March 2005

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We arrived to our February meeting at the plush Council Chambers of the San Mateo City Hall. Unfortunately, the Mayor could not come. Craig started off the meeting by announcing that there would be no raffle/door prizes since our Rafflemeister, Stan Booker was down with the flu. Our Program Chair, Jay Perrine announced the subject for the next few meetings. Details can be found under EVENTS. He also has BAWA hats for sale. He also described the 2-day Bending/Drying seminar with Ejler Hjorth-Westh to be held on 4/9 & 10 in Elk which is just south of Mendocino. Contact Jay Perrine if you are interested at jperrine@calwater.com or 408/367-8227. Other events were announced and can be found in the EVENTS column. Harold Patterson then described the February Toy Workshop which was well attended and even had a barbecue lunch. He showed some of the toys that were made. There will be no Toy Workshop in March. Mike Cooper has laser cut nametags that were ordered. These are $8 and he should be contacted at mlcooper94555@comcast.net or 510/471-6934 if you want to order one. Harold Patterson described a sale of items such as a Unisaw, band saw, scroll saw plus small items. Similarly, Jay Perrine announced a sale of a Unisaw, compound miter saw and many more items contact him at jperrine@calwater.com or 408/367-8227. Tony Fanning described the Sunday 3/13 auction of Peter Wronsky's tools. Details will be sent out to members. Jerry Robinson described his hunt for good Cherry that he needed to build a trestle table. He found good quality at reasonable prices of various thicknesses at Groff & Groff in PA (www.grofflumber.com). Bill Henzel described this year's Rebuilding Together effort which will occur on 4/23. Cabinets and shelving are to be built at the Meals On Wheels warehouse in S.F.. Details will be forthcoming. Craig Colvin described a Woodshop program. Details can be found in CLASSIFIEDS. Craig reminded everyone that it is time to prepare for the April BOX CONTEST! This is a not a serious but a "fun" contest. Everyone is guaranteed a prize! A box is an enclosure on all sides and bottom with a lid.

Show & Tell

John Blackmore had a series of pictures of the kitchen cabinets that he had built for his home. Neal White showed a tilt-top wine bar table made of White Oak.

Silent Auction

Arnie Champagne was the high bidder for the Encyclopedia of Furniture Making donated by Neal White.

Main Speaker

Our speaker for the evening was Yeung Chan, one of our own members. His topic was "The Chinese Armchair -- How Did They Make It?" but first a short biography of Yeung.

Yeung came to America from China with a hunger to learn and to excel. He was introduced to furniture making while working at the Metropolitan Furniture Company. Yeung graduated from the Fine Woodworking Program at the College of the Redwoods, in Fort Bragg, California. He studied under James Krenov. In the United States, he has had the opportunity to befriend and work with many fine woodworkers and has had access to all sorts of woodworking tools and equipment. He has combined this knowledge with his interest in traditional Chinese woodworking joinery to author and publish his book, Classic Joints with Power Tools. Using many of the techniques described in his book, he made a reproduction of a classic Ming Dynasty Armchair. It is the joinery in this chair that Yeung revealed to the BAWA membership on Thursday night.

We walked into the room, sat down. In front of us was a table covered with a collection of shiny, well finished sticks, apparently organized, but in an unapparent fashion. Most sticks were straight, some curved, yet all had been finely worked to produce intricate tenons, mortises, dovetails, bevels, or miters. Surely this beaver dam of parts could not be a chair.

Yeung Chen addressed the club. He pointed to two of his finished tables in front of us and asked: "What is going on inside the furniture"? The mystery ride was beginning.

Design, proportion, materials and workmanship are the fundamentals of good furniture and fine woodworking, Yeung explained. But it is joinery that holds the pieces together. Today we are fortunate to have a wide variety of versatile adhesives. However, adhesives are not a substitute for a well constructed joint. Could it be that "The Chair?" we would see was to be assembled without glue?

The simplest joint is the butt joint, constructed horizontally or vertically, on the ends of boards or on a "T" in the center of one board. It can be angled or mitered. The strength of this joint is increased exponentially with modifications of mortise and tenon joinery.

Yeung took three narrow, thin boards from the stick collection and explained how they could be made into a wider panel using either butt joints, dowels, tongue and groove or a sliding dovetail. Which chair part was this?

Mortise and tenons are used to join thick pieces of wood and are the basis for frame construction. Butt joints, however, reveal wood end grain. A more elegant approach is to miter the ends of the frames and then, of course the tenons too. The advantage is that both pieces of joined wood move together. Only two clamps are required for glue-up.

Then, when the frame is slotted to accept a panel and a center rail is added for support, you find you have a strong chair seat, even a table top or a door. For additional strength, wedges can be added to the tenons, or alternatively, the joint can be pinned from the underside.

The "T" joint is constructed with a mortise and tenon and a pin or wedge can be used to lock the joint. Four shoulder joints as opposed to two shoulder joints better conceal the mortise. A horizontal rail that is narrower than the vertical stile creates an interesting shadow line. A miter on the rail protruding into the stile is more interesting than a flat, flush joint. The rail can have two tongues, one an exposed miter, the other a hidden tenon. Another variation is to bevel the tip of the miter.

Joining three pieces together as on the leg of a chair may require that one horizontal rail be higher than its 90 degree counterpart. Or if joining the two horizontal rails at the same height, one can be made with a short tenon, the other with a longer one. An even more elaborate scheme would be to make two identical pieces with haunches on the tenons, designed to lock the short tenon section of one into the longer tenon section of the other. Now you have a corner joint as at the four legs of a chair. Add a seat and you've got a stool, add a top and you've built a table. "Make this joint once and you've got a sample, make it four times and you've got a piece of furniture" is how Yeung put it.

The joints were passed around for inspection. "Observe, but do not disassemble the joints", we were cautioned. Do not wiggle the joint. It will damage the mortise and the tenon. When disassembling, pull the parts apart along a straight axis.

And magically, there was a solid Chinese Stool with four legs.

Yet, straight sticks remained on the table, round ones at that. Could these be chair arms? They were too short. How could round parts be joined to create long curved chair arms? The answer was wedge-nail joints or overlapping butt joints with full tenon lips on the end. A tapered slot accepted a wedge to lock the short pieces together into longer ones. Chair arm corners were joined either a round tenon and mortise or a dovetail. To form a "T" joint with round pieces, the shoulders of the tenon were rounded to encircle the horizontal arm.

The transformation was nearly complete. The stool had gained curved, long arms. Yet it lacked a back. The curved back panel slid neatly into dados cut in the back arm rail and seat. Carved inserts were inserted at the curve of the arms to add strength and detail. The inserts matched those on the back panel of the chair.

The beaver dam of sticks had become "The Chair". No glue, only good joinery. Yeung had found the original of this chair in the Oriental Museum in Sacramento. It dates from the late Ming Dynasty, circa 1260-1640 AD. Just a few years ago the museum sold its collection of 123 pieces of oriental furniture at auction by Sotheby's for $11 million. The original chair sold for $320,000. "The Chair" took 300 hours to build, one hour to assemble and can be yours for less than the price of the original.

Yeung published a book Classic Joints with Power Tools. Most woodworking stores have it and Yeung has copies also.

The meeting ended with many members stunned by such a fantastic show of craftsmanship had to be helped to their vehicles. We hope they made it home alright.



John Blackmore & Mark Rand