Final "finished" surfaces, how flat is "flat enough"?

[Mike Holbrook]

I have a download from Lost Art Press of Schwarz's latest book "The Anarchist's Design Book. There are some different concepts in this book. The premiss being to go way back to some of the oldest methods for building furniture to find simpler, quicker methods of building household furniture.

One concept in the book which I find appealing, suggests not obsessing on perfect, "plastic like" surfaces. In the green woodworking courses I have taken a rougher surface, which is an instant mark of the hand work, is encouraged. I have been looking at mountain homes over the last few months and at least in the North Ga mountains furniture designs often following the opposite extreme vs the manufactured look. Furniture is being made by local Blue Ridge woodworkers from rough sticks and appearing even in nice restaurants and expensive homes.

Schwarz mentions his preference for a less manufactured surface in his book:
"When I dress these surfaces, I flatten them by traversing them with my jack plane, which has a significantly curved iron (an 8" to 10" radius, if you must know). This iron leaves scallops – what were called “dawks” in the 17th century – that are as interesting as a honeycomb and as delight-ful to touch as handmade paper.

That is what old furniture – real handmade furniture – feels like. I refuse to call it “sloppy” or “indifferent.” It’s correct and it adds to the experience of the curious observer. "

Is it possible that in our eagerness on these pages to prove that hand tools can do as accurate or more accurate work than machines that we may try too hard to prove the point and fall into mimicking a manufactured look? Is it possible to obsess a little too much on how thin a shaving our smooth plane can make? Should we give more thought to displaying rather than hiding our hand work? Would a glassy plane made surface in one area of a piece contrast well to rougher finishes in another? How flat do we actually need most surfaces to be? How many people need many different very flat surfaces to write on these days? My laptop and iPad work fine on a rougher surface or my lap. Most of the writing I do is in a spiral notebook that works fine on a rough surface...

[Pat Barry]

It all depends ...

[Brian Holcombe]

I agree with Pat, the finished surface or what may be considered a finished surface very much depends on what the end goal is. One could argue that much of manufacturered furniture aims at mimicking the highest quality of handwork.

On the underside of a table I see nothing inherently incorrect or bad about leaving the scalloped surface left by a jack plane, however if you have to connect joinery to that same surface you may find it in opposition to your goal.

If you are planing on housing every bit of joinery, like timber frame connections into a rough hewn surface then it may well be a nice compliment to have the surface left with scallops.

[Zach Dillinger]

This literally took me an entire chapter to address in the book. It all depends on your goals, the project, the area of the project the piece is intended to fit, etc.

[george wilson]

Ca you use larger type please?

I have made furniture of plain,Sheker like lines. Left the surfaces planed with a razor sharp smooth plane with just enough camber in the cutting edge to take very light shavings that peter out at the edges. Done well,it can look and feel quite nice.

[Jim Koepke]

Maybe it comes down to what the people spending the money want.

Why pay more for something handmade that looks the same as something manufactured?

Maybe someone paying for handmade feels it darn well better look like it is handmade.

My first thought on this thread was you were having a problem getting rid of some cupping or twist.

jtk

[Bob Glenn]

I use a scrub plane to finish the bottom of the seats of my windsor chairs. I think it wavey surface it leaves adds an additional dimension to the chair as the sitter explores it with his hands. David Pye called this a surface of diversity.

To address the original question, a quote from Peter Galbert. "Is it perfect? No. Can I tell the difference? No. It's okay."

[Tom M King]

In my work, we match old smoothing plane "texture" almost every day. I like it. I remember James Krenov liked it. What I don't like is overdone, like using a scrub plane on a bar top, or long straight smoothing plane tracks on something to make it look old.

[Simon MacGowen]

"Should we give more thought to displaying rather than hiding our hand work? Would a glassy plane made surface in one area of a piece contrast well to rougher finishes in another?"

Don't confuse hand-made look with unskilled work. I know many people who use hand tools but can't plane a board, let alone a panel or tabletop, flat. A skilled woodworker may choose to leave traces of hand work (for instance, the gauge lines of a dovetail) or a rough surface but not necessarily the same as a woodworker who doesn't have the skill to plane flat and square to start with.

If you develop skills in flattening boards -- large and small -- what you choose it to look like or feel like at the end is a decision you can make freely. In cabinet work, I always aim for flatness and squareness; if your work is truly handmade, it seldom has the machine look and someone who is a woodworker can tell the difference.

Simon

[Jim Koepke]

"Should we give more thought to displaying rather than hiding our hand work? Would a glassy plane made surface in one area of a piece contrast well to rougher finishes in another?"

Don't confuse hand-made look and unskilled work. I know many people who use hand tools but can't plane a board, let alone a panel or tabletop, flat. A skilled woodworker may choose to leave traces of hand work (for instance, the gauge lines of a dovetail) or a rough surface but not necessarily the same as a woodworker who doesn't have the skill to plane flat and square to start with.

If you develop skills in flattening boards -- large and small -- what you choose it to look like or feel like at the end is a decision you can make freely. In cabinet work, I always aim for flatness and squareness; if your work is truly handmade, it seldom has the machine look and someone who is a woodworker can tell the difference.

Simon


Well said, though a woodworker can tell the difference, most folks in the general public can not.

I make potting benches to sell at the local farmers market. A few people mentioned they would make a good fish cleaning bench. With that in mind and just for fun one was finished with a tung oil finish. The reaction was many people expressed an opinion of being afraid to use it for fear of messing it up.

So the answer to the original question, "Final 'finished' surfaces, how flat is 'flat enough'?" depends on the intended end user and their desires.

jtk

[Mike Holbrook]

OOps sorry George, I apparently hit post earlier that I thought. I must have hit a hot topic because there were seven responses before I got done. Apparently I picked up the font moving the quote from the book. I think it is fixed now.

Bob I took a class from Peter and like you say he liked a surface that looked nice but under close inspection revealed the random tool marks that prove the work was done by hand. I am not sure exactly how I feel about this topic either, although I try to lean toward functional surfaces. There was a thread a long time ago about how flat a bench top actually needs to be, which obviously has some reasons for being flat. There always seems to be the question of how far, in either direction, is "too" far. Certainly different people like different looks.

I am planing to build a relatively large amount of furniture and I am trying to answer this question for myself. I like the simple designs in Schwarz's new book and I like simple Windsor/Irish/Welsh stick chair designs. I like simple functional, sturdy table designs. I have been hollow grinding all my plane blades, so I can hand sharpen them, which raised the question in my mind of how flat/smooth I might want to make a surface anyway.

[Frederick Skelly]

Is it possible that in our eagerness on these pages to prove that hand tools can do as accurate or more accurate work than machines that we may try too hard to prove the point and fall into mimicking a manufactured look?

This is a fascinating thought to me. I also prefer a rougher texture, a less glasslike finish, etc. But I hadn't put the pieces together into a coherent "whole" until you said it. Thanks Mike.
Fred

[Brian Holcombe]

Maybe it comes down to what the people spending the money want.

Why pay more for something handmade that looks the same as something manufactured?

Maybe someone paying for handmade feels it darn well better look like it is handmade.

My first thought on this thread was you were having a problem getting rid of some cupping or twist.

jtk

I tend to agree. I draw similarities to a handmade suit. Now there are plenty of suits with 'hand detail' and manufacturers trumpet that sort of stuff a lot because it helps justify a larger price tag, but a truly handmade suit may look very nice to many people but only very few will understand what it is that makes it stand out as being so good. There are construction details which can only be made to highest quality by hand, and I think that is the same way in handmade furniture. Yes we can 'show' the handmade aspect and call attention to it, or make it and perfect it and let the customer come to understanding what is so different about it.

In other words your customers in many cases may not know or understand that they're getting a bespoke suit at an off the peg price, but Im sure all of them appreciate the beauty of it. Some will further investigate to understand why it is different and some will simply use it and enjoy it.

[glenn bradley]

I agree with the "hand made, not home made" look. What is "correct" or "flat enough" is quite subjective. I have a drawer unit with arched shapes in some of the inset drawers that mate up with 1/16" clearance all around. The left side of the 24" drawer is actually a fat 1/16" taller than the right (or vice versa, I forget) but, the piece looks fine. The difference came from me fairing the curve as opposed to doing one half and mirroring it with a template or full sized drawing. IMHO if the piece looks like you want and functions correctly and will survive a century or so . . . you're good!

[Mike Holbrook]

The position I think Schwarz takes in his book is that there are simple furniture designs that have stood the test of time because many homeowners, without an established set of hand tool skills, can make them in a reasonable amount of time. I don't think the point is to take exception to some of the amazing pieces very talented guys with refined hand tool skill sets can make, that work can speak for itself. The point is to also appreciate the designs that are more universal in their functional applications without nit picking the precision of the work. To use Brian's comparison to a fine hand tailored suit, I am talking about the clothes my grandmother made for me as a child which are worthy of appreciation at a different level.

My recent thoughts concerning setting up fine/smoothing planes for the furniture work I want to do may represent a case in point. I decided to grind small/ not microscopic cambers in my fine/smoothing planes by hand. My objective is to make a shaving that runs out to nothing on either side. If close inspection reveals very small valleys in the surface I don't think I will mind. My current thoughts run along the same lines as Peter Galbert was quoted as saying above.

Jim, yes I have been flattening some challenging twisted cherry for a couple small projects. I have it relatively flat now with a nice relatively clean surface, do I need to do even more? Probably depends on the tastes of the audience. Typically I make things for personal use so I only have the wife's opinions to contend with and we are usually similar.

[george wilson]

Mike,your idea about the SLIGGGGGGGGHT camber echoes what I did back in 1970,when I first joined the museum,and got a look at the huge collection of 18th. C. furniture.

See post #5. I always enjoy running my hand over a surface so treated. But,the KEY is RESTRAINT. As mentioned somewhere above,it is not to be over done.

[Mike Holbrook]

I hear you George! Thanks for the input, restraint is usually a pertinent consideration.

I have been spending a good deal of time in Blue Ridge, GA. The furniture "in that neck of the woods" seems way over the top to me in many regards but it has stimulated some creative thought as well.

[Bill Houghton]

We were on vacation somewhere, and went into a place - food, drink, can't recall - where the owners had decided that the furrowed finish on table tops was hip. Maybe so, but it was not functional. I spent the whole time trying to find a place where I could set the glass without it looking like it wanted to tip over.

For some great thinking on this subject, track down David Pye's "The Nature and Art of Workmanship." Both of his books (at least the two of which I'm aware) should be required reading for anyone making things. Or designing things. Or both.