Repairing and Refinishing a 19th-Century Sideboard – Part 2

Posted on June 20, 2026 by Steve S.

In my last post, I showed how I removed the old finish from this 19th-century sideboard.

Most any antique furniture I can afford to buy is going to need some repair, and that was certainly true of this piece. No doubt it was priced low partly due to the hole burned into the top.

As you can see, the gap is large and deep, and it runs right out the front edge. I first considered filling most of it in with epoxy and doing some kind of decorative inlay to top it off. Then I came to my senses and settled on an plain wooden panel. I’ve done this kind of thing a couple times before, though never with something this big.

I happened to have a 4″ wide white oak board available. I resawed it and edge-glued the two halves together. After planing it down, I ended up with a panel measuring about 12″ by 8″, and 3/8″ thick. I made sure both halves had the grain running the same direction.

The first step was to clamp the panel to be inlaid exactly where I wanted it.

Make sure the grain direction of your inlay more or less matches the grain direction of the surrounding wood, because you’ll eventually have to plane this whole thing flat. You don’t want the grain of the inlay going one direction while the grain of the surrounding wood goes the other.

I outlined the whole thing with a knife.

Use a chisel to cut into the knife line, resulting in a clear knife wall. Deepen those cuts with mallet and chisel. Everything inside will be cut away.

Now it’s time for some serious excavation. There is a lot of wood to remove here.

I found it helpful to work across the grain at times, not just with the grain.

After removing a good amount of material with the chisel, I switched over to the router plane.

I set the router plane somewhat more shallow than the final depth, and started going around the edges.

Because this was a really big surface to excavate, it was important to leave a little “island” of material in the middle for the router plane to ride on.

In retrospect, I should have left even more in the center and the front edge so the router plane had more surface to reference.

I went back and forth between the chisel and the router plane, slowly increasing the router plane’s depth, until I got to the final depth. Then I chiseled out the center.

Because the router plane wouldn’t reach into the very center, I used a small handplane to bring the center down to the right level.

I managed to go deep enough to get most of the damaged wood out, but there’s still a nice burn mark underneath. But no matter. The patch will cover it all, and the surrounding wood is sound, so the patch will stick just fine.

I put in enough glue to make the patch stick. There’s no need to put in so much that the whole panel starts floating on the glue, as there aren’t a whole lot of places where excess glue can squeeze out.

If the fit of the patch is a bit too snug, try using a handplane to relieve the underside of each edge, so it drops in easily at first. Then you can tap it the rest of the way home with a mallet.

I clamped the patch down as well as I could and walked away.

Once the glue had time to dry, I leveled it off with a handplane. I’m very glad I ran the grain in the right direction. But I also wish I had either excavated the hole a little deeper or planed the panel down a bit more before installation, as it took me too long to plane the whole thing down level.

The next fun challenge was to plane the edge to match the profile on the front edge.

I got as close as possible with the shoulder plane.

Then I switched over to a hollow plane. I own just one, which I picked up on a lark at an antique mall a year or so ago.

It’s the only molding plane I have, but it fit the profile well enough. I’m so glad I have it!

It’s the first time I’ve used this plane on a project, and I’m really pleased with the result. I’ll have to be on the lookout for more molding planes like this.

I used some card scrapers and sandpaper to finish the job.

Once I had finished, I realized that there was a little gap at the far end, where some of the old wood had splintered away from the initial chisel cuts.

These kinds of little gaps are very easy to fix. I sprinkled a bit of oak sawdust into the gap and flooded it with regular superglue. Once it was dry and hard, I scraped it all level with a card scraper.

Even with all the repair on this end, the top of this sideboard still had a lot of scratches, burn marks, and other stains, some of which you can see in the above photo. (Maybe somebody was using it for chemistry experiments for a while. I dunno.) I decided the whole top needed to be sanded down.

One of my daughters was interested in learning to use an orbital sander. So I showed her how to do it. She went over the whole top to try to remove as many of the scratches and stains as possible.

It eventually became clear that we were either going to have to remove a good 1/8″ of wood from this top, or leave some of the deeper burn marks there.

We reminded ourselves that we weren’t going for a like-new look. It’s okay to leave some scars visible.

However, all the sanding had gotten us down to fresh wood, so putting a clear coat of finish on it would not only fail to color-match the rest of the piece, but it would also risk accentuating every stain and discoloration.

So I decided to apply a coat of medium-brown stain to the whole top.

I used an aniline dye (“Georgian brown” from Lee Valley), which brought the color back closer to the rest of the piece. It didn’t need to be an exact match, but it turned out fairly close. More importantly, it hides the burn marks just a little bit.

With the sanding and staining done, it was time to apply a fresh finish.

I went with my all-time favorite: home-mixed Danish oil. Here’s the recipe: put equal parts polyurethane, boiled linseed oil, and mineral spirits into a jar. Shake it up a bit to make sure it’s thoroughly mixed.

Using this finish is very easy, and I normally put on only one coat. Flood the surface of the wood liberally with the mixed oil, using a brush or a wadded up piece of paper towel to spread it out evenly. Wait 2-5 minutes, and add more to any spots that look a bit dry. Once the whole surface is fully coated, wait 15-20 minutes. Wipe off any excess. (Make sure you wipe off the excess before it turns tacky.) Let it dry for at least 24 hours, or until you no longer get a strong smell from the surface.

You can add additional coats if you like. The results are a surface that feels like wood, not like plastic, but that is still easy to clean. It also really brings out any figure in the wood, which is a really good thing in this case.

This sideboard was never going to look like new, but it certainly looks a lot better than it did before.

You can see the burn marks on the far right side, right below the inlaid patch. That’s where the burning liquid that damaged the top spilled over and dripped down the front. Whatever it was even burned off part of the original wooden drawer pull! But there’s enough of the pull left that it remains functional.

Like I said, on a functional piece this old, it’s okay that some scars are visible.

The sideboard is now at home in our back hallway, which we are (slowly) renovating to be our coffee and tea bar.

I think it looks happy in its new home.

Posted in Wood and Woodwork | Leave a comment

Repairing and Refinishing a 19th-Century Sideboard – Part 1

Posted on June 13, 2026 by Steve S.

When I visit antique shops, I’m always pulling out drawers and looking underneath pieces to see how–and when–the thing was built. Most of the older, handmade pieces are way out of my price range, so I’m just looking appreciatively.

But once in a while, I find something I can’t pass up.

My wife and I found this old sideboard at a local thrift shop. After giving it a quick once-over, I decided it was well worth the $120 they were asking for it.

Although it was pretty beat up (more on that below), I could tell there was something really good underneath the grime and the old, dark finish.

And I’m going to spoil the ending for you right now, in case you’re more interested in the product than the process of the restoration.

This is what was under all that:

Getting from here to there took a lot of work, and it was totally worth the time and effort.

In this post and the next, I want to walk you through some elements in the process of examining, repairing, and refinishing this sideboard.

Why I Chose This Piece

What first attracted me to this sideboard was the construction. Everything about it says late 19th century. There are no maker’s marks or factory markings on it anywhere. I think it was probably made professionally somewhere in the eastern USA, but there’s no telling exactly where. I have not seen furniture in quite this style before (note the carved drawer pulls, for example!) but all the construction details suggest it was made sometime the 1880s or the 1890s.

The first thing I do when examining an old piece of cabinet work is to pull out a drawer and look at the corners. These are hand-cut dovetails. As soon as I saw them, I knew I had to have this piece.

Predictably, the ones in the backs of the drawers are a little rougher than the ones at the front. But they’re all still solidly together. You can tell they’re hand-cut not only by the shape but also because a couple of the lines are over-cut.

The wood, by the way, is all poplar, except for the oak fronts.

Drawer bottoms are full of interesting information. I will admit, though, that I’ve never seen one quite like this.

The drawer bottom is solid wood (not plywood). It’s uncommon to find a multi-drawer unit this old with intact drawer bottoms. Drawer bottoms are often split or otherwise damaged, but these are all in great shape.

Most such solid bottoms drawer bottoms are either rabbeted or planed on three sides to fit into the groove in the sides. These drawers, however, have both. Each bottom panel is rabbeted on two sides and then beveled (with a handplane) on the third side. I’ve never seen that before.

There are two other things to notice. One is the use of cut nails to affix the drawer bottom to the back. (Cut nails generally predate the more modern wire nails we’re familiar with.) The other is the saw marks from a rotary saw blade. Notice that the panel is a single, wide board, but it was cut from a thicker board in two passes: the board looks like it was passed through the saw once to cut halfway through. Then it was flipped end-for-end and passed through again to finish the cut. The two cuts didn’t line up exactly, but they were good enough for drawer bottoms.

The back of the case also had some interesting information.

The back panels are all solid–not plywood. These boards are also rabbeted on each end, even though there’s no reason for them to be. They don’t fit into any kind of groove. I begin to wonder if the maker was working with boards that already had a rabbet machine-cut into the edges for some other purpose. That would explain the drawer bottoms.

All these back boards are attached with wire nails, not cut nails. I was surprised to find both kinds of nails in this case, but the presence of both suggests the sideboard was made at a time when both kinds of nails were in widespread use, which is the end of the 1800s.

After we got this sideboard home, I discovered a fun feature. It has a secret compartment attached under the top!

To access this secret compartment, you just remove one of the drawers, and then you reach underneath and slide your money or documents into the compartment. (Unfortunately, it was empty.) There are also the remnants of some decals on this compartment, but it’s too bad they aren’t in better shape.

Here, I’ll save you the trouble of flipping the photo upside-down.

At first I thought perhaps this was some kind of maker’s mark or factory identifier for the sideboard. But after looking at it for a while, I realized the secret compartment had been made from a bit of an old cigar box. I didn’t have much luck searching the Internet for information on this stamp, but if you know something about how to identify and date old cigar boxes based on factory stamps, let me know in the comments!

Anyhow, despite the cool features showing that this whole sideboard was handmade in the 19th century, I have to admit that it was also in pretty rough shape.

The biggest problem was the top.

Not only were there a lot of stains and burn marks all over it, but there was also one place on the right where the top had been almost entirely burned through! (The extent of the damage only became evident once I did an initial strip of the finish.)

This hole had been filled in with some sort of putty or plaster, which had long ago come loose. After removing much of the remaining filler, it became clear that some kind of burning liquid had once spilled onto the wood and run down the front, eating/burning almost through the top and leaving char and burn marks elsewhere. I don’t know what sort of chemistry would have done this. The damage was severe, but localized. If you have a guess on the cause, let me know in the comments!

I knew I was going to have to repair this damage somehow.

Also, each of the three door panels had cracked, and all of the cracks had long ago been filled in with the same sort of putty.

When I first opened the doors, I saw why they had split. The panels were solid pieces just screwed onto the backs of the frames.

But the insides of the doors also gave me a clue as to what kind of wood was underneath the old, murky finish. The whole case is indeed made from solid oak. I knew it was going to take a few days’ work to get this sideboard into working shape, but I hoped that the results would be worth the effort.

Repair the Wood and Remove the Old Finish

The first step was to remove the door panels, clean out the splits, and glue them back together. Fortunately the patches were shallow, and the splits were still fairly clean deeper inside. So I was able to glue everything right back in place.

I also enlarged the screw holes on the sides so as to allow for a bit of wood movement–which had not been done as originally constructed. That’s why the panels all split in the first place.

I did some other little repair work–reinforcing a loose piece with a screw here and a nail there. My goal was not to fully restore this piece to like-new condition, but to make it stable and functional for the next hundred years or so.

The major work was taking off the old finish. I haven’t done this much before, so after reading some online tutorials, I just experimented a little bit to find a process that worked for me. After a couple missteps I got pretty good results. I don’t have enough experience to tell you how to go about your own job like this, but I will tell you what worked for me.

First, have the right the tools. This includes…

  • A cheap, natural bristle brush to apply the chemical stripper
  • A couple plastic/nylon putty knives to scrape it off. (Lowe’s had the blue tool shown above, which I found really useful.)
  • Coarse steel wool
  • Lots of paper towels
  • Nitrile gloves (not pictured)

For the stripper, I used the “Kleen Strip” brand. I also found it really helpful to use the same brand of “After-Wash.”

I did the whole job in my garage with the door open and the wind coming in. Even so, the fumes were strong at times.

After disassembling the piece as much as I could (e.g. removing doors and drawer pulls), I applied the stripper liberally over just one surface (like the top or the door panels). Because there’s a limited timeframe in which to work, it’s best to do a section at a time, rather than try to do multiple surfaces at once. After letting the chemical sit 15 minutes or so, I scraped the sludge off.

On most surfaces, I scraped off as much as I could, then immediately applied a second coat of the stripper and let that sit another 15 minutes to finish the job.

This is after an initial strip and scrape.

This is after the second application.

I used the steel wool, as well as the corners of the scraping tools, to get into corners and into moldings. Make sure you loosen every bit of sludge, especially in corners.

Once I had scraped off as much as the gunk as I could, but while the surface was still somewhat moist from the stripper, I flooded the surface with the after-wash and wiped off the residue with more steel wool and lots of paper towel. Again, go over every surface carefully to make sure you’ve gotten off every last bit of the sludge.

As it turned out, both the drawer fronts and the door panels were veneered with figured oak!

Part of the fun is getting a first look at the wood grain underneath.

I learned that it’s much easier to do this kind of cleaning work on horizontal surfaces. As you can see above, I set up a folding table and wrapped the top with cling-wrap, which provided an ideal work surface for the drawers and doors.

To clean each side of the case, I tipped the whole case on its back and then onto each end in order to work on each respective surface horizontally. I’m very glad I went to that trouble. It’s much easier to do this work on a horizontal surface than on a vertical one.

Once I had the old finish removed, I was able to move on to the major repair issue.

In my next post, I will show how I repaired the gap burned into the top, and I’ll give a short account of the refinishing.

Posted in Furniture, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

What Wood Finishes are Food-Safe?

Posted on January 31, 2026 by Steve S.

Although I don’t make a lot of spoons these days, I still haunt the spoon-making discussion groups on social media, and this is one of the most common questions I hear. How can you be sure that the wood finish you’re about to use is actually food-safe?

Here are some freshly-finished utensils made from eastern red cedar. Dust from this wood is a known irritant, and the oil finish hasn’t been officially certified as food-safe! Will they poison everyone who cooks with them?!? No, they won’t.

Let’s say you’ve made a cutting board or a wooden spoon, or maybe you’ve built a baby crib, and you want to be extra-sure that the finish won’t poison somebody.

You go down to the home center and start looking at wood finishes, and only a few (mostly expensive oil-based finishes) make any claims to be safe for food contact. What about the rest of them? Can you safely finish that cutting board with Danish oil? If the baby if starts chewing on the crib rails, will a lacquer finish send her into anaphylactic shock? Why on earth don’t companies tell you if their product is or isn’t toxic when cured?

Or maybe, just maybe, we don’t get the answers we want because we’re not asking the right question.

In a classic article, finishing expert Bob Flexner points out that no government agency actually certifies any wood finish as “food-safe.” A company can call its finishing product “food-safe” at its own risk, but that claim has not been verified by anybody.

So does that mean that there’s no safe wood finish on the shelves today? That only raw, unfinished wood is truly food-safe?

Not at all. Here’s what Bob Flexner has to say:

…there is no evidence of any common wood finish being unsafe for food or mouth contact once it has fully cured, so a distinction between food-safe and non-food-safe is speculative.

You can’t be absolutely sure about the food safeness of any finish you put on wood. There could even be problems with mineral oil and walnut oil that we just don’t know of yet. There could also be problems with raw linseed oil, pure tung oil, wax, shellac and salad bowl finish, because we don’t know where these substances have been or what they might have come in contact with. None has met the regulations laid out by the FDA.

But, based on FDA regulations, the way finishes are made, the complete lack of any evidence to the contrary, and the countless other untested objects food and children come in contact with, there’s no reasonable argument for avoiding the use of any finishes.

(The whole article is worth reading in full, though it’s only available on web archive sites now.)

In other words, the question we should be asking ourselves is this: “Which wood finishes are known to be toxic when cured?”

And the answer, at least in the USA, is “none of them.”

According to Bob Flexner, there are some specialized commercial finishes in some industries that come with health hazard warnings, but they aren’t the kinds of products you can find on the shelves at your local home center.

When you think about it, we come into contact with various cured wood finishes pretty frequently–on wooden floors, wooden furniture, wooden paneling, wooden handles, you name it. Have you ever heard of anybody reacting negatively to handling finished wood? I haven’t. Our common experience indicates that, as far as anybody knows, none of the the wood finishes you can usually buy off the shelf at a home center in the USA are toxic when fully cured. (Check the label. Is there a warning that the finish contains heavy metals, like lead or mercury? No? Then you should be good to go.)

That’s not to say that applying finishes is non-toxic. Many common finishes, like lacquer, give off pretty noxious gasses as you apply them. Others, like boiled linseed oil, can cause fires if oil-soaked rags are improperly stored. So you should always take reasonable safety precautions when applying a wood finish. But once the finish has cured, the finished wood is as safe to handle as any other common object in your everyday environment.

There are even a few wood finishing products that are edible: shellac, beeswax, mineral oil, and vegetable oils (e.g. flaxseed oil, hemp oil, and walnut oil). Some purists stick to these products in older to be double-extra, super-safe. I have also known people to just use whatever vegetable oil they have available, like olive oil or sunflower oil, but that’s a mistake because those vegetable oils don’t actually dry. If it doesn’t wash right off of the utensil, it will eventually go rancid. So if you absolutely must use an edible finish, stick with an oil that dries: flaxeed/linseed, hemp, or walnut oil.

For my own wooden spoons and spatulas, however, I use a three-part blend of polyurethane, mineral spirits, and raw linseed (flaxseed) oil. The oil and polyurethane mix and dry in the wood, and the mineral spirits (added only to thin the mixture so it soaks into the wood) evaporate completely.  The finish is extremely easy to apply, and once it’s cured, it stands up to repeated washings in the kitchen. And it has never, ever poisoned anybody who used a utensil that was finished with it.

So yes, it’s fine to finish your cutting board with the boiled linseed oil from your local home center. Just let it dry completely before you start chopping fresh veggies on it. And yes, go ahead and use lacquer or polyurethane on that baby crib.

Unless it’s the mother’s first baby, and she’s a health nut.

In which case, give that crib a coat of food-grade flaxseed oil followed by several coats of shellac topped by a hand-rubbed coat of beeswax. Tell the anxious mother that while the finish won’t exactly be tasty, it is certifiably edible.

 

 

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Fix Flaws in Wooden Spoons with This Simple Inlay/Infill Technique

Posted on January 5, 2026 by Steve S.

Author Note: I drafted this post several years ago but am just now getting around to publishing it. Although I don’t make a lot of spoons anymore, I still want to share this handy technique that I’ve used over the years to fix little voids, not only in spoons but also in furniture.

If you have ever found yourself carving a spoon, and you’ve gotten down to making the final, finishing cuts only to realize that there are a couple bug holes or a bit of tear-out that’s just too deep to carve past, you know that sinking feeling that you’ll just have to toss this almost-finished utensil in the burn pile and start over. 

Or will you? 

Not all flaws are fixable, but there is a way to safely and effectively fill in some small flaws and save that nearly-finished spoon from the burn-pile. It’s a common trick that I picked up from a wood turner. 

All you need is bit of very fine-grained fill material and regular CA glue (superglue). Here’s how it works: 

First, find a good fill material. You have lots of options, and some of them are probably lying around your shop already. If you want a relatively invisible fill, try using sawdust from the species you’re working. Use a fine-toothed saw or even coarse sandpaper to produce the dust. The finer the better. You can also use organic substances, such as fine coffee grounds. I have also successfully used crushed stone–you can get many different kinds on the internet. Again, get the finest grains available. I especially enjoy using brightly colored materials that turn the flaw into a decorative feature. Just be careful, as some powdered materials (like metals) can be hazardous to work with. 

Second, use the right bonding agent. It’s just regular superglue. The thinner the better–not the gel kind.

Now for the technique. For a fairly shallow void or crack, fill it with the fill material, and mound the material up over it just a little. Flood the whole area with superglue. Let it dry completely. You can speed it up with heat from a hairdryer or heat gun. Then scrape or sand it level. You can put your finish right over it, though you should be aware that the superglue can affect how some finishes penetrate, so don’t over-saturate the surface with the superglue. You need just enough to saturate the fill material completely.

For projects with a lot of holes to fill, as on the tabletop above, I made myself a little fill-kit. The bag of sawdust is for filling in the bottom of deep holes so I don’t have to use as much of the nicer, expensive fill except at the very top. The green powder is crushed malachite stone. (Again, exercise caution in use, as it can be toxic in its powdered state.) The baby spoon is for putting the fill in precisely the right place, and the old toothbrush is for moving it around and making sure every corner of each gap is filled in before applying the superglue.

For deep voids, you may need to use a couple layers of fill. For little cracks, use the point of a knife to spread the crack a bit to allow more of the fill to enter. Then apply the superglue. With a bit of practice, you’ll figure out what works in different situations. If you need to fill a crack or void that runs into an edge, use masking tape to shore up the fill while it dries.

Once the superglue is hard and dry, I scrape the fill level with a card scraper. You can also sand it level, but it will take a lot longer. The whole process takes just a couple minutes. It really is that easy.

But how well do these fills hold up in everyday use?

Two utensils we use regularly in our kitchen

I’ve stress-tested them in my own kitchen, and I’ve found they are very durable, even on the business end of a spoon or spatula.

These glues are typically good up to about 230F, and since boiling water doesn’t get any hotter than 212F, you’re not likely to soften the glues in any kind of water-based dish. (If you’re plunging wooden spoons into boiling oil, which can get a lot hotter than water… well, please stop. You’re going to catch something on fire.)

If you really need a glue that will outlast the wood, there’s always the original JB Weld, which is good up to about 500F. The only drawback is the ugly gray color, but you can tint it with lampblack. Use a bit of soot scraped off any smooth surface that’s been near an open flame. You can use a candle flame to blacken the blade of an old butter knife if you like. Mix the soot into the epoxy, and it should turn nice and black. 

I need to emphasize that there are limits to the size/type of flaws that you can fix using this technique. It’s best for filling in small gaps–little cracks or shallow voids that would otherwise get bits of food stuck in them. It’s ideal for filling in a bug hole or two, or for filling a wide but shallow gap. But it won’t increase the structural integrity of the utensil, so make sure the utensil is good and sturdy without the fill. I don’t think I would use this technique to try to fix end-checking in the bowl of a spoon, which is the most common kind of flaw you’ll see in a wooden spoon. Not all flaws are worth trying to fix. 

But once you start using this technique on wooden spoons, I think you’ll find it very effective. And you might find it useful on other woodworking projects, too. 

Posted in Carving, Tool Repair, Tutorials, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , | Leave a comment

Make Your Own Ribbon Bookmark

Posted on December 15, 2025 by Steve S.

Who doesn’t love a nice ribbon bookmark? Older bibliophiles will remember when many fine hardcover editions of literary classics came with a ribbon bookmark. I always loved them, though I’m afraid they aren’t as common as they used to be.

Fortunately, even if your favorite hardcover or leather-bound book doesn’t come with a ribbon bookmark–or if it doesn’t come with enough ribbons–it’s very easy to make your own ribbon bookmarks.

I learned how from a guy named Justin, who was a student of mine. A few years ago, we were both part of a theological discussion group at our university, and one day somebody noticed that Justin’s Bible had probably half a dozen ribbon bookmarks, all different colors. We were a little envious and wondered where he had gotten a Bible with so many ribbon bookmarks. He smiled and showed us how he had made them himself out of some very simple materials.

First I’ll show you how you can add the ribbon bookmark(s) to your book, and then I’ll show you how to make them.

Pretty much every book that’s not a paperback has this handy little gap at the spine. You’re going to attach your ribbons to something long and thin that you can slip into this gap.

Here’s how you do it.

First, make the slip.Use stiff poster board or a sheet of vinyl, just something thin you can punch a few holes in. You can even use a cereal box or something like that. Cut it into a long slip that will fit nicely into the book’s spine. The exact dimensions aren’t important, but if you make it about half as long as the book is tall, you can adjust the length of your bookmarks by moving it up and down inside the spine.

Now get some ribbon. I recommend the 1/4″ wide ribbon that you can get at any fabric store. You can get the wider 3/8″ size if you prefer. Be sure to choose a color and texture that you really like. I prefer plain, smooth polyester ribbon, which is soft and flexible and feels nice in the hand. Other kinds of ribbon are quite stiff or have a lot of texture, which is not ideal for a bookmark. Ribbon is not expensive, so you can get several different colors if you like.

You can attach the ribbon to your slip in many different ways. I decided to punch holes, fold the ribbon through the hole, and superglue it to itself. (I pressed it between a couple pieces of waxed paper while it dried.) You could also put the ribbon through the hole and staple the ribbon to itself. Or you could just tie it off in a little knot, which is how my student had attached his. Just make sure the ribbon can’t pull free if you tug on it a little bit.

With the ribbons attached, cut them to the proper length.

Just make sure you leave enough on either end to drop down into the spine and stick out from the pages.

I was making several of these for Christmas presents, so I put down some tape on my table to help me cut every ribbon to the same length. You may want to customize the ribbon’s length to your book’s size. And you can always leave it a bit long at first and trim it to final length once you’ve installed it in the book.

Don’t forget the singe the ends of the ribbons with a flame so they don’t ravel.

Now slip your new bookmark into the book’s spine, and you’re done!

After just a few minutes’ work, you have made a fine ribbon bookmark to mark your place in your favorite book.

But since these are so quick to make, it would be a shame to make just one. Why not make a few for your other favorite hardcover books. You could even make some as gifts for your bookish friends!

Or maybe it’s time to sit down in front of the fireplace and enjoy your favorite book, enhanced with a ribbon bookmark you made yourself.

Lectio felix! (Happy reading!)

Posted in Books, Build-Alongs, Woodworking Literature | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

On Safety: No Risk, No Learning

Posted on November 29, 2025 by Steve S.

One of our family’s favorite children’s books is called Very Worried Walrus. It was part of the Sweet Pickles books published in the late 1970s. Each book featured an animal character (such as Moody Moose or Responsible Rabbit) whose all-too-human foibles got him or her into trouble. Some of the stories are better-conceived than others, but the story of Worried Walrus is perfect. If you ever find a used copy, get it.

The premise of the story is that Walrus is about to ride his bike, but he is worried about all the things that might go wrong. His companion, Positive Pig, being of an optimistic disposition, encourages him to try anyway. Nearly the whole book is taken up with Walrus spinning out a tale of mishap upon mishap that ends with him being nearly drowned in a river and trudging miserably for endless miles at night in the rain. Of course, it’s all in his imagination, and once Pig shakes Walrus out of his self-inflicted nightmare, Walrus reluctantly gets up on his bike, starts riding, and immediately crashes. He gets up, dusts himself off, and realizes that he is fine–and that’s where the book ends.

It’s an insightful, funny lesson about the senselessness of what we now call catastrophizing. And the story has proved to be a reliable guide as I have considered the best approach to safety in the workshop, especially when I have gotten my kids involved and taught them to use my tools.

Periodically I have published articles that feature my kids participating in the craft. And every time–and I mean every time, aside from this blog–I have published an image of one of my kids doing woodworking, some well-meaning grown-up has wagged a virtual finger while providing a mini-lecture on safety.

“Shouldn’t that toy box have a soft-close support for the lid so the kids’ fingers don’t get slammed in the chest!?!”

No, sir, it shouldn’t. The kids know the lid is heavy, and they know better than to let their fingers get caught in it. Same as you. How dumb do you think my kids are?

“Shouldn’t that child be supervised while she uses those tools?!?”

Sir, where do you think I was when I took the picture? I was standing right there. Do you think these pictures just take themselves?

But my favorite safety-first reaction was when a nationally-circulating woodworking magazine ran a picture of my kids using handsaws and eggbeater drills, and one reader wrote in chiding me for not having my kids wearing safety glasses.

Sir, have you ever actually used tools like these? When was the last time you were sawing a board by hand and had a wood chip fly up and hit you in the face? How often does an eggbeater drill spray dust in your eyes? What possible use would safety glasses be in an environment like this? Do you wear steel-toed boots when picking up a package from your front porch? Do you wear welding gloves when pouring hot coffee–you know, just in case?

(My actual answer to the letter was a little more diplomatic, but that’s what I wanted to say. I feel better now. Thanks for listening.)

That letter in particular got me thinking not about injuries that could occur to my kids but ones that have actually occurred to them. I made two quick lists, one of things my kids have gotten hurt doing, and another of things my kids haven’t gotten hurt doing:

My kids have hurt themselves while…..

  • Walking down stairs
  • Walking up stairs
  • Closing a door
  • Skating
  • Getting in the van
  • Drinking milk
  • Cuddling the cat
  • Playing soccer
  • Jumping on the trampoline
  • Playing on a Nintendo Wii

My kids have not, however, hurt themselves while…..

  • Shooting a bow and arrow
  • Tending a campfire
  • Sawing boards
  • Handplaning boards
  • Using an electric drill
  • Using a sharp carving gouge

Just like everybody else, my kids have hurt themselves while doing ordinary, everyday activities, yet not once has the injury been debilitating or life-threatening. My kids actually have a superb safety record in the wood shop. We’ve had a few cuts that required Band-Aids, but that’s it.

That’s because they know the tools are sharp. When you use tools regularly and in the proper manner, you develop a respect for what they can do–both to the workpiece and to you. I remember some years ago I had ordered a new blade for a hand plane. My kids noticed that the the blade was wrapped up with paper announcing “Caution! Sharp!” I could practically hear the kids rolling their eyes. “Of course it’s sharp!” they said. “It’s a woodworking tool!”

I am not saying that I would hand a sharp carving chisel to just any 8- or 10-year-old. Children have to be gradually introduced to tools of all kinds if they are to learn to use them properly–which includes using them safely. In our house, age 10 was a rite of passage: that’s when each child got his or her first pocketknife. It’s the smallest Swiss Army Knife with a little blade, a file, and scissors. Carrying that tool around gets them used to using sharp blades to solve little real-world problems like opening boxes and snipping threads.

My wife and I also taught them how to handle pots and pans on a hot stove. When they were preteens, we assigned each one to be a kitchen assistant one night a week. That included helping with food prep, cooking, and cleanup. Now as teenagers, they can each cook a whole meal–and wash the dishes afterward–totally unsupervised.

When they were younger, my kids were shocked to learn that some of their friends still weren’t allowed to use the stove. I know their parents were just trying to keep their kids safe, but they’re also depriving their children of the opportunity to learn real-world skills. If people don’t learn to cook or clean or fix things as kids, then when are they going to learn these things at all? When they’re as big as we are? By then it’s far too late. The body may be “big enough,” but the motor skills required to deftly flip a pancake or drive in a nail won’t be there unless the skill has been practiced already. Instead, these young adults will have learned that “I don’t do that. Mom and Dad do that for me.” It’s called “learned helplessness,” and it’s debilitating.

I have discovered that many of us adults are pretty poor judges of relative risk–telling the difference between things that look risky but aren’t vs. things that don’t look risky but are likely to cause damage. I know parents who wouldn’t let their kids touch a pan on a hot stove, but they’ll give their kid a smartphone and allow hours of unsupervised access to the internet and social media. But let that kid try to saw a board in half with a handsaw, and we immediately run up and try to put safety goggles on him.

I promise I’m not an advocate of free-range parenting. I’m just not into smothering children. I want my kids to grow up into mature, responsible, independent adults who know how to use tools to solve real-world problems. Learning how to do that involves taking little risks here and there. No risk, no learning.

When I’m deciding when to allow my kids to take risks, I have found it useful to think through the worst-case scenario. Not in an “Oh-my-gosh-that-looks-so-dangerous!!!” way, but in a “what is really the worst that is likely to actually happen?” way. In other words, given the laws of physics and the tendencies of human nature, what is the worst thing that could go wrong here?

At the stove, it’s a burn, a cut, possibly some broken glass–nothing that you or I haven’t had happen to us in our own kitchens from time to time, and nothing that first-aid can’t take care of. It’s the same with most hand-powered tools. With a hand saw, for example, it would be very difficult to inflict an injury on yourself that couldn’t be treated with a Band-Aid. A chisel used inappropriately could send you to the ER for a few stitches–and I know because I’ve done it to myself! But that’s about the worst accident that’s likely to happen.

There are, of course, other kinds of woodworking that are far more dangerous, like ripping thin boards on a table saw or cutting up a fallen tree with a chainsaw. Those are activities that, if something goes catastrophically wrong, could leave you permanently disabled.

Then again, so can driving a car. But somehow, I’m guessing that if I posted a picture of a 15-year-old kid using my chainsaw (even with proper safety gear) I would get a few safety-mongers wagging their fingers, even though that same kid can be legally allowed to guide a 1-ton piece of metal at the rate of over a mile a minute down a concrete path within mere feet of other, similar machines, many of which are being operated by people who could well be texting or drunk–as long as I’m sitting next to her.

In reality, we take reasonable risks like driving and cooking every day because we know those activities are worthwhile and necessary, and because we have developed the skills to do these things fairly safely. We didn’t learn those skills by avoiding those activities. At some point, we had to put the car in gear. We had to turn on the stove. That’s why I think it’s really important for kids to grow up using basic tools of all kinds: hammers and nails, drills and screws, saws and hatchets, wrenches and screwdrivers, without grown-ups trying to wrap them up in unnecessary safety gear. They also need to know how to use pots and pans, spatulas and kitchen knives. And they need to know how to use that most basic tool of all–fire. Because soon they will grow up and need these skills, and I won’t always be there to supervise them.

Life is harder than it looks. Cooking, woodworking, even just tending a fire–these things aren’t easy. When you first start building fires, you will be surprised that the trick isn’t usually to keep it from spreading and burning down the whole neighborhood; the trick is to keep it going at all. On a screen, a few swipes or taps or clicks in the right order will usually get you the results you want, whether it’s the image of a fire onscreen or a fast-food meal delivered to your doorstep. But if you want a real fire or a real meal, you’ve got to learn to use the tools yourself. No risk, no learning.

Take something as basic as flipping a fried egg in a skillet. It’s a simple thing, but it takes practice with tools that, if used inappropriately, can hurt you. Because the egg will not simply conform to your will just because you want it to flip. It seems to me that we are raising a generation of kids who think that tasks are supposed to be easy, that the egg is somehow going to flip by itself–or that Mom will always be there to flip the egg for them–or that flipping an egg is as easy in real life as it was on that cute restaurant game they played on the iPad as kids. But in real life, if they want a nicely cooked egg, they’re going to have to spend some time right next to a hot stove burner.

What’s the worst that is likely to happen if we let them try cooking over a hot stove? Maybe a burn or a cut.

But what’s the worst that is likely to happen if we don’t let them try to cook or use a sharp tool or light a fire? A lifetime of dependence, an irrational fear of minor injuries, and a complete lack of real-life skills. I don’t want to run the risk of my kids not learning how to cook meals or do simple household repairs, even if that means we go through a box of Band-Aids every so often.

You and I are going to disagree about exactly how much safety to impose on our kids, and that’s okay. Families are different, and kids are different from each other. I’ve known 8-year-olds that I would trust with a chef’s knife and 16-year-olds that I wouldn’t trust with a Q-Tip. You have to use reasonable judgment in these things.

What I’m asking for here is that we apply the virtue of moderation to our sense of safety. Of course we should take reasonable safety precautions, but that doesn’t mean that all precautions are reasonable. Some are unreasonable. Reasonable safety precautions are those that are focused on preventing the most common and the most catastrophic accidents, and that allow the work to be done in a reasonably effective and efficient way. There is such a thing as being too safety-conscious. You know you’re trying to be too safe if (1) you are trying to protect yourself or others from threats that don’t actually exist, or if (2) your safety precautions are more likely to cause harm than to prevent it.

A classic example is the guy who insists on wearing work gloves while using the band-saw. Wearing gloves sounds safer than sending a board through a moving blade bare-handed, right? Wrong. Because the moment that blade hits the glove, it will pull the glove down into the machine and probably pull your finger down with it. Better to use the band-saw bare handed and risk a few splinters or even a nick with the blade itself.

In the same way, if you’re going to teach your kids to cook at the stove (and you should), why not have a fire extinguisher in the kitchen, too? And make sure everyone knows that it’s okay to use it!

When we are learning a new skill, we all need a generally safe environment in which to take small, limited risks in which the worst-case scenario isn’t catastrophic, and in which other people aren’t constantly on the verge of panic because they are imagining everything that could possibly go wrong. No risk, no learning.

But if we allow our children to take smaller, reasonable risks in the process of learning valuable skills, they stand a good chance of growing up to be capable, independent people who can be trusted to get the job done, instead of becoming young Worried Walruses who are paralyzed with fear about all the horrible things that might go wrong if they pick up a drill or turn on the stove.

Posted in House and Home, Kids, Teaching, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Making a Joint Stool from Trees, Part 3: The Seat and the Finish

Posted on September 5, 2025 by Steve S.

In my last two posts, I showed how I made the oak framework for my new joint stool, which I’m making with expert guidance from the book Make a Joint Stool from a Tree by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee.

So far I’ve been working oak from logs. But for the seat, I used cherry wood that I also got from a tree.

This cherry tree came down in the back yard of a friend in Alabama during a 2020 hurricane. I hauled off as much of the wood as I could, sawed it up into very rough short boards, and made a bunch of wooden spoons out of it. The rest got stacked up to dry.

Because this joint stool will live in my kitchen, which has cherry wood cabinets and trim, I decided that a cherry seat would complement the space nicely.

Making the Seat

I had originally quarter-sawn a bunch of the cherry logs to about 2″ thick, knowing that they would have plenty of time to dry before I got around to using them. But the top should be much thinner.

The plan was to resaw this little plank on the bandsaw, glue the two pieces together, plane it all down, and end up with about a 3/4″ thick seat.

Resawing a thick plank and gluing the pieces together results in a nicely bookmatched seat.

But if you look closely at the above picture, you can see that the two pieces are not anywhere near the same thickness.

My plan for the seat had gone awry almost immediately. The bandsaw’s blade wandered, leaving one side just shy of 3/4″ thick and the other side well over 1″ thick on one edge. So I needed to remove a lot of material from the face of the thicker piece.

(Side-note: you can see in the background of the picture above that I already have a joint stool, which is a modern reproduction of the form. I have no idea who made it, but I bought it at an antique shop a few years ago. And while I’m not replicating the existing piece’s dimensions exactly, it’s very nice to have a full-scale model from which to work.)

The fastest way to remove stock is with the coarsest tool. In this case, the coarsest tool turned out to be this hewing hatchet. Its edge is beveled only on one side, and it’s designed for squaring up small timbers.

There’s a specific technique to using it effectively to hew to a line, but I won’t detail that method here since I didn’t pause to take pictures of the whole hewing process.

But as you can see, I was able to knock off enough thickness, and I can handplane the surface down from here.

For heavy stock removal, it’s best to use a handplane with a blade sharpened to a slight curve, or camber. I used my wooden jack plane, whose blade I keep shaped and sharpened for exactly these kinds of jobs.

You can take off a thicker shaving if you plane directly across the grain like this. Just be aware that the edge on the exit-side is going to break off some. If this were going to be the underside of the seat, that wouldn’t matter. But this will be the show-side, so I made sure to plan for a bit of loss in the overall width.

You finish by planing the surface down with the grain.

Thumbnail Profile

Once I had the whole piece glued up and planed down, it was time to add a thumbnail profile around the top edges. I had never done this by hand before, but the book shows how it’s done. It’s a surprisingly simple process, and I will definitely use it again on other projects.

Start with the ends. Decide how far in you want your thumbnail. Mark the depth with a cutting gauge or a sharp marking gauge. Clamp a batten across the workpiece in line with your scribed line. Use a saw to cut a very shallow kerf. Just a few light strokes will do.

Now use a rabbet plane to remove the stock. A skew-rabbet like the one pictured above works best. But I imagine that any rabbet plane or shoulder plane would do a decent job if you were to take a light cut. Fortunately I had picked up a wooden skew rabbet plane at an antique mall a year or two ago. They’re actually fairly common on the secondhand market right now, and unlike a lot of wooden molding planes, they are often in usable shape and can be tuned up pretty easily.

Once you have planed this rabbet onto each end, you can plane the rabbet along the long edges, too. Use the same method, though it’s not necessary to saw the kerf if the grain is fairly straight. Just use the rabbet plane held tight up against the batten. It doesn’t even matter if the rabbets at either end are cut to precisely the same depth. Just adjust your strokes with the rabbet plane to make sure the rabbets meet all the way around.

Now that the the rabbets are formed, you can round over the edges. Again, you start with the ends. Plane a chamfer first. When you’re working on the ends, be sure to skew the plane so as to cut the end-grain cleanly.

Then plane off the two corners of the chamfer. The result will start looking like a round-over.

You can plane the initial chamfer around the whole workpiece first, and then go around and take off the corners on each of the four sides. Or you can just work one side at a time, which is what I’ve done.

You can plane or scrape off any remaining corners if you like. And if you really want the round-over to look round up close, you can sand it down perfectly round. I didn’t, though. It’s enough for me that it looks like a round-over from a distance. I don’t mind feeling facets, and it won’t make any difference when you’re sitting on it.

Attaching the Seat

The book admits that the seat attachment is the most fragile part of the stool. The authors note that antique joint stools are often found with missing or replacement seats. The traditional method was to attach the seat with pegs driven through the seat and into holes in the tops of the legs. Because the holes go into angled legs, the angles create a sort of “dovetail” effect that holds the seat on.

I don’t doubt that the result is good if you do it right, but I also know how much this stool is going to get used, pulled around, and picked up by the top. I think there’s a reason that the seats of these stools don’t always survive. If the tops shrunk or cracked a bit, or if someone pulled up on the seat just a little too hard, the seat could pop right off. Then it would be very difficult to reattach it firmly using the same method.

So I decided to use a method that wasn’t really an option for a 17th-century joiner: wood screws.

I made four brackets out of some oak offcuts from the project.

Because these brackets are on the underside, they didn’t need to look pretty. In fact, there was only one part of these brackets that needed to be precise. Everything else could be shaped quite roughly.

Here’s how I did it:

First, I chose a wood screw, and I cut an offcut into this shape.

The stock is approximately 2″ wide and 1″ thick, and long enough to be cut into a right triangle, but the exact dimensions didn’t matter. As you can see, I cut one end at 45 degrees. If your upper stretchers are consistent in thickness, then you can just cut both ends at 45 degrees. But if the stretchers’ inside faces were left rough, as mine were, then you need to figure out what angle you should cut the other end at. Don’t just assume it will be a perfect 45 degrees.

Fortunately, the angle is easy to establish. You don’t measure it with numbers. You just gauge it with a sliding T-bevel.

Use the sliding T-bevel at approximately the same place you’ll put your bracket. I’m screwing them to the short stretchers on each end. Each bracket’s angle is cut to fit a specific corner. They won’t be interchangeable, so I made and installed them one at a time, so as not to get them mixed up.

Transfer the angle to the bracket, gauging from the 45-degree cut.

Cut to the line you just drew. As you can see, the angle between the seat and the stretcher is not precisely 45 degrees. But this bracket will fit the angle perfectly.

Now to make the inside of the bracket.

Figure out exactly how deep you want the screw to go into the underside of the seat and into the stretcher. Gauge the distance using the screw itself. Make sure the screw will penetrate the wood enough to hold it securely but not so far that it pokes through the side or the top. Be sure to account for the whole length of the screw, including the head, since you will want to countersink the head.

Mark that depth with a marking gauge.

Make a shallow saw cut on each line. You only need to cut as deeply as the screw head is wide, not all the way through to the corner.

Split out the center with a chisel. Working from both sides will get the best result. Why not just saw all the way until the kerfs meet? Because splitting out the stock leaves more of the wood in the corner, resulting in a stronger bracket.

Now drill a pilot hole in each face you just sawed. The pilot hole should be wide enough for the wood screw to pass through easily.

Countersink each hole so the screw head will seat nicely and pull the bracket in tightly.

Set the bracket in place, mark the location of each hole, and drill smaller pilot holes into the seat and side stretcher. Use a drill bit with a depth-stop or some other kind of depth indicator so you don’t drill too deeply or stop drilling too soon.

With the top screwed in place, flip the whole thing over and take a look at your work.

With the joint stool assembled, it’s time to do a final once-over before applying the finish. I used a card scraper to level out a few rough spots and take off stray pencil marks here and there. And of course I signed and dated the underside of the top.

The Big Finish

I applied a couple coats of Danish oil to the whole thing. The Danish oil I use is my own mixture: one part each raw linseed oil, polyurethane, and mineral spirits. I apply a first coat very thoroughly so it saturates the whole surface. I let that sit for 10-15 minutes. Before it becomes tacky, I apply a second coat, ensuring that any spots that look a bit dry get plenty more oil. I let it sit another 10 minutes and wipe off any excess oil.

I let the stool dry in direct sunlight, which both dried the finish and darkened the cherry top.

Should the finish become damaged or worn, I can just apply more, though I haven’t needed to do so with any other piece I’ve used this finish on.

After drying for about a day, the stool is ready to be used.

Immediately after I finished this, I thought to myself: “I want to make another one.”

Posted in Build-Alongs, Furniture, Tutorials, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Making a Joint Stool from Trees, Part 2: No-Lathe Legs

Posted on August 29, 2025 by Steve S.

In my last post, I showed how I did the layout and joinery for my new joint stool, which is a 17th-century design that I have wanted to try out for years. I built the piece from wood taken from several logs I got locally, one of which was an oak tree that once grew on my property. I’m so happy to be giving that tree a second life in this stool.

The stool itself is designed to sit on, or really to perch on. Your feet can rest comfortably on the lower stretchers if you like. Despite the flat top, it is a remarkably comfortable way to sit. It’s a wonder this design ever fell out of favor.

It also makes a great end-table, if that’s your preference.

In building this stool, I am following a book published over a decade ago now: Make a Joint Stool from a Tree by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee. This book is an invaluable guide to building this project, but the book is so much more than that. The principles and techniques they illustrate are widely applicable to all manner of furniture making.

Detailing without a Lathe

Traditionally the legs on these joint stools are turned, and they do look lovely when done well. I, unfortunately, am still lathe-less after 20+ years of woodworking, so I went with a different design plan.

The book very thoughtfully offers an alternative for those of us who don’t work in the round. It shows how to cut stopped chamfers with a lamb’s tongue detail on the legs. It was the first time I tried this kind of decoration, and I rather like it. And because you may wish to use this kind of detail on your own work, even if you never make a joint stool, I’ll walk you through the process here.

Between and below the mortises on each leg, pencil a line around the leg. Then pencil a second line about 3/4″ or 1″ further away from the mortises. The second line will be your stop, and the first line will be the beginning of the lamb’s tongue.

Use a pencil to mark the depth of the chamfer. I went about 3/8″, though I probably should have gone deeper for a bolder detail. Make a saw cut on the second line, and chisel into it to make a stop on each end of the chamfer.

I used a drawknife to carefully remove most of the waste. A chisel works too. Work right down to the layout line–and to the bottom of your saw cuts. A spokeshave is useful for leaving a nice, finished surface. That does it for the chamfer.

Now it’s time to shape the lamb’s tongue on each end of the chamfer. Using a mallet and chisel (bevel down), you start at your first line and scoop out the first part of the lamb’s tongue.

Next, with the chisel bevel-up, round over the lower part.

You can see the result here:

Use the chisel to make sure the chamfer and the bottom of the lamb’s tongue meet together nicely. Don’t get too fussy with how each one comes out. There will be little variations between them, and some will probably be cleaner than others, and that’s okay. From a distance, they’ll all look great.

It really helps to be working with stock whose grain is dead-straight.

I formed this detail on three of the four corners of each leg. The inside of each leg just got a rough chamfer all the way down.

When you need to remove layout lines, the card scraper will take off whatever the eraser leaves.

There are fuller instructions in the book, but that’s how I did it. The result is a softened, lighter look to the legs. Plus it removes the sharp edge that would otherwise start splintering as the stool gets used over the years. Always remove sharp corners on your furniture, or they will be removed for you.

In my final post, I will show how I made and attached the top of the stool.

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Making a Joint Stool from Trees, Part 1: Layout and Joinery

Posted on August 22, 2025 by Steve S.

Ever since I got this book, I have wanted to make a joint stool from a tree. The grainy picture alone should give you an idea of how long ago that was.

The book is Make a Joint Stool from a Tree by Jennie Alexander and Peter Follansbee. Although I wrote a review here back when it first came out, I never got around to building the featured project until now. The reasons for my delay were manifold, but they mostly came down to (a) lack of trees, and (b) lack of a lathe.

Then about five years ago, the tree problem was solved for me when we took down a 100-year-old oak tree in my front yard in Alabama. It yielded a small pile of straight, clear, white oak boards, some of which I cut into 2X2s that I expected to make into legs for chairs or stools once they dried.

I brought all of the stock with me to Ohio when I moved here, and now the wood is at 12-15% moisture content–quite dry enough to build with. Along the way, it got mixed in with some red oak that I harvested that same year. Both woods are ideal for this project.

I still don’t have a lathe, though. Fortunately, Alexander & Follansbee provide guidance in their book for making shapely joint stool legs without a lathe, and this is the result:

For a first attempt at this form, I’m happy with it. The legs are white oak (well, at least three of them are) and the stretchers are red oak. The top is cherry. All the stock is from wood that I got right from logs. It was a fun project, and I will definitely make another one, even though I will do a few things differently next time around.

I’m not going to indulge a build-along instructable post here. If you want that, buy the book!

Rather, in this post and its sequels, I’ll walk you through several elements of the process that I found especially interesting, as well as some problems I needed to solve, some of which went beyond the scope of the book. So consider this post a small tribute and supplement to Make a Joint Stool from a Tree.

Layout

If you’ve only every built furniture with right-angles, the joint stool is a good introduction to angled mortises and tenons. But because the legs splay only in two directions (as opposed to chairs whose legs often splay in all four directions), the angles are simple to visualize. There is only one angle.

The challenge, however, is determining the exact length of the stretchers. The distance between the tenon shoulders on either end actually determines where you should cut the mortises. It’s hard to describe why, but as soon as you start building the stool, you’ll see what I mean. If that distance between the shoulders is a bit too short, then the stretcher would want to sit too high. If it’s a bit too long, it would want to sit too low. So you have to lay out the locations of the stretchers very precisely.

That doesn’t mean you have to do it with numerical measurements, though. After giving the problem some thought, I grabbed a big board out of my scrap pile. (It was a drawer bottom I had mistakenly cut to small.) On it, I drew out the angles and used the full-size diagram to lay out the angles and the locations of the joints, as well as the precise length of each piece. I planned for the legs to be 23″ long when finished, and everything else was gauged from that single dimension.

I departed somewhat from the dimensions of Alexander & Follansbee’s stool, which is shorter than mine and employs a 6:1 angle for the legs. Mine is more like 12:1. Because it’s a taller stool, the splay angle needs to be shallower. As long as the legs extend just a little bit beyond the top of the stool (when seen from above) it will be perfectly stable in use.

With the full-size template, I was able to cut the stretchers to the proper length and mark the tenon shoulders right from the legs–no measuring required. I’ll set the template aside for when I decide to make more of these.

Sixteen Mortise and Tenon Joints

Yes, there are 16 mortises to chop. That’s a lot. I cut them all by hand.

But I found that after my first few, I got a lot faster. The process was not nearly as laborious as I had imagined.

I considered removing the bulk of the waste with a Forstner bit on the drill press and squaring up the holes with bench chisels. It would perhaps have been a little faster to do it that way, but I don’t particularly enjoy squaring up round holes, and the air-dried oak cut really well under the mortise chisel. I’ll do it this way again.

Sixteen mortises are cut to accept sixteen tenons, which did not take nearly as long to make, thanks to some tricks recommended by the book.

Normally when cutting tenons by hand, you first saw the cheeks and afterward you saw the shoulders. But with this method of construction, you saw the shoulders first.

You also intentionally undercut the shoulder on the back of the stretcher, as you can see above. That way, the shoulder on the face is guaranteed to pull up tight against the leg with no gap. That does mean there’s a slight gap in the back of the joint, but no matter. The joint is quite strong enough.

With the shoulders cut, you then cut the tenon cheeks. But you don’t saw them. You just split them off.

I remember the first time I saw Peter Follansbee do this–on an episode of Roy Underhill’s show The Woodwright’s Shop. I was almost mad at him for making it look so easy. But it IS easy. First split off about half the thickness of the cheek. Then set your chisel in the layout line and split that part off. Check the fit in the mortise, and pare off any bit that remains too thick.

This method works because the wood’s grain is very straight. It’s been split out of a log, after all, not sawn out any which way. So the wood splits pretty straight. This also works because the joint won’t be glued together. The real strength of the joint will come from the drawbore peg that will lock the two pieces of wood together. But we’ll get to that below.

Because the mortises meet inside the leg, the ends of each tenon must be trimmed so as not to bump into each other when the frame is assembled.

I did the work roughly with a drawknife.

And yes, this leg has a stray saw cut in the top. It doesn’t affect he integrity of the joinery, so I just left it. The book guides readers away from perfectionism and reminds us that it is perfectly acceptable to leave tool marks, layout marks, and even small flaws in the work, long as those things don’t compromise the structure or ruin the overall form.

Drawbored Mortise and Tenon Joints

There are lots of good tutorials on drawboring, and the book covers everything you need to know. But it doesn’t hurt to show how it’s done, because it’s genius.

I first bored 5/16″ holes through the mortises about 1/4″-5/16″ from the edge. The lower stretchers each got one hole. The upper ones got two holes on one side and one on the other. The holes mustn’t intersect.

Insert the tenon in the mortise and use an awl to make a mark slightly off-center, toward the shoulder of the tenon. That last part is important. You are intentionally going to bore holes that don’t match up, but that are slightly offset from one another, and the direction of offset is critical to the success of the joint.

Pull the tenon back out and bore the holes where you marked them. I repeat: on the tenon, the hole must be offset toward the shoulder. How far should they be offset? The exact distance doesn’t matter. Make it about the thickness of a half-dollar coin.

Thus, when I assemble the joint and drive in a peg, the offset holes will pull the joint up very tight, and there will be enough friction in the offset holes that the peg will never work loose.

Drawbore Pegs

I bored 20 holes in 16 joints, so I need 20 pegs.

Because the whole joint will depend on the structural integrity of these pegs, the stock should be chosen with care. The grain should be dead-straight all the way through the peg, and the wood should be as dry as you can get it–ideally drier than the stock they’re being driven into.

I found some off-cuts about 5″ long. These were from the end of one of boards I cut to make the stretchers, so they are at least as dry as the surrounding wood. And because boards tend to dry out more on the ends than in the middle, I can expect these pegs not to shrink on me.

To insure the grain runs straight for the whole length of the peg, they must be split out, not sawn. For successful splitting, don’t try to split narrow pieces off thicker pieces. Instead, split your stock in half, then half again, until you are close to the size you need.

Using a chisel to split the wood will inevitably make the split want to run out because the chisel edge is flat on one side and beveled on the other. So once you start the split, set the workpiece loosely in the vise and pull the chisel back a bit toward the flat side, as you see above. That should straighten out the split.

On a sacrificial block, use a chisel to carefully shave down each peg to a slight taper. You may have to turn them end-for-end at first to remove the bulk of the waste safely.

This looks much more dangerous than it is. Oak works particularly well in this way, especially when your chisel is perfectly sharp. Other woods may not shave so well in this way. I’ve tried making pegs like this from hickory, for example, and that was noticeably more difficult.

On each peg, you’re aiming for a nice, long taper. The peg should drop easily into a sample hole but not go all the way through.

On a few of these pegs, I used a spokeshave to finish shaping them.

Notice the peg is nowhere near round in cross-section. That’s intentional. It is better to leave the pegs somewhat square, or hexagonal, or octagonal in cross-section, as the corners will grip better in the surrounding wood. It is also a good idea to shave the tip to a dull point so it can slip through the offset holes.

It takes a while to make enough pegs for the whole project. You may wish to make one or two extra, in case one turns out to be a bit too thin or breaks unexpectedly when you start tapping it in.

Assembling the Joints

Woodworking is a curious process. You start with a pile of wood, and you work steadily for hours or even days making cuts and planing surfaces and shaping joints, and for that whole time, you still have what looks for all the world like a pile of wood.

Then, suddenly, in just a few minutes, that pile of wood comes together into a recognizable form. What was a heap of seemingly random bits of material is now a stool or a cupboard or a table. It’s almost magical the way it happens.

The assembly is the fun part, especially since assembling drawbored mortise-and-tenon joints is a relaxed process. You’re not worrying about clamping things up before the glue sets or anything like that. Because there’s no glue, there’s no hurry.

I assembled one end, then the other, and finally connected them with the remaining stretchers. Tap in the pegs just a little bit at first, until you’re sure each piece is in the right place and everything is coming together as planned. Then go around and tap the pegs further in to snug up the joints.

I did have a bit of trouble making sure that the pegs cleared the opposite stretchers when they came through the backs of the joints.

I had left the insides of the top stretchers quite rough, since they will be hidden and out of reach of anybody’s fingers. They vary in thickness quite a bit, since there was no need for them to be a regular thickness. As long as they don’t obstruct the drawbore peg, they’re fine.

So back to the pegs. How far do you hammer in the pegs? Well, I just tapped each peg in with a hammer until it stopped. If you’ve done this before, you know what I mean. Once you stop feeling the peg advance, and the peg has come through the back, and the shoulder of the stretcher is snug up against the leg, you should stop. You’re done. Some pegs will go in father than others.

Then I trimmed off the pegs with a dovetail saw.

I sawed off each peg. The easiest way to do this without marring the surface of the leg is to rest the spine of the saw on the surface and saw carefully so the teeth don’t touch the surface. This leaves the pegs just a little bit proud of the surface. You can trim them flush with a chisel if you like. Or you can just whack each one with a hammer to set it flush. The hammer method is faster.

On the lower stretchers, I sawed off both ends of each peg. (It hurts a little bit to see your hard work on the peg come off as waste, but you get used to it.) On the upper ones, where they won’t be seen, I left the pegs long on the inside. Just a little something for the conservator to appreciate.

Once the stool was assembled, I leveled the feet. You can do this very precisely by hand. I also chamfered the feet with a spokeshave so they won’t split in use.

As you can see in the photo above, I’ve added chamfers and a lamb’s-tongue detail to the legs in order to break the sharp edges and lighten the structure visually. In my next post, I’ll show you how it’s done.

Posted in Build-Alongs, Tutorials, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Building Peter Follansbee’s Book Stand (in Exotics)

Posted on August 8, 2025 by Steve S.

Last Christmas I was given a few pieces of exotic wood, which have been sitting in my shop since then, waiting for me to make a special little project with them. After doing a lot of work with pine this summer, I was in the mood to make a smaller project for myself, ideally using these special pieces of wood. (I’ve learned that the best time to use that special material I’ve been saving is now.) I had one 24″ piece of goncalo alves and a couple 18″ pieces of purpleheart, all about 4″ wide. After doing some sketching, I confirmed that I could use this wood to make a nice book stand, which I would model on a book stand that Peter Follansbee made.

You can see Follansbee’s version here. It’s a lovely piece, with his characteristic 17th century carving. His blog post gives you excellent directions if you want to make a similar one yourself–provided you have a lathe. I don’t intend to repeat Follansbee’s instructions, but I do want to supplement them–should you decide you want to make something similar but don’t own a lathe.

This is my own version:

The most obvious difference between my book stand and Follansbee’s is the choice of wood and my lack of carved decorations. I admire carved work very much, but it’s not the kind of thing I like to live with. The dimensions of my stand are also different (the reason for which you will see at the end). Mine is 18″ high, and the shelf is 18″ wide, whereas I think Follansbee’s is about an inch shorter. And the dimensions are different. His is more or less square, while mine is oblong. Working with short stock, I could make the rails only so long, which is fine. The lesson here is that this is a very adaptable design. The exact dimensions are not crucial to its function.

I especially like the ratchet in the back, which allows the stand to sit more upright or more laid back, depending on your preference (and perhaps the weight of the book on display). I had never built any mechanism like this, so I was eager to try.

When I showed the finished project to a friend, who is also a woodworker, he asked if I worked to any kind of plan. It occurred to me that others might also like to see the plans I use for my projects, too.

“Plans.”

The reason I seldom show my plans is that they are truly minimal. I write down only the most critical dimensions of the piece. I keep most of the design elements in my head during the building process–especially for one-day projects like this one. Decisions that can be made on the fly (like the exact radius of a curve) are not written down at all. As you can see, the finished product differs from the plans in several details, such as the number of teeth in the ratchet and the addition of a curve on the top rail.

I began, as always, by dimensioning my stock. I didn’t feel like running out to the garage and unburying the bandsaw and planer, so I just did it all by hand. All my stock was 3/4″ thick to begin with, but I reduced the thickness of the shelf down to about 5/8″, just to save on a bit of weight. Purpleheart is heavy, and I don’t want this book stand to be front-heavy! Planing across the grain with a jack plane brought down the thickness pretty quickly, though even with a sharp blade it gave me quite a workout.

Follansbee’s blog post does an excellent job explaining how the shelf is tenoned into the stiles, so I won’t go into detail about that here. But you can see from the picture below how the tenons are shaped. I also bored some peg holes (3/8″, I think), though I did that after everything was dry-fit and I could set a book on the stand to figure out where the holes needed to go in order to hold the book open. I decided to bore two sets of holes, one pair for a smaller book and the other pair for a bigger book.

Next I selected the nicest part of the goncalo alves board for the top rail. The grain had a natural curve to it, so I decided to shape the top into an arc following the grain direction. I penciled in the arc freehand, roughed it out with a coping saw, and fared the curve with a spokeshave. Next I cut the tenons on each end. they’re about 3/4″ deep with a haunch on the top.

I realized I should have cut the tenons first and shaped the curve afterward, as it’s difficult to hold the workpiece on a bench hook with the top all curved. I ended up picking one of the offcuts out of the trash and using that as a shim to help me hold the board in place. It worked surprisingly well. Lesson learned: don’t take out the trash until the project is finished.

With the tenons cut, I laid out the mortises and chopped them with a mortise chisel. I also bored the 1/2″ round holes for the pieces that will rotate for the ratchet.

My auger bits are optimized for soft woods, not for dense hardwoods like purpleheart. When I need to bore a hole in a very hard wood, I typically drill a pilot hole for the lead screw to follow. It really helps.

I cut curves on the top of each stile, which I think is a nice complement to the curved top rail.

I used my glue bottle as a template to trace out the curve on the top of each stile. (I told you I do a lot of the design work impromptu!) After cutting off most of the waste with my coping saw, I again refined the curves with a spokeshave. Clamping them together and shaving them down like this ensures that the curves are identical.

Making the rotating rails for the ratchet was probably the most fun part of the project. The rack and the blade are each tenoned into a rail 3/4″ square. I chopped a through mortise in each one and cut a tenon on the end of the rack and the blade (not pictured). Follansbee’s pieces are turned on a lathe, but I don’t have a lathe. I do, however, know how to make a round shape with flat tools.

Here’s how it’s done.

First, find the center of each end by using a ruler to draw lines corner to corner. The intersection is the center–or as close to the center as you need to get for this operation.

Next, use a drill bit of the same size as your mortise to drill an extremely shallow hole in the end of the workpiece. It’s best to use a bit with a center screw or spur, like an auger bit or a Forstner bit. I happened to use a Forstner bit in my electric drill, which is the only powered tool I used for this project. Now you have the finished width of the tenon marked clearly on the end.

Now determine the finished depth of the tenon, and measure that in from the end.

Mark the line all the way around the workpiece with a knife, and make a shallow saw cut on each of the four faces. You can measure the approximate depth of the tenon shoulder and saw to that line, or you can just eyeball it. Even if you go a smidge deep, you won’t compromise the strength of the tenon.

Now, with the workpiece held upright in the vise, split off some of the waste, going as close to the finished depth as you dare. (This is where it really helps to have chosen stock with dead-straight grain on each end.) You can deepen each saw cut as necessary in order to allow you to split off even more waste.

Because this tenon needs to rotate freely in the hole, it’s okay if you chisel over your line in a couple places. The more you take off with your chisel, the less time the next step is going to take.

Once you’ve gotten as close to your line with your chisel as you dare, use a file to remove each corner, and remove each corner again, until the tenon is roughly round. It helps to use a file with a “safe” edge (also called a pillar file) so you don’t cut into the shoulder by mistake. You could also use coarse sandpaper wrapped around a slim bit of scrap.

Test your fit in the mortise regularly. When it fits well but turns easily, you’re done–no matter what the tenon looks like. This method seems slow, but once you get the hang of it, it’s really quite quick.

I also decided to chamfer the corners of each piece with a spoekshave, which I think provides a nice transition from the square mortise to the rotating end of each piece.

With the whole assembly dry-fit together, I determined how the two pieces of the ratchet would meet. First I tapered the blade with a drawknife and spokeshave to just under 1/4″ at the end. I also narrowed the width of the blade at the business end just a little bit, so any misalignment between the two pieces wouldn’t be obvious to the eye.

With the book stand set at the steepest angle I could imaging wanting it, I marked the location of the first ratchet tooth. The rest are spaced 3/4″ apart.

I just cut them out freehand with a back saw, though I suppose I could have marked out each tooth first. My one suggestion is that you not make the top of each tooth sharp. There’s no need for that. The teeth will be more durable if each one has a bit of a flat left on top.

After removing as many of my layout marks as I could find and breaking the sharp edges with a spokeshave, I glued up the whole assembly. There are only six joints that need glue. Don’t glue the round ones!

While I waited for the glue to dry, I shaped the pegs from a couple scraps. They are about 3″ or 4″ long. I don’t know–I didn’t measure them. After planing them square with a slight taper, I took off the corners with a spokeshave and kept working at them until they fit just snugly into the holes.

I gave the whole thing a couple coats of my home-brew Danish oil, which is just equal parts raw linseed oil, mineral spirits, and polyurethane.

It’s very easy to use. Flood the surface with the oil. Wait 5-10 minutes, and apply a second coat. Wait another 10-15 minutes and rub it down with a clean cloth, removing any excess oil. Let it dry about 24 hours, though the finish won’t be fully cured for another week or so. Still, it’s about as foolproof as a finish can get. The finish gives just enough protection that the wood is easy to clean, but it also lets the grain come through, so the surface still feels like wood and not like plastic. It’s also very easy to renew if necessary.

As the finish dried, I kept rotating the ratchet mechanism, as I didn’t want the finish to freeze the round tenons in place.

The book stand will live in my office at work, where I’ll use it to display some of my more interesting books, like this English translation of Dante’s Inferno illustrated with woodcuts by Gustav Doré.

I like the fact that the book stand is tall enough that even a large book doesn’t completely obscure the tops of the rail and stiles. It would be a pity to use such nice wood only to have it always hidden behind a book.

I do, however, own one book that will hide nearly the whole stand, and I don’t mind that so much. In fact, I built the stand with this particular book in mind.

It’s my Compact Oxford English Dictionary, which my wife and I got at a secondhand shop for $15 quite a few years ago.

The full Oxford English Dictionary is by far the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the English language. While it is now used mainly online, in print it runs a full 20 volumes. But the single-volume Compact edition is something of a technological marvel. Each folio-sized page contains nine regular pages in nearly microscopic print, and it must be read with a magnifying glass. (My copy, sadly, is missing the magnifying glass that is normally provided with the book.) Because I have full access to the online version through my university, I don’t often have occasion to consult my print edition.

But the volume is too interesting to just let it sit there in its box, so from time to time I’ll be displaying it on my new book stand.

Posted in Books, Build-Alongs, Wood and Woodwork | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment