Help Me Solve a Remuddling Mystery

It’s the closed door (to the third floor) and the open door (from the back stairs) adjacent to it that aren’t right (as well as that weird opening between the front hall and back hall).

Two months ago or so, as the first step in renovating my kitchen, I started tearing out a first-floor bathroom that was in what was almost certainly a butler’s pantry – and will become so again. But this seems like a bad time to tear out the kitchen proper – and a bad time to spend a lot of money on 6/4 oak for the stair spindles – so I’m looking elsewhere for house projects.

One thing that has confounded me since before I bought the place is the second-floor opening to the back stairs and the adjacent door to the third floor. The configuration simply cannot be original, but darned if I can figure out what it ought to be.

Here, you can see where the anaglypta stops on the back stairwell, and the 16″-wide or so insert of drywall at the top of the stairs. But you can also see the original trim and painted anaglypta on the stairwell up to the third floor. It seems likely the short wall between the two should be pushed back…but then how would the trim carpentry work?

Today, I took out the remaining stops that had been installed to put a door at the top of the back hallway (and lock off what used to be a separate apartment), thinking that might give me more of a clue. The only thing it revealed was that my suspicion was correct – no way was there a door right there before. The wood (though clearly 100+ years old) in the jamb behind the stops is loosely inserted – not supporting or supported by anything other than a couple of round-shanked nails (all the original stuff is installed with cut nails). And the door header isn’t actually a header; it’s just a piece of wood the width of the doorway. Plus the trim installation is janky – as if it was moved and not reinstalled quite properly. And anaglypta on the bottom of the hall opening between the front of the house and back? Um, no.

There is zero chance that the Germans who installed the trim work in my house in 1905 did any of this. I think most of it is original trim, but this was not its original location.

Probably, the framing was originally at about the same point where the anaglypta ends in the back stairwell. A neighbor has a similar floor plan, and her stairwells are just in front of the top/bottom stairs…but if so, then I can’t figure out the proper transition from the back hall stairs to the short wall between it and the door to the guest bath. I know those walls are original; they’re plaster over lathe, and I can see the original plaster behind the anaglypta that is pulling away from the wall there.

I’m positive these two walls are original.

This is my neighbor’s back hall; similar stair setup, but no short wall to the right, as in mine.

So that’s my current renovation headache – what to do? The obvious answer is to take out the trim and what has clearly been added later – the drywall and the hardboard that’s above the doorways. That’s most likely to give me the answers. But that will leave things open to the third floor…to which I wish to lose neither heat or my cat. So I’ll wait on that until the temperature is likely to stay above 60°…then just let the cat have her way.

But if anyone reading this owns a 1905(ish) four square with a similar setup, I’d love to hear from you (with pictures). Anything to keep me from tearing out the kitchen!

 

 

Big-A** Medicine Cabinet

A woodworking friend asked about the specs of the cherry medicine cabinet/open shelving I recently made for my bathroom, so I sat down at my computer to send her the SketchUp model. But I cannot find it (did I even do one?). So instead, here are the details…with my usual caution about not trusting cutlists or any measurements. And anyway, I recommend sizing this to what’s above and beneath. Mine is based on the vanity and the 9′ height of the ceiling.

The piece was dirt-simple to put together…after Christopher Schwarz talked me out of dovetails and mortise-and-tenon joints, and into the Festool Domino (I used three of the loose tenons on each corner). Dovetails would still have been dirt-simple, and added only a little time. The door frame, though, well yeah – the Domino sped that up quite a bit. But if you don’t have a Domino, look to the biscuit joiner or even pocket screws…if you don’t mind looking at them on the back of the door frame (I would mind that). Or, of course, cut the mortise-and-tenon joints.

Overall, this cabinet is 5″ deep, 35-1/4″ high and 60″ long, and built mostly out of 3/4″-thick cherry, with random-width shiplapped backboards in 1/2″-thick pine (or maybe it was poplar). The medial style is only 4-1/2″ wide, which allowed me to simply pop the backboards in between the two outer stiles, and screw them to the rails.

Here you can see the beaded backboards and holes on 1-1/2″ centers for the shelf pins at the front; the holes are set back about 5/8″. At the back, they’re in about 3/4″. Yes, they could/ should match…but it doesn’t really matter (heck – I didn’t notice until I went to measure…clearly I got my shop-made jig in the wrong position).

The door is inset into the left side of the case, with the medial stile arranged 26-1/2″ from the left, to visually balance with leg and medial stile in the vanity. The door is slightly too big…I have to lean back to open it if I’m standing at the front of the sink. But it is better to look good than to…well, you know.

After the glue was dry on the Dominos in the door frame (two at each corner), I routed (yes, with an electric router) a rabbet for the mirror. The mirror is held in place with silicone…which looked ugly. So while the adhesive was still wet, I added 1/4″ x 1/4″ strips of mahogany to cover it up. Why mahogany? Because we had some 1/4″ x 1/4″ strips of it in the scrap bin.

Behind the door, the 1/2″-thick, 3-3/4″-wide cherry shelves are adjustable and double as door stops; the shelf pins are set 1-1/4″ back from the front edge (that’s different than on the open-shelving section to accommodate the door).

And now you all know that I have entirely too much hair product. And that I cannot take a straight picture.

This piece ended up being kinda weighty, so I decided to hang it on a French cleat (also known as 1/2″ ply ripped at a 45° angle). The wall half of the cleat is secured with likely too many Tapcon screws (it’s a solid masonry wall); the cabinet half is screwed directly to the top rail. Plus, there’s a 1/2″ thick scrap of ply screwed to the back about 2″ up from the bottom, to help hold the piece flat and at an equal projection from the wall top to bottom…except that the plaster wall is nowhere in the general vicinity of flat, so I don’t think that bottom scrap is even touching the wall.

You can see that the cleat isn’t fully seated – the fun of old houses with wonky plaster walls! But I feel confident the cabinet will stay put.

The hinges are PB-409 from Horton Brasses, in the Polished Nickel finish. (Yup – the same ones I like for the Anarchist’s tool chest…that PB-409 is so versatile! And because one always has to order in pairs and most of what I use them for takes three hinges, I always seem to have extras sitting around.)

And that’s about it. It’s not fine furniture, but in a bathroom (or kitchen), it doesn’t need to be. After I’m gone, the next owner will no doubt redo all the bathrooms (and kitchen) – the circle of house life.

Cutlist (thickness, width, length, in inches):
Outer stiles: 3/4 x 5 x 35-1/4
Medial stile: 3/4 x 4-1/2 x 33-3/4
Rails: 3/4 x 5 x 58-1/2
Door stiles: 3/4 x 3 x 33-3/4
Door top rail: 3/4 x 2-1/2 x 19-3/4
Door bottom rail: 3/4 x 3 x 19-3/4

 

 

 

 

Support WOO & the WOO Pit Crew

Kelly Harris, Claire Minihan and Aspen Golann are donating their time and expertise to help A Workshop of Our Own – a Baltimore non-profit educational woodshop for women and gender non-conforming craftspeople – with some much-needed space upgrades and equipment maintenance. With the initial donation goal for the must-haves met, a little more help from you and me means more upgrades, more educational opportunities and more woodworking outreach can happen.

Find out more – and how you can help – by clicking here.

 

‘The Carpenter Bench’

I got an email recently asking about the image atop my Facebook page (and above), a young girl planing at a workbench. It’s from a 1918 booklet, “A Catalogue of Play Equipment,” by Jean Lee Hunt; it was published by the New York Bureau of Educational Experiments.

I’ve copied below the (out-of-copyright) text that accompanies the image, but the booklet is well worth paging through in its entirety (there are some adorable animal-themed pull toys) if for no other reason than to marvel at the comparison to today’s play equipment and safety regulations. You’ll find it here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/28466/28466-h/28466-h.htm

THE CARPENTER BENCH

The carpenter equipment must be a “sure-enough business affair,” and the tools real tools – not toys.

The Sheldon bench shown here is a real bench in every particular except size. The tool list is as follows:

Manual training hammer.
18 point cross-cut saw.
9 point rip saw.
Large screw driver, wooden handle.
Small screw driver.
Nail puller.
Stanley smooth-plane, No. 3.
Bench hook.
Brace and set of twist bits.
Manual training rule.
Steel rule.
Tri square.
Utility box–with assorted nails, screws, etc.
Combination India oil stone.
Oil can.
Small hatchet.

Choice of lumber must be determined partly by the viewpoint of the adult concerned, largely by the laboratory budget, and finally by the supply locally available. Excellent results have sometimes been achieved where only boxes from the grocery and left-over pieces from the carpenter shop have been provided. Such rough lumber affords good experience in manipulation, and its use may help to establish habits of adapting materials as we find them to the purposes we have in hand. This is the natural attack of childhood, and it should be fostered, for children can lose it and come to feel that specially prepared materials are essential, and a consequent limitation to ingenuity and initiative can thus be established.

On the other hand, some projects and certain stages of experience are best served by a supply of good regulation stock. Boards of soft pine, white wood, bass wood, or cypress in thicknesses of ¼”, 3/8″, ½” and 7/8″ are especially well adapted for children’s work, and “stock strips” ¼” and ½” thick and 2″ and 3″ wide lend themselves to many purposes.

‘He Saw the Light,’ by Ed Rumsey

Editor’s note: Thanks to everyone who entered our True Tales of Woodworking Contest, in celebration of the release of Nancy Hiller’s new edition of “Making Things Work: Tales of a Cabinetmaker’s Life.” We enjoyed reading every one of the entries – it was difficult to choose a winner (a good problem to have!). We’re running some of our top choices here (lightly edited to match LAP editorial style), and will announce and share the winning story on Saturday, Feb. 1. Nancy will also be sharing some of the entries on her Making Things Work blog, so be sure to tune in there, too!
— Fitz

End sheet from “The Windsor Style in America, Volumes I and II,” by Charles Santore.

In the 1980s, I made and sold Windsor chairs, using mostly old techniques and tools. Mike Dunbar’s “Windsor Chairmaking” was my handbook, and Santore’s “Windsor Style in America” was my inspiration. One friend’s 100-acre forest provided the trees, which I cut down with a chain saw; another friend’s gorgeous Percheron mare, a draft horse with hooves almost the size of dinner plates, hauled them out.

Instruction was hard to find. I remembered how scary it had been, as a kid in junior high shop class, “poking a bar of steel into a spinning chunk of wood”* – it hadn’t turned out well.

Today, excellent instruction is available on-demand in downloads and streaming videos; Peter Galbert’s wonderful materials come to mind. Forty years ago, a beginner would have to go to the teacher. After wasting four months trying unsuccessfully to figure out how to turn wood, I finally found a mentor, 300 miles to the south, whom I met at a workshop 300 miles west.

One of the most challenging things for me was learning how to drill the seat for the legs. I quickly experienced the heartbreak of destroying a carved seat by drilling the legs wrong. The technique shown in Dunbar’s book used two angle gauges and a hand-held brace with a spoon bit; that didn’t work for me. I found it easier to use a single line of sight with a single angle gauge (a common technique, today). I used an antique Delta floor-standing drill press with a foot pedal to bring the bit down into the wood. That left both hands free to hold the big wooden chair seat in position. To get the correct angle for the legs, I built a wooden tilting table that bolted to the work surface. It worked great and I could tilt it either way – front or back.

I often demonstrated chairmaking at the local Farmer’s Market. On one of these occasions, a young guy watched me from a distance. Eventually, he showed up at my door, introduced himself, and said he would love to watch me work, and learn how to build a chair in my workshop. I quickly realized that Eddie had a lot of potential; he had worked with mentors far more talented than I was, repairing 17th and 18th century furniture, stuff that I had seen only in museums. I taught him by simply showing him what I did and explaining why I did it. I said there were probably better ways to do all of it, but I just hadn’t found them.

I suggested the best way to make his first chair was to find a big fireplace, so he could burn his first attempt; he shouldn’t take it too seriously – that would minimize the stress. Eddie ignored me, of course; he was determined to make his first attempt a really great piece of work. And he was doing quite well; he spent several days carefully cutting and carving a seat to a very pleasing shape, and then turned some very nice legs to go with it.

Eddie was very capable, so I let him work pretty much on his own, unless he asked for help. I occasionally took a peek to keep him out of trouble. The challenge was teaching without interfering, finding that line between oversight and overbearing. I showed him how to set up the drill press to bore the holes in the seat, and then watched from a distance. I knew how easy it was to reverse the angle of the table, and have the chair legs gathered tight together on the floor, like a goat on a rock.

I saw him setting it up wrong, and I just couldn’t bear to let him destroy that beautifully carved seat. I also wanted him to learn to think about what he was doing. I didn’t take my eyes off him as I quietly backed off into the far corner of the windowless shop. I waited to see if the light would go on in his head, but he pressed on. When he finally had everything ready (and backward), Eddie reached up and flipped the switch on the drill press motor. I pulled the switch in corner. The shop went dark, the machine fell silent, and Eddie yelled “NOOOO!!!!!” as he finally realized what he’d been about to do.

When we finally stopped laughing in the dark, I turned the power back on and we got back to work. His first chair turned out very nice, and he still has it decades later.

— Ed Rumsey

*David Fisher’s colorful reason for carving rather than turning bowls:
“There’s something about a twenty pound chunk of wood spinning around at five hundred rpm that makes me not want to poke it with a bar of steel. I like my chunks of wood to sit still in front of me.”
https://davidffisherblog.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/carving-round-bowls-can-be-super/

 

Tool Chest Classes Near & Far

While there are a few spots remaining in a couple of my 2020 classes at Lost Art Press,  the tool chest classes are sold out – but I’ll be teaching a couple of other Anarchist’s Tool Chest classes next year, and registration is now open for both. One is close to home in Berea, Ky.; the other is in one of the most lovely places in the U.S. (IMHO), Port Townsend, Wash.

The first is June 1-5, 2020, at the Woodworking School at Pine Croft, a new school run by Berea College, in Berea, Ky. … that’s really an old school – Berea College bought the august Kelly Mehler School of Woodworking last year (Kelly is still involved as an instructor), and classes are held in the same (stunning and well-stocked) two-story shop that Kelly built. It’s a lovely area of the country to visit (as a Kentucky girl, I might be biased), with rolling green hills, horses, bourbon and Shaker Village at Pleasant Hill nearby.

The second is July 20-24, at the Port Townsend School of Woodworking – a school founded by Jim Tolpin, John Mackworth and Tim Lawson to teach traditional woodworking skills. The school is great (good tools, good people) – but I also love it for its location – come for the woodworking fun, stay for the well-preserved Victorian seaport, stunning sea views and perfect weather. (It’ll likely be 95°F or so in Cincinnati when I’m enjoying an average high of 73° in the Pacific Northwest.)

And the weekend before the ATC class (July 18-19), I’m teaching a two-day Moxon Vise class at Port Townsend…because that shop fixture is a godsend when dovetailing large panels. Those tend to cup a bit, and the Moxon vise (aka twin-screw vise) flattens ’em right out, making transfer easy. I also use my Moxon for all dovetailing and other sawing work, because it lifts the work to a comfortable working height while holding the work securely.

The Moxon vise shown on my bench here is actually Christopher Schwarz’s; mine is on the shelf below. I’m showing Chris’s in use because it has that fancy lamb’s tongue detail, such as we’ll be putting on our Port Townsend vises. (It’s not just a pretty touch – the relieved front edge keeps you from cutting into your vise as you’re cutting on an angle.)

And I might have another not-in-Covington class or two to announce in the coming weeks, so stay tuned.

 

 

On the Naming of Parts

Please excuse the dust…

My bathroom renovation is the last major project above the first floor, so with but a few cosmetic things to take care of therein before I can call it done (and before I show it finished), I’m resigned to finally rebuilding my front staircase. There’s no other large items to move up the stairs, and thanks to Wyatt “Bo” Childs, I now have some gorgeous reclaimed Southern yellow pine out of which to make the two bottom stair treads; I’ve no excuses remaining for leaving the staircase balustrade-less.

So I’ve been delving back into my books about period staircases…even though I don’t really need to know how to actually build a staircase (which is good, because there is quite a bit of math involved). The steps themselves are in fine structural condition, and it’s quite obvious from the back stairs and the remaining original handrail and spindles in the second-floor hall as to how the thing should go back together. I even have a good idea of what the moulding that caps the closed string should look like, thanks to a neighbor’s almost identical (but less remuddled) house. And I know how to swing a hammer. But darned if I can find anything written about the method used in my house to affix the balusters – even though it seems to be a fairly common arrangement.

Maybe there’s nothing written about it because it’s too obvious to need instruction? The balusters are housed in a wide groove on the underside of the handrail, and are simply nailed in to the handrail at the top and into the close stringer at the bottom. In between them on the underside of the handrail are simple rectangular pieces of wood nailed in place to fill the void in the groove between the balusters. At the bottom, there are faceted pieces of wood nailed between the balusters, directly to the closed stringer. A wide piece of moulding (I believe that’s called facia) is applied on both sides to hide the butt joints of the balusters and little pieces between (and to cover the rough surface of the stringer).

Oh look – more dust! You can sort of see here the underside of the handrail and the little blocks that go between the balusters at the bottom – especially given that the moulding isn’t nailed in place to cover their edges.

I’m not all that concerned about doing it (except for getting the balusters turned), but it’s bugging me that I can’t find the proper name for some of the parts – notably, the little faceted pieces. But George Ellis’ “Modern Practical Stairbuilding & Handrailing” is no help, nor is “A Treatise on Stairbuilding & Handrailing” by W & A Mowat. And while Peter Nicholson is credited with devising a mathematical system for designing/building stairways and handrails, he doesn’t get into affixing the balusters (and my house is 100 years younger than “Mechanic’s Companion” – the method used here may have come after him.)

Surely there is a technical term for these? (And yes, more dust!)

I also have several late-20th-century books on staircases – but they have nothing on traditional approaches (and a lot on using construction adhesives).

So if there are any experts on historic staircase building who are reading this, do you know what the little spacer blocks are called? And can you point me toward a book or other resource that discusses this construction method? If not, I suppose continuing my search for relevant reading material will do nicely as procrastination.