spray guns

Getting back to spraying, I started using spray cans for repair work where I was matching a small repaired area to preexisting finish, but their use has spread into finishing of new pieces. Why do I use spray cans instead of a spray system? When I finish a piece it usually goes something like this. 1. Seal with 1 or 2 coats of thin shellac. 2. Tone with from 2 to 4 different toners. 3. Another seal coat of shellac. 4. A coat of glaze. 5. Finally 1 to 4 coats of finish or French polishing. This means at a minimum of six different coats of spray and a maximum of up to 10 coats of spray. Which means 6 to 10 spray guns to clean. That’s why I have 8 spray guns. When I did this with spray guns I spent as much time cleaning spray equipment as I did finishing. Now if I was spraying kitchen cabinets all day long I would have the appropriate spray equipment set up and clean up once at the end of the day. But for small amounts of multiple products, spray cans save a great deal of time. Like any finishing procedure there is a learning curve but you can get a very good finish out of a spray can.

spray cans

In the past you were limited in what was available in spray cans but that’s not the case today. Today you can get almost any finish in spray cans.

Cab lacquer, acrylic lacquer, pre-catalyzed lacquer, nitrocellulose lacquer, high solids lacquer, shellac, oil finish, dye toners, pigment toners, glazes, vinyls and sealers are just some of the  products available in spray cans. There are also 8 or 10 different changeable spray tips available for spray cans. With spray cans there is no clean up, little waste, long shelf life and for me increased speed which means more income and in the long run less cost to my customers.

Canada goose

First is a life size goose carved from Tupelo Gum. It’s the only piece I carved from this wood as I remember it was very hard on tool it seemed to have grit in the wood and was hard to carve with edge tools. The goose was one of the first birds I carved.

Baltimore Oriole

An Oriole in Basswood. Another early bird. The feet are cast metal and the leaves are brown paper.

Owl

This Owl, I believe was the last bird that I carved.

Epoxy putty sticks consist of a resin and hardener in one stick you just cut off a piece and knead it together to blend the two parts, it then cures in less than ten minuets. It is available from several sources and in many hardware stores. It is available in several colors. The manufacturers claim it to be permanent. I have not used it long enough to know how long it lasts. It seems to me that in order to be permanent the coefficient of thermal expansion would have to be the same. So far I have never had it fail.

epoxy putty sticks

Once the putty is kneaded it is pressed into the defect and formed to the correct shape but left proud of the surface. It can be formed with your fingers or tools. I always use a fill that is lighter than the color of the base surface.

puttied edge

Once it sets but before it is totally cured, trim it to match the surface. It can be trimmed with chisels, files, floats or sand paper, even a small plane.

tools used

If you trim it to soon it has a tendency to chip out of the repair, if you wait to long it becomes quit hard.

trimmed and sanded

Next I apply a coat of garnet shellac. It is always easier to match color after a coat of finish is applied to the repair and the surrounding area.

one coat of shellac

I begin to build up the color with dye in shellac. Start light and build up to the right color, it is easier to make it darker than to make it lighter.

dye in shellac

First coat of color.

1st color coat

Here the color is about right but the sheen is off. You can see that I have scratched the grain into the fill with a dry point tool and colored it dark.

color finished

A little bit of toner and a top coat blends it right in.

toner and top coat

As part of “Get Woodworking Week” I thought about what I would say to a beginning wood worker. I thought about tools, wood, projects, techniques and other aspects of the craft, but I could not come up with something that wasn’t going to be covered in depth by others. I finally came up with a couple of thing worth repeating here, I think.

Are you a Photo Realist or an Abstract Expressionist? Everybody has a distinct personality you need to match you wood working to you natural personality. If you are the type of person that irons your socks and all you cloths are folded neatly by you, not your partner, you need to learn to work wood that way. You probably don’t need a selection of axes in your tool kit but you may need a micrometer. Likewise if you regularly wear socks that don’t match and don’t care, you will need a totally different tool kit and projects.

You must learn to take advantage of the happy accidents. Years ago when I was in art school my mentor told me you must learn to take advantage of the happy accidents. Happy accidents are what he called mistakes. Everybody makes mistakes. The great craftsmen have learned to either work them in, cover them up or turn them into a feature. He also said an eraser is not for removing mistakes it’s just another tool to draw with.

Below is a rose head nail that was used to repair a tall case clock I restored. I removed this nail and made the repair with hide glue instead of the nail. You can see the hammered facets on the head.

1820 rose head

This is a bag of hand made iron nails I purchased. They are supposed to be unused 18th century made nails, but who knows for sure. They look good. I save these for repairs of period pieces.

18th century rose head nails

These are soft clinch nails made for the repair of steamer trunks. They are a cut nail with a smooth round head. I don’t know what they are made of but they are soft enough to hammer into a simulated rose head nail.

trunk nails

These are the tools I use to make the nails I use when building reproductions of pieces from the 18th century or earlier. The shafts can be hammered cold but if you hammer the heads without heating them they tend to pop off.

tools

This is one of the trunk nails after hammering. The rectangular plate is a used up draw plate that I use as a nail header.

new nail

ready to finish

Here it is finished.

finished

This piece is made of white pine with cherry legs. Coloring pine presents two problems, grain reversal and blotching. The grain will almost always reverse if you dye or stain raw pine and some other woods. Blotching depends on how much grain runs out of the surface of your lumber. There are a couple of ways to deal with these problems. First is to completely seal the wood and apply the color as a toner so the color sits on top without penetrating the surface. There are dye and pigment toners and they both work. The problem with this approach comes after the piece begin to show some wear, it becomes obvious that the color is sitting on top of the surface. The second approach is to chemically change the color of the actual wood. This can include the use of bleaches, acids, mordants, UV light among others. The idea here is to try and recreate and accelerate the natural aging process. The problem with this approach is the the chemicals can be extremely dangerous to use.

grain reversal from the American Woodworker website

This is a sample board I made using aqua fortis, garnet shellac and black wax.

test board

A close up of a pine board treated with aqua fortis. You can see that the wood is darkened without grain reversal. The darkening is in the surface of the wood. Aqua fortis is made with nitric acid which is very dangerous. Don’t do this without being trained in the use of acids and the proper safety equipment.

chemically aged

The table chemically treated.

chemically treated

Next two coats of garnet shellac, then a coat of van dyke brown glaze.

glaze applied

The glaze was allowed to flash off [ dry until the shine was gone ] then wiped back. One more coat of thin shellac to seal the glaze.

wiped down

The table was then given a coat of black milk paint. The milk paint was allowed to dry but not cure, about an hour, it was then scrubbed off strategically with a maroon nylon pad and water. Then another thin coat of shellac. Finally it was waxed with black wax a couple of times. The black wax does a couple of things, 1 it stays in every scratch, crack, plane track, ding and flaw and makes them show, 2 it takes the shine off of all the low spots and crevices and adds shine to all the high areas.

finished

Here is the original piece from the Mesda. If you clic the link you can read all about it.

Mine is slightly smaller I built it to fit a particular space.

original

Simulated wear

For some reason I didn’t take a picture of the piece totally finished but before aging and finishing. This one is close the only thing missing is the top edge profile.

ready for aging

The first thing I did was add wear with a riffler rasp to the appropriate areas. you need to add the wear to the areas that would have wear under normal use, like corners and places were hands would have touched often.  After the rasp it is cleaned up with sand paper and a card scraper.

riffler rasp

A rasped edge.

rasped edge

The final step in the simulating wear is to burnish the entire piece with a block of wood. I used a block of ash then a block of basswood. Burnishing creates a worn smooth surface that is hard to produce any other way. The two wood blocks are similar to having two grits when sanding.

burnishing

Here is a burnished edge. This picture doesn’t really capture the quality of the surface, it’s smoother and has more shine.

burnished edge

Wear on a corner.

burnished corner

Wear on the stretchers.

worn stretcher

The table with simulated wear ready for coloring.

complete

Top

The top attached with snipe hinges.

top atached

Here you can see the nails and hinges going through the top.

open

Ready for profiling the top edges.

tab

Starting a thumb nail profile with a moving fillister.

cutting profile

Rounded over with a block plane.

cutting profile

Finished profile.

profile complete

trimming glue blocks

Here is the profile it appears to be two pieces but is actually one.

trim profile

I cut the profile on to the  edge of a long piece of stock with a 78, hollow and a round, and a snip bill plane. I then cut the molding off the edge with the band saw.

making trim

I next mitered the pieces and pegged them to the base of the case. I overlapped the top of the legs a small amount to help reinforce the leg joint.

trim

Here’s the piece ready for the top and finishing.

trim applied

stretchers

The first thing I did was mill the stock for the stretchers, then I marked the position of the stretcher on one of the legs. With the table sitting level on the bench I then cut a piece of scrap the height of the bottom of the stretcher. Using that piece of scrap I marked the bottom of the stretchers on all the legs.

marking

Next using a small piece of the stretcher stock I marked the height of the top of the stretchers on all sides of all the legs.

marking

One leg marked. The legs were marked with a knife I highlighted the knife cuts with a pencil for the photo, but not very straight. Using this method I was able to lay out the stretcher positions without doing any measuring or angle calculation.

marked

After marking I sawed the slots for the stretchers.

sawing

Cleaned out the waste with a router plane.

routing

Slot cut.

slot

Stretcher stock inserted into the slots in the legs.

insert

With the stretcher stock in position I marked the miters. I used long clamps to make minor adjustments in the leg spacing while doing the marking.

marking

All the miters cut and the stretchers glued in place. I used wood pegs instead of nails.

stretchers glued