A little while back I had a customer visit my shop and see two ball and claw feet I had carved for a Newport lowboy. He told me he would like to buy it but really wanted it to be built entirely with hand tools. The one exception is I used a bandsaw to rough out the front two legs before I carved them. Other than that everything was done entirely using hand tools. I actually had to barrow quite a few tools for this piece as I don’t own a set of hollows and rounds or a handsaw that was large enough to resaw the top. While I use a lot of hand tools in my shop I am far from a purest and typically use the best tool for the job that will accomplish the task without compromising the authenticity of the piece. When I started this piece I was pretty good with hand tools but I will admit this experience has made me a much better woodworker and I would really recommend it to anyone who hasn’t tried a total hand tool build before.
The piece is a Newport Lowboy based on a piece built by John Goddard. The construction is figured Honduran mahogany and poplar for the secondary wood. The finish is a dilute mixture of pot di, tung oil/varnish and shellac.
You will have to excuse the distortortion from my camera that mahes the top look bowed