Refurbishng two 19th Century Chests of Drawers

    

The handmade chest as it appeared on FB marketplace

The refurbished curb find     

       I've finally completed saving two antique pieces of furniture to add to my house in Huntington. The first item was a handmade chest that I bought through FM marketplace. A bit impulsively but I am more than pleased with how it turned out and my having rescued it from further decay.

    The second chest, a factorymade item, was picked up curbside shortly after acquiring the former.  I hadn't yet gotten a functional woodshop in order but they could serve first as motivational projects while assessing the collective damage and developing repair strategies.

    The factorymade model was manufactured with ceramic casters. Three of the wheels were intact but even that's not good enough. I purchased replacements in brass. I ought to have bought the models with the thickers stems but I made the undersized models fit snugly by using electrician's tape to bulk it out.

  

Properly supported andlestick holders and drop pulls on a handmade chest

     I pondered how to repair the broken candlestick holder.   These are often attached to mirrors as a means of reflecting the light back out into the living space.In better quality construction, the support is bracketed.  The candlestick supports on this model were secured with a singular woodscrew, one of which remained attached; whereas, the second had failed. Initially I imagined that I could fabricate a bracket that would be joined to the support pad with a sliding dovetail.

The meretricious candlestick shelf

The compromised improvement 

Underbuilt and underscrewed

     

 

        I wasn't until I had obtained a piece of locally milled walnut (along with tulip poplar planks for other repairs) that I realized that such an upgrade would not work. The uprights were beaded and A bracker would cover them. At best the bracket would only provide stability and I didn't want to drill through the uprights in order to better secure the candlestick supports with an additional woodscrew. This meant that even with the brackets jointed into the bottoms of the pads, they would only be held in place with a single woodscrew. It dawned on me that these were simply decorative items that were not functional today any more than in the past. I determined to remove the remaining support before it was also broken.

    Even though the handmade chest had its own distinct challenges and quirks, one problem straddled both items and many other similarly constructed chests of drawers.  The drawersides present two intertwined weaknesses. The narrow bottoms must bear the full weight of the drawer's contents as it is withdrawn and reinserted into the chest. This repeated action causes the drawerside to be worn down over time ad well as the runners. 

    A second inherent weakness of such a groove that is plouhged into the sides in order to receive the drawerbottom. This necessary groove renders a weak component even weaker and is the source of many drawer failures. Solutions to this are slips and tapered sides. Slips do appear on high end furniture yet I have only ever heard of the Shakers using this technique, likely due to its slightly greater labor investment.    

    

the restored drawerside

    My solution to counter the wear on the factory chest was to square up the bottoms of the drawersides and then to attach shims in order to repair the loss. I used beech in this case because they were handy but even a dense pine would suffice. 

Screwed down in slot

 

Drawerback thickener

    The Knapp joint cutting fixture likely was also used to join the drawer back into the sides.  The pins were were cut out of a drawer back of the same thickness which was then driven into a line of holes drilled into the drawer sides.

    

damage cased by loose drop pulls

The replacement pulls and closeup of the faux veneer

    The vanity dresser was originally produced with drop pulls. Even though this piece was set to the curb, stuffed with a bag of various hardware fittings and components from other furniture items, the correct drawer handles were absent. I tried finding modern drop pulls with backings large enough to cover the circular scoring caused by the originals into the drawer fronts. It turns out that elaborate drop pulls have fallen out of fashion during the previous 100 years. And there isn't a very active secondhand market. I settled on a different style, obtained from a hardware supplier located here in Indiana. The walnut adequately covers the damaged fronts and blends in with the vintage design.

    

Escutcheon inlay

Patched

Drawbored joinery and drawer stop

    The handmade chest is a piece rich in history. It's the only signed piece that I have obtained and it is extremely confusing to interpret what occurred during its construction.  The piece exhibits the qualities of what, I believe, would have indicated a high status piece. I've not been able to identify the primary show wood, but it is extremely dense which is in contrast with the escutcheon inlays.The split turnings and uprights suggest perhaps and workshop with specialized tradesmen or a diversely skilled individual cabinetmaker. The drawer fronts exhibit London style dovetails. 

    

It doesn't show so the mistake didn't count

Chopped and unfilled 

        And yet the piece is notable for the errors of its original construction. The damaging repairs across the years will get itemized separately. The most obvious mistake is the groove that runs around the inside top of the largest drawer. Evidently the layout lines were mismarked and the components were too valuable to dispose of and begin anew. Peter Follansbee has documented many examples of this with handmade objects. It's the case that the amount of labor already sunk into the the boards compelled the workman to make due. He and the customer were willing to overlook such flaws. Similarly there is a unused mortise in the front uprights due to mistaken layout. The stretcher just above the split turnings enters the uprights with a double mortise. The upper stretcher, by contrast, is oriented so that it only enters the upright with one tenn. The ghost mortises remain empty.

Original nail, suitably placed, clinched onto short bottom board

    The drawer bottoms merit their own highlight reel. The goal must have been to construct them out of one flatsawn pine plank. I have seen examples of bottoms that have shrunk over many years of use. A gap either emerges at the front of the drawer because the bottom is fixed to the drawer back or a gap opens up at the back as the wood fibers age and sometimes cup.

    

Original shim on bottom board, nonetheless too small

Hammer blow marks and a later repair

    The drawer bottoms, too narrow to serve their only function, left the workshop with gaps. I lost some of the photos of this project when my mobile was stolen at my workplace, but there are enough details to show that the oldest style of nails were used to pathetically patch these gaps. Roughly chopped shims were crammed behind the pine bottom, leaving slits. It boggles the mind to understand such shoddy work, albeit hidden, could commingle with the classically proportioned and decorated front

    

The workman's signature on a drawerside

    I initially planned on fully replacing the bottoms with new tulip poplar. In the end, I instead decided to incorporate as much of the original pine as I could with a width of new tulip poplar glued onto the reworked bottoms. All this would be for nothing, however, if I could not come to terms with the damage done to the drawer sides     

earlier repairs

 

        

Nail holes from a century of bodging

    After injecting some hot water into the dovetail joints, both front and back, the drawer sides components could be easily disassembled with light blows. I would be using hide glue to reattach these joints and PVA glue to widen the drawer bottoms.

gap at the drawerfront due to shrinkage 

    I selected the densest and straightest stock of southern yellow pine to serve as shims for the rebuilt drawer sides. I left the stock slightly fat, a nod to tapered sides, but also to allow for some variation with the old wood. I glued the new stock onto the old, flush with the outsides.

Ripping off the bottom of the drawersides on the new bandsaw

     

cracked groove in a drawerside

    I was able to rip off the bottoms of the drawer sides with the kerf passing between dovetails. I then jointed the edges. Because I would have to groove the sides with a handplane, I left the stock longer. This procedure would be better accomplished with a tablesaw.  I should have taken better measurements since I struggled to layout the grooves onto the newly rebuilt sides. The third ones were the easiest and produced the best fit.

  

Reassembled drawer with London style dovetails

   

a broken pin cleverly glued into its corresponding socket

     I transferred the marks from the dovetails onto the sides and sawed. One was too tight and cause a split, which I invisibly glued and clamped. I applied hide glue to the dryfit joints and assembled, checked for squareness, and let sit without clamps.

   

New drawer bottom in use

     Regluing the new shims of tulip poplar onto the old pine bottom was only slightly tricky. Each glueup required three of the long bar clamps. Out of the clamps, they were handplaned where the inside surfaces weren't aligned.  I planed down the underside bevel so that it matched up with the original contour, using a strip of wood with the same groove groove and with the sides to test for snugness. Since these are flatsawn, some cupping was evident which made assembly rather difficult. I chose to plane down some that cupping to make the newly widened bottom slide more easily into the grooves. Additionally I planed the front of the bottom panel,  squaring down the steep bevel with a skewed rabbet plane so that the would fit readily into the groove of the drawer front. I would thus secure the bottom with hide glue alone. The thickness of the bottom didn't require any fastener at the back.

    

wood butchery

 

wane in back of top and a clipped corner

    This chest suffered abuse throughout its existence. Not only the botched repairs with nails driven willy nilly in the manner of an annoying uncle, but at some time, the top was sawn along the right side and at the back left corner.  I can only surmise that at one time this chest was crammed into a closet space which required the butchered modifications

detail of back corner and distinctive chamferring of dovetails on the drawerbacks 

 

 

    Happy 250th anniversary to the constitution! It feels invigorating to be back in the woodshop and diverting Americana away from the landfill 

 

 

 

      

 

Last class at the Yangpu Bilingual High School

woodworking tables and chairs

         On January 4th I conducted the final woodworking class of senior middle school students at the YangPu Bilingual school. The school officially refers to this course as Design and Technology but I wasn't made aware of this distinction until I was given the student roster. 

The guardhouse of the closed campus

         

             I came into this job through Chen Yonggang who has learned to supply contract teaching to school administrators who understand that there is a need to provide their students with handicraft instruction but lack the institutional skills to do so internally. He provides the materials, the teachers, and the projects that the students complete. He mainly hires young women to teach students in primary schools. I agreed to teach the high school aged students since I knew that their English level would have allowed me to actually instruct. Somehow accepting this job compelled me to also teach a class at the primary school level. My reasons for why I didn't think this was a good idea were irrelevant since Chen Yonggang had already promised to the school that he could provide with a foreign teacher.

 

Multitasking

            As it happened, the school informed me while I was travelling in Hungary that they were not pleased with my classroom management with the primary school students and upset that my class and the one being taught simultaneously in the adjacent classroom were not synchronized. So I guess in the end, my reasons won out. This worked out for the best since I was teaching the primary school students four days a week for . As a result I only needed to commute once a week to Shanghai.

The primary school class schedule

            This seemed to have been the first time that Mr Chen has been contracted for a course at such an upper level and with a western instructor. He decided in advance that the students would make model of a Dougong timberframed structure. He even hired an extra man to develop the prototype that would then be copied by the students. I entered the classroom with this in the back of my mind and stressed to Mr Chen that I needed the model as quickly as possible to help motivate the students onto their main task.   

         To his credit, Mr Chen observed the first class that I taught during which I introduced the themes of timberframing, the research and life of the architect, Liang Sicheng, the tools associated with the trade, and the recent rebuilding of Notre Dame. I conduct this style of lesson in order to gauge the students' level of English. It was evident that there was a wide range of abilities. 

Critical part for the turningsaw project

        Mr Chen confessed to my wife that he was there in the classroom with me on the first day so as to be able to offer me some tips to help me out in the classroom; he, instead, confided in her that he was impressed by the amount of information that I was able to present in an organized manner and how well the students remained focused.  Yeah, it's called teaching.  

Dougong model

            The bulk of the coursework were projects that Mr Chen has developed for his own courses and for sales. One of the projects, for example, was the same folding stool that I have already written about. Other projects included both a bowsaw and a turningsaw, a try square, and chopsticks. In this classroom, the students are given metal vises to hold wood. I donated a few bench hooks from my own failed woodworking school and a few students recognized their utility but there weren't enough. With this in mind and the upcoming dougong model, I decided on teaching the students how to make the Underhill style bench hook. 

Still from Lie Nielsen film studios

        The construction of this bench hook offered the students an opportunity practice layout, crosscutting with their newly made bowsaws, and paring chisel techniques. I thought it was a great addition but Mr Chen wasn't convinced until I showed him the video. And then he was very concerned that I would be teaching the students how to use a chisel. He is as much concerned with the possibility that a student might cut himself as how parents would react when they learned that their investments were being put at risk.

Painter's palette

 

 contact milkpaint fumes

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

            I conducted a lesson on making milkpaint on the Thursday before Christmas. There was less enthusiasm for this lesson than I had gotten in the past. There was however a lot of enthusiasm for painting which many students were very talented in. I don't think any of the students understood that the plywood forms represented spherical tree ornaments. Most students treated the precut pattern pieces as a flat board upon which they painted Christmas scenes.

Abandoned decoration

Common photo pose

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the last day, I repeated the instructions as to how the interviews would be conducted and I put a list of names on the whiteboard to help facilitate the sequence. I sat in an adjoining room and waited nearly 15 minutes before I reentered the classroom to remind the class about the interviews. 

Adrian completed the bench hook!

Peter, volunteer bodyguard

Eric and his two saws

Vanessa and her projects

            I got a final opportunity to learn the students' names and get feedback about the course and projects. While I did manage to routinely interact with all the students during the previous months of Thursdays, I wasn't always able to speak with them in a meaningful manner. In the interviews, some students were clearly imitating what they had just learned from their exiting classmates what to expect, having quickly memorized and rattled off answers to questions I had not yet asked. In other instances, the students revealed just how little working vocabulary they acquired: "wood make this."

Steven

Katerina

Chet!

Yuki

 

I finished this last lesson late and discovered that the teaching assistant had already moved onto her next class period. I sent a pic via the social media app, WeChat, to her and she thanked me. Class was over.  

Hammers and saws

painted tool arrangement

As I was leaving the building, I poked my head into the adjacent classroom where an art lesson was being conducted. I saw that the woodworking tools had been repurposed for another teacher's painting class.

Geese and sausage

Bacon and sycamore

 

The preserved meats one can see streetside in a major metropolis   

To all those who celebrate, Happy Epiphany!