Month: November 2013

Over The Moon

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

Last weekend was the Over The Moon show in Lawrenceburg, IN. My wife Anita did really well selling her painted furniture and home décor items. People were even telling her that she had the best booth at the show. She did so well that the organizers invited her back for the spring show in April.

Helping my wife out, I made a few things for her to sell at the show. All of my EATs and NOELs that she brought sold which made me happy. I need to make some more and let her sell them in her booth in That Shop in Milford.

Here’s the china cabinet hutch at the show. A lot of people were looking at it, but most were looking at the things inside the cabinet instead of the cabinet itself.  Beside it were chalk boards that she painted. Those are a very popular item for her. I simply cut out the plywood for the frames, she does everything else.

I made a bookcase for her a few months ago, but unfortunately no one bought it.  I’ve made two other ones before and both of them sold within a couple of weeks. We’re thinking it might be the paint job that’s hurting the piece. I’ll make another soon and Anita will just paint it black and see if it sells quicker.

The one piece that didn’t sell was the china cabinet hutch we worked on a few weeks ago. However, Anita is happy about that because she wanted to keep it anyway. It looks nice in our dining room. Now she needs to work for the next Over The Moon show in the spring.

Visting Brian Boggs Chair Maker

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn WorkshopLeave a comment

If your wife comes to you one day and tells you that she wants to go to the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC to see how the Vanderbilt’s lived, tell her “sure, let’s go.” Then while strolling the Biltmore Village below the mansion, shopping at all the retail stores, head a block East and take a right on London St. There you will find the studio of chair maker Brian Boggs.

My wife and I visited his shop this past weekend while in Asheville. The building he operates out of is nothing fancy. In fact without noticing his sign out front, we almost passed it up. When we walked in, I looked at one of his chairs and sat down. His wife Melanie looked me up and down and asked “are you a woodworker?” I said I was and asked her how she knew. She said that most woodworkers will walk in and immediately sit in one of his chairs.

Melanie was nice enough to spend a few minutes with us and explain some of Brian’s furniture. She even took us into his shop area where we were able to sit in his new Sunniva outdoor swing. The thing was impressive and very comfortable. You can see the swing here on his website. http://www.brianboggschairmakers.com/product/sunniva-swing/

I don’t have any photos of his shop because I thought it would have been rude to do so. All I have to say is that it is worth the time to stop by and swing in for a visit if you’re in the area. The amount of 16/4 mahogany he has in stock was probably worth more than my house. However, if you do visit, don’t expect to have a long conversation with Brian about woodworking. He was extremely busy while we visited. One of the things that I noticed about his shop is that I didn’t see a table saw. He may have had one, but considering a lot of his work is curved, him not owning one doesn’t surprise me. He does have a sweet Old Iron band saw that looked like it was the staple of the shop.

After the tour, I asked Melanie if Brian would like some hemp oil to try out. She went into the shop and asked him if he did. It must have peaked his curiosity because he came out and asked me about it. I told him it’s made from hempseed, is solvent free, contains no VOC’s, is environmentally friendly, but is not readily available in the US. I gave him a small 4 oz container of the oil and wrote down the website where he could buy it. Whether or not he will use the oil on his furniture in the future remains uncertain, but being able to give him something he was unaware of was pretty cool.

Antique Tool Improver

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Antique Tools7 Comments

I’ve been cleaning antique tools for over twenty-five years. When I was fourteen years old my Grandpa gave me a Stanley No 77 dowel machine that took square stock and turned it into dowels. Since that day, I was hooked on old tools. There was something about taking an old neglected tool that was just sitting around collecting dust and bringing it back to life that appealed to me.

I’ve cleaned hundreds if not thousands of tools over the years. When removing all the dirt and rust from an old tool, the final step is to protect it with a penetrating oil so it doesn’t rust again. For years I used Kramer’s Antique Improver and loved the way it protected the wood and metal of the tool giving it a nice sheen. The only problem I had with the oil was the price. At $20.00 for a 8 oz bottle, the stuff wasn’t exactly cheap, but it worked so well I kept using it even though my wife couldn’t stand the smell of the stuff.

Since my wife was no fan of the smell when I used Kramer’s Antique Improver, it got me wondering if I could make something that worked as well for pennies on the dollar. I didn’t want to reproduce Kramer’s exactly because John Kramer uses turpentine and solvents to make his oil. I wanted something simple that I could whip up in a jiffy using only natural products.

I started with melting beeswax. I bought a small 100% beeswax candle and cut a small 1/4″ slab off of it and melt it in the pot. You can always buy granule beeswax at a woodworkers store if you can’t find a 100% beeswax candle.

Once the wax has melted, I add equal parts of orange oil and mineral oil to pot and cook them for one minute. They sell mineral oil at a woodworking supply stores as butcher block oil however, I found mineral oil at the pharmacy for a whole lot less.

Once the oils have cooked in the pot for a minute I pour it in a container. As you can see, my container is nothing more than a Sweet Leaf Ice Tea drink I bought one day.

Using a paper towel, I rub the oil all over tool penetrating it in every spot. You can see the difference of the tool with just one coat of the oil. I usually coat the tool three or four times letting the oil penetrate the entire surface.

The oil works on wood just well as metal. In fact, I coat all my molding planes with the oil. The great thing about my oil is that it’s completely natural, there is no odor and it lasts just as long as Kramer’s. Not to mention that it’s dirt cheap to make.

Updating a China Cabinet

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture6 Comments

My wife bought this china cabinet at the Springfield Antique Show in Springfield, OH in September. It originally came with two glass paneled doors but she wanted to take them off and open up the top part of the cabinet for easy storage. We have a similar china cabinet in our dining room now and opening and closing the doors every time I want to unload my wallet and keys is kind of a pain in the ass, so taking the doors off permanently make sense to me.

You’ll see a lot of china cabinets with their doors removed in antique stores but most of them simply take the doors off and paint the piece leaving the sides of the case 3/4″ thin with the hinge mortises exposed and all. I knew I didn’t want to have that look, so I decided to add stiles to front to complete the case.

I started by milling two pieces of poplar 1″ x 1 3/4″ x 36″ and laid out where I wanted to rout fluting down each piece.

I then clamped the pieces in my modern Moxon vise and used a 1/4″ fluting bit to rout a flute about 1/4″ deep down the front of the stile. I opted to have three flutes 1/4″ apart down each stile.

The scrap portion of the stiles is key. Here I gauged where the fluting should go and then tested the layout. As you can tell, I had to move over the middle flute just a tad in order for it to line up evenly with the other two flutes on the side.

After the fluting was routed, I sanded the stiles and glued them onto the cabinet.

The reason I decided to use 1″ thick poplar 1 3/4″ wide is because I wanted to match the stiles to the top rail as it was 1″ x 1 3/4″. Had I used wood that was only 3/4″ thick it wouldn’t have looked as nice appearing like the stiles were an add on which I did not want.

The fluting on the china cabinet’s leg started up 2″ from the bottom so I mirrored the detail starting and stopping the fluting on the stiles 2″ from the top and bottom.

This is how the cabinet turned out. The fluted stiles gives the piece a nice added touch and finishes it off. It will be sold in my wife’s booth at a vintage designer’s market called “Over the Moon” in Lawrenceburg, IN near the end of the month. I think my wife secretly doesn’t want it to sell because she wants to keep it. I can’t blame her.

Making Walnut Stain

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Workshop6 Comments

I have a big walnut tree in my backyard that drops hundreds of walnuts on the ground every fall. For some reason the walnuts were excessive this year as I have never seen so many on the ground. It must have been a good year to be a walnut tree.

I usually just trip on them while I cut the grass but I decided it might be fun to try to make my own walnut stain from the nuts.

I looked around for the walnuts that had opened up while the squirrels were giving me dirty looks and took about a dozen of them to my shop. I then wrapped them in an onion bag and tightened them up so the walnuts wouldn’t fall out. Wrapping them in cheese cloth would work just as well.

I grabbed a big pot I bought a few months ago and a hot plate burner to cook the walnuts. There was no way I was going to use a pot from my wife’s kitchen as I didn’t want to get punched in the face. I filled the pot with water with a couple of gallons of water, placed the nuts in it and turned on the hot plate until the water was at a boil.

After the water came to a boil, I turned the hot plate off and let the walnuts sit in the pot overnight. In the morning, I dipped a stick in the water to see how dark the stain was. It wasn’t as dark as I would have liked so I turned the burner on again. After I got the water to a boil, I turned the hot plate to low and let the walnuts simmer in the water for a few more hours.

This was the most frustrating part of the process. I kept testing the stain on some scrap oak to see how dark it was. Every hour I checked, the stain was real light and looked like tea. I started to think it wouldn’t work. So I decided that I probably had too much water in the pot and poured some of it in the sink. After removing about half the water and cooking the walnuts for a few more hours, this is what I was left with.

Satisfied with the color, I poured the stain into a mason jar using a funnel and paint strainer to collect all the gunk that had accumulated in the water from the walnuts.

This is how the stain looks on white oak. It dries a little lighter than this and raises the grain a bit but considering I made it from nuts in backyard is pretty cool.

I marked the date on top of the can so I know how fresh it is. Ideally you would want to store the stain in the refrigerator so it doesn’t go bad, but I doubt I’ll do that. I’ll  keep it around and test it every week to see how long it lasts. Unfortunately, I have nothing to stain right now. Maybe I’ll make a bookcase out of oak in the next few weeks so I can at least use it before it goes bad.