Highboy complete

[Bill Berg]

Hello everyone. I finally finished the highboy and wanted to both thank folks for answering my questions and show the finished product. The project was very rewarding and I am pleased with the outcome. I feel that I learned more new skills from this than from the past few years of projects combined. Looking forward to more period projects in the future. Please don't hesitate to add any constructive feedback.

[David Christopher]

WOW, thats is very nice

[Cliff McNeill]

That is very nice!!!!

[John Keeton]

Bill, the finished piece is just striking!! It really came together well. Did you end up using Dave Anderson's finish schedule? Whatever you did certainly worked!

I would also suggest posting a thread in the Projects forum. Maybe link to this thread.

[gary Zimmel]

Nice, very, very nice Bill...

[lowell holmes]

How long did you take to make it? It is very, very impressive.

What percentage of neander work was involved?

[Gary Herrmann]

Beautifully done. You should send pics to FWW.

[Andrew Hughes]

Now thats a nice looking piece of furniture.I really like the color.

[Jeff Skory]

Absolutely stunning!! Well done.

[Jim Koepke]

I second the idea of sending pictures to FWW.

A beautiful piece.

The only comments I could make would be based on personal taste. Personal taste is probably part of the reason many of us are involved in making our own furniture anyway.

jim

[Jim Kountz]

That is one fine piece of work there. This is one thats on my to do list after doing a lowboy earlier this year. I want to make the big guy next. Yours looks amazing and very well done, love the color!!

[Mike Henderson]

That is great! And good photography, also.

Mike

[Dave Anderson NH]

Great job Bill. The piece looks fantastic. Since the legs are tiger maple, I know how much of a PIA they were to get to the point they were ready to finish. Been there, done that. I figured mine took me about 3 times as long as ones I've done in mahogany. Again, it came out beautifully.

[Robert Rozaieski]

Fantastic job Bill! You should be very proud!

[Kevin Barnett]

Okay...you said constructive feedback. The hardware looks too big on a couple of the drawers on the lowboy. Also, I'm not a big fan of bright brass.

The piece itself look stupendous. Awesome. Out of my league.

Questions...On the lowboy, how did you decide on grain orientation for the side? What was your finishing schedule?

Thanks!

[Mark Maleski]

Bill,

Fantastic looking piece, I really am quite envious. I have a similar piece on my "planned project" list, but quite aways down (building up to it). I hope you post in the projects forum with details (brasses, finish, etc). If you're a SAPFM member, think this would look good in their members' gallery.

Regarding the brasses - I think you made the right choice on the bright brass. No sense putting old-looking hardware on a brand-new cabinet. WRT the size of the hardware...I've noticed that even on originals the hardware size isn't graduated along with the drawers. It's often struck me as a little dissonant, but if that's how the 18th century masters did it...

[Joel Ficke]

Very nice Bill. I also would be interested in knowing your finishing schedule. Congrats on a great piece.

[Jerome Hanby]

How about some destructive feedback. You're great and I suck.:eek:

That piece looks incredible. I was amazed at a refinish job my wife did. Seeing your's...well I think I'll make some more shop furniture.

[Ron Brese]

Bill I have made this same piece of furniture in the past. I expressed my piece in mahagony. When I was finished I felt as though every bit of woodworking expertise that I possessed had been tested. It's a challenging piece but you were obviously up to the task.

Ron

[Don C Peterson]

Fantastic piece of work!

[Bill Berg]

Thanks everyone for the comments. To answer the questions...

Finish- First, my ability to take a photo to show the depth and figure is disapointing. However, the color looks pretty accurate. Also, the finish recipe is not completely true to the period and I would be happy to hear opinions on whether I should change my thinking in the future.

1. Transtint vintage maple with a small amount of honey amber by eye to bring out a slight green tint, then added a small amount of dark walnut to darken until satisfied that I matched the picture in my head.
2. BLO
3. Several coats of sealcoat
4. Garnet
5. 2 coats wipe on varnish for protection and to knock down the gloss

Lowell- I'm not exactly sure when I really started but I began by making a couple of practice legs somewhere around mid August.

Kevin- I struggled with the hardware selection and actually bought some samples to help me decide (I put way too much effort into making this decision). They came from Horton. After having a chance to look at the 3 suppliers products, David Keller's advice that all the products are of good quality and unless the piece was made largely by period methods I would end up with an equally nice piece of furniture... really fit this situation well. I also feel that the bright is a bit overpowering. However, the next step down seemed to "de-gloss" more by texture than by a chemical aging process... which I really didn't like. I'm going to look at it for a while and see if it grows on me and if not will take them off and try to speed the patination a little.

Thanks again for the comments.

[Martin Shupe]

Terrific!

I really, really, like it.

Beautiful!

You MUST send a pic to Fine Woodworking!

[Johnny Kleso]

I'm Jealous....

[David Keller NC]

Bill - Very nice result. What I think I (and others) would be interested in is the "would have done different list". Even after making things out of wood for going on 30 years now, I can still point out niggling little things on a particular project that I'd have liked to have a 2nd chance on.

Regarding the brasses' patination: I'm not sure about Horton, but some makers laquer-coat their brasses so that they stay shiny. If you don't want them to be shiny, you can take them off and drop them into a mason jar full of laquer thinner. Take them out and dry them off, and put them back on the piece. Within several days to a month, they will have aquired the dull, but still bright yellow, patina characteristic of un-protected brass.

If you want the greenish-dark patination of old and undisturbed brass, you can replicate this very easily. Simply remove the laquer coating as above, then aquire a sealable glass container of suitable size - I use a 5 gallon aquarium with a piece of saran wrap for a top held on by a large sized rubber band. Place the hardware to be patinated on wooden scraps with the show side facing up. Aquire some calcium sulfide - this is sold as lime-sulfur in garden stores as a pesticide (though other than being stinky and corrosive if you get it on bare skin, it's non-toxic). Pour a tablespoon of this onto a sponge or a cotton rag, place it in the glass container with the brasses, then seal it. Within a few hours to a day or so, the brass will have aquired a dark, greenish patina.

You can adjust the degree of darkness by how long you leave it in the container and/or diluting the lime sulfur.

Then simply re-install the hardware. It will continue to age in the air and go a bit more greenish over a number of years. Should you decide that you don't like that look any more, you can polish the brass back to its shiny state with any brass polish - the lime sulfur just oxidizes the surface layer.

[Bill Berg]

David, That's an interesting question. Just thinking pretty quickly about it I have 3 thoughts.

1. If I was doing this again with curly maple I would probably suck it up from the beginning and take the 3 hour drive and try out Irion lumber. Even being within an hour of a couple of the popular southern PA saw mills it was frustrating finding enough stock that I was happy with and matched well.

2. For the white pine drawer stock I resawed thicker material to both get better utilization and nicer wood. It seemed like I spent forever doing this and cleaning the gunk off the blade. Will consider something different next time.

3. I used to use BLO on most projects but have been getting away from it recently. I included it in this finish because it just felt like I should... but think it is the shellac that is really providing the depth/color/grain pop. Would probably omit this step in the future.

[John Timberlake]

Great project. I really like the finish and the amount of curl in the wood. Too much curl on a piece that big detracts from the form.

[Robert LaPlaca]

Kevin- I struggled with the hardware selection and actually bought some samples to help me decide (I put way too much effort into making this decision). They came from Horton. After having a chance to look at the 3 suppliers products, David Keller's advice that all the products are of good quality and unless the piece was made largely by period methods I would end up with an equally nice piece of furniture... really fit this situation well. I also feel that the bright is a bit overpowering. However, the next step down seemed to "de-gloss" more by texture than by a chemical aging process... which I really didn't like. I'm going to look at it for a while and see if it grows on me and if not will take them off and try to speed the patination a little.

Thanks again for the comments.

Bill, the highboy is beautiful.. As you know, hardware is such a big part of many projects, it can really make or break how the piece looks.. So I wouldn't be concerned how much effort you spent on the decision..

[Bruce Page]

Craftsmanship is alive and well. Stunning execution.

[David Keller NC]

David, That's an interesting question. Just thinking pretty quickly about it I have 3 thoughts.

1. If I was doing this again with curly maple I would probably suck it up from the beginning and take the 3 hour drive and try out Irion lumber. Even being within an hour of a couple of the popular southern PA saw mills it was frustrating finding enough stock that I was happy with and matched well.

2. For the white pine drawer stock I resawed thicker material to both get better utilization and nicer wood. It seemed like I spent forever doing this and cleaning the gunk off the blade. Will consider something different next time.

3. I used to use BLO on most projects but have been getting away from it recently. I included it in this finish because it just felt like I should... but think it is the shellac that is really providing the depth/color/grain pop. Would probably omit this step in the future.

Bill - some comments. If you're interested in period furniture, and you're that close, you're seriously missing out by not visiting Irion. It's their specialty (supplying period furniture makers), and impossible-to-find matched sets of highly curled maple is all over their yard. 22" wide curly maple boards are not at all unusual, and I've purchased 40" wide plus mahogany planks from them, and I know they have up to 60" widths - try finding that anywhere else in the US.

As to the white pine - it is, of course, the correct secondary wood for furniture made in New England, and there are sources available for 20" or wider EWP planks so that you can have single-board drawer bottoms as you would find on an antique. EWP also imparts a really nice smell to the interior of casework. Poplar and Southern Yellow Pine, which would be correct for Pennsylvania furniture, not so much. In fact, I sometimes go off the reservation and use EWP anyway despite the fact that the piece I'm building should have Poplar as a secondary wood - raw poplar really doesn't smell good at all.

Finally, you're correct about BLO. BLO and wax was often used on less expensive furniture from the period, but period source indicate that it was rare on high-style pieces. Instead, these got a film finish made of dissolved, fossilized tree resin in oil. The overall effect is very similar to modern alkyd varnish/oil mixtures. Oddly enough, shellac was almost never used during the colonial period, despite it being often cited as an appropriate period-correct finish for such pieces. The reason was that the shellac of the day was very dark - basically the same as button-lac sold today. Refining of shellac to the orange/garnet/blond varieties that we have today didn't occur until the second or third decade of the 19th century.