Now if you read just about any finishing book, you’ll come across one of those handy charts that compares the key properties of different finishes (usually abrasion, heat, and moisture resistance). These charts can be incredibly helpful, but nothing is more eye opening than a simple, practical, home-brewed test! Am I crazy for disliking the oil & wax finish??? To answer that question, I decided to make up a few sample boards and run a little experiment of my own.

I took 4 scrap pieces of baltic birch plywood and finished each one with different materials. My assumption is that if you are considering oil & wax as a finish, you are probably a fan of that “close to the wood” look. So the film finishes were applied very lightly in an effort to keep everything consistent. Here’s how I treated the samples:

BLO (boiled linseed oil) Only – I sanded the board to 320 (for oils, I like to go a little higher than usual to help promote even absorption). I flooded the board with BLO and let it soak in for an hour. I then wiped off the excess with a clean cotton rag and let the board dry in the warm Arizona air for the entire day and overnight. The next day, I repeated the application process. I did this for a total of three applications.

BLO/Wax – I treated this board exactly as above, only after waiting about 4 days after the final oil application, I applied two coats of paste wax and buffed it to a very pleasant sheen.

BLO/Shellac – I gave this board the same BLO treatment, but instead of wax after 4 days, I gave it two coats of Bullseye SealCoat (2lb cut).

Varnish Only – Sanded to 180. This board received three light coats of Arm-R-Seal satin with sanding in between.

When it was all said and done, each board (with the exception of the BLO-only), had a nice, natural-looking satin appearance. The BLO-only board was dull, as one would expect.

So now for my not-so-scientific test. I wanted to simulate a spill of some kind. In this case, I used a fairly concentrated solution of Transtint Dark Mission Brown in water. I placed a quarter-sized puddle of dye on each board, and let it soak. Let’s pretend this is soda, coffee, wine, or maybe even some delicious hot cocoa (we ARE entering the holiday season you know). After 5 minutes, I wiped away the excess dye and then scrubbed the surface with a damp rag. Here are the results:

The BLO-only sample looks………well……it looks like a bird took a poo on it. The dye seeped into the grain and through capillary action, traveled well beyond the original location of the dye. A stain like this would be very difficult to repair. And if the project is made from plywood, you’ll most likely burn through the veneer before you completely clean up that stain.

The BLO/wax board clearly fared better. The wax does a decent job of preventing complete absorption of the dye and the spread was fairly limited when compared to the BLO-only board.

The BLO/shellac proved to be reasonably protective. A small amount of staining is present but it doesn’t seem like the dye penetrated far enough to travel through the grain. The staining is generally limited to the shellac film, and never really touches the wood. This would be a very easy repair.

And finally, we have the varnished board. Boring right? Honestly, there just isn’t anything to look at. The varnish completely blocked the dye from absorbing into the wood fibers.

Really there was nothing surprising here. Film finishes simply protect the wood better than non-film finishes. But deciding what finish to use on your next project depends on a number of factors, and protection from spills is only one of them. So try to pick the finish that suits the project at hand as well as your personal tastes.

What is my take on this? Personally, I am a big fan of the wiping varnish finish. Just take a look at my DVD, *wink wink*. You can apply just a coat or two to get that close to the wood look and feel, or you can slap on six or seven coats for the ultimate in protection. If you like the deep amber hue that BLO brings to the party, why not start with a single coat of BLO, and finish by top-coating with your favorite varnish? Or maybe compromise and use a Danish Oil or even a home-brewed oil/varnish blend. But when it comes to my projects, the time it takes to produce a BLO finish, coupled with the overall lack of protection, puts it smack dab at the bottom of my preferred finishes list.

Now one other thing that I must mention is repairability. Unfortunately, varnishes are not as easy to repair as other finishes. Shellac, lacquer, and BLO can all be sanded down and re-coated with excellent results. But with varnish, sanding too much can result in witness lines if you burn through one layer and expose the one beneath. So if you are repairing a varnished surface, you really have to take it easy. Fortunately, the increased durability of a varnished surface means you are a lot less likely to damage it.

So like many things in woodworking, its a balance and a compromise. But ultimately, its your project and your shop, and you are the boss. So choose whatever finish tickles your fancy. But if you want a truly durable surface, you should definitely give a film finish strong consideration. And of course, clean spills quickly and encourage the use of coasters!!

My business, Southern Ladies Showcases, was still experiencing growing pains when several guys started asking me to build shelf display cases for their model NASCAR collections. As a woman, being new to this woodworking business, I had branched out into several markets: trade shows, festivals, craft fairs and flea markets. But, I was mainly building shadow boxes that displayed knives and arrowheads.  

These guys were requesting oak display cases with shelves and sliding glass, and that could be hung on the wall of their homes. To be perfectly frank, I was as lost as a goose in a snowstorm!  For one, the world of NASCR was new to me. I had never been to a Daytona bush race. I didn’t have a clue who Dale Earnhardt was. 

I wasn’t at the races when Casey Atwood slid on his top for a quarter-mile down the front stretch. But I had a potential customer who was there. And not just as a spectator, but he had raced against Mr. Atwood, and had a replica of the car to prove it.  And more than that, he was willing to pay a good price for a display case to house his car on its back in memory of his race. 

I was clueless as to what the rare “Tucker” car looked like, that the great country music star, Patsy Cline’s husband owned, and wanted to display, with other replicas cars he had owned and driven.  Well, at this particular time, I may have been new and green on woodworking,  but I wasn’t short on business sense. I figured out real quick, THIS could become a lucrative business.
 
While I was visualizing in my mind how to build these ‘shelf cases’ for the guys, a man came into my show booth at the Nashville, Tennessee fair grounds. This friendly fellow had worked with a pit crew for years.  He and his crew had maintained and hauled their car all over the nation. They worked all the NHRA drag meets. He had recently retired and had a closet full of cars, and he wanted display cases.  Now the grand thing was, this guy was familiar with a tape measure and didn’t mind sharing his knowledge. 

I caught on real fast, motivated by all that green stuff that was soon to come my way. Within a short time, I was producing a full line of shelf cases for all my racing fans, and drivers. And yes, it became a lucrative business. 

After working in the shop for more than 14 years I have most recently taken to penning my tales per the request of many of these customers that have become such good friends. My first book was published in March of 2009: “Splinters: The Pain, The Passion, The Point”. In this book, I tell my story of winding up in a seemingly abnormal profession and several of my customer’s stories and pictures of their cars displayed in my cases are included. For more information on “Splinters” you may visit my Web site at www.SplintersBook.com. 
 

I was fortunate to work in a refinishing shop for a while and I had the opportunity to learn about color matching using various techniques and materials. We used to mix all kind of crazy stuff together to get that perfect match. Over the years, I began to realize that many times the perfect match is sitting in a can on the shelf. And if you can find the perfect color in a commercial product, I say “why not?”. The formula should always (hopefully) be consistent and if you ever need to reproduce the color again in the future, you’ll thank yourself.

This weekend, my buddy Ron from RJones Woodworks stopped by to bring me Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. Well, to tell you the truth, that’s my standard color matching consultation fee. Pretty reasonable, right? Well anyway, he’s building a custom piece for a client who wants the color to match a particular bamboo cutting board. Now lets get one thing straight: there isn’t a damn thing you can do to oak to make it look like bamboo. This is an important detail that many clients don’t realize. I have had more than one customer ask me to refinish something made from pine so that it looks like something else made from oak. I would match the color perfectly, only to find the customer disappointed on delivery day because the pieces don’t look the same. So if you are ever doing a match for a client, its incredibly important to manage their expectations. OK enough business advice.

So we were all prepared to pull out the pigments, dyes, lacquer and the HVLP. But before diving into that craziness, we decided to take some dyes and stains from the cabinet and see if we couldn’t find a pre-made solution. We tested numerous water and oil based stains and dyes (all General Finishes). From left to right we have oil-based Pecan, oil-based Antique Cherry, American Cherry gel stain, Nutmeg gel stain, Light Brown water-based dye stain, and Pecan water-based wood stain. The differences were subtle: some had more red, some had more brown, others had more yellow. But all of them were, of course, affected by the red oak laying underneath the color. This is why its always important to test your stains on an actual scrap piece of the material you plan to work with.

Now the bamboo itself contains a range of colors from light to medium to dark brown, and mimicking the exact look would be nearly impossible. But if we could find a color that was a happy medium between the light and dark streaks, we would be in business. When it was all said and done, we decided on the Light Brown dye stain. We stained a larger area to confirm the match and I think we made the right choice. Honestly, I don’t think we could get any closer even if we tried. So once Ron gets the client’s approval, this is a done deal. Instead of spending hours trying to experiment with color, Ron can now hop online and order up a can of Light Brown Dye Stain. And if his client ever commissions another piece in the future, its going to be incredibly easy for him to match the color.

All in all it was a fun morning. And if anyone else wants to bring me free Dunkin’ Donuts coffee, I’ll be more than happy to help you do some color matching.

I have a question for you. Have you ever taken the more difficult path on purpose? You could do something the easy way, with results that were just as good, but there was something about the more difficult path that drew you in. I confronted this as I was preparing for this month’s Guild project: a wall-hanging tool chest. I wasn’t sure whether to opt for a new joinery gizmo I am reviewing, or go the more challenging route with traditional dadoes (made even more complicated because of excessively undersized plywood and the fact that the dados are stopped). So as tempting as it was to try the new gizmo on this project, as it surely would have made life easier, I decided to opt for the dadoes. And while I’d like to claim some herioc noble reason, the truth is that the simple path just wouldn’t have done much justice to our viewers. The fact is, if you haven’t dealt with undersized plywood and stopped dadoes yet, you will. So you need to know how to deal with it, with or without a gizmo. And there is plenty of time to show how the gizmo works on future shows. So I wonder how many of you own something like a Domino, an FMT or a DowelMax, yet you still occasionally make your joints the old-fashioned way. Maybe you own a planer but you still break out your #7 and the smoother just for fun. Or perhaps you have a nice dovetail jig on the shelf collecting dust, because you really enjoy cutting them by hand. I know I could say yes to at least one of those scenarios, and I know I’m not alone. If you really think about it, we all share this common trait. Aren’t we all intentionally taking the more difficult path just by being woodworkers? In today’s day and age, do we really need to make our own furniture by hand?!?! Of course not, but we do it anyway. No matter how many splinters, cuts, and backaches we get, we would still rather be in the shop than just about anywhere else. So here’s to the difficult path! I shudder to think of a world without it!

Here are a couple of real-life examples from our good friend Google. These two boxes both have disrupted grain patterns. As a result, they fall a little short of their potential. Let’s take a closer look at the box on the left. The grain is not only disrupted where the front meets the side, but also where the lid meets the rest of the box. These are two very important areas for box-makers to focus on. Looking at the box on the right, we can see the front to side joint is disrupted. But this person was careful to make sure the lid was matched to the rest of the box. In all likelihood, the box wax constructed as a closed cube and the lid was sliced off, similar to the process used in this video.

Now I don’t mean to disparage the woodworkers who created these beautiful boxes. Clearly a lot of effort was put into their construction, and not everyone cares this much about continuous grain. But when I see a box as finely crafted as the box on the right, with its awesome burl inlay and fine lacquer finish, I almost expect to see that beautiful grain flow wrapping around the front.

Here’s a box from West End Woodworks that makes excellent use of grain. It is so well done that its almost difficult to see where the lid starts, and the grain from the front just wraps right around to the side. It produces the illusion that a board was just bent to a 90 degree angle! Very cool!

One other thing to keep in mind here is your choice of wood species. The more pronounced the grain, the more important it is that you pay attention to it. If you are using a wood with a relatively muted grain like the mahogany (below on the left), it probably won’t be nearly as noticeable if the grain isn’t continuous. But something like walnut (below on the right), would be incredibly noticeable.

What inspired this article was an email I received from Guild member Brandon who asked about creating a continuous grain drawer front for his poker storage box. I happen to have a few pictures of this process from several years ago when I was building a hall table and I thought it would be a great time to share this information with you.

It all starts with a board that is slightly wider and longer than you actually need (by about 1/4″). We are essentially going to cut the drawer front out of the middle of the board, and we need that extra material to make up for what we lose to the blade kerf. I like to use the thinnest blade in my collection and I start by ripping the top and bottom (lets call them “rails”). This leaves us with a wider center piece that needs to have its ends trimmed off in order to release the actual drawer front. So two quick cross cuts at the mitersaw or tablesaw will yield a drawer front and two side frame pieces. Its critical that you keep everything straight so label all of your parts and use chalk to draw reference lines if you need to. Now put the drawer front aside for later and glue the frame back together. If you are careful about it, the frame will look like one continuous piece and you won’t even see the new joints. And your drawer face will be perfectly matched to the wood around it. If you have a well-tuned bandsaw, consider using it for this operation so you can take advantage of the super thin kerf.

So do you guys have some great examples of grain flow that you can share? Post a link to the images right here in the comments area. To post a link, just copy and paste the URL into your comment.

**Gratuitous plug** – So if you like the look of the hall table pictured above, consider taking my class at the William Ng School in January.

Now many of you may remember that I was attending a week-long class being taught by Darrell Peart at the William Ng School when I had an opportunity to handle, trace, and measure the original Hall frame. During that week, in addition to meeting Gary Hall (Peter Hall’s grandson), I had the opportunity to meet Tom Moore, a Greene & Greene enthusiast and docent at the Gamble House in Pasadena, CA. Recently, Tom was able to view and photograph three more frames made by John Hall. These frames are still in the family and needless to say, its probably not easy prying them away from the hands of their owners. Fortunately for all of us, Gary made it happen and Tom was kind enough to share his photos with me. So let’s take a little trip back in time!

The first frame is being referred to as “Carved Frame“, for obvious reasons. The frame seems relatively simple, which is just as well given the wildly pronounced grain and the carving on the top rail. The wood looks to be pine or maybe some wild douglas fir. What I find amazing about this piece is how John Hall let the wood guide his carving. At first glance you might not even notice its there. I imagine its much more obvious in person. Tom reported that the wood appeared to have been “liberally wire brushed for deep texture”. This carving style seems reminiscent of the wall panel carvings I observed at the Gamble house itself. I remember taking note of how the carver (one of the Hall Brothers I assume) utilized the natural grain lines in those panels and this frame clearly exploits the same natural properties of the wood. Here’s an excerpt from Tom’s observations:

“The top rail is carved, although it doesn’t show up dramatically due to the coloring. The full carved scene shows three clouds, one over the full moon, and five large birds (seagulls?).”

The next frame is called “Island Paradise” and appears to be another straightforward frame. Judging from the ray fleck and grain pattern it looks to be of quarter sawn white oak. Remember that the Greene Bros. (and certainly the Hall Bros. as well) took a great deal of influence from the Arts and Crafts movement and the stylings of Gustav Stickley. So its not surprising to see white oak show up here. The joints on this frame appear to be pegged with white oak and I do see a few design features (cloud-lift-like elements) that are also present in the original Hall frame that started me down this whole path.

The final frame is called “Tender Memories” and is named after the painting within it. The most striking thing about this mahogany frame is how similar it is to some of the Gamble House frames: Gamble House Virtual Archives DA-005 and DA-002. The big question on my mind is when was this frame made? Was it before, or after the Gamble House project? Were these Gamble House frames actually built AND designed by the Halls? Fun questions to ponder. The frame features an inner frame made of walnut and Tom speculates that the outer frame was made before they knew exactly what would go inside it.

Tom and Gary disassembled the frame to see how everything was held together. Here’s Tom’s account of the event:

“We disassembled it to see how it was done. What a surprise. In addition to the Citizen newspaper, there were free floating strips of cardboard and small pieces of wood, most a bit smaller than a wooden match, that served as shims. The frame is similar to the one in the Gable House but the Hall frame is portrait while the Gamble is landscape. In addition, the Hall splines are mahogany, while the Gamble splines are brass.”

So after pouring over the numerous photos I received from Tom, I really started to wonder about the story behind these creations. While beautiful in their overall design, the fit and finish is not exactly at the same level as the pieces that adorn the various Greene & Greene houses. Being a woodworker myself, I can envision a few scenarios here. These frames could have simply been intended as practice. Perhaps they were done to iron out a particular technique or to play with unusual proportions. Were these just the “oops” projects? Maybe they were presents made for family members in between the paying jobs. After all, our family members tend to be a little less picky than our customers. Even without an accompanying story, these frames are a sight to behold.

I have never been much of a history buff but I just can’t seem to get enough of the Greene and Hall legacies. My Hall frame reproduction adorns a wall in my kitchen and every morning I get to appreciate it as I prepare my cup of joe. It serves as inspiration and a reminder of why I work with wood. The passion that went into John Hall’s work is the same passion that drives all of us, regardless of our skill or experience level. So I encourage you to exercise that passion as much as possible. Get into the shop and create! Just remember, even if you screw something up its not the end of the world. Give the “oops” projects to friends and family members and move on. You never know, your next creation could be your masterpiece!

Fast forward about 5 years and here I am, back in a garage and shopless once again. I have been trying to organize my new garage over the last few weeks and my little workspace is finally starting to come together. But it wasn’t until this week that I found myself calling it a shop. What happened this week? I made a project. Nothing fancy. Just a Popular Woodworking “I Can Do That” Magazine Rack for a Guild video. But the fact that sawdust had been made, finish had been spilled, and a new piece of woodworking was born, meant that my new garage had been elevated to the next level: a shop. The transition was much faster this time around.

And as you can see from these pics, it doesn’t take much for the new shop to get messy.

I am curious how many of you refer to your work spaces as a shop and when did the transition take place?

• “Purchasing an overwhelming tool… most recently Leigh Dovetail Jig…. uggg” – KN_SSA-r
• “measure once, cut twice.” – Yucatandan
• “Measuring twice doesn’t help if you only think once…” – Torch02
• “doing ‘just one more thing’ when tired. Always leads to disaster. Go upstairs and sleep, bozo…” - jmk89
• “underestimating the time needed to complete and overestimating my ability to get the job done” – FredCannon
• “mis-measuring in some subtle way (e.g. missing kerf or reading wrong side of line)”- Cyface
• “buying new tools before learning what my current tools are capable of accomplishing (and, thus, spending money I don’t have).” – CogWheelBrain
• “I jump in to bigger projects than I can do and get discouraged too quickly.” – michaelbclark
• “Woodworking mistakes? Let’s just say I can’t count the mistakes on my fingers.” – Aquapasture
• “Drips and runs in the finish” - Dbingham
• “Letting my mind go 100MPH … hands can’t keep up thou…lol…I NEED TO SLOW DOWN :)” – Lubos Kuzma
• “Not spending enough money for tools. The single worst thing I’ve done (repeatedly, unfortunately), is thinking that a cheap tool will work just as well as the good tool.” - Carlos Alvarez
• “chipout on the corner of a board from hand planing or routing…” – Matt Berger
• “Not buying enough raw material… always have to go back to get more. Should know by now LOL”- Andreas Schwall
• “Trying to do everything with power tools when they should be done with hand tools” – Matt Rakowski
• “Trying to keep all the good wood for yourself when you are building a project for a customer.” - Thomas Elliot Glynn
• “Having 5 projects going at once in my 1 project workshop…(and occasionally finishing one).” – Gary Aurora
• “Either under-buying wood and then struggling to match grain and color later or over-buying and ending up with too much but not quite enough for another project.” – Allen in Ohio

And this has to be my personal favorite:
“jeez, all of the above… I suck… B-/” - Bob Daniel

See! You’re not the only one who makes mistakes. :)

Well Marc I had an accident on my jointer on 04/25/09. I was milling maple for your cutting board design when the accident (carelessness) happened. I had just run the piece through on its face and pushed the piece through no problem. Well i didn’t push the piece all the way past the blade guard which left it propped open about two and a half inches (see pic) exposing the spinning blades. I reached for the end of the board closest to the blades and that’s when it happened.

My ring finger on my right hand came into the blades path. I heard a little hum and my hand immediately jerked back. I was scared to look down to see what happened to my hand. Marc I was lucky, I was bleeding moderately but my finger was all there. I hand cut a 1/16th inch deep flap about the size of your pinky nail (see pic). There is no room in woodworking for carelessness or lack of safety around machines. It could of been much much worse but safety will come first in my shop from now on.

Please let this serve on your site as a testament to safety especially for upcoming safety week.