Winchester Secretary -- And So It Begins

I reported last year that I would be building a Winchester secretary in the Chippendale style, taking a class with Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton.  Jeff and Steve are renowned furnituremakers.  They produced the two matching chairs with carved handles that the President and foreign heads of state occupy during one-on-one discussions, as well as reproduction pieces for Colonial Williamsburg and others.  It's a seven-day class in two segments.  In the first segment, which began yesterday, we will be building the outer, dovetailed case.  In July, we'll conclude with two days when we will start work on the interior.  In between times and afterward, we'll work on the desk in our own shops.

In reality, I began working on the secretary late last year.  I first created parts and cut lists using Cut List Plus.  Then I located sources for the cherry and poplar I'm using and began accumulating the lumber.  The hardest part was finding a good supply of curly cherry and getting it in the 5/4 size (1-1/4") needed to assure it would be 7/8" thick after planing.  In the end, I settled for 4/4 (1") stock in many instances and hoped for the best.  Then came weeks of cutting the wood to rough dimensions and gluing up the many panels.  With all that behind me, I am now starting the actual construction of the desk.

The design for the secretary is based on a Winchester area desk that is held in the Williamsburg collection.  It is described and illustrated in an article by Anne S. McPherson, "Adaptation and Reinterpretation: The Transfer of Furniture Styles from Philadelphia to Winchester to Tennessee," pp. 299-334 in Luke Beckerdite, ed., American Furniture 1997 (Hanover and London: Chipstone Foundation, 1997).  The original included a case on top that might have held books or china.  I will be building my desk without that top.

We spent most of the first morning running our panels through a 36" belt sander to get them even and to the correct thickness, then cutting them to size.  The machine work was done by our instructors, who cut all the panels using a crosscut sled and jigs so they would all be equal in size.  This was much faster and saved our time for the real work, cutting the dovetails that will hold the case together.

The afternoon was spent cutting half-blind dovetails in the case bottom and sides.  This was my first time to cut dovetails and my first time for half-blind dovetails, even in practice.  It went well.  Fortunately, the dovetails will all be hidden inside the case so any mistakes will not be visible from the outside.  So it provided me a good opportunity for practice.

Of course, with all my careful preparations to process and load the lumber and tools in my car, I walked off without my chisels and dovetail saw.  I had visited my friend Jeff Fleisher to get some dovetailing advice and took them with me, then left them in my wife Betsy's car. Fortunately, I was able to borrow tools from the instructors and all went well.  Still, I wanted to give my Blue Spruce chisels a good workout and was disappointed not to have them.  They are already loaded in the car so I'll have them today.

When we resume this morning, I'll mark and cut the remaining set of dovetails on the bottom of the case and then we'll turn our attention to the top of the case.  I find I'm enjoying chopping dovetails and, under the watchful eye of the instructors, I'm learning a lot.  It'll be fun seeing how far we get today.

Oh, and I've concluded that my plywood-topped workbench is not going to cut it for dovetailing so a new bench is in order for later this summer.  One thing I know for sure--it'll have a hard maple top.  Other than that, I've ordered Christopher Schwarz's book Workbenches, said to be the best source on designing and building one.  In addition, I've found an on-line source at Fine Woodworking for a good looking bench that uses the same vise I have sitting on my workshop floor.

More later.

Norm

Milling Lumber

I got about half of the poplar I'll need for the Winchester desk in and stickered about two weeks ago. The other day I started milling the first batch, jointing one face and edge smooth and then planing the other side smooth. That's done now for the 5/4 stock. I still have the 4/4 stock to do. When that's done, I'll have enough room on my lumber rack to get the second half of the poplar.

I'm doing the milling in stages. I first marked up the boards into the lengths for their eventual parts and cut them roughly in half to make them easier to handle. Then I milled them lightly, just until smooth. Now I'll stack them under cover and leave them until later, when I'll mill them to nearly final thickness and rip them into near final width. The reason I'm doing this is to account for any additional movement in the wood that might lead to cupping or warping as the wood continues to acclimate to my basement humidity. The idea is to get some of the work done now so it doesn't stack up right before the course starts, yet assure that the wood is accurately shaped when construction time arrives.

In the meantime, I have a few other projects in mind. I'll write about these in the future.

Norm

Buying Curly Cherry

Jeff Fleisher and I made a trip the other day to Willow Run lumber yard in Harrisonburg, VA, in the Shenandoah Valley. He was looking at some highly figured walnut boards as a possibility for the Winchester desk he will be making in the class we are taking. I wanted to look at curly cherry. Jeff drove us from his place in New Market in his bright yellow pickup truck with the license plate BMBL BEE. Willow Run is just a half hour from his place.

The walnut boards Jeff was looking at were matched, cut from the same log, and had a beautiful figure to them. But Jeff isn't certain yet whether he is going to use solid wood or veneer his desk. He said there is some really pretty veneer available and he might use that.

I pawed my way through a large bin of curly cherry and after that another pallet of it. There was a lot to look at, mostly 8-10 foot boards. I pulled out a dozen and took them for the outside of the case. Some of the boards are shown in the picture. Only one was what I would call spectacular and I could not find a matched set to use for the four drawers, which I would like to have the same pattern to them. I'm going to look elsewhere for four boards cut successively from the same log and that have a special curly figure to them.

When we got back to Jeff's place, I tied the load to the top of my Subaru and away I went up I-81 to I-66 and back home. The boards rode well.

When I got home, I put them inside on a shelf I had cleared, stickering them between small lengths of thin board to allow them to acclimate to the humidity level in my basement shop. In a couple of weeks, I'll begin crosscutting them to rough length after marking them up for the parts they will make up. I'll talk more about that process as I get into it.

For the rest of the cherry, I may have to make a trip into Pennsylvania. There are some good lumber companies there that have Pennsylvania cherry I may be able to use for the drawer fronts and slant front and writing surface of the desk.

More later.

Norm

Preparing to Build the Winchester Chippendale Desk

Recently, I've turned my attention to preparing to build the Valley of Virginia Chippendale desk I wrote about previously. I'm taking the class in June and July from Jeff Headley and Steve Hamilton, who teach at the Woodworking Workshops of the Shenandoah Valley, located in Berryville, not far from me.

The first task was to estimate the lumber I will need to build this desk. I'm going to use cherry for the casework and will probably use curly cherry for the drawer fronts and lid. The drawer sides and bottoms and other interior parts will be poplar. I happened upon a program called CutList Plus, where you enter the dimensions and type of wood for each part. The program then calculates layouts on the boards I'll be using and from that I'm able to estimate the amount of lumber I need to buy.

I hauled in a first load of poplar the other day and have it on the lumber rack and stickered. It should be ready to begin processing in a couple of weeks. Tomorrow I'll call some hardwood suppliers in the region to see if they have curly cherry in stock. My plan is to check it out in the next couple of weeks so it too can be acclimating to my workshop humidity level.

Although the course does not start until June, I'm counting on it taking me weeks to joint, plane and cut to size all the pieces for the desk. This all has to be completed before the class begins. I've put together a schedule that will allow me to do all this without rushing and so far I am on or slightly ahead of schedule. But I'll have to be diligent in order to keep it that way.

In addition to preparing the wood, I'll need to learn some new skills. The case is constructed with hand cut dovetails, so I'll need to learn how to cut these before the class starts. I've never yet cut one. And, some of the pieces of the cherry will need to be hand planed because of their size and in order to avoid tearout. I've purchased a good set of Blue Spruce chisels and several Lie-Nielsen and Veritas planes, so I have the tools in hand. Now I need to learn how to use them well.

I'll be updating my progress as I go along on this ambitious project.

Norm

Making the Legs - Part 1

I decided to start with the legs on my Mission style table. In my last posting, I showed the rough stock. The next step was to joint and plane it to the correct thickness, 3/4 inch or less. The process is simple in concept. You put the jointed face down on the planer bed and run the board through the planer, taking off a little wood with each pass. I took 1/4 turn on the planer handle each pass, which amounted to about 1/32 inch each time. But the rough boards were 1-1/4 inch or more thick to begin with and there were 14 boards. What that meant was a lot of passes in order to get the lumber correctly thicknessed. All told, it required about two hours to finish the job.

The biggest concerns were to avoid tearout and to minimize snipe. The reason I took such thin cuts (1/32 inch) was to hold tearout to a minimum. Snipe is another matter. I set up a roller stand to supplement the small outfeed table on the planer. While this took care of most of the problem, I still grasped each board as it emerged from the planer to hold it as level as possible. This nearly eliminated snipe on all boards.

It is fortunate that I planed a number of extra pieces. Some will be used for jigs, some for test pieces during setup of the router bit and some for extras to take care of any mistakes that occur. In addition, though, I found hidden knots and other anomalies in some of the boards that only emerged as they were planed. Thus, some of the extras will go to replace boards that now appear to be unusable as leg stock.

A word about my planer, shown in the photo. It is the entry level Sears Craftsman planer, a 12-1/2 inch planer with only two blades. Although I will probably replace it sometime, it does a very creditable job and I regard it as a good purchase when I was setting up my shop last year. I cannot see any defects in the quality of the planing it produces and the resulting surfaces are smooth, which is all I can ask of it.

Now that the planing is done, I will select which boards to use for leg stock and which for jigs, etc., and rip them to width. Then I'll be ready to make the jigs I need and to rout the edges of the leg stock, prior to gluing up.

Norm

Starting a New Project

Recently, I've started a new project--a Mission style table to sit beside my leather armchair. I've spent the last several weeks learning Google SketchUp, at least enough to be able to draw up a couple different designs to get the dimensions right. That wasn't easy; SketchUp has a steep learning curve. But once I got through it, I found it makes design a lot easier and more accurate. Probably, it is faster too.

Awhile back, I bought a supply of quartersawn white oak to use for the table. Now I am ready to start cutting and dimensioning the lumber into actual parts. The photo shows the stock that will make up the legs. Clearly, this 4/4 stock is not thick enough for the legs, which will be 1-1/2 inches square. So instead of cutting four legs from thicker stock, I'll be cutting 16 pieces to make up four faces for each leg. These pieces will be routed on each end using a lock miter bit so that when assembled four pieces will lock together into a single leg. The advantage of doing this is that the legs will also show quartersawn oak on all faces, making them much more attractive than if I had used a single board for each leg.

I've already jointed the boards in the photo. Next step is to plane them to 3/4 inches thick and make the two jigs I'll need to rout the edges. I'll plane that wood at the same time so the boards in the jig are identical in thickness to the leg pieces. I hope to have the planing done by the end of the week.

I will chronicle this project, the first of my own design, step by step in this space.

Norm

A Trip to the Lumber Yard

Yesterday, I took a trip to Herbine Hardwoods in Lucketts, Virginia, just a few miles north of Leesburg and not far from the Potomac River that separates Virginia from Maryland. My goal was to lay in a supply of 4/4 quartersawn white oak for a mission-style table I am preparing to build. I came with a cut list calling for 19 six-foot boards. But Rick, the owner-operator, had only boards in eight and ten-foot lengths so I refigured on the spot. I came away with 13 planks, plus a wide, planed 8-foot poplar board for the table innards. The total was 53 board feet of oak, eight of poplar. The load, once hoisted on top of my Subaru, seemed like a lot of wood for one small table. Perhaps it is. If so, I will have some left over for another project later down the line.

Next on my list is to get the wood into the basement and sticker it (separate the boards with slips of wood to help it acclimate to my basement's humidity level). Then, while I'm waiting for it to acclimate, I will develop detailed drawings of the table which will enable me to select and cut the boards to rough length before jointing and planing. And that means taking the time to learn more about Sketchup, the free computer-aided design (CAD) program provided by Google. Sketchup has the potential to eliminate some of the tedium of making drawings by hand and produce scale plans that can be used in actual construction. Learning to use it is one of my goals for the year.

More on the table later as I progress in building it.

Norm

A Successful Show

Friday and Saturday, I participated in a Lie-Nielsen demonstration of their outstanding hand tools held at Exotic Lumber in Gaithersburg, Maryland. I was there to help take orders, for which I was paid in credits toward Lie-Nielsen tools. I had a blast! I had never done retailing before and I found that I liked the interaction with the customers, chatting about the tools (about which I learned a lot during the show) and about woodworking in general. All told, I was there and on my feet 10 hours and never even thought of getting tired! I estimate that I sold somewhere in the vicinity of $10,000 worth of tools during the two days, my two biggest orders being $1,340 and $1,175.

I also made some purchases. My first was not from Lie-Nielsen but from Exotic Lumber, whose space we were using. They have an amazing array of special lumbers from around the world, especially Africa. Though it is a long drive for me, it will be a good place to go for special needs in the future. I bought a nice zebrawood board with straight and pronounced grain that I think will make a pretty box. I also bought a burnisher for my card scraper from Czech Edge Hand Tools; it has a beautiful kingwood handle, but what I really liked about it was the size and feel of the handle, which was better, in my opinion, than the Lie-Nielsen version.

At the end of the show, I made a few purchases from Lie-Nielsen. The major items were a low-angle adjustable mouth block plane, which was paid for by my earnings, and a 15 ppi (points per inch) dovetail saw. Lie-Nielsen has offers two dovetail saws, the one I bought and a progressive pitch model, with teeth that run from 16 ppi to 9 ppi. I tried them both on a piece of cherry and much preferred the 15 ppi model; the progressive pitch model was actually harder to start and tended to slip out of position on the first stroke. The photo shows my new acquisitions.

Norm

A Trip to the Sawmill

Last Thursday, I was in the vicinity of a sawmill I've been wanting to visit and decided to stop in and check it out. The mill, Herbine Hardwoods, is located near Lucketts, VA, just a few miles north of Leesburg and about an hour from me. It turns out that it is a one-man operation. The owner, Rich Herbine, has a portable sawmill and two kilns behind his house. He features domestic hardwoods that he cuts and dries himself. Of particular interest to me are his quartersawn white oak and, I was surprised to find out, his sycamore. Sycamore isn't usually carried by hardwood suppliers, though it is a common hardwood, at least in Virginia. The problem is, it isn't all that good for fine furniture so it is shunned by most woodworkers. But just look at the figure in this piece, which was among the better boards I bought. When it has been jointed and planed, this will be absolutely beautiful. For smaller projects, like boxes, that don't need much strength, it should do fine. And that is exactly what I intend to use it for. Right now it is resting on the lumber rack, acclimating itself to the humidity of my shop. In another couple of weeks, I'll start working it. I really can't wait to see what it looks like!


Next week, if it doesn't rain, I'll go back for a load of quartersawn white oak for an Arts and Crafts style cabinet I'll be making to hold my photo CDs. I know I'll find what I need there. And, it's a good place to get lumber. Since there is no middleman, Rick is able to underprice the other lumber yards by as much as 30 percent. And that's a good deal!

Norm