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Perhaps the most alluring aspects of Arts and Crafts furniture is working with quarter sawn white oak and the unique ray fleck patterns it presents. A particular challenge of featuring the distinctive ray fleck patterns is presented by the leg-a table leg, Morris chair leg, or side board leg-and how to make oak’s ray fleck pattern visible on all four sides.
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This past weekend I had the pleasure of hanging-out with Wood Magazine’s Jim Heavey. I first met Jim Thursday night-he was the headliner at the Washington Woodworkers Guild of the National Capital Area’s monthly meeting. Jim gave an excellent talk on how to select, apply, and care for finishes. To his credit, Jim is one of those rare speakers who can walk into a room full of woodworkers with no slides or visual aids– just a couple of finish samples, and keep a crowd captivated, and on their seat edges all night long; which is exactly what he did. Read the rest of this entry »
The April/May issue of American Woodworker is out! You may notice a framiliar Arts and Crafts bedside table on the cover. Starting on Page 39 is an article I’ve written on building a bedside table. It includes step-by-step instruction on incorporating spindles and panels into your Arts and Crafts furniture, making breadboard tops, and a second article on making four-sided quartersawn legs on a router table. This is a great project for learning how to make many Arts and Crafts elements!
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I make Arts and Crafts style legs from four pieces of quarter-sawn white oak to maximize the ray-fleck pattern on all four sides. I also try and cut the four pieces from the same board, allowing the grain pattern to wrap around the leg. I use a locking miter joint, cut on a shaper, to assemble the legs. Sometimes, when gluing and clamping the legs, the locking miter joint does not close up completely. Whether from too much glue in the joint, insufficient clamping pressure, or some unexplainable force–maybe karma–I get an unattractive gap in the leg. Normally, this gap won’t be more than a 1/16″, and can easily be closed with a simple burnishing procedure. Read the rest of this entry »
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Through mortise and tenons are a popular style of Arts and Crafts joinery, regularly seen in Morris chairs, sideboards, and various case pieces. In this post I’ll show the version I used in my footstool, which can easily be adapted to the mentioned furniture. As with all of my technique posts, I’ll primarily focus on the process. Mentioning my favorite step-by-step techniques along the way; my hope is that you will choose the step-by-step techniques that make sense for you. The goal of this process is to produce a through mortise and tennon that is tight, and has crisp (i.e.: not rounded over) mortised shoulders.
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 White Brothers Drawer |
 Roycroft Drawer |
 Greene & Greene Drawer |
When you think of designing and building an Arts and Crafts drawer for a bedside or end table, what do you think of? Half-blind dovetails in the front, through dovetails in the rear; perhaps a solid-wood bottom grooved into the side, sticking out the back with room for expansion?
