Tochi bookmatch

Here's a place for forum members to share pictures of their recent work outside of the study group projects.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Wed Sep 27, 2017 10:49 am

Nice work - thanks so much for sharing photos of the process!

I agree with you on the Tung Oil front. What were you using previously - what options are available where you are? What do your customers expect as a finish? Lacquer?
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Chris Pyle
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Wed Sep 27, 2017 4:35 pm

Thanks for sharing and nice job. Are you worried about the table top moving? You said the wood had been dried for 20 years but there will still be seasonal movement, right?

Just interested in a formal defense of your choices. I have a family member requesting a table (down the road) so I've been looking at table design for a while.

As to the wood: "Japanese Horse Chestnut" sounds really nice to work. I hope to one day see full grown chestnuts...
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Wed Sep 27, 2017 6:32 pm

Very good work. I'm glad you posted the complete build as it's nice to see the finished piece after going through the photos.
One another subject, the painting behind the table looks to be of a River Red Gum. Very Heysen-esque.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:41 pm

Daruma wrote:
Wed Sep 27, 2017 7:29 pm
Any finishing suggestions?
A weak area for me also. I've been liking using a water-based urethane for the past few projects and will likely stick with that. I suggest you have a read of Flexner's book on finishing. i found it quite educational.
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Brian
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Wed Sep 27, 2017 9:52 pm

Beautifully done! Thanks for posting this up!
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Thu Sep 28, 2017 7:39 pm

Daruma wrote:
Wed Sep 27, 2017 7:29 pm

My teacher had taught me that the older the board gets the lower the swing in seasonal movement and thus overtime is becoming more stable. Finding out later that there is still some contention regarding this theory and that its quite possibly hearsay after his passing I inquired further. The two individuals I asked were an Ukai fishing boat builder, and a local temple carpenter. They believe it to be absolutely true and also told me they readily get moisture content levels well under 10% in old air dried wood. Again, hearsay? It seems here there is less contention about the validity of the wood slowly becoming more stable over time. Also the fact that the boards final dimension was 1", and the boards used were the pieces above and below the removed pith portion of the tree( the most stable flat sawn piece), and the wood was never cut when the relative humidity was above 55% give me confidence the wood will not be moving much with seasonal swings of moisture.

-Jacob
This is an interesting question. I tend to agree that the longer a board has sat and moisture cycled the more stable in service it is likely to be. This seems to make sense as dead wood cells only have so much elasticity, and like skin, stretching (swelling) and shrinking of the cells over and over seems likely to be in a direction of gradually decreasing flexibility.

And yet...

I made that gate for the MFA a couple of years back, as some of you may recall. The two main posts were 11"x14" sections and I had dried them gently for 10 months in dehumidification, getting them eventually down to 12% at the core, which seemed about right for outdoor use in Massachusetts. Of the two posts, one was well behaved during the cutout, while the other one had brash grain and various movement issues which caused me some consternation at the time.

A year after install, the posts had swelled due to moisture, and one had strained its lower copper foot flashing until it was slightly deformed. Guess which post had moved the most in service? The one which had been well behaved during cut out.

I then thought that it was likely that the worst movement was over with, and that subsequent swellings would be less than the first year. I was wrong. This summer was wetter than usual, and the same post had swelled over 1/4" in width and had popped the flashing apart. Again, the other post, the one with the brash grain and movement issues during cut out, had only swelled slightly and he flashing was still okay. Go figure. I'm currently in the process of replacing the flashing around the one post with a multi-part flashing that will accommodate greater movement. Fortunately this is not a warranty issue, as they had insisted upon the copper foot flashing against my recommendation to leave it off.

So, wood is not as predictable as we might like. I would not have have thought that the nice post in cut out would be the one to move the most in service, nor that it would move more in the second year than the first.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:04 am

Yeah, i've thought about using it as a shelf before. It seems like such a precious piece of wood i refuse to use it until the absolutely ideal sort of way to use it presents itself. That may never come however, so perhaps in the end I will have held onto it until death and have simply have been the guardian of that piece of material...
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Chris Pyle
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Fri Sep 29, 2017 9:05 pm

Chris Hall wrote:
Fri Sep 29, 2017 5:04 am
Yeah, i've thought about using it as a shelf before. It seems like such a precious piece of wood i refuse to use it until the absolutely ideal sort of way to use it presents itself. That may never come however, so perhaps in the end I will have held onto it until death and have simply have been the guardian of that piece of material...
What is the ideal use for a block of ebony? It's hard to imagine a perfect use without cutting down into smaller parts or crafting a box out of it so the majority is of ebony? I think i'd be too nervous to cut into it for fear of spoiling it/finding out it wasn't a pristine piece of wood.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Sat Sep 30, 2017 5:38 pm

The 'ideal' use for a block of ebony? Good question. That's hard to say what 'ideal' might be - depends upon perspective. It's hard, dense, and beautiful, and wears well. The greatest commercial use is for guitar fretboards and other musical instrument parts. It used to be used for the black keys on pianos. Also used in chess sets once. It has been used for cabinets in Europe a very long time ago (1600s). My mother has a pair of decorative elephants made of ebony, which I think came from India or Sri Lanka. She got them in the 1960s.

In Japan it gets used for abacus, and we've all seen it for chisel handles and lining the soles of chamfer planes too.
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Chris Hall
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Re: Tochi bookmatch

Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:16 pm

Jacob,

thanks for the follow up, and shared insight. It could very well be the case that the tree´s solar orientation, soil conditions, and so forth manifest in different behaviors when the cut material is in service. I definitely think those factors are important, worthy of further study, and yet oh-so-unquantified here in the West. In fact I would go so far to say that in the west the entire topic remains terra incognita. Wood scientists may even scoff at the suggestion of such things.

When I went out to look at the Port Orford Cedar in Oregon, the logs had been cut many months, or possibly more than a year previous, so questions as to what the solar orientation of the trees might have been were well moot by the juncture. Then, even though I made some log selections, I have no firsthand knowledge of whether those logs were actually cut, or which timbers came from which tree. Ya get what you get, I guess.

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