Bring Your Furniture to Work Day
My final lesson on building a Limbert 244 table by hand is due out on Monday for The Hand Tool School. Fortunately all that is left is to apply the finish so I should hit that deadline barring any (more) natural disasters. I diverged from the norm on this Arts & Crafts style build by using Cherry instead of White Oak for a few reasons:
- I’m lazy and using a softer species is easier with hand tools only
- The Stickley Co released a line of furniture in the 1950s all in Cherry
- I have lots and lots of Cherry already in my lumber rack…see point 1 above
Whenever I build something in Cherry I like to give it a good tan before finishing to speed up the color change and get that rich red-brown color. The problem is the last few weeks here we have experienced some Old Testament style weather with the rain. So today I am at my day job at the lumber yard and the sun is shining brightly. That means that today is bring your furniture to work day! My little table is basking in the sun just outside my office window and has already changed color nicely throughout the day.
It gets admired a lot too as people come and go from the lumber yard to the office. Heck the Cherry came from J. Gibson McIlvain in the first place so it is only proper karmic balance that it revisit after it have been converted from rough board to furniture.
As an added bonus, the table sits right by the cigarette butt bin so I’m sure it will have a nice smoky texture to it too. (not sure if that is a good thing, but the first coat of Shellac will kill any smell)
Do you give your projects a sun tan before finishing?
