145, Patience, August, 2019

A Lesson in Patience

As a young man I used to marvel at the time it took my elders to accomplish a task. Patient, deliberate, thoughtful: they proceeded slowly while I flitted through the chore. But, of course, they got the job “done right” while I was typically condemned to re-doing it. Now I am such an elder. I hope I have learned something in the interim.

Take this present project — building a new kitchen table — as an example. Recently completed, I am tempted to say the project began over a year ago. But that would not be quite accurate. I have been contemplating the challenge for over five years: thinking about designs, about the choice of woods, its size.

The table I am replacing was bought thirty-five years ago at an elementary school sale in Fairfield, CT. Solid rock maple, it was impervious to the ministrations of decades of elementary school students who used it for reading, coloring, crafts, lunch, etc. We bought it specifically to use as a kitchen table at our “camp” in Maine. It has served us admirably well in return for our $5.00 investment. To this day, it is solid and flat, and more or less indestructible. Why change? Because I have the time and enjoy the challenge. Maine is now our full-time home. More than that, a kitchen table is a center of life; a place where friends gather, meals are enjoyed, where newspapers are read and discussed, where serious and not-so-serious conversations take place, where mail is sorted, where games are played. And so, the time has come to retire this hard-working stalwart to the garage and replace it with something more aesthetically pleasing. What follows is the story of constructing a worthy replacement.

As noted above, the process began in earnest about a year ago. I started sketching designs; consulting Steph about dimensions; deciding on the wood to be used. (It would be made of cherry.) Those early sketches gave way to more elaborate drawings — and ultimately to a full-sized rendering taped to the inside of the garage door.

From the drawing, I could refine the design and estimate the dimensions of the wood I would need.

Now the first act of commitment: ordering the wood. From a local cabinet maker/friend I bought three cherry boards 2” thick, 8” wide, 10’ long; I also bought another two cherry boards of the same width and length, but only 1” thick. Together they cost $424. I was committed.

Aside: I have found through life that it is often helpful to throw your hat over the wall to force yourself to follow. My first major woodworking project, completed in our basement in Fairfield, was a cherry highboy that I built from an expensive kit. Almost forty years later it is sitting in our downstairs bedroom.

I waited a couple months for the wood to be delivered. Now it had to be carefully assessed; rough dimensions chalked on (avoiding sapwood); initial approximate cuts (gulp) made.

The table is a “trestle table”, i.e. a wide leg at each end through which an on-edge center beam (the trestle) passes to be held in place by pegs. Its design is inspired by Greene and Greene. Each leg is formed from a broad base, a vertical shaft, and finally a broad shoulder that will eventually be screwed into the table top. The base and shoulders each have through mortises (recesses) cut into them into which tenons, (protrusions raised at each end of the vertical shaft), fit.

To form the bases I used dado blades to cut matching recesses in the centers of two 1” thick cherry boards. I then glued together the boards, (recess facing recess), to form the through mortises. The vertical piece is made from 2” cherry with tenons raised at each end. (Woodworkers speak of “raising” a tenon as if it comes up from the wood, but in fact the wood is cut away to reveal the protrusion.)

The shoulders are also made from 2” think boards; they required the chiseling out of matching mortises, (seen here).

I then took the still-rectangular bases, (one for each leg), and the shoulders to the band saw to cut out their curvilinear shapes.

(Again, no room for error.) As you can perhaps sense from the preceding photo, each of the four, (two bases, two shoulders), required at least an additional hour of sanding/shaping.

Next I chiseled out the opening (mortise) in each leg’s vertical shaft through which the tenons of the on-edge beam would pass to hold the table’s base together.

Here are the completed legs, pre-finishing.

Lots of careful calculation followed about how long to make the tenons at each end of the on-edge beam that would pass through the legs. They had to be long enough not only to pass through, but also to have room for the pegs that would secure them in place and enough room beyond that to hold the pegs.

An engineering problem: the on-edge beam is running horizontally as is its grain. A tenon will pass through each leg to be pinched tight by the pegs.

You can imagine that the driven pegs must exert a great deal of force to hold the legs to the trestle. Because that force is in the (outward) direction of the beam’s grain it would not take much pressure to break out the portion of the beam beyond the pegs and ruin the table. You could eliminate the concern if you had enough wood beyond the pegs, say a foot or so, to counter the outward pressure, but that would spoil the design and bump against the shins of anyone sitting at either end of the table. The answer is to drill a vertical hole through the width of the tenon into which you then insert and glue a half-inch wooden dowel. Now the pressure of the pegs cannot pop out the end of the beam (which is strengthened and held in place by the dowel).

There followed weeks of careful fitting and still more weeks of sanding: 100 grit, 120, 150, 180, 220, 320 and finally 400.

But we are in Maine. My garage is unheated, except for a small electrical space heater. Finishes have a temperature range within which they must be applied. Maine was rapidly approaching the lower limits of that range.

So, I began finishing the pieces of the table’s base — the feet, the vertical shafts, the shoulders, the trestle, the pegs. I used a diluted polyurethane to better penetrate the wood and give a smooth, (albeit thin), surface. I put on five coats of thinned poly, carefully sanding between each.

At last, an interim milestone: pieces of the base could now be put together and held by the pegs. So far, so good.

Because cherry darkens with age, (which is to say with sun light), to a lovely patina, I then moved the assembled base up to the garage apartment to spend the winter in the light of Maine’s cold sun.

Though Maine had passed the threshold for applying finishes, it had not yet passed my personal threshold. I could still work in the garage.

With considerable trepidation I turned my attention to the table top. The two inch thick cherry boards needed to be trued, (i.e. their edges made straight), and then glued together. I decided to do this in stages and to strengthen the bonds by using “biscuits” — inch-and-a-half-long oblongs that fit into slots cut in each adjoining edge. The boards were glued together one by one until the five boards were joined to make what would ultimately be a 30” wide table.

Lots of planing and rough sanding followed.

More planing; more sanding.

At last, with the snow deep outside, the table top was ALMOST complete. Now it and I would rest through the winter.

Spring eventually arrived on the coast of Maine and with it another engineering problem: breadboards. Due to changing humidity, wood expands and contracts across its grain, but not with the grain, in which dimension it is relatively stable. In a narrow piece of wood the effect is trivial and usually need not be accounted for. But in a 30” wide table the wood can expand/contract between a 1/4 and 1/2” from humid summer to dry winter.

You can either leave the ends of the table planks exposed (gauche), or hide those ends with an additional board running perpendicular to them. This end treatment is called a “breadboard”. BUT, if you glue/screw the end (bread)board directly to the table top you will get TROUBLE. The breadboard end will not expand/contract, (because would be glued with its grain), but the body of the table top will expand, (because it would be glued across its grain) — resulting in big ugly cracks in your table top.

What to do? Craftsman craftsman, (No, that is not a redundancy; the first is the name of a group of wood-workers.), designed a clever way to deal with this problematic movement of wood. Plow a mortise across the width of the breadboard and raise a matching tenon in the width of the tabletop. Fasten the center three or four inches of the breadboard, (too little for a significant expansion/contraction), to the tenon with glue and a recessed screw.

Now, approximately half way to each edge of the table, fashion a slot in the tenon, (let’s say of 5/8 inch long), running from center to side. Into the center of that slot you drop a screw from the top of the bread board, through the slot into the bottom of the breadboard. The screw will hold the breadboard tight to the tabletop, but at the same time the slot will allow the table top to move, thus allowing for expansion and contraction. Depending on the width of the project you might have to add other slots closer to the table’s edge. (I did.)

This breadboard process involves some serious fitting, for which I have neither the tools nor the skill. One aspect of a project such as this is that the stakes grow with your progress. At first you don’t want to ruin some good and valuable wood. Pretty soon, however, it is your prior time-spent that you do not want to undo. The solution: a little help from my cabinet-maker friend, Hugh, (See above.), who has both the tools and the skill needed to “get-er’-done”.

So, the top had to be trucked off to Hugh’s shop to spend a few weeks working its way to the top of his “to do” list.

Hugh made a few subtle alterations in the classic Craftsman design. At the center he extended a tenon all the way through the breadboard to firmly anchor it.

Then, instead of using Geene and Greene’s recessed screws hidden by ebony pegs, he used solid brass shafts fashioned from brass screws from a 100 year-old sailing ship that he had reconditioned (with stainless steel screws).

Finally, he milled grooves for the corner splines. (See below.)

Once Hugh’s work was completed the top was returned for me for sanding, finishing and manufacturing the splines. I finished the table top with three coats of thinned polyurethane followed by three additional coats of unthinned poly.

Rick helped me carry the table base from the shop to the kitchen and then helped transport the very heavy table top to be screwed atop the base.

Just to see if you have been paying attention, a quiz: what happens if I screw a fixed, with-the-grain shoulder to opposite sides of an expanding/contracting table top? Right. Cracks. So, slots must be drilled/chiseled in the shoulder to allow the table top to expand/contract.

The table was now in place, its top secured to the base, but…

The table top would be incomplete without its corner splines. Due to expansion and/or contraction of the core, the breadboard would sometimes be shorter than the width of the table, sometimes longer. To offset that incongruity splines, (here seen from above), are inserted at each corner.

They are glued fast to the table’s core, but left free to float within the breadboard, thus allowing the table to expand and contract as weather dictates.

Traditionally, splines, like Greene and Greene pegs are made of ebony, which is now a protected wood and hence appropriately hard to obtain. The solution: ebonizing — a process of turning wood black. I used black walnut, milled the splines to fit and then ebonized them. To do so I washed two pads of steel wool (to remove the wax) and soaked them in vinegar for three days, thus producing a solution of iron oxide. I filtered the gunky solution through a coffee filter and then applied it to the walnut which almost immediately turned black.

But, I was still not happy with the table’s finish. To address that issue I sought some advice from Sharon and then waited until Steph would be away from the house for a few days at Sebago Lake with her daughter Heather and granddaughter, Pepper. Now I could add another five coats of wipe-on polyurethane without fear of fumes.

A last, the finish began to “pop”.

There is a satisfaction as friends/family gather around our table; a satisfaction built of time carefully spent, of braving escalating “risk”, of taking time to get it right. Like me, the table is not perfect, but it represents one more stab at excellence.