The right hat

My first job after high school was as far away as I could get from where I grew up in Ohio. In June of 1975 I found myself on a cattle ranch in Western Montana. My older brother was my new boss. I thought I was going to be a cowboy but spent most of the first few weeks doing glamorous work like pulling a chain drag over an 800 acre hayfield breaking up chunks of dried manure. I remember the first day my brother telling me I should wear a hat. I know I must have given him one of those looks only an 18 year old can muster who has concrete for brains. I don’t need no stinking hat. Two days later my face and ears looked like an overcooked potato chip. He was right about the hat. Not being a hat guy, and not being from Montana, I bought a small pitiful straw hat only a rodeo clown could love. It was my brother’s turn to give me one of those looks. He was pretty good about it. Wasn’t mean or cruel, which he had every right to be. After all we are brothers. You just don’t let those opportunities to pick on a sibling slip through your fingers. Two weeks later on the next trip to town I bought this black hat. We went to a branding at the neighbors ranch and everyone got a charge out of seeing my new hat take a beating in the muck and dust of a hard day’s labor. I don’t wear it much back here in Ohio but it’s filled with memories of one great summer.

Crown Molding detail by Bill Evans, Photo by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

I’ve been putting together an upcoming article for my Design Matters column in Popular Woodworking Magazine. The article is about how moldings can emphasize a form and includes some tips about sizing a crown molding for a cabinet. I often think of a crown molding like a hat. Get it wrong and it’s one of those things that people notice immediately. A crown molding has it’s origins in a cornice found at the top of a classic order. In its original form it played a functional role. The overhang helped shield the building and occupants from the elements. On furniture the crown or cornice is purely esthetic. It terminates the form by providing a clear border at the top of the case or pediment. Since a crown is such a visible element even from a distance you can vary the visual strength of it to achieve a range of effects. On the bolder end of the spectrum you can use a crown to achieve a strong architectural feeling. Reducing the size of a crown is like lowering your voice. That is often appropriate in an interior setting and if you look at a sampling of period work you will often notice the crown molding is more subdued. I like to use the proportions in the orders as a starting point but often find myself backing the overall height of the moldings by a ¼, 1/3, or even ½. There are proportions associated with each order for sizing a crown molding all based on the overall height of the piece. A quick and dirty way to get a generic envelope to start with is to divide the overall height of the case into 6 parts, then divide the top unit into 3 parts. That top third is your crown. These divisions are giving you 1/18th of the overall height. That’s a place to begin. I usually work up some full sized profiles at that scale and once I’m happy with the molding combinations, I may reduce the scale down from there until it suits my eye.

George R. Walker

If you can’t hear it, you can’t play it.

A few months ago on this blog we were discussing links between music and design. One comment struck a chord with me.  

“If you can’t hear it, you can’t play it.”

 That rings true to me and resonates with my approach to training the eye. Aplying that to design it might read.

 ”If you can’t see it, you can’t build it”

A big part of training your eye is to build up the library of images (music) in your mind. I look at a lot of furniture, most often in books and whenever the chance avails, revel in person. Architecture is also a constant source of inspiration, a deep pool that continues to offer up surprises and delights in old buildings that often go unnoticed. Nature offers an unending banquet. In my case for most of my adult life it’s been fueled by a keen interest in botany and ornithology. This time of year that’s a bleak source but in a few months I’ll take to the wetlands with my wife Barb to witness the majesty of the spring migration. We’ll head up to the southern shore of Lake Erie where large numbers of colorful warblers pause to rest before jumping across the open water.

It seems the more I study design the more I notice things. These snippets seldom go immediately into a furniture design. Most of the time they get filed away in the library I’m amassing internally. When it comes time to lay in a curve on the front of a chair seat or transition a leg into a case, those tucked away images guide and inspire. The best part is this doesn’t require anything on your part but to slow down and really look.

I do a lot of my work with traditional hand tools; many of them refurbished vintage planes, chisels, etc. Here’s a plane that’s a bit of a wall hanger. It’s one half of a matched tongue and groove set for 7/8 stock. It’s on my list some day to take up the challenge of making the missing partner and putting it back to work again.

 But just look at it.

 This is not all function though it does fit the hand like warm water. Note the graceful elongated way the tote flows back and how it transitions into the plane body as though it sprouted from the earth. Even the metal parts mix function with beauty.

One of my favorite quotes-

 “…what humans have done excellently once they can do again (Demetri Porphyrios, 1982). “ .

Even something as simple as a plane can inspire us to do our best work. What inspires you?

George R. Walker

Finished Small Empire chest

Ready for some shellac

I mentioned recently that I’ve been finishing up a small reproduction dowry chest from a circa 1830 original from the upper Ohio Valley. It’s a commission and way way way past due so it’s especially good to see my part completed (I’m supplying it ready for finishing.) It’s always interesting to learn close up some historical building practices on a project like this. You may notice small cut nails pinning many parts together. My sense is that the nails were used in lue of clamps and glue. Anyway the pictures may speak louder than my words. Primary wood hard curly maple, secondary poplar.

Detail of turning on front corner, very typical of this empire style.

Drwaer detail, note cock beading on edges.

Front veiw, chest is Aprox 25" tall.

Detail showing full raised panel back, note pockets gouged into top back rail to secure top with screws

Quaker Locks with a hidden twist

Secret trap door cut into the back of the bottom rail provides access to unlock the drawer by inserting a pin in the hole

I spent some time in the shop Saturday installing Quaker locks on a small reproduction chest of drawers. First let me say this project isn’t about something I designed, rather it’s an inside look at some historical construction details not often seen. I’m building this for a collector who owns the original piece built in the upper Ohio valley circa 1830. He asked me to make a copy as close as possible to the original. The exception in a strange way, is the Quaker locks which secures the drawers. My friend stated that in more than 30 years of collecting regional furniture he has examined over 500 chests of drawers. Of those, only 12 had Quaker locks and all of them had the locking mechanism broken off. That includes the chest I am reproducing. The original just had enough broken remains that we could use as a pattern to put locks on the new piece. These locks are a bit awkward and require that to open any drawer you must first unlock the bottom drawer and then sequentially unlock every drawer going up until you arrive at the one you want to open. You definitely do not want to put your 44 magnum in the top drawer to fend off an intruder. Anyway, I am recreating the Quaker locks and the new owner can bust them free once he gets tired of fumbling with them.

Drawer bottom has thin strip of oak which snaps behind the drawer divider when closed.

At its simplest a Quaker lock is a thin strip of oak let into the drawer bottom at a slight angle so that when the drawer closes the thin strip snaps behind the drawer divider preventing it from opening. To unlock you simply reach under the divider from the drawer below and press it up with your finger, releasing the drawer. What makes this special? This case has a dust bottom below the lowest drawer preventing access to the first lock. You can’t begin opening the drawers if you cannot unlock the bottom drawer. It has a small secret opening cut into the backside of the bottom rail allowing you to insert a pin to lift the bottom lock and start unlocking the drawers. If the construction looks a bit crude, it’s because it is made like the original. If anything it’s a little

Veiwed from the outside the secret compartment is hidden from the eye. It's cut into the backside of the decorative scroll.

less rough than the piece it’s a copy of. Also note another unusual construction feature. The chest is primarily frame and rail construction with four heavy corner posts mortised to accept the rails front, back and sides.

Here you can see a mortise chopped into the bottom rail for the lock to snap down into. Note also the hole so that a pin can release the lock from below.

To support the drawers a second set of rails is mortised into the inner edges of the corner posts and then drawer runners are nailed to the inner rails.

Inside veiw showing double set of rails to support drawers and runners nailed to inside rails.

That means this little chest had over 56 mortises to chop out to accept all the rails and drawer dividers. The corner posts looked like Swiss cheese before glue up.

 George R. Walker

Golden Rectangle… a different viewpoint

Formed by extending the diagonal of a half square creating a ratio of 1:1.618

Last Spring I gave a keynote address at the WIA (Woodworking in America) design conference in Chicago. I was a little worried about the audio visual setup and had nightmares about standing in front of two hundred people doing shadow puppets. I also dreaded the question and answer period at the end of the talk. Shooting from the hip is not my strength.  I always think of the best answers about 2:00 AM back in the hotel room. The presentation went smooth and the audio visuals flawless. Everyone enjoyed my story about the time I tripped and fell headfirst down a grand staircase in the Library of Congress. Then I spied Chris Schwarz, editor of Popular Woodworking magazine waving his hand.

“George, I was curious to know why you left out any references to the Golden Rectangle in your latest video on furniture design, was there a reason?”

I was outed. Felt like an atheist in a Baptist bible college. Armed with only a pair of dividers in case an angry mob rushed the stage I laid out my reasons for putting no stock in this mystical holy grail of proportions. I’ll give you the benefit of my answers that came to me at 2:00AM that night.

 Like many woodworkers I started out firmly believing the many articles and books that sang the praises of the Golden Rectangle, also referred to as the Golden mean, Golden ratio, Fibonacci series, or Phi. It’s been used to explain the design for great buildings like the Parthenon, great works of art and masterful furniture designs from the 18^th century. It has some unique mathematical properties and is often tied to patterns observed in nature like the graceful volute in a nautilus shell. In simple geometric terms it’s formed by dividing a square in half and using the diagonal from the half square extended out to form a rectangle with a ratio of 1:1.618…. 

 My own doubts about this started creeping in when I began my own investigation of how period furniture was designed in the 18^th century. I studied the standard texts like Thomas Chippendales Director and the writings of Sheraton, both English furniture designers who reflected the design approach from this important era. All arrows pointed back to architecture as the wellspring and stressed the importance of mastering the classic orders. The classic orders are an ancient architectural form consisting of a column and the support structure above it that were used in Greek and Roman temple construction.

Doric classic order, drawing by author

Many of those historical design books started with a series of engravings detailing the proportions in the orders. I did something a bit odd for a 21^st century woodworker. I took heed of the advice, sat down at the dining room table and began to draw and explore the classic orders. Over the ensuing weeks the sun came out, the fog lifted and my understanding of furniture design blossomed. First, the physical act of drawing the orders awakened my mind to see proportions in a new and sharp focus. Secondly, the excitement of discovery drove me deeper into period architectural literature which filled in many gaps and changed my entire way of seeing. It was exhilarating to discover a design language that is rational and allowed me to pull back the veil on the furniture I so greatly loved. Dividers became an extension of my hand as I explored the elegant and simple proportions in the engravings in design books and photo copies of furniture pieces. This approach focussed on simple whole number proportions like 2:3, 3:5 that can be easily played with and manipulated much like you can arrange musical notes on a scale.  Those old engravings from the design books with odd symbols and hieroglyphics now made sense. But the more confident and excited I became about what I was learning, the more doubts began to creep in about the magical Golden Rectangle. I couldn’t find any references to it in any of the design books from the pre-industrial time period. That’s nothing short of amazing as there were over 200 architecture titles and 20 more on furniture design published in England in the 18^th century. To top it off, many of these authors had an ego like Donald Trump. They vied with each other to display their knowledge like a peacock to attract the richest benefactors, yet no mention of the Golden mean. None, nada, zip. Then I started trying to reconcile using the golden ratio with the techniques I had learned using dividers to lay out a design with simple whole number ratios. I couldn’t make it work. It always felt like a train wreck or like drawing a blue print and mixing inch and metric dimensions on the same drawing. I was exploring a lot of photos with dividers so I began revisiting some of the articles where the Golden rectangle was overlaid over a form as an illustration. What I frequently saw was the rectangle applied in a way that would make no sense to a furniture builder. If you overlay the golden rectangle over any complicated piece of furniture you are bound to find something that will coincide. As a furniture maker I’m looking for proportions that align with major structural boundaries that have meaning. I always focus on the inner or outer boundaries of the cases, top of the pediment etc. I don’t care if a proportion lines up with some random drawer, that’s not how you build furniture and is meaningless.

One of these is based on the golden ratio and the other two are based on simple whole number proportions of 3:5 and 5:8

In addition there are several whole number rectangles very close to the Golden rectangle as to be almost indistinguishable. On this graphic I laid out three proportional rectangles, can you tell which one is Golden? I’ll give you a hint. One was used in the design of the “Ark of the Covenant” the most holy piece of furniture in the ancient Jewish tabernacle circa 1400BC. It’s described in the book of Exodus chapter 25 verse 10. Note: if you have a little trouble with the dimensions spelled out in cubits, the ark is a wooden chest that is 27” high by 45” long, a rectangle with a simple ratio of 3:5.

The rectangle on top is 3:5, middle is the Golden rectangle or 1:1.618, and the bottom is 5:8. With all three it’s difficult to distinguish as they are so similar.

Here’s the bottom line for me.  I’ll let you in on the “secret” of traditional design. Listen close. This is not rocket science. If you can count to ten on your fingers, you can learn to use simple proportions to guide your designs. Simple whole number proportions might not sound as sexy as the magical Golden rectangle, but they work without fuss to find elegant design solutions at the workbench.  

George R. Walker

Borders

Bold Architectural elements border this doorway, Hamilton House, South Berwick Maine

Back in the pre-911 days I took a backpacking trip in Glacier Park with my brother and his wife. We spent four blissful days hiking from the west edge of the park up over Boulder Pass and came out at Waterton Lake. Along the way I think we touched the border of heaven in a campsite called hole in the wall. It was a hanging cirque perched on side of a mountain ringed by a necklace of waterfalls, and a stillness I still carry with me.

I’ve been working on another upcoming article for my “Designs Matters” column for Popular Woodworking Magazine about border elements. Often when a design looks clunky or weak it can be traced back to the way borders or framing elements are laid in. Proportionally borders fall under something called punctuation. I covered punctuation in detail in my first video “Unlocking the Secrets of Traditional Design.” Unlike the ratios used to rough in a simple shape such as 1:2, 3:4, 2:3 etc, when we punctuate or create a border we use ratios like 1:5, 1:6, 1:7. Borders can have a profound visual impact on how a form or shape comes across to our eye. On one end of the spectrum we can totally forgo a border. Sometimes in a grand house, a doorway was blended into a wall space with no borders to provide a discrete way for someone to pass unnoticed from one room to another. At the other end of the spectrum an important doorway could be elevated with the addition of border elements and ornament. On furniture, for elements like drawer fronts, if we forego borders altogether we achieve a sleek look that won’t compete with the overall form. We can add a bead like I discussed last week to give a subtle outline to each opening. Or we can add a border with inlay, marquetry, or even a molded edge. Sizing these border elements is important and will have a profound effect on how it comes across to your eye. Many times a border is the same width all the way around the perimeter.

Border on this drawer front is proportioned one sixth the height.

This is often the case for drawer fronts or on panels set in doorframes. If the element has a horizontal emphasis like a drawer front, the border is proportioned from the height of the drawer opening. If the element is more vertical like a door panel, then the border is proportioned off the opening width. Andrea Palladio wrote about sizing the molding to frame in a door opening. He suggested dividing the width of the opening into six parts and using one sixth as the width for the border around the doorway. I take that as the upper end of how wide a border should be. If you start with one sixth of the opening you will get a strong architectural feel. That may hit it right for your eye. I always want to step back and look at it from across the room. It may be too bold; I personally don’t want a zebra waving at me. Feel free to tone it back from that one sixth proportion but it’s a good place to begin.

George R. Walker

Linking simple shapes with proportions

Sideboard by Gerald Currey, Photo by Lie-Nielsen Toolworks

I once read there are two ways to learn a foreign language, a “High Road” and a “Low Road”. The high road is a path that includes mastering grammar, diagramming sentences, and conjugating verbs. The low road involves learning the alphabet to the point you can fumble through a dictionary, then getting you’re keister down to the fish market to buy some supper. I make no bones about it; most of my writing about furniture design is low road. I’m trying to share small chunks of practical design information that you can use immediately at your workbench and try to avoid getting hung up on a dangling participle. For the folks out there traveling the high road, I apologize ahead of time.

This square is divided into three smaller 2:3 rectangles

We use proportions to rough in the overall form or bones of a piece. Casework pieces are often built around a simple rectangle with the height and width in a proportional relationship i.e. a 3:5 rectangle. Proportions can also be used to unify a design when we integrate smaller shapes that have similar proportions. Often inside the overall rectangle that defines the form is a series of smaller rectangles nested together. Sometimes they are separate, sometimes they are spaced apart, and sometimes they overlap. For the April issue of my Design Matters column In Popular Woodworking Magazine I discuss forms and specifically adjusting a form to accommodate different room sizes. My wife is after me to build a sideboard but wants a smaller version for our modest dining room. I’ve been working up some ideas based on a nice example from Rhode Island. The overall form is a square. The upper third defines the cabinet space and bottom 2/3 is the open space below. If you divide the upper third in half you end up with three smaller rectangles within the square and all of them have a ratio of 2 parts to 3 parts. My guess is that most people who look at this form would not say “I see a square that is divided up into three smaller 2:3 rectangles.” That’s one of the beautiful things about proportions, often it’s this simplicity that makes this into a true and wonderful thing.  

Sideboards a fun form to study. Typically they are a maze of these simple rectangles in countless versions and combinations. Best of all, even though they appear rectilinear from the front, many employ dramatic curvature and a wide variety of leg treatments. They are a great example of how this traditional approach can be used to create designs in a wide range of tastes. Note the sideboard above by Gerald Currey. He’s a furniture builder and instructor at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship up in Warren Maine. He is a master of taking a traditional form yet expressing it in a new and wonderful way.

George R. Walker

Proportioning systems

Simple Diagonals divide this space into halves, thirds, and fourths

Ever since the first caveman or cavewoman drew the first saber tooth tiger on the wall, we have been exploring, discovering, and rediscovering proportions. I watched one of those “how to paint” artists on PBS recently. The instructor was working on a painting that featured a sand hill crane. He started off by saying  “To pull this off you must get the proportions right.” I perked up and listened, then but he didn’t elaborate. Evidently everyone but me must know how to proportion a sand hill crane.

When it comes to woodworking, understanding proportions are one of the foundation blocks of design. I’ll go so far as to say that anyone who produces a large body of work which is recognizable has worked out an approach to proportions even if it’s something completely freehand in their mind. I suspect that’s that case with many accomplished designers. I’ve questioned many builders who produce outstanding work and often they cannot explain how they proportion their work. Obviously they have mastered it. I put them in a category of someone able to play music by ear but unable to read notes. My hats off to anyone who has achieved this whether through keen observation and study, talent, or most likely a combination of both. Down through history there have been numerous ways to use proportions to arrange a composition and link the parts together into a unity. I primarily focus on the use of simple whole number ratio proportions but I thought I’d share briefly another approach that was once used. Some refer to it as a simple geometric approach and in the fine arts it’s referred to as the armature of rectangle. Take any square or rectangle and with simple diagonals you can divide up a space proportionally both vertically and horizontally. Connecting the opposite corners divides the space in half (Point A). Connecting the midpoint down to a lower corner divides the space into thirds (Point B). Finally, connect two midpoints and it divides the space into fourths (point C). You can continue adding diagonals and dividing the space into smaller and smaller units. I have no idea if furniture builders used this method, but I do know they frequently used and studied simple geometry. It’s also a handy thing to know regardless.

Using simple geometry to design a doorway by Serlio

This approach was used by architects as this drawing from Serlio illustrates the layout of a door opening on a wall. Renaissance painters are most famous for using this approach to organize a composition on a canvas. If you would like to read more about that you might check out a copy of “Classical Painting Atelier” by Juliette Aristedes at your library.

George R. Walker

Fitting small beads

Bead on drawer side narrower than top bead

Unless you have a strong stomach, you never want to get a group of bikers talking about bike wrecks or woodworkers talking about accidents with power tools. I have to admit, the older I get the more squeamish I am about blood and detached digits. Spent way too many years in a manufacturing environment and saw firsthand how easy it is to make a mistake that cannot be repaired. I even knew a guy once who worked in a stamping department and intentionally lopped a finger off so he could collect compensation to buy a new motorcycle. His nickname was “Spot”. I think that says it all.

 I’ve been in the shop fitting the beading on some drawer fronts on a reproduction. They present a few challenges. The bead that runs across top and bottom spans the drawer front thickness plus 1/16” to allow the bead radius to cast a shadow. On the ends, the bead is aprox ½” wide. This means that the miter on the top and bottom pieces stops half way across. You might notice on the photo that the top bead has a butt end flush part way across and then mitered where it mates with the side bead. I cut that stopped miter with a block cut at 45 degrees to act as a guide and used a chisel to pare down carefully. I mitered the side pieces the same way till I got down to the narrower drawers.

Precise miters on tiny peices is a challenge

The smallest drawer is only 2” high and that means trying to cut a precise miter on a little piece of beading with nothing to grab. In the old days I would have attempted to make the cuts on a table saw. Bad idea for several reasons. Miter cuts on small work like this is asking for a trip to the emergency room. Secondly, this fine of work requires quite a bit of fine tuning to get the fit perfect. That’s not something a table saw or miter saw excels at. Hard to get a table saw to remove just a small shaving or two.

 My solution. Use double stick tape to mount the small bead on a board that’s already cut to 45 degrees.

Shooting board is my solution on small parts

Use a shooting board to get a good clean miter. Best of all I can remove just a shaving or two and creep up on that tight fit I’m after.

 Anyone have a better idea? I’m all ears.

George R. Walker

Separate molding shapes

It’s impressive how a major league outfielder can run full tilt to snag a fly ball without crashing into the home run fence. A big part of the feat is the fact that the outfield has that narrow strip, the warning track that allows the fielder to know that the wall is just a few steps away. If you think about it the warning track is a relatively small element compared to an entire baseball outfield. It’s just a narrow band that separates the outfield from the fence and the stadium seats rising up behind it.

I’ve been writing a few posts about using a simple bead or a small filet or fascia as a separator to help divide up a furniture design visually. In many cases these design ideas have application on several levels. Often we can see the same concepts applied on a macro scale or a micro scale. This translates into the visual image as seen from a distance, then as we draw closer, and finally the close up detail. In earlier posts I wrote about using a bead or fillet to separate major elements in a form such as making a capital distinct from a column shaft, or using a bead to suggest a shadow of a base at the bottom of a table leg. Also looked at how a bead could help us separate a bank of drawers on a chest front. That would be an example of using separation on a minor element or something that would be noticed as we draw closer. Finally we use fillets and beads to separate elements on a micro scale or up close.

We use small fillets and beads in molding combinations to separate different molding shapes. A small fillet or fascia is a natural choice because the flat vertical surface will reflect light in a strong monotone and usually will contrast with an adjacent surface that is curved such as a cove, cyma recta, or Ovolo. The bead also works visually as a separator because the recesses where the edges of the bead sink back into the surface creates shadow lines. Often molding combinations are assembled with major and minor elements and a bead or fillet separates those elements, yet still allows them to compliment one another.

George R.Walker