Tag Archives: Maple

Fine Woodworking, Historic Places, Writing

A Visit with the Frid Family

March 28, 2014 @TheRainford 5 Comments

This past weekend I had an amazing opportunity to visit the home of Peter Frid — Tage’s son, and visit with his family. Beyond seeing some of the many items Tage made it was great to hear stories of what life was like with Tage and Emma from Peter, his wife Kathy, their son Oliver and his wife Cherie.

Tage Frid's iconic 3 legged stools and natural edge coffee table — Tage Frid’s iconic 3 legged stools and natural edge coffee table

I was very exited to see Tage’s iconic 3 legged stools in person — building a pair has been on my mile long todo list since I first learned about them years ago. I tried unsuccessfully to see these chairs at the MFA and RISD museum but every time I went they were not on display. Not only did I get to see them, but I got the chance to sit on one of them as well. The stool is very stable and surprisingly supportive given its seemingly diminutive stature. It was also just as comfortable to sit in it facing forward as it was to sit in it backwards. I had read the story about how Tage came up with the idea for the stool while sitting on a fence at a horse show, but it was neat to hear that the reason Tage and Emma were at the show was because Peter and his sister were riding in that very show.

Also shown in the picture above is a very nice natural edge coffee table with inlaid metal that is seen in the Gallery section of Tage’s 3rd book.

Tage Frid's Grandmother Clock — Tage Frid’s Grandmother Clock

In another room was Tage’s famous ‘Grandmother Clock.’ The black and white photos of Volume 3 of Tage Frid Teaches Woodworking do not do it justice as the wood has aged beautifully. Inside the case are all the traditional polished brass movements you would expect to find in a large case clock.

Adjacent to the clock is a beautiful liquor cabinet that is also from the Gallery section of Volume 3. It is made from mahogany and the panel details on the side and top are carved in. The cabinet also has beautiful copper/bronze hinges that pivot on an egg shaped knuckle.

Shown above and below is Tage’s favorite chair to sit in. With clean lines, expressed construction, and thickly upholstered cushions I can see why he liked this chair a lot. Like most Danish modern furniture the lines are clean, the details are subtle and piece has a visually light feel.

Expressed joinery and clean lines on this comfortable chair

The profile view reminds me of some cues from a morris chair and the forward lean of the legs reminds me of some of the chrome accents on cars from the 1950s — even while standing still it wants to be moving.

The end table above has another great story behind it. In some of Tage’s writings and articles he mentioned the rocky start he had when first arriving at the School for American Craftsmen wherein the facilities were not well setup and some folks were not eager to hear what Tage had to say. One morning while the students were attending lectures with another instructor Tage took a large board and started milling and working it. By mid-day he finished construction of the table and by the end of the day he even applied a scraped lacquer finish. This feat caused quite the sensation at the school and suddenly a lot more folks wanted to hear what Tage had to say as the existing way the program operated would have taken about 2 weeks for students to carry out this work and with inferior finish results. (You can read more about this story and many others in the Smithsonian interview of Tage Frid available online here.). The table has a delicate look that was ahead of its time and has aged well.

Round pedestal table and corner chairs — Circular pedestal pull-out table and corner chairs

In the above photo you can see the circular pedestal pull out table Tage made in Chapter 4 of Volume 3 of his book. The table base has some interesting design details that hide where the table expands from. The book details the intricate and interesting sliding mechanism that supports the removable table leaf. Also shown are some corner chairs with upholstered seats. They are comfortable when sitting upright and support you well even if you sit with a more relaxed or slouched posture.

While not a cabinetmaker by trade I suspect the knack for woodworking and artistic creativity is in the genes as Peter built numerous very nice cabinets and built-ins around the house, including the kitchen cabinets and tops shown in the background of the above photo and a very nice computer desk. Oliver is an art teacher and accomplished painter and you can see some of his work here.

A sampling of Tage's bowl turning — A sampling of Tage’s bowl turning

Tage also did a fair amount of bowl turning especially in his later years. Above are a few samples of his turning work. The large checkered/segmented bowl and blue lacquered bowl in the foreground were two of my favorites. The large salad bow near the top of the photo is also interesting. Rather than create a large tenon or undercut a tenon for use with a bowl chuck it seems that Tage used 4 wood dowels to presumably affix the large bowl blank to a faceplate or similar — thus maximizing the size of the bowl he could get from the blank and also allowing him to easily cut it off of the faceplate when the turning was completed.

Peter Frid (Left) and Oliver Frid (Right) — Peter Frid (Right) and Oliver Frid (Left)

Pictured in this last photo are Peter Frid (Tage’s Son) on the right, and Oliver Frid (Tage’s Grandson) on the left. I want to thank Peter for opening up his home to me, a thank you to Oliver for the introduction and a big thanks to Kathy and Cherie and the whole Frid family for their hospitality and allowing me to poke around admire some of Tage’s work. It was an inspirational visit and reminds me how I need to get back out into the workshop and finish off my Frid inspired workbench.

Take care,
-Bill

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about Tage Frid and his work, please check out my earlier post about him here.

P.P.S I also got to see some of Tage Frid’s workbenches and will be exploring those more in a future post.

Timber Framing, Timber Framing, Traditional Woodworking, Turning, Woodworking Techniques

Treenails, Trunnels, Pins and Pegs

January 4, 2014 @TheRainford 7 Comments

Treenails, Trunnels, Pins and Pegs — all terms used to describe the wooden nail-like fastener used in timber frame construction. I needed to make a large number of them for an upcoming project and thought you might also enjoy seeing what it takes to make these deceptively simple looking pins.

(1) White Oak and Hard Maple stock ripped, thickness planed and jointed

Where did all those names come from?

Like most things that predate modern recorded history I’ve read many conflicting theories on where these terms came from, so what I relay here is based on my own experiences in this field; your mileage may vary. Timber framing dates back thousands of years and can be found in early civilizations around the world in many different forms. What all these structures had in common was the joining of heavy timbers using traditional joinery and large mortise an tenon joints that were pinned together using large wood fasteners.

These fasteners are known by a lot of colloquial names, the most common of which I describe in this post. Most literally treenails (or trenails in some places) is the term for nails made from a tree. Trunnels is derived from the pronunciation of treenails and at times reserved for larger treenails used in very large buildings or ships, sometimes even wedged so they do not back out. Pegs tends to be a more modern term for treenails and pins tends to be used for smaller scale work though many timber framers I know today use it regularly. Having said all this I’ve heard all of these terms used inter-changeably at times by both novices and seasoned professionals, so feel free to use the term(s) that best suit your work and locale.

The bottom line is ‘a pin by any other name will hold your building together just as well.‘ (provided you heed my tips below 😉 )

(2) Stock ripped down into square blanks

How do you go about making these pins?

Traditionally pins were split out of green wood, shaved down with a draw knife and shave horse and allowed to season. Then touched up again when dry. Since I have to make a few hundred of these, being a practical modern joiner I will make use of my table saw and some high quality kiln dried lumber. Most of the stresses in a timber frame are carried by the joints and not the pins, and white oak is very resistant to shearing forces so I am not worried about the wood not being split out for this usage. (I’m building a square rule, late 19th century style frame from milled eastern white pine, so by that point the pins likely were made the same way I go about it)

For the scale of timber framed buildings I generally work on — homes, barns and sheds, I’m usually using a 7/8″ ships auger bit to drill holes for pins. Most tenons I work with are generally 1.5″-2″ thick eastern white pine and based on experience and reference tables I’ve found this size to work well for me.

I learned to timber frame while at NBSS and with that my framing has a proclivity for historic precedents. The historic buildings I work on all had octagoned pegs which worked well for hundreds of years and can be made more easily when compared to the expensive turned pegs you see some modern supply houses offer for upwards of $2 each. For a draw bored joint, I feel the octagon pegs look better and hold better compared to the CNC turned pins. (More on that later)

(3) Making octagons out of the square blanks

1.) I start off by milling down my rough 4/4 white oak stock to be 7/8″ thick, then I joint an edge on each board (See photo 1). I then crosscut each board to be about 30-3/8″ long. (Each of these boards should yield 3 sets of 10″ long pegs)

2.) Next I rip each of those boards into 7/8″ square sticks (See photo 2)

3.) Tilt the blade on your table to 45″ and turn each of those square blanks into an octagon. The use of feather-boards will help you be consistent. (See photo 3)

(4) Chopping several blanks at a time on the chop saw using a stop block

4.) I set a stop block on the chop saw at 10″ and gang chop (cut several at a time) for the sake of efficiency (See photo 4)

(5) 248 Oak Treenails and 166 Hard Maple Try Pins

5.) At this point you’ll quickly see how many pin blanks it takes to make even a modest building. (In this case a 12’x24′ large shed/small barn) (See photo 5)

Using the hewing bench, carpenter's axe and timber framing chisel to taper the ends of each pin — (6) Using the hewing bench, carpenter’s axe and timber framing chisel to taper the ends of each pin

6.) Now it’s over to the hewing bench to taper the leading ends of the pin blanks. I usually rough off the wood with my capenter’s axe and touch things up with a timber framing chisel. I find it helps to get the cut started with the tool and bang them both (peg and tool) in unison on the hewing bench. The downward momentum drives the tool through the wood with a minimal expenditure of energy — important when you have a few hundred of these to complete.

7.) I usually taper the first 2″ or so of the pin. You do not need to be overly concerned with trying to make the pins look like a sharpened pencil. You just need to knock off the corners to help guide the pin through the draw-bored joint. Anything beyond that is to suit the design aesthetic you are going for. (Some folks will want to cut the ends off a pin in the house, so all the more reason to only do what you need to do with them)

Foreground -- 3/4" Hard Maple Try Pins; Background 7/8" White Oak Treenails — (8) Foreground — 3/4″ Hard Maple Try Pins; Background 7/8″ White Oak Treenails

8.) Sit back and enjoy your work. Take a deep breath and repeat steps 1-7 all over again to make try pins. Try pins are slightly thinner pins used when test fitting your timber frame. I make them from hard maple for two reasons — I can visually differentiate them from the oak and the smooth hard maple is easily removed when the test fitting is complete. For this frame using 7/8″ Oak pins I make the try pins from 3/4″ hard maple stock. They are made the same way as their larger brethren.

Why are they octagons?

By making a 7/8″ octagon pin and driving it into a 7/8″ round hole the corners will bite into the wood and keep the the pin securely seated. (The diagonals across the 7/8″ octagon are slightly longer than 7/8″.) This is why you want to use smaller try-pins during test fitting, this way you are not deforming/stretching the holes before the frame is raised.

Tips for a high quality timber framing pin:

Use kiln dried pins with a green wood frame. Use green pins with a dried frame
I use most often use White Oak pins with green Eastern White Pine frames
I use Hard Maple Try Pins during test fittings (try pins should be 1/8″ smaller than your final pins)
Octagon your pin stock so that it properly bites into the joint
Taper the ends of your pins so they will easily enter the draw bored joints
Don’t stress too much about the tapering
Avoid the machine turned pins — I dislike the look, the cost (~$2 each), holding power, fact that they are not historical etc

Where can I learn more about timber framing?

Join the Timber Framer’s Guild (www.tfguild.org) and read the many good publications they have
Read any of the books by Jack Sobon, Ted Benson or Ed Levin on the topic of Timber Framing
Take a class in timber framing at The North Bennet Street School (with Rich Friberg or me), or at the Heartwood School in Western MA

The next time you are in a barn or timber framed building I hope that you will take a moment to examine the pins holding the joinery together.

-Bill

General Information, Timber Framing

The thoughts one thinks while sawing a tree…

November 11, 2013 @TheRainford 4 Comments

“The Oriental philosophy of contemplation involves forsaking all work; the European does his meditating while relaxing from work, but the American seems to think things out best while working. So the stone walls of New England may be thought of as monuments to the thoughts that occurred while they were being built, for those were the days of great decisions and profound planning. The thoughts one thinks while sawing a tree or making a stone wall are surprising. It is almost as if the mind becomes ashamed of the work the body is doing and starts doing a little “showing off” by itself. Lincoln said he did some of his deepest thinking while splitting rails. The plain farmer of two hundred years ago was weaving the fabric of a new nation and although there are no marble statues to his patriotism now, there are still his stone walls.” — Eric Sloane American Barns and Covered Bridges, 1954

Oak trees in the way of my barn... — Oak trees in the way of my barn…

I live on a heavily wooded street in New Hampshire that is lined with stone walls. As I pass them each day I think about what it took to clear all this land and build those walls. While most of the neighborhood is covered with second and third growth trees that were not actively managed, and new housing developments, there are still a few pockets of small family farms with cleared farmland that looks like an idealistic painting of yesteryear and reminds us how this was all farmland about 100 years ago. As the leaves changed this season I found it amusing to see tourists snapping pictures in front of some of these farms with their stone walls and weathered barns. In the book referenced above Sloane encouraged his readers to keep an eye out for early barns also made several interesting observations about stone walls. They were designed to keep animals in and not to keep humans out. When a wall fell over you had all the stones needed to rebuild it as opposed to a wooden fence that could have rotted away. I like the sense of inviting simplicity, using what you had on hand and building for the long term.

I recently set out to clear some trees out of my backyard and make room for a 12’x24′ timber framed shed/small barn to store extra wood and yard equipment. I’ve cleared about 35 trees so far, knocked off a bucket list item — taking down a full size tree with a felling axe, and still have a few more to go.

Safety Tip:

When working with large trees and high powered saw, make sure to ALWAYS wear the appropriate safety gear. Above you can see me wearing my steel toe boots, Kevlar chaps, eye protection, helmet with hearing protection and face shield and Kevlar reinforced gloves. The chaps are like wearing an insulating blanket and rough to wear in the summer, but in cooler months they help you stay warm.

How do I cut down a larger tree?

I start by walking around the tree from all sides, sighting up at it to see what way it leans and were the mass is held by the limbs. I then mentally think about what direction I have enough space to drop to the tree without hitting houses, other trees, people or fences. With a plan in place I set about felling the tree. The process is much the same whether I use an axe or a chainsaw. I cut in at an angle on the side of the tree facing the way I want it to fall. I then make a horizontal cut to remove that wedge of wood. It should only be about 1/3 of the way through the tree. You want the intersection of those two cuts to land right on each other so you have a smooth hinging surface and a controlled drop.

90 Foot tall oak trees take a LOT of work to break down

I then come from behind the tree and make a horizontal cut until I leave about a 1.5″” wide hinge of wood that will help control the fall. This cut should be about 2″ above the bottom of the wedge cut (As seen in the photo below). If done properly the tree should slowly start to fall over exactly where you want it. The tree shown here was a 90 foot tall oak, so when it hit the ground it shook the ground with an incredible thud — anything in it’s path will get crushed. When cutting a tree like this make sure you have a clear retreat path, usually 45 degree from the way you expected the tree to fall, that way you are not in the path of a falling or splitting tree or anything it kicks up.

Notch cut and hinge used for a controlled drop

Once on the ground I start removing all the limbs from the tree. I start with all the limbs that are not holding the trunk up off the ground to make room to better access the trunk. Any limbs or branches that are holding up the trunk are likely going to bind on your chainsaw if you are not careful. Being mindful of where the tree may move as you release that tension you can use a sharp axe to remove these limbs or careful wedge cuts that will not bind the saw. When doing this sort of work you need to be thinking about where the trunk is likely to fall after removing this limb, so you’ll want to mind your legs and feet.

Breaking down the de-limbed tree into firewood

Once the limbs are removed I break the tree trunk down into either firewood or whatever I am looking to use the wood for. These trees will be processed down into several projects — a few bowl blanks, a new base for my anvil, a few chopping benches for the shop, a stump to split firewood on and of course firewood. The incredible amount of brush and branches will be ground up into chips and distributed elsewhere on the property.

More Tips on cutting trees:

Try to cut tree during the colder months or winter as there will be less sap and thus less weight and cleaner cuts
Use plastic wedges when cutting a larger stump so that it does not bind on your saw’s bar and the wedge will not damage the chain
Use plastic or even larger metal wedges to help a cut tree (notched and ready to hinge) that is not falling. You can use a large mallet or beetle to drive in a wedge and help give it that little push it needs to start going over.

Even with all of the above information running through my head, and the sometimes backbreaking labor to break down these trees, there was still a lot of time to think. As I was doing the above work I was building the timber framed barn over and over again in my head, so by the time I actually get around to cutting the frame it will be like second nature. Unfortunately the snowy weather is creeping up on me fast, so it will be a race to see if I can get the shed put up this fall/winter or if it will get delayed until spring.

I’ll keep you posted.

Take care,
-Bill Rainford

Workshop Projects

Rack ’em up — Lathe Tool Rack

May 6, 2013 @TheRainford 4 Comments

As an avid wood turner I often spend a lot of time at the lathe. When doing production work I am often trying to figure out better ways to be more efficient in my work. A modest time sink is often finding the next tool to use as historically my turning tools usually lived in a Woodcraft tool travel bag which was overflowing on a nearby table or tool, and a small rack for 4 tools that would sit on the end of my lathe’s bed. Over the past few weekends I set out to fix this problem…

The drill press got a workout hogging through a LOT of Maple…

Then came test fitting the joints….

Then making sure the size, shape and angles I figured actually worked for tools in the real world…

Refined the design a bit by tapering the sides…

Next up was fitting together each of the double units..

Then finishing them and installing them on to the 4’x4′ plywood backing. The backing, much like everything else in my workshop rides on a french cleat, so I can re-arrange my wall space each time my needs, tooling or shop changes.

Part of the beauty of this design is the over sized holes and the large dowel underneath which allows shavings to easily fall through the rack, rather than fill up as they would if the bottom of the holder was closed in. (This was a design element seen on similar, but smaller turning tool racks we had at NBSS — so thank you to my friend Rich Friberg or one of his predecessors for the inspiration 🙂 ) The completed rack looks naked without any tools, so time to populate it…

The completed rack has worked out great. When I turned the handles for my tools, I made them different shapes and species so I could tell them apart with only a quick glance and this rack allows for very fast identification and selection. There is room for my full sized tools, room for my smaller detail tools, and room to add more. (I’ve been itching to build some of the hollowing tools from Alan Lacer’s video on making your own turning tools). The rack holds 28 tools, 14 on each level, so as your collection of tools grows you can still make use of the shelf space — I filled some of the space with tiny turning blanks and rolls of turner’s tape)

Time to get back out into the shop and keep turning…

Furniture, Portfolio, Woodworking Techniques

Why don’t you sit down and have something to eat? — Kitchen Bench

June 18, 2012 @TheRainford Leave a comment

I fired up the way-back machine again to visit another project from the past — a solid hard maple kitchen bench. This was an interesting commission in that it had to fit a specific alcove in a new kitchen, stand up to life with a busy family and provide some additional storage. The other challenge was tying into the kitchen, keeping a shaker look and incorporating details from the room like beadboard.

To protect the fingers of small children from the large lid I chose to use toybox/safety hinges which do not allow the lid to slam down. The unit also lives right in front of a large baseboard heating element so the bottom (inner shelf) of the bench’s storage area had sufficient spacing between the members and clearance off the ground to allow the heat to rise around the unit and leave sufficient room for the wood to move without checking or breaking.

The piece is constructed of hard maple and finished with water based poly and hand rubbed wax. The beadboard was solid maple as well and all made by hand and ship lapped — that was a LOT of work, but much better than pre-made or pressed panels.