Had a fun time in the shop today as I dove into the Adirondack Chair Guild Build. I started by milling up the front legs in preparation for the joinery and I immediately noticed some issues with the color of my 8/4 stock, but we’ll get to that in a moment. Once the legs were milled to length, width and thickness, it was time to cut the mortises. As is always the case in the Guild, I try to show multiple ways to do things. So I cut one set of mortises using a router, and another set using the hollow chisel mortiser. Which do I prefer? Good question Marc! The router method is a smidgen faster and results in mortises with nice smooth walls. With the sweet dust collection of my OF1400, the work is rather clean too. The hollow chisel mortiser is a bit slower, a little messier and the mortise walls aren’t quite as smooth. But it has the advantage of providing perfectly square mortises and built-in stops. So once everything is set up, I could literally bring a monkey into the shop to pull the handles for me. If you know any monkeys looking for work, please send them my way.

Mahogany

Now, about that mahogany color issue. Maybe its just my supplier, but the mahogany I have access to can be incredibly varied from board to board and purchase to purchase. This is not the first time I have been surprised to confront a board that is much denser and even looks significantly different than the rest of my material. Trouble is, this isn’t obvious in the rough stock (pictured left). As you can see, there isn’t much of a discernable difference between these two boards. But once milled the true colors really show (pictured right). The 8/4 stock is not only darker, but much denser. In fact, my first clue was during the jointing when I experienced quite a bit more chatter as I passed the board over the blades. So the real question I have to ask myself is, “Should I use this stuff in my project???” Obviously I don’t want the front legs look different than the rest of the piece, but the possibility certainly exists that natural aging would bring these boards into the same color family. Thankfully, the Arizona sun is quite powerful!

The Sun

I decided to conduct a quick test using three test pieces: a 4/4 board that represents most of the wood in the project, a single piece from the dark stock in question, and my backup stock that I stole from the Bell Forest kit that contains Fiji-grown Mahogany. I carefully placed the boards outside on my trusty “wood-aging boulder”. You DO have one of these don’t you?!?! After about five hours of unrelenting desert UV rays, the boards already started to darken. The results were actually enough for me to make a judgement call. The dark stuff was just too dark and I didn’t want to take the risk of this turning into a long-term eyesore. The Fiji Mahogany, on the other hand, looks perfect. And just in case you don’t believe the wood could change color in that period of time, the third picture shows you the tan lines. Hot! So it looks like I’m using the backup stock for my legs.

All in all, not a bad day. I’ll be back in the shop tomorrow continuing work on the legs and broadcasting live on the Live Page. Next up, adding a short tenon to the top of each leg and the Greene & Greene indent detail to the bottoms.

In the final part of this series, I do the final work on the stretchers and then its time for the glueup! The table top gets a special profile as well as a few cable recesses for the monitor and mouse cables. The top is attached via screws in elongated slots, and the counter sink holes are hidden using tapered plugs. Of course, the desk needs a good finish and Arm-R-Seal Stain fits the bill nicely!

Topics Covered:

• Milling the cross-members
• Cross-member joinery
• Small knot repair
• Final leg sculpting
• Sanding methods for cross-grain situations
• Using a special table top router bit
• Attaching the top to the base
• Making elongated screw slots the easy way
• Creating tapered plugs
• The Glueup
• Finishing and Sanding Strategies
• Dust Safety
• Finishing Justification: Color and Sheen
• Pore-Filling Products

Other Parts in this Series
Part 1
Part 2

Resources:
Table Top Router Bit #174-4055
3m 7500 Respirator
A Simple Varnish Finish DVD

My Shop Journal articles for this project:
Trestle Table – Playing with Curves
Trestle Table – The Dreaded Prototype

Well thanks to my pure laziness, I have a very obvious example of the effect of the sun on cherry. I recently picked up materials for the upcoming Chest of Drawers build, and due to pure laziness on my part, I left them in the pickup for a full day yesterday. The sheet of 1/4″ cherry ply was partially covered by a piece of Baltic birch. So when I went out there to bring the materials in, I just knew I would have a two-tone piece of plywood on my hands. The picture at left tells the tale. If you look closely, the birch plywood was also affected by the sun. You can see the strap marks left by my tie-downs.

So why am I not concerned? Well, the side you are looking at is not the show side. So if there is a little unevenness on the inside of the case, I am not too concerned about it. Also, my case sides are small enough that they can be cut completely out of the lighter portion.

Now if you run into a problem like this and it IS on the show side, here’s what I would recommend doing. Sand the surface lightly to even things out. If you are using plywood, you don’t have much material to sand so you have to be gentle. As a result you will not be able to remove the color difference completely. You will still see a line (pictured right after 180 grit sanding). So the next thing I would do is put the entire panel in the sun again. Give the lighter side a chance to catch up. At this point, the difference between the two sides should be minimal. Even after being incorporated into the project, the wood will continue to darken over time and the two sides will even out. But if you are in a rush, you might resort to using some dye or stain. A simple natural cherry-colored dye/stain will even things out without giving the wood an artificial-looking color. Over time, the wood underneath will continue to age and the little bit of dye/stain on top of it won’t be much of a factor.

And most importantly, don’t be a dork like me. Bring your wood into the shop once you get it home! I would love to hear any stories you guys might have about similar experiences with the sun (intended or accidental).

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.

This video is from a live demo I did on Wed. Nov 19th, 2008. The topic was staining blotchy woods. After the demo, I’ve included a portion of the Q&A from the chat room. Thanks to everyone who participated!