There will be a couple of further posts about this chest; I’ve been asked for plans and I have an idea for a cutting list which is slightly more exciting than it sounds.
But for now I’m calling it finished.
clamp front chest
Clamp front chest 5: finishing
Like many woodworkers, I suspect, I stick to what I know when the time comes to coat the project I’ve sweated, sworn and bled over, with finish. In my case it’s usually three coats of Osmo and one coat of homemade carnauba wax for furniture. Boats get as many coats of Sadolin Ultra as I my patience allows on the bright work.
2018, however, will be the year in which I spread my finishing wings (and get them covered in noxious chemicals which bring me back to Earth). I have a French polishing course booked and am trying something on this chest that is deeply out of character.
Usually I’m with Tony Konovaloff where changing the colour of wood is concerned, “If you want a different colour, choose a different wood.” And I’m certainly not about to start staining beautiful English oak. However I really want to keep this piece light. There seems to be a fashion for adding ‘patina’ to new wood. Black wax is rubbed into the grain to imitate age. Patina is another word for dirt. I grew up in schools with acres of oak panelling and much of it was so darkened by smoke and the paw prints of small boys that it was rather oppressive. My reaction to this is to keep oak as light as possible.
To this end I’m (brace yourself) liming this chest.
Our front hall is not a particularly light place and we want this shoe box to brighten it, not lurk in the corner slowly ‘patinating’. So rather than let the grain fill up with dirt I’m going to charge it with lime wax.
Lime wax has a bad reputation. Beloved of shabby chicists it usually gets smeared onto antique furniture that was hoping for a quiet retirement and instead had to be ‘reinvented’ by someone who finishes every sentence with a question mark. I want a rather more subtle effect than shabby chicistas usually go for. To this end I’m prefinishing all the pieces in an effort to control the intensity of the colour and keep the big blobs of wax that get stuck in the corners off my chest.
Shabby chicartistes recommend ‘opening the grain’ with a brass brush so that it accepts more liming wax. Instead I sanded to 240. Then I smeared on the wax, across the grain, rubbed it in and off and then took some 0000 steel wool to it. I would usually use a grey pad for this but I’m running low and accidentally bought a lifetime’s supply of steel wool several years ago. (Caveat: never use steel wool directly on unsealed oak. Just don’t.)
The steel wool removes most of the liming wax. You can control it quite carefully. Then I applied carnauba wax. This uses D Limonene as a solvent and that also removes some of the liming wax. If the area you’re working on has a bit too much white in the grain you can knock it back a little by applying and rubbing off more carnauba wax.
One last polish brings up a shine and the job’s done.
‘The possibilities are endless’ stage. Just shellac, rubbed out.
The ’Oh my God, what have I done?’ stage. Applying the liming wax.
The ‘I’m a terrible person. This oak tree gave its life for my project and I’ve defiled its memory.’ stage. Rubbing in and off the liming wax.
The ‘Perhaps this is salvageable.’ stage. Rubbing off the liming wax with steel wool.
The ‘Actually I rather like this’ stage. Rubbing in carnauba wax.
The ‘I wonder if anyone will notice the hours of work I put into this’ stage. Buffing the carnauba wax.
Clamp front chest 4: dry fit
Progress over the last few months has been slow and sporadic. Today I reached a milestone: the first dry fit. It wasn’t intentional; I don’t like joinery to suffer more abuse than absolutely necessary but I needed to put it together to transfer some lines to between the front, back and the ends.
This is a bit of joinery I’ve been worrying about and looking forward to in equal measure. I drew it out, at one quarter scale, before I started so I knew it should work. But those are famous last words. The style/leg joins the front and back to the sides. A simple groove in the long grain of the bottom panels on the faces and ends is easy to cut with a plough plane. But this groove must be carried through the leg. There are two mortices and tenons to navigate as well so it was always going to be interesting.
Fortunately it was less than exciting. Having ploughed the grooves in the front and back panels I put the styles on and marked the housing. Once I chopped them I assembled the whole shooting match in order to make sure everything lined up and to mark the grooves for the end pieces.
This gave the first glimpse of what it will look like. Of course I couldn’t resist the temptation to carry it across the back garden (hardly an epic journey) through the house (again – not a great marathon) and put in the front hall – just to see how it looks.
But that photograph will wait for another day.
Clamp front chest 3: movement
I was really hoping to get to some joinery done this weekend. But the best laid plans…
This design is definitely utilitarian but it won’t tolerate this much movement. So I’ve planed the offending pieces back into line and will give them another week to think about what they’ve done and decide whether they really want to be a part of this project…
Clamp front chest 2: What makes a clamp front chest a clamp front chest?
Less writing; more video.
Clamp Front Chest 1: A bit of background
C14th Oak Clamp Front Chest. Image courtesy of Marhamchurch Antiques
It’s time to rediscover the clamp-front chest
Lurking in the furniture record somewhere between the six-board and its heir, the frame and panel, lies the clamp-front chest or hutch. Without the cross-grain problems of its older relative or the need for thicker timber, like its younger sibling, the clamp-front chest offers some opportunities for the modern woodworker.
Six board chests are either constrained by the width of the boards available or require panels glued up from narrower boards. With its grooved and pegged joinery the clamp front chest requires little or no glue, can be scaled up or down with very few problems and needs only a small tool kit with no clamps to complete.
Described by one antiques dealer as a form of ‘proto-joinery’ they are relatively simple to build. Clamp-front chests or arks, as the curved lid variants are sometimes known, appeared in the late medieval or early middle ages. Several period pieces survive today in museums, antique dealerships and private collections; their longevity is a testament to their design. Many surviving examples are from churches and country estates across Europe. Some measure up to six feet wide and use timbers two inches thick but much smaller chests, under 30 inches also survive.
The majority of existing examples date from between the 13th and 17th centuries. Six plank chests from the same period are at least as common but with one key difference. Many of the surviving chests are heavily bound with iron straps. Few such chests exist that were only nailed or pegged together without the metal reinforcement. Yet a surprising number of clamp fronts, that use only pegs or nails as fasteners, are still going strong. This highlights the advantages the design has. Six board chests suffer from cross grain movement. The grain on the end boards runs vertically but the sides, with their grain orientated at 90 degrees, move with the seasons causing splits and loosening fastenings. Often the solution was heavy, iron corner straps. Few large chests have survived without this crutch. Hutches from the period sometimes exhibit splits along their front or back boards but these are rarely terminal and some careful planning with slotted peg holes, as might be done on a clamped (or bread board) table top, will prevent them.
The frame and panel chest superseded the clamp front but it may now be time to revisit this design. It makes conservative use of timber. The rails are often the same thickness as front and back panels which can be made from several boards and need nothing more than a tongue and groove or even a shiplapped edge. The joinery is as simple as it gets. Front and back panels are given a tongue on each end, grooves are cut into the rails and each assembly is pegged together. Different solutions have been tried to keep the front and back together and the ends on. Without the material for pegs other techniques have been used: mortice and tenon stiles, dovetails on either end of a stretcher and occasionally a metal strap.
The chest I’m building is designed as a boot box for the front hall but it can be scaled up very easily. The construction would work well for a tool chest or blanket box. With creative use of different thicknesses of timber in the panels you can create runners for tills or shelves as we’ll see later. I wouldn’t use timber less than ¾” thick for the uprights . You’ll be ploughing grooves, pegging through and cutting tenons in it and you’ll need the thickness but 5/8″ will be fine for the panels.
I started with the internal dimensions needed to store six pairs of shoes or boots without creating an obstacle course in our narrow front hall. Change any of the dimensions to suit your own project but think carefully about the width of the four corner posts. These must be wide enough to accommodate the groove that takes the front and back boards and have enough left to accept the wedged mortice and tenons for the side boards. Anything less than three inches will give you some concerns.
The end boards are set in from the outside of the posts so you’ll lose a little internal space. Bear this in mind if your internal dimensions are critical.
The drawing developed from the size of chest needed and the timber I had on hand. I use air dried oak a lot. These boards had been sitting in the timber yard for a couple of years before I bought them and then in my workshop for at least a year after that. I started by choosing the prettiest bits of timber for the lid, then the front, posts, ends and back in that order. The bottom can be built out of old pallets – don’t waste your best stock on the bit no one will see. In my case it will be a rather over-complicated grate to allow air circulation to sweaty shoes and to make cleaning a bit easier.
Next time we’ll have a look at the design and joinery in a bit more detail and then start planing some oak.
A few examples of clamp-front chests
Hutch chests in Kloster Isenhagen
15th Century Oak Chest Sold by Period Oak Antiques
Early medieval chest sold by Marhamchurch Antiques
The Quiet Workshop 