Category WINDSOR FURNITURE

Cutting the tenon in the rails

Start making the frame-and-panel doors of the bookcase by cutting blind tenons at the ends of all the rails. To do the job on your table saw, install a dado head slightly wider than the tenon length. Attach an auxiliary wood fence and notch it by raising the dado head into it. Set the width of cut equal to the tenon length and adjust the cutting height to about one-third the thickness of the stock...

PREPARING THE SIDE PANELS FOR ADJUSTABLE SHELVING

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 rows of holes in the side panels at 1-inch intervals and ensures that cor­responding holes will be perfectly aligned. Clamp the jig to the edges of one panel; the holes can be any distance from the pan­el edges, but about 2 inches in would be best for the secretary. Fit an electric drill with a bit the same diameter as the sleeves
and install a stop collar to mark the drilling depth equal to the sleeve length...

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 with a craft knife, then smooth it down with a hand roller, as shown at left. The leather should be treated with glycer­ine saddle soap once a year.

Fall-front frame stock

Shaping the frame edges

Cut the four frame pieces for the fall-front from a single board. But before making these cuts, shape one edge of the board...

MAKING THE UNIT

Rough-cutting the arches

Referring to the anatomy illustration of the pigeonhole unit (page 108), out­line the shape of the arches on a piece of %-inch plywood, cut it out, and smooth the edges to fashion a template that you will use to make a routing jig (step 2). Before assembling the jig, use the tem­plate to outline six copies of the shape on your arch stock. Cut out the arches to within H inch of your cutting lines using the band saw...

GLUING UP THE DRAWERS

Routing the through dovetail joints

Size the drawer parts to fit their openings in the desk unit, then join the boards with dovetails, cutting the pins in the front and back of the drawer, and the tails in the sides...

The carcases of the desk unit and bookcase form the two main parts of the secretary. In keeping with the twin requirements of elegance and usefulness, both pieces are assembled with one of the most attractive—and sturdy—joints available to the woodworker: the half­blind dovetail. The steps shown below and on the following pages feature the connection between the top and sides of the desk unit; but the same proce­dures apply to the joints at the bottom of the both the desk and bookcase units.

Once the dovetails have been cut, you can move on to making the dust frames (page 112) and the loper housings. The carcase is then assembled (page 113) and the back panel is nailed in place (page 115). The final step, once the glue has cured, is installing the lopers.

CUTTING HALF-BLIND DOVETAILS

Top

Joined to sides with half-blind dovetails

Top of drawer section

Front edge is hinged to fall-front; ends fit into groove in carcase sides

Dust frame (page 112)

Supports drawer. Assembled with plate joints; side pieces fit into grooves in carcase sides

Loper (page 115)

Supports fall-front when in down position. Dowel glued into inside face slides in slot in loper housing; piece joined to front end with sliding dovetail conceals end grain

Loper housing

Features slot that guides loper; top edge fits into groove in under­side of drawer section top

Leather inlay-……

he major components of the Queen Anne secretary are shown in explod­ed form in this section...

The secretary, a bookcase and slant-top desk combination, evolved in Britain and America in the 18th Century and has been pop­ular ever since. By setting a book­case atop a slant-top desk, the secretary embodies the close rela­tionship between books and writ­ing. Until the 19th Century, books were an expensive and sometimes rare commodity to be treasured.

A secretary offered an ideal way to keep a precious collection safely behind glass, only an arm’s reach away. The Queen Anne version fea­tured in this chapter is more elegant than the stolid furniture that hall­marked the 17th Century, but it is less ornate than some of the incar­nations that followed it, such as Chippendale-style secretaries.

The desk half of the piece has several useful features...

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 paint, which yielded a flat, lus­terless finish that can be stained, oiled, or waxed once the surface is dry. To pro­duce a semigloss sheen, egg whites can be added to the recipe. Their use has a long tradition in painting; egg tempera paints were used by some of the great Renaissance masters.

The ability of milk paint to produce a finish that is both durable and mois­ture-resistant is somewhat of a mystery, but it is known that a chemical reaction
occurs between the lactic acid in the mi...

Once the stretchers have been glued to the legs and the legs fixed to the seat, it is time to trim the legs to the same length. The technique shown above involves cutting four wood blocks from a single board, then notching one of them to fit around a leg. Place the block around the first leg to be cut, then, holding the leg firmly with one hand, cut it to length with a flush-cutting saw. Once the first leg is trimmed, remove the notched block and replace it with one of the remaining blocks. Position the notched piece around the next leg and cut it. Continue in the same way until all four legs are cut.

Although the stretchers are glued to the legs and the legs are glued to the seat in separate steps, these procedures must be completed in quick succession for the chair to be symmetrical and...