Fine Furniture: The process or the product?

[Todd Burch]

After my email exchange with Popwood about the belt sander article, and with the replies to the poll about the use of belt sanders in furniture making, the situation got me to thinking (when I was BELT SANDING SOME PANELS THIS AFTERNOON - OK? I got that out of my system - I'll be OK now).

For "fine furniture" (whatever that is), does the process used to manufacture it make a difference in the end, or is just the end product all that matters?

If the answer is that, in the end, it is irrelavent HOW a piece was made, but the end result is what could be conisdered "fine", then so what, and there should be no noses turning up at the use of a belt sander, or hatchet, or chainsaw, or whatever was used in the construction of a piece. (I'm not implying that ANYONE turned their nose up at belt sanders - except possibly Popwood.)

However, if a person or shop has to follow a certain protocol (like NOT use certain tools during the manufacture) in order for the end product to be called "fine", then I'm completely ignorant in the ways of the world. Clue me in!!

Thoughts?

One thing I have surmised from some of the posts in the belt sander poll, is that anyone who has upgraded their belt sander with a drum sander likes the change, and that there is definately an audience of people who have difficulty handling a belt sander - and that's what the article addresses - how to handle it. Maybe I'll try American Woodworker - the "oops" magazine...

Todd.

[Bob Lasley]

Todd,

As far as I am concerned it is the final result as to whether or not a piece can be considered fine furniture, but to the individual craftsman, I'm sure that the process has alot to do with how she/he feels about the outcome. I would not be as proud of a table that I produced by pushing a button on a CNC machine as one I had built with my more conventional tools. I am sure that most hand tool afficionados are more proud of the pieces they build with their tools than if they used my power tools. I don't think that because a person favors certain tools and methods for producing furniture gives him/her the right to say that a piece is not fine furniture unless it was built using their preferred tools.

JMO
Bob

[Dennis McDonaugh]

Todd, that's a can of worms to open. I think it would have to depend on the individual because I've seen arguments over all sorts of things. Plywood or no plywood, brads or no brads, biscuits or no biscuits, screws or no screws belt sander no belt sander etc, etc, etc.

[Dave Hammelef]

If the finished product truely had no appearence differences how would anybody but you know. But its my experience in seing people look over furniture, that the pros can tell a difference. Many people will tell you a sanded finish does not have the depth of one that was handplaned. The difference is the sanding sands down the softer wood leaving the harder and the ends are fuzzy. The planed wood all types are cut evenly and CUT so they are not fuzzy. Not sure I could tell a difference but I have been told by others they can.

Dave

[GEDunton]

A question of interest, but one with no verifable answer.

Architeciture: form, function, utility. Define each component and it is "fine furniture".

Artist: element, appearance, purpose. Define each, well you can't, and you have fine furniture.

Ergonomics: fit, utility, interface. Well, are you starting to see the point?

Fine furniture is that piece of utilitarian wood/metal/glass/stone/other material that is right in the end, not the path that was taken to reach the edge of the abyss.

If you examine the end product, it is unlikely that you will able to tell every tool and process that was employed in its creation.

Ergo, I would conclude that one may use a power driven sander of any type at the appropriate step in the fabrication and on one will be the wiser. So they could not possibly conclude that it is not fine furniture. Or could they?

[robertfsmith]

I think that the process is what really makes it fine. A company can turn out Queen Ann chairs all day with mass production and automation, and one man can spend afew days making the same chair (by hand in his woodshop). I personally think the "hand-made" truely is the base for fine furniture. And I think that you can use anything in your shop to make your piece(short of a CNC machine) and it will still be fine. Because it is hand crafted, and not "machine-made and line assembled"

Note: I consider powers tools like table saws, routers, lathes, and such part of hand made processing. As well as neander tools.

Just my views, I know y'all probably won't agree. But this is how I perceive "Fine furniture".

[John Sanford]

I think that it really depends on how you define "fine." Is it "finely crafted", "state of the art manufacturing", "fine design"?

Ultimately, fine is a subjective term. An interesting means of examining this is to compare the following four items:

A Maloof Rocker

A Stickley Morris chair.

An Eames Plywood side chair.

A David Partridge chair.


All four qualify in one sense or another as "fine", yet in all likelihood, none would meet the "general public's" definition of fine furniture.

A Maloof Rocker is sublime in its design and execution, but, frankly, a rocking chair just doesn't fit the mold of "fine" furniture.

The Morris chair is generally going to be regarded as too plain to be "fine." Plus, Stickley is neither on the cutting edge of technology nor are they crafting things by hand.

The Eames chair is "fine" Modern design (a modern classic if you will), but it IS plywood and steel, not very "fine." The fact that the chair spawned millions of school chairs doesn't help. Yet, it is only through an intensive application of technology that such a chair can exist profitably.

Finally, the Partridge chair is fine in only two senses. Pure human craftsmanship and handwork is required to produce it, and it is a riot of detail. But as a "rustic" chair, it certainly won't qualify as "fine" in the eyes of the general public.


These then are the various elements that people consider when evaluating whether something is "fine", in no particular order.

1) Form and detail.
2) Function and utility.
3) Quality of materials.
4) Value of materials.
5) Estimated capital investment to produce.
6) Perception of human skill used in production.
7) Production method.
8) Uniqueness.
9) End result.

Does using a belt sander vs. a scraper/plane place one outside the realm of "fine" furniture? No. A skilled operator can produce great results with either, and klutz can botch either. (DAMHIKT :))

"Fine" is in the eyes of the beholder, and each "beholder" weighs the above factors differently.

[John Sanford]

Originally posted by robertfsmith
I think that the process is what really makes it fine. A company can turn out Queen Ann chairs all day with mass production and automation, and one man can spend afew days making the same chair (by hand in his woodshop). I personally think the "hand-made" truely is the base for fine furniture. And I think that you can use anything in your shop to make your piece(short of a CNC machine) and it will still be fine. Because it is hand crafted, and not "machine-made and line assembled"


I have to rise in defense of the CNC route. CNC machining is just as much of a skill as wielding a tote full of planes.

If an artisan uses a CNC machine to craft a single piece, is it somehow less "fine"? Or does the correlation between CNC machining and mass production sour the sense of "fine"?

[robertfsmith]

John,
I think CNC machining is an art. And I would probaly use it if I had access to, or could afford one. But when I think of CNC, I think mass produced, indentical, flawless. My opinion of fine furniture is that of unique hand made charater. CNC and mass production are to flawless, they show no variance in the pieces. I personally like seeing the tool marks, and slight diffences in a set of furniture. I guess my thoughts are basically, mass production can make nice furniture, but I don't think it's "fine".

I love the pictures of people's creations, that fill the pages of Fine Woodworking magazine. That is fine funiture to me!

[Phil Phelps]

...the wood worker who carves egg and dart molding gets my vote over a CNC every day. I'm in competition with CNC's and although they can out procuce me, I'm still in demand in my craft. For now.;)

[Ace Karner]

The tools do not make the craftsman. The tools do not make the furniture, the craftsman does. If is made fine it is fine.

[Ted Shrader]

Originally posted by Ace Karner
The tools do not make the craftsman. The tools do not make the furniture, the craftsman does. If is made fine it is fine.

Ace -

You said a mouthful.

"Fine" evokes a feeling of hand craftsmanship. What tools are in the hand - doesn't really matter. The fact that hands have touched the wood in the stages of construction give it the potential to be "fine".

A certain amount of craftsmanship during the assembly is what draws the minimum line for me. 2x4's nailed together is below the line. Do you need a sliding dovetail or a through mortise or a full-blind dovetail joint? I don't know. They probably would do the trick if not well executed. What does the end results look like?

If you see fine furniture - you know.

Ted

Ted

[Jim Izat]

Todd that a great question!

To my mind it doesn't matter how you do what you do unless certain types of tools and work are necessary to the authentic production of a particular type of fine work. For instance if you were making a reproduction piece from some particular style. I always do whatever I can with whatever I can to do as fine a work as possible whether it's a piece of furniture or a shop box for cutoffs. Quality is a mindset.

To quote Barry Corbin in War Games (1983) - I'd **** on a spark plug If I thought it'd help!

Jim Izat

[Dave Avery]

Ace said it best

[Scott in Douglassville, PA]

Originally posted by John S.

A David Partridge chair.


David Partirdge made chairs?!

Oh, wait a minute - I'm thinking of <i>Keith</i> Partridge, played by <i>David</i> Cassidy. <i>Whew</i> - I feel much better now...

[Marc Wittman]

I believe there are many ways one can create a fine piece of furniture. I also believe that fine furniture is something that will last. So I guess that means the construction process is important, in so much as, what type of joinery is used, how well the joints are made, etc.

As said earlier, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. I would make a distinction between good looking furniture and finely crafted furniture. Someone might consider a pine box joined with brads a pretty piece, but I would hasten to call it fine furniture mainly because it probably won't be around for long.

I suppose it's how you define "fine furniture". There are many characteristics of furniture that people will have different views of, mainly style wise. But I think the one factor that everyone would agree on is that fine furniture must stand the test of time.

Just my .2 cents, interesting question.

[Jim Stastny]

The obstacle in answering this and most other questions is: Who gets to define the terms? In other words: By what or whose authority can these things be judged. This, ultimately, is the problem even in society when we ask what is right and what is wrong. In the case of moral situations there must be a final authority. However, in the case of what constitutes fine furniture the answer really becomes . . . "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

[Bill Grumbine]

If I might add my opinion to those already expressed...

Often these types of discussions tend towards hand tool versus power tool usage. Now we have CNC thrown in, and mass production as well. My perspective addresses all of these things, and perhaps I am benefitting by all those who have posted before me on this.

A piece of fine furniture is not fine because of the tools which were used, or because of the level of craftsmanship of the maker. It is not a function of the number of copies, whether one or infinite. A piece of fine furniture is defined, at least to my way of thinking, by its own attributes.

It should be well made of course. Now you might think this negates one of my assertions above, but not true. There are people out there who are making fine pieces right out of the gate with little or no experience. Well made is defined by appropriate joinery for the piece. Not evey piece of work needs dovetails on it, and they certianly don't need to be handcut. The quality of the joinery is a big thing though.

It should be pleasing to the eye. I am a hard core functionalist when it comes to woodwork, and I have little use for a lot of esoteric "stuff" that passes for art. Fine furniture should be beautiful in its lines, proportions, wood selection, and finish.

It should do what it is intended to do and do it well. A chair might look great, but if it hurts your butt or your back, it ain't fine furniture. Now, I will qualify this a bit, since there are many fine pieces out there which would turn to kindling if I plopped my carcass onto one of them, but as long as it is designed for the human body to be comfortable, I would call it fine.

All these things can be found in one off pieces, and in production run pieces. The same holds true for lousy work. Many production pieces often bear the brunt of disdain because they are not well made, and rightly so. Most production work is designed to be easy to produce, not necessarily for ease of use or long life. Still, as has been mentioned, CNC components can be incorporated into a piece made by hand which gives the maker an opportunity to use components not available otherwise.

Of course, all of this is subjective, but since it is my opinion, I tend to agree with it wholeheartedly. :D

Bill

[Brad Risley]

I feel that "FINE FURNITURE" is an advertising gimick. Example: "SO AND SO'S FINE FURNITURE". I strive to make heirloom quality pieces. I define heirloom as well made, appropriate for the intended use, and gracefull and pleasing to the eye. I have a long way to go but that is my target. Brad in Fl

[Dan Bussiere]

As I am certainly no expert, I will state for the record my own opinion. "Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder"
Dan

[John Sanford]

Originally posted by Brad Risley
I feel that "FINE FURNITURE" is an advertising gimick. Example: "SO AND SO'S FINE FURNITURE". I strive to make heirloom quality pieces. I define heirloom as well made, appropriate for the intended use, and gracefull and pleasing to the eye. I have a long way to go but that is my target. Brad in Fl

Ahh, another, smaller bucket of worms, or would that be powder post beetles? :D

"Heirloom quality" - I have to disagree somewhat with Brad's elements of "heirloom quality." Perhaps the only requirement is "well made", as in durable, and even that is questionable given how many porcelain, ceramic, and glass heirlooms there are out yonder. Many items become heirlooms and remain so because of their emotional significance and longevity. While being graceful and pleasing certainly helps, there's a lot of "great grandma's whatchamajigs" that are neither graceful nor pleasing, yet are family heirlooms. Their value is in their service as a temporal bridge spanning the past, present, and implicitly, the future.

Another important difference is "appropriate for the intended use." Here, the problem is that many of the heirlooms extant today have been "repurposed." How many heirloom wash basin stands are being used today for washbasins? How many 19th century Armoires lugged across the Great Plains are being used in their "intended purpose" as freestanding closets? How many steamer trunks serve as coffee tables or winter clothing repositories, decades and thousands of miles away from the nearest steamer? How many "library tables" or plantation desks serve computers now?

I will have to add this, in recognition of the essence of Brad's definition: something is much easier to recognize as "heirloom quality" if one can imagine it passing from one family to one completely unrelated/unknown, and still holding signficance. Thus, an heirloom that transcends the family...

[Mike Vermeil]

The whole aspect of CNC is interesting, because it won't be too much longer before CNC becomes affordable to many woodworking hobbyists. I think, however, that "furniture" is clouding the issue. Let's take an entirely different product - say promotional rock concert posters.

Posters promoting rock concerts back in the 60's and 70's were often real works of art. Drawn by hand, by graphic artists, they many times conjured up psycodelic (sp?) images of what the concert experience would be like. Many of those posters are now worth a whole bunch of money.

Seen a concert poster lately? Well, they're perfect, absolutely perfect. Spun out by the thousands by graphic artists on their PC's, they display none of the "hand drawn" character of their predecessors, and many would say none of the imagination either. When I look at a vintage concert poster, I can imagine the original artist, slaving for days over his work in some loft flop house in the Haight, sustained by booze & who knows what else, until satisfied with his work. I've never looked at a modern concert poster and done the same. Who wants to imagine someone middle-aged, balding & frustrated artist hunched over a PC in the cubicle of some monster public relations firm?

Get the idea? When I look at a piece of fine, hand done (with true hand tools or with hand held power tools) furniture, I can imagine the woodworker covered in chips & dust, fussing with the fit of each joint until it's just right. The fact that a straight line may have the slightest bend in it just shows me where his hands once touched the piece. When I look at a piece of anything cranked out by CNC machinery, it's perfect, absolutely perfect, and nothing on it shows me where it was touched by the hands of a craftsman.

All humans crave human touch, and I believe most people prefer things around them that display that quality.

[Scott in Douglassville, PA]

C'mon - what about <a href="http://www.besound.com/pushead/gal.html">Pushead</a>?

[Terry Dyck]

I find that one element as been left out of this discusion, the buyer. If it is well made. well finished and functionally designed it is "fine furniture". My customers on the other hand might say it has to be built "by hand". I will do this and charge them accordingly. Other buyers agree with me and I am able to give them an equally well made product for much less money. I price my work based on time so my income is much the same, though I sometimes feel tempted to over charge the "hand made" buyers a bunch. They often seem more interested in impressing their friends than in the actual quality of the piece.

[Ian Barley]

I have no pretensions towards fine furniture - I make a living selling furniture which is constructed to a quality level which is appropriate to the market at which I aim and the desires of the customers within that market. I make series pieces because that ay I get to eat every night. I also make sure that it is good enough to satisfy my own desire to create something of value an integrity.

Some of my customers think that makes it fine. Some think it makes it good enough. The things which cause one person to appreciate a piece may be lost on another.

I recently had a customer who was so impressed with finding his name written in pencil on the underside of a chair. I had written it there to keep track of which was whose in a batch I was making. He was so ecstatic that he phoned me up to tell me that this was the first time he had ever had anything more permanent than a hamburger that was made for him personally. I normally sand these marks off but had forgotten in this instance. In his mind that pencil mark meant that he had purchased a piece of fine furniture. It has little to do with beauty and everything to do with individuality.

I also strongly agree with Mr Grumbine. Any seat which is not comfortable is not fine furniture. It may be beautiful, it may be artistic and it may be superb engineering. But the purpose of a chair is to provide physical comfort and if it doesn't it is not complete in its purpose.

Just my tuppence worth.

[John Sanford]

Ian, that's worth more like a quid. Well said!

[Steven Wilson]

Well said Bill Grumbine !!

My only exception is with chairs, specifically seat backs. Certain dining chairs (Chippendale) have backs that are uncomfortable to rest your back against. The seats are comfortable but the backs aren't and that is by design. If used properly, your back should not be leaning into the back of a dining chair, and the chair will be very comfortable for dining. I would call a well executed dining chair of this type, fine furniture. Now, if I can only get my carving up to snuff I can make on.

As for CNC - bring it on !!!! I'm a buding Luthier and I would like nothing more than to very accurately reproduce a good neck design. CNC is really the best way to go for making neck profiles consistant.

[Ron Taylor]

When I'm finished or near finished with a piece, I usually asked my wife's opinion to which she replies, "Fine".

Good 'nuf for me.

[Malcolm Timbers]

I think it depends upon how religious a person is about his woodworking that sets fine woodworking apart from other stuff.

Unlike fine furniture, at least, with rustic furniture, they cannot duplicate it with a CNC machine. I really like people's expression when they see a high quality finish on a knotty table top with warped sides and bent, barky legs.

[Bob Lasley]

Originally posted by Ron Taylor
When I'm finished or near finished with a piece, I usually asked my wife's opinion to which she replies, "Fine".

Good 'nuf for me.

As they say, "When Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy". I think you have it figured out Ron.

Bob

[Howard Ruttan]

I suppose I would have to differ with some of the opinions here because I personally have found that, taking the example of the panel you mentioned, that a finer finish can be achieved by planing the panel rather than sanding. A panel that has been hand planed, scraped with a cabinet scraper, then finished with fine sandpaper will take on a deeper, richer finish. That has been my experience and it only works if the same care is taken while finishing.

As far as what tools are used to get the joints cut, whatever works is my policy. I figure fine furniture is created by the use of proper joinery in a sensible fashion. The finishing of a piece of nice furniture is another matter. Let's face it, when someone looks over it when all is complete, are they going to say, "what a finely executed example of a mortise and tenon joint?" Probably not. But they will notice how smooth it is, what a pretty color it is, and those sorts of things. That's why I get real picky over the finishing part.

[Gary]

Obviously this is much too subjective a matter to ever draw more than a very fuzzy line. For example, regarding the visible imperfections of fine hand work: if you progarm a CNC machine to produce these imperfections, and I assume that with the proper skill it could actually be programmed to introduce 'random' evidence of tooling, then would it be 'fine'?

Like the noise in the forest, I think fine is a matter of human perception, and there are people who appreciate the skill and effort of a fellow being that goes into 'handcrafted' work and are willing to go the extra mile (or dollar) to aquire it. Everyone else shops at IKEA (just kidding! :D )

[Todd Burch]

I'm going to have to lean with Howard and the others that feel that the final "fit and finish" is what makes a piece "beholden."

I can take two identical pieces, as a lot of us here can, both made the same with similar grain, and apply a finish to one so that it looks like garage sale fodder and to the other so it looks suitable for any gallery.

This attractive finishing is what industry has striven for, in my opinion - make something as cheaply and as quickly as possible, and make it look fantastic in the finishing room.

When I see a piece that looks good in a showroom of a store, I study it to determine what is attractive about it. The lines, the proportions, the finish, the adornments, the door or drawer movement, quality of hardware, the backside, the underneath, etc. Those pieces that really stick out as fine to me are the ones that score high in every aspect. You can look at a piece closely and quickly determine how much attention to detail the maker put into the piece. When I see this detail, I know that the maker was striving for something above mediocre.

The depth of finish, to me, is very important. If I can achieve that with a hand plane or scraper, then that's what I will start doing on those pieces that matter (which means my own, and those that people are willing to pay for).

This has been a good discussion.

Todd.