It is finished, again,

And it is still for sale, should anyone want it.

I spent as much time as I could the last few weeks finishing the altar.  As I said I would, I decided to use shellac, my favourite finish.  Shellac has the advantage that it is beautiful, and bestows upon would a lovely amber finish which grows richer over time.   The drawbacks are that it takes many coats to build up a finish, that it is water resistant but not water proof- meaning if any water is spilled on it it must be wiped up very quickly.  Soapy water and alcohol are both shellac strippers.  Back to the upside, it is easily cleanable and takes wax finishes, which give it extra protection.  Back to the downside, when it is being applied it is hygroscopic, meaning that it picks up moisture out of the air.  Too much moisture in the air and the finish becomes milky and cloudy.  The last few weeks have been terribly humid, thus stretching out the amount of time it took to finally finish the piece.

I decided to go with a french polish- which is mostly just a method of applying the shellac- on the table.  It came out very nicely in the end. Here is an attempted photograph of me trying to measure the depth of shine.

I had to dismantle the piece into its two main components to finish it.  Here's the reredos, receiving its finish.

Beside the reredo you can see the balloon back chair that I have to repair after Frodo, destroyer of the One Ring, The Five Chairs, The Four Plates, The One High Chair, Dozen Toy Cars, got his hands on it.  Sigh.  You can also see an old bicycle.

When I said the altar was for sale a few posts ago, more people seemed interested in the kids' bike.  Anyone still interested, thirty bucks and it's yours.  Come and get it.

So tonight, I decided it would be pointless to put on any more coats of shellac, on account of A. I had put on enough, and B. I was out of shellac, and don't have the money to replace it.  Although I might if someone buy a kids bike.  Failing that, I have reassembled the finished pieces.  The altar is now done. 

At least, my part in it is done.  It still needs a few images, and a small curtain to cover the hole in the middle, where a tabernacle would go on a church altar.  But those are not my fields. My part is finished, and it has been a long time coming.

And so, the price is now $1800.00.  Anyone interested, say so.

It is finished

For comparison: the original and my version, side by side.



The woodworking is now finished. I will now put a finish on it. I think I'll go with shellac, my favourite, and do a polish on the mensa. I could try and do a few gold leaf highlights, but I have never done that before, and the only gold leaf I can afford would be the kind that looks like a candy bar wrapper.

It has taken me a long time of off and on, five minutes here, ten minutes there, to get to this point.  The wood is all found lumber, and much of it is mahogany, and some of it is something that looks an awful lot like mahogany.


Now, here's the thing: I am willing to sell it.  It isn't something I particularly want to do, but I am hard up for money at the moment, and I will let it go- once I have applied the finish- for $1700.00.  

The altar is six feet tall.  The table is about nineteen inches high, or just above knee height for an adult.  The weight is not evenly distributed, (there is no way it could have been with the large structure resting on the back of the table) so it will need to be anchored to a wall, just like book cases are supposed to be.

The buyer will have to provide their own pictures, or needlework, or whatever they wish to fill in the empty spaces for the altar, and they will also have to arrange for its transportation.  I will see to it that it is ready for pickup.  If you are interested, contact me at gladius-spiritus(at)hotmaildotcom.

So Close I Can Almost Taste It.

I have continued my glacially slow work on the altar.

As I looked at it the other day, I thought that this may be the most beautiful thing I have ever made.

The Home Altar: Almost there...

Progress has been glacially slow, and I am about to get to work on some other comissions, so progress will slow even more for the next little while.  I hope to have the woodwork done by Advent, and I am so very close.

I use the word "glacially" in the above paragraph to remind myself that even slow progress can lead to great things.  After all, the glaciers creeped down this way at a snail's pace, and yet they still managed to bury my neck of the woods in an ice sheet two miles thick.  I suppose I could also invoke Aesop's fabulous tortoise and hare, but I am in a race with no one but myself.

Home Altar: Making a Column Part II.

Continued.

Once the blank is turned to a cylinder, it is time to begin adding the details.  Turning the details into wood is a little bit like Michelangelo carving a statue:  You are releasing the form encased within the wood. It is simply a matter of removing the wood that doesn't belong.

The first thing to do is laying out the position of the details, and then take the wood down to the proper diameter..  The details are marked out with a pair of dividers, and the diameter is measured with a pair of calipers.




The dividers leave grooves in the wood.  I have darkened the grooves with a pencil for the purposes of the photo.

 The process is continued over all the details.

Once the details are roughed in, the beads are rounded over, and the cove is cut. The cardinal rule when turning decorations is to always. always go from the high to the low.  That way, you will be following the grain. 

With the top of the column complete, it is now time to begin turning the central column.  Its straight lines actually make this the most difficult part of the entire piece.  As with the beads and coves, it begins with bring the piece down to the correct diameter at key points, and then remove the rest of the wood.

The knot was a problem, but it came out fine.  It is not as prominent as it was before, and I am not so concerned about hiding it.

With the central cylinder turned, it is time to repeat the process with the base details.

Lastly, the piece is sanded to smooth out the roughness, and bring it to its final shape.

Whenever possible, I like to wait at least a day before I decide that a piece is finished.  Using a treadle lathe is tiring, and it is only too easy to say "good enough" for a piece.  Now with the first one done, there is only three more to go, but at least this one may be used as a model.

Home altar: Making a column, part one.

Work continues on the home altar.  I decided to do a post on making one of the decorations of the altar- one of the long columns for the upper section.

The column is made on a lathe.  Turning on a lathe is about the most fun you can have in a shop.  It was so popular, in fact,t hat years ago noble men had their own lathes made, and would do their own turning for their own enjoyment and relaxation.  One of Tolstoy's noble characters is often found with his lathe, for instance.  However, a nobleman would not be turning wood: their lathes would be used for ivory.

I have two lathes: an old beaver lathe I use for turning large pieces, and my treadle lathe, which I generally use for smaller pieces.  At twenty four inches long, the blank for the column is the limit for a piece the treadle lathe can handle. 

As can be seen, the blank is made from three pieces of wood laminated together.  As I have said before, almost all the wood I use these days comes from whatever I can scavenge- old furniture, pallets, fallen trees.  The main reason is that I am broke, however, I am a bit of an environmentalist, though I avoid that word.  Let me say a word or two (or a paragraph) on that subject.

Let me begin with the case of Charles Dickens.  Dickens was possibly the greatest social reformer in the Golden Age of Busybodi- I mean, the Golden Age of Social Reform., yet he eschewed the term and actually distanced himself from other reformers.  His reason was that he disagreed with their methods, and believed they often brought discredit to otherwise righteous causes.  Although I cannot pretend to be a Dickens, the principle is the same.  I believe we should wisely use our resources and make a conscious effort to preserve them to the best of our abilities.  In that I am like many environmentalists, but so many of the environmentalists are so obnoxious they push away more people than they convince, and bring discredit on anyone who even remotely mentions the environment.  For myself, to put it bluntly, I do not believe we were meant to be Creation's Tyrants.

These days, there are quite a few woodworkers and cabinet makers who, like me, use scrap and found wood.  Essentially, we go through the garbage, looking for something that may be useful.  Many of them flaunt their source material, and their work is quite sought after in some quarters.  To my eye, though, it still looks like garbage, and I suspect it will eventually be like 1960's art pottery: a fad, expensive in its day, now worth a few pennies at a garage sale.  I do not try to flaunt my source material, but I do not hide it, either.  I try and create beauty to the best of my ability.  Perhaps I should emulate them: their sales are better. 

Moving on.

The lathe is based upon a design by Roy Underhill published in Popular Woodworking some years back.  It is a simple design.  The tailstock, visible in the upper photo on the right side of the blank, is held in place by a wedge....

...which is tapped in place with my mallet.  The whacking, unfortunately, knocks the headstock a little out of alignment, which must be tapped back into place with the mallet.  The parts occasionally break from all this pounding, but, since I made this myself, I can rebuild any part of it whenever necessary

One of the modifications I made was the addition of an idler.

The idler moves up an down to adjust the tension on the rope, to keep it nice and taught.  However, slippage is still a problem with the rope.  Roy Underhill recommends using Maple Syrup, as it is nice and sticky.  I, however, regard Maple Syrup as one of nature's most perfect bounties, and would never commit the sacrilege of pouring this precious liquid out upon a rope.  I use a glue stick instead.

With the rope nice and sticky, the blank secured, and the lathe tapped into alignment, turning can begin.  Turning is a rather delicately balanced affair on this lathe.  I stand balanced on one foot, pumping like mad with the other, while holding sharp tools to a rapidly rotating piece of wood.  It is good exercise.  Interesting note, and often a bit of a surprise to first time users of a treadle lathe:  The leg that gets tired is not the one you think.  It's the leg you're standing one.

I begin by rounding the blank.  I start near the tailstock, turn it round, and then move back to the headstock.

In the above photo, you can see a knot in the wood.  If this blank were a single solid piece of wood, I would have to cut the wood short at the knot, as structurally unsound and unsuitable for turning, and found another blank for this piece.  However, as this piece is laminated, the other boards will be strong enough for the column, and I will hide the knot by placing the column so the knot faces the back of the altar.

I continue rounding the piece until the entire blank is a rough cylinder.

Now that the blank is round, it is time to start adding the details, which I will discuss in the next post.

Another altar update

I have checked the sidebar widget which shows my five most popular posts as well as my stats.  It turns out that the number one post, the first one on my home altar, is not only my most popular post, but it has more hits than the other four posts combined.  So, in the spirit of giving the people what they seem to want, here is another update on the altar.

When I last checked in, I had completed the base of the altar, or the altar itself, and was now working on the altar piece, or superstructure, as I called it then.  Work has not progressed as quickly as I would like, as my time is severely limited, but I have made a little progress. As a reminder, here is a photo of the altar upon which mine is based:

Now here is a photo of mine so far:

The top section is not yet attached.  I placed it on top and have it leaning against the wall just for the purposes of this photograph.

As I have said, the piece is much easier to make than it appears at first glance.  The main structure of the top consists of the four upright pieces and six horizontal pieces ( three straight, three with arches cut into them) joined by mortise and tenon joints.  They could also be made with dowel or biscuit joints. Whichever way they are joined, that is the fundamental structure of the top.  Almost everything else you can see in the photograph of the original is decoration.

The decorations, in a way, make the building of the piece easier, rather than more difficult.  Without the decorations, the work would have to be perfect.  If there are any readers out there who sew and make clothes or dresses, they will understand.  For those who don't, let me explain.  If you want to know how good your tailor or seamstress is, don't ask them to make a complicated wedding dress; ask them to make a simple man's shirt, with straight lines, no frills.  Anyone can make the wedding dress, but the shirt... with the shirt there is nowhere to hide mistakes.

It is the same with woodworking.  The decorations look lovely, but they are also a huge distraction.  The eye dos not rest in any one place, because the decorations draw the eye off and distract it.  No one piece has to be absolutely perfect, because no one is going to look at the piece long enough or close enough to see its imperfections.  Of course, this work is AMDG so I am trying to make it as perfect as I can, but even so, if I can allow myself some slight leeway.

I have broken down and moved away from my more strict adherence to galoot building.  I cut the moulding on the arches with my router.  Generally, I hate using the thing. It is loud, covers the entire workshop with a thin film of sawdust, and is dangerous.  That thing will take a finger off and turn it into hamburger before the pain reaches your brain. I had no intention of using it at all on this piece, but my efforts at carving moulding were not turning out well, and it would be quicker and easier to just use the router.  I hope that's the last time I use it on this piece.

I imagine I'll have to set it aside for now, and work on Christmas presents for the next few weeks.  I'll have another post about the altar when I have a little more to show.

Home Altar update

It has taken me longer than I thought, but the lower portion of our home altar is nearly finished.  Here are some pictures.

Some details and decorations still need to be added.  I will even out the colour of the wood with some aniline dyes (different from stains.  Stains are basically a thin paint, and they tend to obscure grain.)  I am using hand tools to build the piece, as is my wont.  On the whole, it is going well.

It is rather small, but if I am to stick to the plan, or at least the photograph, and preserve the proportions, I need to keep it small, or it will not fit in my house.  I am also constrained by the wood I find and the lengths in which I find it.  The longest boards I dig up are a little under four feet long, which means the longest parts of the altar have to be under four feet long.

 We have decided to dedicate the altar to the Holy Family.  Perhaps I will combine the altar with a few kneelers and the organ I am building to make a small chapel in the basement.  If I had time and money enough. I would build one of these for the Holy Family.  However, I am broke, and I doubt the landlords would appreciate us making the addition. 

Soon I will begin work on the superstructure of the altar.  I will take photographs when there is something to show.