Category: Furniture

Handmade furniture posts

Empire Dresser

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture5 Comments

My wife won this Empire style dresser this week at an online estate auction site for a mere $50.00. When we went to pick it up the guy who ran the auction was telling us it was probably built around the early 1800’s and was a cross between Empire and Federal styles. The dresser was beautiful with its carved columns, mahogany veneer and old brass hardware.

The dresser was in pretty good shape with the only major damage being the bottom drawer was broken off. Fixing the veneer and making it match with the rest of the piece would be a challenge so my wife and I are thinking of taking out all three bottom drawers and turning the dresser into a wine bar with storage for wine glasses and bottles.

While taking the drawers out I was looking for a makers mark just in case this is some rare piece made by famous cabinetmaker. The last thing I want to do is to retrofit some dresser that if left alone and restored could be worth $20,000. Unfortunately I found no makers mark but I did notice that the piece was made by hand.

The drawers were made with hand cut dovetails and the bottoms were chamfered into grooves in the drawers side. No plywood was used which gave me a clue that the dresser was pretty old. Plywood wasn’t being used in furniture until around the 1920’s.

I also noticed that not that much care was taken in cutting the drawer bottoms. One of the bottom’s edge was wavy and looked like it was cut with a bow saw. Why the cabinetmaker didn’t use a hand saw to rip down the bottom is baffling. Maybe he was in a hurry or didn’t have a hand saw around at the time but, it looks like crap and wouldn’t be considered top-notch craftsmanship by todays standards. However, it was perfectly acceptable back then. Maybe there wasn’t as much scrutiny about how things were built as there is today. If I did something like that, all my woodworking friends would call me a hack.

  

I also could see where the cabinetmaker reused boards that he first cut dovetails for as the drawers backs. The back and the sides are simply nailed together with some finish nails. It’s possible he was planing on dovetailing the back of the drawers but changed his mind for some reason. But nevertheless, apparently back then if the part was not being shown and was hidden from the customers view, then nobody cared what it looked like inside.

The back of the piece gave me another clue as to its age. There were two pockets drilled to accept screws to hold down the top. As I unscrewed one of them, I saw that the screw had a point at the tip. Due to increased machinery technology, manufacturers didn’t start making screws with points until the 1840’s. Before that they were simply blunt and craftsmen would have to pre-drill the hole.

So my guess is this piece was probably built between 1840-1920 by a local cabinet shop who didn’t bother signing their pieces. With no makers mark, there is no way for me to determine who actually built it. I searched the internet for “Empire dresser” in Images to see if a similar dresser appeared with no luck. So in the end, with its major damage to the bottom drawer, I think it’s safe to retrofit this into something new.

Turning a Door into a Headboard

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

My wife Anita and I bought an old door off of Craigslist a few months ago with the intentions of using it as a headboard for our full size bed in our spare bed room. This type of “recycled” work is new to me but it’s all the rage nowadays and my wife has just opened up a business called Bella Chic Decor where she rehab’s old furniture. We’ve been antiquing for a few weeks picking up a whole bunch of old furniture to build up her inventory and she spends time sanding and repainting it. She also has rented a space at a local antique store to sell her stuff.  She’s been doing really well and the furniture she rehab’s looks the bomb so her future looks bright.

Once we got this door home I needed to measure it and decide where to cut it in half so it would work as a headboard. I ended up using three panels of the five panel door in order for the design to make sense. Cutting the door was the easy part. I whipped out my Festool panel saw and cleanly ripped the door in half. Then I filled the door knob hole and latch with scrap wood and putty.

Turning the door into a headboard was a sinch. I knew the headboard needed to be at least 54″ long in order to fit the bolt holes for the full size bed frame so I added extra wood on each side from a 2×8 ripped down to 6 1/2″.

For the top, I simply added a piece of 3 1/2″ wide ash I had lying around and nailed it to the top with my pneumatic finish nailer. From there I cut and nailed a piece of crown molding I bought at Home Depot.

After I was done, Anita painted the headboard with chalk paint and applied a coat of dark wax then clear wax on top in order to protect the finish. The old door really came out nice and makes a stunning headboard.

Sofa Table

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

Last fall my wife Anita and I redid our screened in porch. Since then we’ve slowly added furniture to the room but what we really need is a table to put our 20-year-old TV on. Right now the TV sits on a big clay pot with a piece of plywood on top. Not an ideal place for a TV so she asked me to build something quick to use for out there. So I designed this table which measures 56″ long x 17″ deep x 30″ tall.

Because the table will be outside, I decided to build it out of 2 x 8’s in case it gets destroyed by the weather. Plus, I really didn’t feel like spending the money on something more weather appropriate like cedar or teak. The 2 x 8’s around here are Southern Yellow Pine and if you scavenge through a pile, you can find some clean board free from knots. Once I bought the boards I let them acclimate in my shop for a couple of weeks.

Since 2 x 8’s are 7 1/4″ wide, it was a no brainer to make the sides of the table 7″. In some cases I was able to rip the boards in half on my bandsaw to yield two thinner pieces. Because the boards are a 1 1/2″ thick, cutting them in half yielded a two boards 11/16″ thick rough sawn. I kept planing those boards to 1/2″ thick and used them as the drawer stock.

I tried using the grain to my advantage as best as I could. The bottom slats only being 1/4″ thick are susceptible to warping so I cut them with quarter sawn or rift sawn wood.

Those aren’t dovetails!

What can I say, I wasn’t in the mood to cut half blind dovetails. I’ve used this pin joint in the past when I built my toolbox ten years ago. Those have held up fine over the years and these drawers are going to get minimum use so I’m not too concerned.

Anita plans on painting the piece with gray chalk paint and distress it a little to make it look old. Painted gray with some nice old style handles and this table will be a show stopper in our screened in porch. But I have a feeling a new flat screen will be on top of it instead of a 20 year old dinosaur.

French Style Bookcase

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

My French style bookcase is painted and done. It turned out really well. My wife loves it which is all that really matters. I decided that I will build a few more and have my wife paint them with different colors to see if we can sell them on Craigslist. I posted these pictures on Facebook with a little bit of a description and an asking price of $450.00 which is cheap considering hand-made bookcases sell for over a $1000 in furniture stores. I’ll see if I get any offers on Facebook but even if I don’t, I won’t let it be a deterrent from building more because I feel that people will really like these bookcases.

The bookcase measures 59″ Long x 16″ Wide x 34 1/2″ High and is made from poplar. My wife did an excellent job painting it with two coats of semi-gloss black latex paint and a primer underneath. It’s turned out really well but I’m considering painting the next ones with a lacquer paint for durability. I’ll have one black, one white and one black with white stencil, or vice versa, whatever my wife decides to do.

The side shot shows the detail of the crown molding that I cut with an old molding plane and the cross bars that hold the case together. The crossbars are strong but make the whole bookcase light. The crossbars also imitate the sides of the Eiffel Tower which puts it in the French Style.

This morning my wife and I decided to fancy up bookcase by decorating it. We searched all over our home for trinkets and stuff to stick on the shelves. I used a picture of a bookcase from a furniture catalog to act as a guide on how to decorate it. After we were done, my wife didn’t want to put the stuff back from where we got them since the bookcase looked so nice.

Hopefully I’ll get good feedback from my friends on Facebook. Maybe I’ll even get an order or two.

Since when do woodworkers buy furniture from other woodworkers?

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture4 Comments

I have to admit, I’d never thought that a woodworker would buy a piece of handmade furniture from another woodworker. After all we’re woodworkers, we could just easily make it ourselves. But what has happened over the past few months has changed my opinion.

It started a couple of years ago when I made four Shaker side tables out of cherry. I had plans of listing them on Etsy and turning a handsome profit. At first it seemed easy with a sale within the first week. The problem was that the person who had “bought” the table was a scammer trying to pull some over payment cashiers check trick and then have me send him the difference back. Luckily Etsy saw the scam and cancelled the transaction.

I had the tables out on Etsy for a few months with no other bites so I decided to delist them. I was them stumped as to what to do with them so I had the idea of donating one to my local PBS station’s Action Auction. The auction went well and I had my table on TV for several minutes as well as MVFlaim Furnituremaker listed on the PBS station’s website. So, the next year I decided to do it again. Even though I didn’t get any money for them, I felt good about the exposure and helping out my local PBS station with the donation.

Then last summer I got a call from one of the people who had won the auction for one of the tables. They wanted another one! So I gave them a price and went over to their house to deliver it. I met with the woman’s husband and he started talking about woodworking and took me out to his shop. I looked around in his shop in confusion. The man obviously had a nice set up. Nice enough to be able to build the table himself. Why was he buying mine? I asked him why and he told me that while he dabbles in woodworking, he doesn’t possess the skills that I have to build the table as nice as I did. I was extremely flattered by that.

Three tables down one to go. My wife decided to stick the last one in our spare bedroom and use it for a few months. It looked nice but didn’t quite match the French country decor she was going after so she listed it on Craigslist. A couple of days ago a guy called and asked if he could have it for a certain price. My wife and I agreed to the offer and told him to come pick it up. The man came to the house, introduced himself and started asking about what type of joinery I used to build the table. I couldn’t believe it. Another woodworker! Here’s another guy who would rather buy a nice handmade table than make himself. What is going on? He told me that he spends all his time at work and really doesn’t have time to build things he wants but appreciates nice furniture when he sees it. He even told me that he went down to Tennessee to Lonnie Bird’s school to take his Dovetailing class a few years ago so he definitely had a passion for woodworking.

All I know is that I learned something new today. Even though people possess the skill to build something themselves, they’ll still pay a fair price for the work of others. I didn’t get rich from the sale of the tables. In fact, I barely got my money back from the cost of the wood, but it still felt good helping out my local PBS station the past couple of years and meeting new friends.

Making crown molding with a complex molding plane

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn FurnitureLeave a comment

While in the process of building a Bourdonnais French style bookcase I needed to make some crown molding for the top.

I wasn’t about to go out and spend money on some pre-made crown molding. That would be the easy way out. I have a boat load of antique molding planes in my shop, so I decided to put one of those bad boys to use.

The first step in make making crown molding is to get the stock prepared. I ripped a couple of pieces of straight grained poplar 5/8″ x 2″ x 6′ long. It’s important to get wood with grain as straight as possible to avoid tear out caused by the plane’s blade.

I then chopped off a section of one of the boards to use as a test piece. Placing the piece in my sticking board, I began running my molding plane over the board to create the Roman ogee profile. After a few strokes, the shape was completed in about five minutes. By the way, my sticking board is similar to the one based off of Jim Toplin’s in the book “The New Traditional Woodworker” by Popular Woodworking Books.

The next step is to create the angles on the board so that is works as crown molding on the case. I took the board over to the table saw and set the blade to 30 degrees. Once I set the fence to the proper location, I ran the board through and then flipped the board over to rip off the same 30 degree angle off the other end of the board.

I then took the molding back to the bench to finalize the profile. I used a block plane and just knocked off the top corner. This corner should be 90 degree to the 30 degree angle cut on the table saw so that it will lay on the case properly. (It’s really helpful to have a small sample piece of crown molding laying around so that you can use all the angles on the molding as a template for your piece).

Once the profile has been completed, a light sanding with 120 grit sand paper helps clean up any chatter left by the molding plane. I use a styrofoam sanding sponge and some sticky sand paper to sand the profile.

After sanding the only thing left to do is attach it to the case. Always make more molding than you need. There may and will be parts of the molding where the plane falls out of line a little bit and the profile won’t match the rest of the board. You simply cuts those parts off and use the rest.

Making a Bed Part 3

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

Well it’s been a tough few days with my dog Rylee passing away but I finally pulled myself together and put the finish on the bed.

After sanding the parts to 220 grit sandpaper, I applied a Brown Walnut analine dye to the bed. I diluted the dye to a 4:1 distilled water:dye solution and applied a liberal amount to the bed with a sponge wiping off the excess. I’ve been told to use distilled water instead of tap water because the minerals in tap water may change the color of the dye.

The dye turns all the wood to a uniform color creating a base for the gel stain that will cover it. After I washed the bed with the dye, it looked like I grabbed a handful of mud and smeared it all over the place but I realized it’s just the first step in the process.

After the dye dried, I needed to coat the bed with de-waxed shellac so that the gel stain won’t penetrate the wood too much making the wood appear blotchy. I create my own 2 lb cut shellac by diluting 4 ounces of shellac flakes to 16 ounces of denatured alcohol. I keep the shellac in an empty glass maple syrup container.

 

Once the shellac is applied, the bed turned darker but was still nowhere the color I wanted it be. My wife came downstairs to look at the progress I was making and told me she hated the way it looked. I told her not to worry as I was only half way done.

Allowing the shellac to dry overnight, I was ready to apply my first coat of stain. I used one coat of General Finishes Nutmeg Gel Stain applying it with a piece of an old t-shirt and wiping off the excess with another piece of old t-shirt. I used a dry paint brush and brushed away any swirl marks left by the t-shirts. Fortunately the bed started to take on a brownish color removing the mud look after I applied the stain .

For the next color I used Minwax Rosewood Gel Stain but before I applied it, I coated the bed with another coat of shellac so that the new color won’t affect the nutmeg color giving the finish more depth.

Now the bed has the reddish hue color I’m looking for. All that is left to do is apply the top coat with Arm-R Seal polyurethane oil combo. Three coats of the Arm-R-Seal coat and a lightl sanding of 600 grit sandpaper and parrafin oil, the bed was ready to be put back together.

The bed is finally done and I was pleased with the outcome. It took me longer than the month I promised my wife but she was fine with the delay. I forget how much the bed actually cost me to build since I threw away the receipts, but if I believe it was around $300-$400. A far cry from the $1699 Pottery Barn wanted for their bed. Now to take it apart again and drag it upstairs.

Making a Bed Part 2

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture1 Comment

Well it’s been a few weeks since I blogged about making a bed for my wife but the month of October had some really nice weather. So nice that my wife and I decided to use the days to redo our screened in porch. Once that project was done, I moved back to the bed.

After the feet were turned and the top legs were made, I cut a couple of mortises in them to accept tenons for front panel. The tenons were cut using a router and hand saws and are about 3″ wide.

Next I needed to make the beaded details for the front panel and sides. I used my sticking board and a No 6 hollow molding plane to shape a round over on one side of a piece of wood that was 1/2″ thick x 1 1/8″ wide.

    

Glueing the beaded detail onto the boards was a synch with my Bow Clamps. The front panel only needed one bead on the bottom while the sides needed two. One on top and one on the bottom.

The top of the front panel is glued down in place with biscuits so that no visible fasteners will be seen. Once everything is glued together, the front panel is complete. The next part is focusing on the headboard.

   

The headboard started with a design on a 1/4″ piece of melamine hard board . I traced the pattern onto a piece of 1 3/4″ soft maple stock and cut it out on the bandsaw. Then I took another piece of 1 3/4″ and laminated a piece of 1/2″ on top of it to make the thickness I needed for the top rail of the headboard.

  

I shaped the bed rail into form by using my hollow molding planes. Using the right sweep of plane makes the job simple and quick to do. After cutting the tenons on the bed rail, I cut a sample tenon to use as a gauge to figure out where I needed to bore the mortise on the headboard sides.

 

 

Once I determined the location of the mortise, I simply bored it out with an auger bit and cleaned up the sides with a chisel. I then worked on the headboard rail bottom and the bottom rail for the slats. To make sure everything fitted fine, I tested fitted all the parts together.

  

Next I wanted to focus on the coopered panel front. The bed at Pottery Barn had coopered panels that were flush with its sides. My wife wanted the same look so cutting a groove in the sides and in setting the panel pieces into the groove wasn’t going to work. After studying the Pottery Barn bed, I decided to build it in much the same way they did. I shaped two pieces in an S curve and glued it to the sides. I use this curved part as the way to connect the slats onto the headboard by screwing them through the back.

  

Making the slats was fun. I took 1/2″ thick by 3″ wide boards and cut tongue and grooves in them with my Stanley #49 plane. I opened up the joint a little bit so the boards would fit sloppy in the groove and bend around the S curve.

  

Once all the slats were cut, I dry fitted them to the headboard and attached them with screws.

   

Once all the slats were in place, I glued the feet to the bottom. My headboard was assembled.

Now I needed to assemble all the parts. I test fitted the bed hardware and how the rails would attach to the front panel and headboard with a scrap of plywood.

Once I figured out where each piece of hardware went, I screwed it on and test fitted the bed. Cutting out some bed support slats out of poplar and glueing a support bar on to the sides, the bed was ready for final assembly.

Now I need to sand the entire bed and stain it a dark mahogany stain my wife wants.

Making a Bed

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

So my wife wants to buy this bed she found in a Pottery Barn catalog. They want $1500 for it but I told her I could make it for $400 and be done in a month. Neither promise I’m sure I can keep but she gave me the okay to give it a shot.

After looking at the picture I calculated how much would I would need. I bought enough to get me started. I glued up 3/4″ material for the sides and the front frame and bought some 1 3/4″ stock for the sides of the headboard and feet.

I wanted to start on the front legs and feet. Both are 4″ thick but I didn’t want to use that much material for the legs so I glued up four pieces of 4″ material and cut them at 45 degree angles.

I then filled the middle of legs with a laminated piece of 2×4 material about 4″ long. This is so that I can drill a hole in the middle and glue the feet upon them.

Next were to work on the feet. I glued up two pieces of 1 3/4″ and one piece of 3/4″ maple 10″ long to become the feet. I then squared it up on the bandsaw and marked out the center.

 

I didn’t want to take a full square stock over to the lathe so I marked out an octagon on the ends to cut off at the bandsaw. The easiest way to mark out an octagon is to take you compass and place one end on the center and the other end at one of the corners. Now take that layout and move it to each corner and swing a mark on both sides. When you mark around all four corners you’ll have eight marks. Connecting the two marks at each corner creates your octagon.

Now take the wood over to the bandsaw with the table set at 45 degrees and cut off the corners. Now you’ll have a block of wood that is a lot easier and probably safer to turn.

I studied the picture as best as I could but had to rely on guess-work as to where the curves started and stopped on the foot. I drew out a drawing of what I thought it looked like but only used the drawing as a guide. In the end I just used my own guess-work to determine the overall design of the foot.

Next was the hard part. I had to duplicate the next three feet to look like my first one. I used the original foot as a template and measured the diameters of all the curves and valleys with calipers so I could duplicate them. In the end I was happy with the way they came out even if they aren’t exact duplicates. Being that they will eventually be five to six feet away from one another, I don’t think anyone will tell.

I’ll keep you posted on my progress and let you know when my wife gets impatient.

Discovering the faults of production type chairs

On By MVFlaim FurnituremakerIn Furniture2 Comments

My wife and I were browsing Half Price Books tonight when a wooden chair caught my eye. What I saw was a screw on the top of the chair where the side was mortised into the top.  So I grabbed my phone and took a couple of pics.

I turned the chair around and I saw the tenon and how small it was in relation to the size of the mortise.

The amount of slop on the tenon was astonishing. Seemed like there was a 3/16″ play all around the tenon. I couldn’t tell how much difference there was between the thickness of the tenon and the width of the mortise but there wasn’t any glue residue on the tenon. You would think with all of the stress put on a chair that the manufacturer would be more attentitive to the proper size of the mortise and tenon joints in their furniture. Just another reason why it’s better to buy furniture from craftsmen who care about their work.