Neander Chippendale Lowboy Build – Part 8 bench on bench and carving Knees

[Mike Allen1010]

This is a series of posts on building a Chippendale lowboy model after the one in Franklin Gottschall’s book “Building Furniture Masterpieces”.

I am a novice Carver. It still tedious and not nearly as fun for me as the rest of the build but I am getting better. I’ve done enough carving out to realize that carving on the benchtop is waaaaay too hard on my back, so as is typical for me a new project requires a new shop appliance, in this case a bench on bench.

My requirement was it had to be something I could put together quickly using only scraps I had in the shop. I had some 6 x 6 Douglas Fir left over from the legs on my bench and I used these for the bench on bench. It had been sitting in the garage for acouple years so was fairly dry but still splintery as all get out.The top is Baltic birch plywood. I wasn’t sure exactly how high I wanted it so I designed it so I could trim the legs to lower the work surface. Ultimately I did trim the legs to lower it to just below the height of my elbow which seemed to work out okay - a compromise between my pooreyesight and aching back.

By nature I am fast-paced and inpatient (my wife’s ring tone for me is the Oak Ridge boys “I’min a hurry and I don’t know why”). One of the things I love about building “shop furniture” is the freedom to work quickly without fussing about tolerances around fit and finish that would normally apply to furniture projects.

The legs are joined with split, three shouldered M&T’s. I have a shop built, 18 inch, 9PPI back saw filed rip that is great for quickly cutting big tendons like this
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I use my favorite layout tool to lay out cut lines on just the two surfaces that are visible whens awing. In the interest of expediency I aim for splitting the layout line to make for less final shaving of the Tennons for a decent fit. In this picture you can see the knife layout Mark and was able to get a decent fit right offthe saw.
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Here’s a picture of the bench in use. It is very solid and I was able to stab in the outline of the carving with the work clamped as you see here, without having the carved surface directly over the bench. Maybe for Christmas all asked for a small quick release vice that I can add with some dog holes. For now it’s easy enough to clamp stuff directly to the work surface.
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[Mike Allen1010]

Here’s a sequence of the outline of the carved elements incised against the background.
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Here’s the next step after the background has been lowered.
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And here is my first attempt after I’ve done some shaping of the upper surfaces. Not great but better than I expected
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Here is the whole leg including the foot. Altogether I’d say it takes me about three days to do what you see here.
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Here’s one side of the knee foliage done and the other side outlined. Remains to be seen these will remotely match when I’m done.
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In the interest of speeding things up I did the initial outlining for both legs with one clamped in the tail vise and the other clamp on the bench on bench. This really did save a lot of time because I could use the appropriate sized carving tool to do the initial cuts in both legs without setting it down, hunting around for it and picking it back up.
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Here’s the initial outline of my second attempt. A big timesaver for me was being more careful with the initial outlining so I had fewer marks in the background to be cleaned up once the outline was completed. BTW, any advice on how you’re supposed to secure the metal hoops on the end of Japanese carving tools so they don’t always fall off?
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Finally a picture of my sharpening fiasco. After repeated sharpening on the stones the cutting edges of my gouges got real rounded so I decided to square them off at the grinder. After grinding, I polished the bevel side but was confused when they wouldn’t cut at all - until I look at the cutting edge – oops I forgot to re-grind the taper on the bevel so that it matched the inside surface and had to redo the whole process - that’s a half a day wasted. You can bet I won’tmake that mistake again.
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I hope to finish all the knee carving next weekend and finally will be able to assemble the carcass and get back to some relaxing joinery/furniture making, without all the white knuckle carving. The last major carved piece is the drawer front and I won’t have to do that to the very end.

Thanks for looking.
All the best, Mike

[Maurice Ungaro]

Nice work, Mike! You must the patience of a saint.

[Malcolm Schweizer]

Loving every bit of this build. Your carvings are beautiful.

[Mike Allen1010]

Thanks guys. Maurice, anyone who knows me would tell you that whatever the opposite is of a saint, then that's how much patience I have.

For me there's been a pretty steep learning curve with carving, however I think it is much easier the second time you do the same carving. So far, I've always done new things because that's what I project called for. However in the future I'm going to try and recycle some of the basic carving things I've done a couple times the so that hopefully I can speed up the process.

That said, I'm not planning on doing the ball and claw feet and carved acanthus leaves again anytime soon – these have been a real bear! The carvings on this Chippendale lowboy have quadrupled the time it is taking me to finish the project.

The good news is carving lends itself to being able to do a little bit at a time because everything set up and ready to go. Last night I did 20 minutes after I got home from work. I'm looking forward to finishing the legs and then getting back to some good old-fashioned drawer building – now that's the kind of woodworking I really enjoy!

All the best, Mike

[Christopher Charles]

Hello Mike,

Also still following along and enjoying. Especially appreciate your posting of these and your frank commentary about your feelings about carving

I like the bench on bench. Keep the posts coming!

Cheers,
C

[Allen Jordan]

You have some great carving skills and serious patience. I wish I could carve a ball foot like that.

[Brett Robson]

Those legs look great Mike! I'm envious of how clean your carvings are. I always have a mass of torn, mashed or otherwise goobered up fibers in the narrow point of the carving, such as where two leaves meet in a V shape

Your carvings look really professional!

[Mel Fulks]

Impressed with your ability to learn and to keep going. Carving requires an ability to adapt.

[Mike Allen1010]

"[QUOTE=Brett Robson;2341739]Those legs look great Mike! I'm envious of how clean your carvings are. I always have a mass of torn, mashed or otherwise goobered up fibers in the narrow point of the carving, such as where two leaves meet in a V shape "

Brett, I absolutely have the same problem. As mentioned, I am the farthest thing from an expert. FWIW, the two things that help me the most with this issue are using a real sharp knife to highlight/define where to surfaces meet and also scrapers!

Card scrapers have kinda been the magic bullet for me in cleaning up both the background and carved services. I have a bunch of 1095 spring steel from failed saw builds that absolutely works great!. I use the drum sander on the drill press to shape the edge of the scraper into various curves that really do wonders in cleaning up chip out and smoothing the upper surface of curved forms. Most of the scrapers I use for carving are real narrow, some no more than about an inch at the business and, and that makes it a lot easier to get into the tight spaces.

I've gotten some great scraper material from Ron Bontz before. I don't know if scrapers are a Itt routine offering he sells, but if you're interested I would encourage you to drop him a note.

As I say, your mileage may vary by I would encourage you to consider giving these a try.

All best, Mike