Category: WINDSOR FURNITURE

MAKING THE DOORS

An escutcheon is fastened to one of the doors of the bookcase shown at left. On this piece, the key and escutcheons are purely decorative. The doors are actually held shut by spring-loaded catches installed on the inside faces of the stiles near the bottom of the doors.   1 Cutting the tenon in the […]

. MAKING THE BOOKCASE

PREPARING THE SIDE PANELS FOR ADJUSTABLE SHELVING 5 top collar.   Bushing   Bushing carrier   Shelf-drilling jig   Drilling holes for shelf supports Cut the side panels of the bookcase to width and length, then set them inside-face up on a work surface. The commer­cial jig shown above enables you to bore two parallel […]

MAKING THE FALL-FRONT

Once the frame for the fall-front has been assembled and hinged to the desk unit, the leather top can be glued to the inside face. The leather should be cut slightly larger than the recess. Use contact cement, hide glue, or thick wallpaper paste to attach the material to the surface. Trim it to size […]

MAKING THE DRAWERS

The desk unit drawers are assembled with through dovetails, then a false front is glued to the drawer front to conceal the end grain of the tails. The chamfer cut around the perimeter of the false front shown above recalls the traditional practice of beveling the ends and edges of veneered drawer fronts, which pre­vented […]

MAKING THE DESK UNIT

Leaving the side panel in the vise, cut along the edges of the pins with a dovetail saw (left), working your way from one panel edge to the other. (Some wood­workers prefer to cut all the right-hand edges first, then all the left-hand edges.) Hold the panel steady and align the saw blade just to […]

A MILK PAINT FINISH

The traditional finish for Windsor chairs is milk paint, which is thin enough to allow wood grain to show through. You can buy the paint in pow­dered form and mix it with water or make your own by following the recipe presented below. The blend provided was used in colonial times as an interi­or wall […]