly this was do to work (which has been busy and I’m scheduled to testify in a case soon) but the primary reason was a sense of disgust in my own failure.
While I was leveling the chair legs I discovered that my workbench has developed a pronounced twist which has been the source of my troubles with chair seats (and probably explains why the dining table bench rocks slightly). This was very discouraging and it took me a while to get back in the shop.
This past weekend I finally got around to cleaning up the messy garage (when I’m busy with work things get a bit messy) and part of that meant finishing up the chair. I got out the miter box and trimmed all of the bent crest rails and shaped the spindles. My hide glue expired in September but my garage is quite cool so I decided to test it with some scrap prices. Hopefully I can get this chair assembled thus weekend and free up enough space to re-flatten my bench.
