I am following the Heller / Clarkson book on Piecrust Tea Table and on page 107 right hand side is says:
“Turn the top right side up. We are going to bead the edge. But first we need to mark the width of the bead. Here you see how we figured it. Working out from the inside of the rim, the first shape is a cove, which is 1/2 the thickness of the rim. Next is a thin fillet, 1/16″. The remaining rim is a bead, which in this case is 15/16″ wide”
my first question is what are they talking about on “1/2 the thickness of the rim”
Second question is remaining rim is bead, which in this case is 15/16″ wide. I just don’t see that in the picture or measurement.
Any help will be appreciated. I only get one shot at these cuts.
Chris.
Replies
That was a misprint. It should have said 5/16". If you look on page 144 it has a full size cross section of the rim. I have attached a photo of a table I made. It is not an exact copy of the one in the book. I thought the bead on the table in the book was a little on the large size, so I made mine 9/32". This 1/32" change may not seem like much, but it is noticeable. I also did not add "wings" to the feet in order to make them wider. I think the feet in the book look odd and I've not seen anything like them on originals.
Rob Millard
I have seen your post before and your table is nice. I agree with the finish in the book it has much to be desired. Too bad to ruin such a nice piece with such bad finish.
How big is your top? I made mine 36" I was not able to find one piece of wood that I was happy with for a top so I had to glue up two pieces. But I got a nicer looking top.
I also printed your finish technique and will probably use a portion of it for mine.
thanks for your help, I am having troubles posting pictures but will keep trying.
Chris.
The top was about 33" in diameter. I actually made it in a slight oval shape; with the across the grain dimension being about a 1/2" smaller to mimic the shrinkage on the originals.
I got my piece of wood from Irions, but that was 5 or 6 years ago. I just purchased some very nice 35" wide boards from Groff and Groff, so if you ever make another give them a try.
I hope you can work out the posting problem, because I'd like to see photos of your table.
Rob Millard
I hope this works, I have attached a couple of picture of my progress on the piecrust table. Enjoy and any feedback is welcome.
Rob,
I bought the Heller / Clarkson book after I believe you had recommended to another poster who wanted to build a pie crust table, many thanks for the tip. I hope to build it in sometime in the next couple years, but need to pratice on my carving skills.
Your example is drop dead gorgeous, much much nicer that the example in the book. Heller and Clarkson really really needed to refine their finishing technique, as the finish on the example in the book is awful.
Edited 2/23/2006 9:05 am ET by BOBABEUI
I'm still not sure about the layout. Let me go through it on here. My rim is 1" wide, half of it leaves 1/2". Next is the 1/16" fillet that leaves me 7/16" wide for the bead?
That seems to be a big bead or am I missing something? Or do I force the rim to be smaller to get my 5/16" or slightly less bead? Working backwards the rim needs to be 3/4" wide.
thanks Rob for your help.
Looking at page 144. I see another typo. The cross section shows the entire boarder as being 3/4"wide ( 3/8" cove, 1/16" fillet, 5/16" bead). The drawing for the edge shape, shows the radius at "C" as being 1" at C-1 and 1 11/16" at C-2. That makes the edge width 11/16" It is also quite obvious from the photos that they make the fillet much wider than the 1/16" they describe.
I think I still have the template from the table I made. I'll dig it out Friday morning and post the dimensions.
Rob Millard
Attached is a scan of the template for the table I made. I included a ruler and scanned it over a 1/4" grid, for scale.
The cove is 7/16"
the Fillet is 1/16"
The bead is 9/32"
This gives an overall width of 25/32"
Rob Millard
thanks for your help Rob, I redid my layouts between the scallops and it looks much more proportional.
I will try to post my progress tomorrow after some more work.
Chris.
Chris,
The photos you posted so far look great. I'll be looking for the others.
If you have any other questions, you think I can answer, don't hesitate to ask.
Rob Millard
here is the progress from this week-ends work on the pie crust top.
Lots of router work on the top and all hand work on the bottom.
My wife can finally see what it is going to look like. She is getting a little excited to see it finished now. I think she has a place picked out already.
I will be sharpening a few carving tools this week.
Chris
Here are a couple of more picture of my progress on the Piecrust table top.
Rob, is there supposed to be any details on the cove cuts where they intersect at the points?
Let me know what you think, Chris.
How can I get my pictures normal size to show up? It looks like the jolly green giants table.
I can't answer that question but please continue to post your progress on this project. I've been following this thread and have been wanting to undertake this project. Overall, how would you rate the book you are following?
the book has been great. I have had a few questions that I was able to get answered here, mostly from Rob.
The pictures give me a great visual of where I am and where I want to go. I did find one typo in the book that was discussed earlier.
I am anxious to finish the top. I am a little skeptical about the finish. I don't want it to look chunky like the books. Also I have spent a great deal of time on this project I don't want to be disappointed with the finish.
Thanks for your encouragement, I will continue to post picture as I progress.
Chris.
sorry it has been a while since I posted any progress. I have started working on the carving on the column. Here are a couple of pictures of my gradoons and flowers. I am working on the leaves on the vase now. I will post more pictures as I progress. The project is starting to take some shape now. I also did not realize how many carving chisels I don't have until recently.
Chris.
The carving looks great to me, especially the cove portion, where you have an crisp shape. Also, you did a prefect job of keeping the field flat up to the cove.
I resize my photo in Photoshop Elements 2.0, with the save for web feature. I think there are free programs on the internet that do the same thing. Do a search in the gallery section to see what shows up on resizing photos.
Rob Millard
Sorry it has been a while since I posted updates from my project. But here they are. I am getting close on the ball and claw feet. For me they are the hardest part of the project yet. I suppose it is carving a half ball with feet attached to it with out too many reference points. I have some more clean up work to do, but I am happy with the results so far.
I am going to start the leaves on the upper legs now, hope to be much more pleasant experience.
I will keep posting my progress, and thanks for your support and comments.
Sorry, I still can't resize my pictures to fit the screen.
Chris
Chris,
Excellent work. The real hard part of the feet is the rough-out stage where the overall shape is formed, and your feet look perfect; nicely shaped ball and well defined web.
For me it is just the opposite, I like making the feet but not the leaves.
Looking forward to seeing the complete table.
Rob Millard
http://www.americanfederalperiod.com
thanks, Rob.
The next piecrust table I make I might just sent you the feet to work on and I will take care of the leaves.
I am anxious to get this project finished and start something new.
Possibly of of the Federal Period. I have always like the inlay work, and I want to stay away from carving for a while.
Any ideas on a nice table??
Chris.
I haven't posted in a while, Moved to Eastern Tennessee and had to reset up shop. I was able to upgrade a few shop pieces, so not too bad.
Attached is a couple of pictures of my Piecrust Legs, they are 99% done. I worked on these in the hotel room for a while while my wife and little girl were back home. I was able to make some good progress though.
I need to work on finial assembly and some fine tuning on the fit.
I do have a couple of questions that need answers:
Do I glue on the dovetailed legs for a permanent assembly or just keep the tight fit and add a couple of screws on the bottom attached to the base?
Second and the biggest is the finish. the book has much to be desired, their finish looks a bit chunky around the carvings. Am I going to use filler for all mahogany, if so how to do the carvings?
I am going to need a stain to match mahogany and at least fill the table top.
My goal to to finish this project this year, it has been a great project and many lessons learned.
Enjoy, Chris
Very nice carving-I especially like the 'tension' you put in the foot tendons.
Stef
Excellent work! I am very much a newbie here as I just posted my first completed piece "First Completed Piece" under the Gallery section. Anyway, it is made of mahogany and got the finish recipe from Jeff Jewitt's article in FWW#164. He finishes a pie-crust table of mahogany to have the old world finish. He did an undertone of amber dye with distilled water and two dyes mixed with linseed oil, then shellac, and then wax. I followed his recipe except for the filling stage. He only filled the top. I wish mine ended up a shade or two darker but am pleased with it for the most part. The finish made things really "pop." If it wasn't my first woodworking project and first time finishing, I might have been more inclined to mix my finish to a darker shade. If you are interested in this finish, and can't find the article, perhaps I can try to attach the pdf file of it.-Matt
Here's a follow-up to my email. I will attempt to attach the pdf of the article on the piecrust mahogany finish.-Matt
Chris,The legs look super.. You must have gotten some interesting looks from the cleaning staff at hotel
Chris,
The carving looks great. I wish my foliage carving would look like that.
While I like the look of filled mahogany, I don't think filler would work too well on intricate carvings. There is so few flats that the open pores won't distract from the look. I think the top should be filled.
I would color the mahogany with your preferred method ( the link below has mine). Then I would apply a wash coat of dark shellac and then a glaze to accentuate the carvings. This glaze should roughly match the color of the grain filler you'll use on the top; I use Minwax or Bartleys gel stains as a glaze. When the glaze has dried apply several coats of thin blond shellac, stopping when additional coats don't make the surface more glossy. If you're good at spraying this is the place to use it, I'm not, so I use a Golden Taklon Filbert.
When the shellac has cured, carefully rub out the surface with 600 grit wet and dry sandpaper in those areas where you won't cut through. On the wet sanded areas, use a piece of fine steel wool (Liberons is great) saturated with mineral oil, and dipped in 4F pumice, to bring up a nice sheen. In the carved areas, knock the gloss off with a shoeshine brush charged with mineral oil and pumice. This will result in a very nice soft gloss, that won't accentuate the pores, and feels wonderful. At this point, you could wax it if you liked.
I leave the legs off until the finish has been rubbed out, and then I glue them in. On many period tables, you will see what is called a spider; a wrought iron plate with 3 arms. This is nailed (yes nailed!) to the bottom of the column with a nail through each arm into the legs. This will reinforce the joints. I think Horton Brasses sells these. I make my own from sheet steel, heating it up with a torch and beating on it to give it a hand forged look. I believe the originals may have been forge welded, but I'm not sure.
http://rlmillard.typepad.com/ See the May 2008 entry
Rob Millard
Chris -
Very much enjoyed looking through your "in progress photos" of your piecrust tea table. It would help other forum users, however, if you down-rezzed your photos a bit. I've a DSL connection to the net, and it still takes a bit of time to download and display 600KB photos.
There are a couple of very easy ways to do this - One is to take the photos in a lower resolution directly in the camera. On most cameras, you simply need to select 640X480 resolution (some cameras identify this as a "small" resolution), then set the compression to "medium". That'll result in photos that are about 75KB each, which are a bit easier to force through a narrow internet pipe.
The second way is to use a photo processing program. If you already use the software that came with your camera, almost all of them will allow you to re-size your photos once they're opened in the software.
If you're using Windows XP, and you right-click on the photo in a folder or a desktop and select "edit", the photo will open in the freebie microsoft program "Paint" (it came with your operating system, so it should be on most installations of Windows XP). In "Paint", select "Image">"Attributes". You can then edit the width and height of the photo to 640X480 or 1024X720, and save the down-rezzed photo as a new version.
Really nice table, by the way - I echo Rob's and other poster's thoughts - only the top surface of the table should have the pores filled. My take on the finish for the carvings might be a bit different - I would suggest not attempting to dye them with aniline dye, as the varying end grain/face grain surfaces will result in an un-even absorption, and may have a very blotchy or unexpected appearance.
I personally use a 1 lb. cut of blonde shellac and an almost dry brush on my carvings, the objective being to get some finish on the tooled surface, but to avoid pools of finish accumulating in the nooks and crannies of the scrolls and acanthus leaves. Afterward, if the person that's receiving the piece of furniture wants it darker, I'll either tint an oil-based varnish with a bit of aniline dye and brush it on lightly (the initial 1lb. shellac coat prevents uneven absorption of the dye), or use a gel stain as a glaze.
The metal spider that Rob refers to is wrought iron on the original pieces (not necessarily forge welded from 3 separate pieces of wrought iron - a fair number of them were cold-chiseled out of wrought sheet iron). Some of them are nailed onto the undersides, and some were screwed to the undersides. There's a pretty good picture of one on the Chipstone site:
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WebZ/SortedQuery?sessionid=01-56994-1442115504&termsrch-ti%3D=Chipstone+Accession+No.+1953.4&format=B&fmtclass=&next=html/nfbrief.html&bad=error/badsearch.html&entitytoprecno=1&entitycurrecno=1&numrecs=12&entitysuppressReview=true
Superb work - I look forward to seeing the completed piece.
thanks, I have had problems resizing my work on the web. I'll try the XP paint option next time I post.
I do not want the carving to look "clunky" with finish. the foliage is niece and crisp now. I don't want that to change.
I planned to use a 1/8"brass spider on the bottom to strengthen the dovetail legs. I'll assume that will not be "unattractive" on this piece.
I have some detail sanding to do on the entire piece, I don't want to loose the hand work though.
I have some more planning to do before I finish this. I have a few scrap pieces to try first.
also the link did not work, I would be curious how other people made this spider bracket.
thanks for your support.
Chris
Ugh - I typed out detailed directions on how to navigate to the Chipstone furniture web database (3 paragraphs), and for some reason the Knots software timed out and erased what I'd written.
Here's the summary - search Google for the chipstone furniture database, and select the link for Digital Library for the Decorative Arts and Material Culture. Select the Chipstone and Longridge collections link and then the chipstone furniture: all records thumbnail.
Select "guided search" and key in "Jugiez" in the first field and "tea table" in the second.
For 18th century furniture makers, it doesn't get any better than this - the database has very high resolution photos of the insides, front, back and bottoms of furniture. The carving photographs are particularly well-done.
Try this link:
http://digicoll.library.wisc.edu/WebZ/SortedQuery?sessionid=01-50982-526227866&termsrch=Chipstone+furniture&index=an%3A&next=html/nfbrief.html&bad=error/badsearch.html&entitytoprecno=1&entitycurrecno=1&entitytempjds=TRUE&dbgroup=DLDecArts&numrecs=12&fmtclass=gallery
Doesn't work. Not sure why, but I've never gotten pasted links directly into that database to function properly.
Weird. Right after I pasted it I checked to make sure it was working properly. Oh well, I'm sure I'll never find it again unless I bookmark your directions!
Lee
Hi Chris,
I really like your work - really inspirational.
Although I can't offer you any help with your woodworking skills I would like to make a few suggestions regarding pics.
I would take pics at the highest resolution my camera can take instead of at a lower one. You can always resize them and this will help to preserve as much of the details as possible. And you'll have the big ones for your portfolio!
Here's a simple and easy to use tool: http://www.irfanview.com/.
Regards,Bob @ Kidderville Acres
A Woodworkers mind should be the sharpest tool in the shop!
Chris,
I too have been following this thread, your carving looks great.
Best Wishes and Good luck
thanks, attached is the last big project I worked on.
My dad and I built three highboy's for each of his children.
One Tiger Maple, Walnut, & Cherry.
We spent three years working on these. It was a great project.
sorry I attach an extra picture of bird cage I could not take off.
Enjoy, Chris.
Fantastic work!!! Three high boys??? May I ask what reference material you used for the highboys, if any? Coincidentally I just posted a question here about making an arched pediment in the style shown on your highboys. I know it's off topic from the piecrust table but if you could provide any insight to your method, it would be appreciated.
I'll need to check for spelling but Vandall's book on Queen Ann furniture is the plans we used.
I also made a matching lowboy night stand.
Let me know and I will dig out the book for more information. It is a wonderful book that has plenty of ideas and nice plans.
We scratched our head for 2 years on how we were going to make the arches and ended up finding an article in FWW about cutting them. I used a router with two guided on each side of the cut out to make them. I believe the book used a pin router and some bearings guides. I though our method was a little safer.
Let me know if you want more information about this. It really turned out slick and did not take as much time as you would think. We did spend some time fine tuning each of them after the final cuts.
I found Vandal's book and it does look great. It's not cheap at close to $100. I also tried to find the article re: arched pediments in some back issues of FWW but was not successful. I was surprised that FWW doesn't have a searchable archive online. If they do, I couldn't find it... Could you please elaborate on your technique for making the arched pediment on your highboy.
If you search <abebooks.com> you might find a new copy of Vandal's book on Queen Anne Furniture for $80 ppd from England. It's published by Taunton ... might still be in print! Excellent work on this furniture style. For the Federal furniture mentioned by another in this thread .... search same place for Dunbar's book ... Federal Furniture, also by Taunton, but often available for $15.
Like clamps, you can never have enough reference books ..... always an excuse to build a bookcase!
Good luck,
John in Texas
The price of the book went up since I remember. It does have some great plans in it. I have made three projects out of the book.
I will try to take some pictures this week-end of the jig I used; that should help explain how I did it.
Termites: You can get a re-print of the Norm Vandal book from Lee Valley:
http://www.leevalley.com/wood/page.aspx?c=2&p=54157&cat=1,46096,46105&ap=2
$29 for a copy, USD
snapp
Here they are resized.
thanks DougU, I need to work on my computer skills a little.
Hi Chris,
Looks like you and me are suckers for 18th century furniture. I like the highboys, I believe they are from FWW three part article done sometime in 2002, the orginal author built them from curly cherry. I hope to build them after I finish-up my current projects.
You didn't ask, but I got to say I like the walnut and cherry highboys best.
Best of luck
we actually started ours before the articles came out. Ours were just a smidgen different. We reviewed their articles and compared notes.
Yes, I do enjoy the 18th century furniture. I am looking a making some Federal tables next, this again will be a Dad and son project. Similar to FWW a few issues ago. This will give us a chance to work on our marquetry skills a little.
All three woods were nice to work with, the maple is hard and I liked the tiger stripes. The walnut we were fortunate to find some nice boards for the drawer fronts. I do enjoy working with cherry, it works extremely nice. I had all three highboys in the house for a while my wife wanted to keep them all.
Chris.
A good storage will help to restore your food. Should be away in any kinds of insects.
pest control arizona
This forum post is now archived. Commenting has been disabled