woodshopnotes

The office desk is done except for rubbing it down with wax and steel wool. I need to stick with refinishing only the antique finishes and then only in the summer time when I can put them outside to dry. The cost of heating the space for things to dry is to much. The polyurethane I have to mix some gloss with the satin to get the right finish.

The office desk is striped, sanded and stained. I never have had such a hard time striping any thing before. The stripper would not cut it. It got soft enough to remove with a 1" puddy knife in a long piece at a time. Then wet it down again with stripper and went over it with a small brass bristle brush. Then clean it off and went over it with alcohol and steel wool and a paint scraper. Hopefully the finish wll lbail me out of this one. You should not do this in the winter time indoors. I used a Minwax walnut gel stain on it. I left the heat on and hopefully will be dry enough to put the first coat of finish on tomorrow. Thanksgiving.

The walnut kitchen table is done and sold to my brother back in Illinois. My country shop lady whom I do things for her shop gave me the name of her trucker lady who takes things from the East coast to the West coast when she is on buying trips. The table is 5 ft long, 29 in. wide and 30 in. tall with one drawer. Boy!!!! is walnut wood expensive.

The trucker will be leaving the East coast the day after Thanksgiving for Calif. She should be coming up this way later the week after. She is going to Calif. first. The shop lady uses her quite often when she buys furniture back on the East coast. The trucking lady blanket wraps everything and seems do to a fine job. Her Name is Windy Buckus. 603/491-5199.

The duplicate black bench is done and ready to go. I called the country shop lady and she will be over on Fri. the day after Thanksgiving to pick up the bench and the 60 in. Mustard quilt rack and drop off the corner cupboard that I am to strip and also repaint in the distressed mustard color.

The office desk that I am stripping and refinishing is not coming along to well. The stripper that I always use will not take off the finish. I called George, the painter, to get the name of the auto body stripper that he used on his antique cars. He is cleaning the gutters and will call me back latter.

The walnut table is coming along.I got the top all distressed, stained, etc. with the first coat of finish on it. The wide 6" walnut boards on either side of the wide middle board which came from my great grandfathers furniture shop back in the late 1800's are some what lighter and the grain and is not as nice as the old board. In a way this helps accent the character of the old center piece walnut board which has the history. I should put a picture of his wood shop and furniture under the top just for future reference.

Duplicate bench. I got a drawing of the bench that I did for the country shop. A sales lady there wants a matching bench for her self. I got it cut out today and nailed together. She also want me to strip a small corner cupboard and done in the same mustard color.

Quilt rack She gave me an order for a 60" quilt rack like I have made for her before. To be done in a antique mustard color. I have the paint from previous orders.

Kitchen table A lady wants a price on a 44" x 33" kitchen table with the base done in black. 7" over hand on the end and 2" on the sides. I don't know yet if she wants a drawer. I need to look up a price on that.

Jerry called and want a small dresser stripped and refinished. He will bring it to coffee Thurs.

I still need to work up a price on the cedar entertainment center.

So I had better get my butt in gear.

I have the table all made up, except I need to mount the top onto the base and install the hardware on the drawer. There is still misc. wood filling and some sanding. Then starts the staining and finishing. Things sure would go faster if I did these tables more often. The cost of walnut sure is expensive. I need to think of something to do with the small scrap pieces.

There is still the other seven foot walnut table to do. I have the legs glued up for that one and should have all the wood except, I think, I will need another short piece for the 5" apron. Not sure if any one likes walnut primitive tables.

I am making up the walnut table out of the 5 ft. long piece of walnut. It was 1 1/16" thick. I took it to a commercial wood shop to have it planed down to about 15/16 th to match the walnut that I picked up at Edensaw Lumber. They figured it would take them an 1 1/2 hrs to sand it down and would cost me $109.00. They did not have a planner 20" wide. I would have to leave it with them to do it in their spare time.

I went back to Edensaw and caught one of the owners there and asked him about planning it down. We went out in back to his wood work shop. They have a 36" Planner and he did it for me in about 10 minutes and did not charge me anything. We spent about another 15 minutes BS-ing about misc. things. So I got it done in about 1/2 an hour.

I have glued up 2 sets of walnut wood legs and have the tapper done on one set. I glued up some additional walnut to the one old piece so the table top will be about 32" wide and 5 ft long. I have it all sanded down. Tomorrow I will put the apron on and legs. I made the legs 2" wide and tapper to 1". Hope they will look ok. I will put a drawer in it also.

I picked up one eight foot piece and one ten foot 5/4 walnut boards for $80.00, about twelve inches wide. One has rough edges and cracks on the ends. I had to sort through a bunch in order to get ones just this good. I use to bring back great walnut when I was trucking and buying antique furniture twenty five years ago from back east.

I plan one using them with the walnut that I brought back from Illinois. They where pieces from Great Grandfather Linderholm's furniture shop in Altona Ill. The one piece that is seven foot long was the piece he used to drain the blood from the corpses he was preparing the bodies for burial. Furniture makers back then where also the ones that made the caskets and fixed the bodies. Grandma Boland use to fix their hair etc. I still use some of his hand wood working tools. I have several casket handles etc. also.

I plan on making a couple tables out of the walnut boards. One would be five foot long and the other one, the bleeding board, would be seven foot long. I think I have enough walnut to glue up for the legs but will need to get some more walnut for the aprons. They will be about thirty two inches wide. These being family pieces I would hate to sell them.