2009 Northern Woods Entry

[Joel Ficke]

The Minnesota Woodworker's Guild annual competition, called Northern Woods, is April 23-26 at Southdale Center in Edina, MN. Here's my entry this year.

The major design elements are from a number of 18th century examples. Doors came from one in Winterthur's collection, valence style crown moldings from a private collection, and paneled columns from an auction catalog. All arched components and keystone were hand-carved, straight moldings made with wood hand planes. Overall, it was a significant neander effort.

The primary wood is curly/crotch cherry and secondary wood is white pine. Cherry is finished with dichromate oxidation and sealed with dark garnet and black shellac (brush and pad). Pine is finished with milk paint and linseed oil. The intent of the finish was to make the piece look old, unfortunately this came at the expense of killing some of the figure, but overall I like the look. Final dimensions are 100" high and 59" wide.

If you can make it to the show, please stop by and say hi.

[Rick Thom]

About all I can say is that you did a wonderful job on design and execution.
Hope you did well in the competition. It's a beauty.

[Don Bullock]

Joel, that's spectacular. The design and execution are exquisite.

[John Keeton]

Joel, that is an excellent piece, and I wish you well on your entry. Hard to tell from the pic, but it looks like you even used period glass in the doors.

[Joel Ficke]

John, thanks for the reminder. Glass was salvaged from an old home and has lots of waves and other defects. It shows up ok in this photo but is not as noticeable in person unless you're at just the right angle.

[GERALD HARGROVE]

That is a great looking peice, and I am sure very heavy. It is nice to see real furniture being made and enjoyed. Good luck.

[Barry Richardson]

Beautiful! You are a true craftsman sir!

[Craig D Peltier]

Very very nice, great job!

[John Thompson]

Outstanding.. many may never realize as they look at a piece as yours just how many hours of detail work is involved. Kudo's to you for just having the patience and energy to take on a project of this magnitude.

Sarge..

[Brent Ring]

That is an awesome cabinet - Good luck!

[Dave Anderson NH]

Outstanding piece Joe. Did you tint the black into the shellac, and what did you use for the main shellac, organge, garnet, or seedlac?

[Joel Ficke]

Thanks for the kind words everyone.

Dave, I used dark garnet for the body then glazed red-brown and top-coated with black shellac. The black shellac was not tinted...it's likely just unrefined (and definitely needs to be filtered). The only place I've found it is Olde Mill. Honestly though, orange or garnet would have worked for the top coat too since it's fairly thin. Final rub out was done with mineral oil and rottenstone leaving plenty of junk in the crevices.

[Doug Mason]

Now that's what I call style!!! Beautiful work!

[Calvin Hobbs]

Final dimensions are 100" high and 59" wide.

Man that is huge. I did a cupboard a few years ago that is 92 x 48, it would look like a baby in comparison. As always, beautiful work Joel. How much time would you estimate it took to build?

Could you give a brief overview of how you cut the curved sash at the top of the doors? The tombstone doors are nice and sharp, also. Last question, what material/method did you use to glaze the glass panes? Cal

[Joel Ficke]

Hi Cal,

Great to hear from you. Yes indeed, this thing is a monster. I have about 400 hours into it -- hard to believe given that it's not full of carvings etc., but there's still a lot of detail.

The curved sash pieces (along with arched moldings and rails) were basically band sawn to shape, smoothed with rasps and then the final shape was carved in with gouges / bench chisel. Rabbets for the glass were chopped out with a bench chisel. Does this make sense?

Here's a couple of photos showing how the top of the doors went together.



The glass panels were glazed in using standard window glaze from the Borgs. I did add some raw umber to darken it a bit and then after hardening, it was coated with wiping stain to get a decent color match to rails and styles. Might consider modeling clay next time.

Let me know if you'ld like more detail.