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by

Andrew Pitts ~ FurnitureMaker

Work in Progress
Paschal Candle Stand
Processional Cross and Stand

Article completed 11 June 2008

Disclaimer: This discussion chronicles the making of a piece of furniture in my workshop. My intention is to bring the reader virtually into my shop to generally see how I do the work and share in my thought processes. Although I try to point out how the tools work and the applicable safety considerations, this discussion is not intended to be a text on how to work with tools, nor how to execute operations with the tools shown. I am not providing instruction in woodworking methods. Woodworkers attempting to imitate my methods do so at their own risk.

Click on the images to enlarge them and see the detail

A few weeks ago I received a most surprising phone call. It was from the Pastor of a Lutheran Church in southern Utah. He told me that his congregation was in the process of completing a brand new building and that they were interested in discussing a new Paschal Candle Stand for the new Sanctuary. Of course I was very interested, but I was also very curious to know how he had heard of me. In the interest of full disclosure, I earned my bachelor's degree in Meteorology from the University of Utah in 1975 while in the Navy, but somehow I knew that connection to Utah was peripheral to the current query! In fact, he had learned of my work from an internet search, seeing the Paschal Candle Stand I had recently completed for my local church here in Virginia. What amazed me was that I had placed that work on my website only a week previous and only one search engine had actually picked up on that new link, and when I searched for the piece myself, I had to go to page 4 of the search results to find it! Almost no one makes it to page 4 of search results! I am still amazed. But moving on ..... in a subsequent e-mail, I was asked if I would also be interested in designing and making a processional cross with stand. Of course, the answer was an immediate Yes!

Over the course of the next few weeks there was a flurry of e-mail activity between myself and the committee engaged in the project, as I submitted a few radically diverse design proposals to home in on a final design preference. The new building was in the Pueblo style, with rustic accents in the interior, and the congregation already had some liturgical pieces, either built or in the process of being built. Using all that information, plus input from the committee and study of styles used by their denomination, I was able to get some idea of the type of design we were heading toward. It would be more contemporary than my previously completed candle stand, and as we worked together to refine the designs, they became more and more interesting! We finally settled on a design for the bases, made of cherry wood, that mimics the pueblo style of the building and incorporates carvings, and a simple dignified style for the Processional Cross. Here are what the renderings of the designs look like, without most of the carvings but including dimensions so you can see what we are talking about. If you look closely at the candle stand, you will see some of the carving rendered. It shows waves of water and a Christian fish symbol within. Although not shown on the rendering, the stand for the Cross will have carvings of a Crown of Thorns and the symbol 'IHS'. The carvings will extend completely around the pieces. The Cross, also of cherry, will have walnut inserts to represent the nails and a Greek Cross "butterfly" connection device in the center, which is both decorative and functional for holding the pieces together. Very nice!

Candle Stand

Processional Cross

With the designs clearly stated, I turned to preparing the stock. Now, here is one of the kinds of technical problems I encounter in my work. Here in Virginia the average relative humidity is fairly high. As a result, we generally air condition the interior of our living spaces, and of course we heat in the winter. It turns out that pieces of wood kept in these spaces tend to stay at an average moisture content of around 7 or 8 percent. That means that a piece of wood in my home or shop weighs 7 or 8 percent more than a completely dry piece of the same wood (called "oven dry" because the weight of the dry piece is determined after cooking the water out of it at 200 degrees until the weight stops decreasing). Utah, on the other hand, is a pretty dry place. I always thought Salt Lake City was dry - we often cooled our houses with devices we called "swamp coolers" which actually blew air over wet filter like material and the evaporation cooled the air and added humidity! That's dry! Well, southern Utah is even drier, but how dry? And why does that matter? Well, let's say the average indoor humidity in southern Utah is 4 percent. If I build a piece from 8 percent moisture content wood and ship it to southern Utah, as the piece dries further in its new environment it will shrink in width. How much? Well, about 1 percent of its size. That means that the candle stand column width will lose something like 1/16". Depending on construction methods, that kind of shrinkage can have a big impact on the life expectancy of the piece! Joints can loosen, wood can crack, and so forth. However, if I can dry the wood to 4 percent moisture content ahead of time, it might not shrink at all in the new environment. I'm all for minimizing the impact of environment, so my plan was to dry the wood and construct in a manner to minimize dimensional change problems. Fortunately, I have a solar kiln in which on sunny days (not always the case on the east coast) I can reduce the moisture content of lumber I place inside. So, I designed the construction so the grain of all the parts would be in the same direction, allowing any movement of parts to not fight the movement of other parts, made the base design a monolithic lamination (so it appears to be one solid piece of lumber and behaves as such), and after cutting the parts I placed them in the kiln to dry further. In the mean time, I researched the internet and called two furniture maker friends in Scottsdale, AZ (talk about a dry place!), and finally determined that 4 percent is actually a pretty good estimate of the average moisture content I should shoot for.

jointing stock

The committee wanted me to keep the pieces a little rustic looking, and knots were welcome! That's a little unusual for cherry, as knots in cherry often are accompanied by splits and other degradation, but after carefully assessing my stock I was able to choose pieces of wood that

drying stock

would give the right sense and be carve-able. The photo to the right shows me doing some initial jointing (making an edge straight) of one of the pieces of cherry. After jointing an edge and face, cutting the width to size and planing to thickness (planing is like jointing, but it uses a rotating wide "knife" blade to thickness the wood and make the faces parallel), I clamped all the pieces together with spacers between and readied them for the kiln. At that point the moisture content of the wood was 7 percent. The photo to the left shows the clamped stacks for the candle stand and the Cross stand ready to go. Next I concentrated on the base pieces of the stands, the larger square boxes that actually contact the floor. Here, again, I had to consider wood movement with changing humidity, so I glued pieces of wood together like a butcher block so that if

gluing bases

they changed moisture content they would not break apart. Also, that kind of construction gives nice faces on all four sides of the bases

clamping bases

and shows the end grain on the top face, just as in the upright parts of the stands. I glued the wood together for these bases using a very stiff glue called Unibond 800, which forms a rock hard joint that will not "creep". Creep is when a glue gives a little and allows the wood pieces to slightly misalign, and is a characteristic of most carpenter type glues. Normally, creep is not a big deal, but if you are trying to keep a lamination nice and smooth, you don't want creep. Veneering is usually done with something like Unibond 800 (which was specifically formulated for veneer work) because if a piece of glued veneer shifts on it's substrate (that's creep), it can open gaps between adjoining pieces of veneer -- and that's bad! The photo to the right shows me applying the Unibond 800 with a roller, and the photo to the left shows the completed bases clamped up and sitting in the sun to cure. Finally, I rough cut the stock for the Cross, and then I put everything into the kiln to dry some more. It will take a week or so of sun to do the trick, and I got a couple of sunny days last week, but it's been raining for two days and is supposed to rain again, tomorrow, so I'm not holding my breath! I guess good things are worth waiting for!

It's now been over a week since I placed the parts in the kiln. We have had a lot of overcast days, so not all the parts are as dry as I want them, but the bases (the pieces clamped up just above and to the left) are dry. These parts did not lend themselves to moisture measurement with my meter, since there are a lot of glue joints that might give false readings, so I measured dryness by the shrinkage. I had measured the dimensions of the blocks before placing in the kiln, then I measured them this morning. In the direction of the tangential grain, shrinkage was 1/8" for an 11-1/4" wide piece. Running the math for cherry told me that the moisture content was now around 3 percent, plenty low enough even for Utah. These pieces dried fast because there was a lot of end grain showing, and end grain lets moisture out like the ends of soda straws. The other parts are coming down in moisture content more slowly. I'll look at them in the morning and take it from there.

It's now been several days since I said I would check the kiln "in the morning" and I finally feel the wood for the uprights of the stands is dry. It measures around 4 percent moisture content, which is way too dry for Virginia, but just about right for southern Utah. Today I removed the wood from the kiln (I kept the wood for the Cross in the kiln, since it is thick and dries more slowly) and prepped it for gluing up as two monolithic blocks of laminated boards. Using the jointer and planer I refaced each board, since they twisted a little in the kiln (another reason

Gluing uprights

to dry wood for its intended locale is so you can get rid of all the twisting and bowing before the wood goes into the furniture), and used the horizontal drum sander to prepare the faces for gluing. Using the same glue and technique as in laying up the laminates for the bases, I glued the two uprights together. This was actually quite a massive gluing, and it sounds easier to do than it was. When gluing such broad surfaces, it is essential that each board be flat with both faces 100% parallel, and that takes some time and work. But the glue-up went well, and in the photo to the right you can see one of the uprights clamped up. The temperature was 75 degrees in the shop, and Unibond 800 requires a minimum clamp time of 3 hours at that temperature, so I left the first upright clamped for 6 hours before unclamping it so I could do the glue-up on the second upright. If

Routing groove

you saw my shop you would say that I have a LOT of clamps, but I have found that I can always use some more! One thing I did to the second upright, which was the one for the Processional Cross, was to cut a slot for the Cross staff to be planted into. That slot was to be 1-1/2" square and 12" deep, right in the center of the top of the stand and I did not have any tools to make such an excavation. My solution was to cut the slot out of the boards that would be laminated before doing the gluing. I used a 5/8" diameter flat bottom straight cutting router bit in the router table to cut a series of three grooves 12" long in the appropriate boards. Then, during the glue-up all I had to do was align the slots. The photo to the left shows the router table at work making the slots. Later, after I glue up the parts I will show a photo of the finished slot for the staff. Stay tuned!

Sanding base

While the glue was curing I set to finish the bases. You recall I glued up the laminates for the bases a couple of weeks ago, so now I had to flatten the tops and bottoms and then cut the slopes on the sides -- the bases are kind of like truncated pyramids, but with sides that only slope from the vertical by 2.8 degrees. I used the drum sander with progressively finer grits of sandpaper to face the tops and bottoms, and used the table saw to cut the slopes on the sides. The photo to the right shows the drum sander facing the bases.

With the gluing complete, I set to rough shape the uprights for the stands. First, I cut each stand to exact length. My goal here was to create perfectly square tops and bottoms so the uprights would sit perfectly vertically on their bases. This sounds simple, but we are talking about a blank of cherry 7-1/2" square and heavy, and my 10" saw blades could not chop through such a thickness. The solution was to raise my radial arm saw head so that the motor cleared the blank and take a cut almost half way

Bandsawing upright

through the blank, then rotate the blank 90 degrees, align it as well as I could and take another cut. I repeated this for all four sides, then cut the center with a hand saw (the radial arm saw cut left a 1-1/2" area in the center uncut). This worked pretty well, and I had to use a low angle block plane to fine tune only a little.

Jointing upright

With the ends squared, I next cut the tapers on the sides. To do this, I scribed lines for the cuts and used the bandsaw to do the cutting, as shown in the photo to right. This was successful in making rough tapers, but I needed to clean up the bandsaw marks, so I turned to the jointer. Hefting the blanks onto the jointer bed, I successively took shallow cuts from the faces, rotating the blanks 90 degrees with each cut. After a short time, all the saw marks were removed and the blanks were still square in cross section. The photo to left shows the jointer in action. After the tapers were cut and smoothed, I could cut the round overs on the edges of all the parts. To do this I used a round over bit in my router table and made quick work of the bulk removal. Later I will clean up everything with a hand plane, scraper, and sandpaper. For now, I'm going for the rough shapes.

Rough candle stand

Rough stands shown together

One of the things I had to get used to with designing on a computer is that the computer screen is the same size no matter how large the piece I am designing. Now, that sounds pretty basic, but when I hefted the upright for the candle stand I was afraid that it was just too big! I had to get some perspective to see past my sore arms after manhandling it! I knew from the scaled drawings on the computer that it should look right with the candle, but I wanted to be sure. So, I rummaged through my stock of 'stuff' and found a section of PVC pipe about 1-7/8" in diameter. Recall that the candle is 2" in diameter, so I had located a surrogate candle to use for comparison. I cut the pipe to a 30" length and set it in the brass candle holder I had obtained. Understanding that colors would not be quite right - the brass still had to be darkened to appear as oiled bronze and the stand had no finish that would darken it slightly and

Cross stand top view

bring out the grain - I could still see the proportions. I was relieved to see that the proportions looked just like the computer drawings I had made; a photo of the stand with the pipe 'candle' is shown to right. I think that my problem was that I was making both the candle stand and the Cross stand at the same time, and the Cross stand is smaller and lighter than the candle stand. The differences were very apparent when I was working them together; for your benefit I took a shot with the two together so you could see what I mean. That photo is to left, but bear in mind that the staff and Cross are yet to be added, which will give the Cross stand an entirely different look. Also, I mentioned earlier that I would show a photo of the slot I made in the Cross base, to hold the staff, and that shot is also to the left. Please ignore the dark marks - they are burn marks from the router bit caused because I was moving the stock slowly while cutting. These marks will easily be removed with a few strokes of a block plane.

Carving candle stand

Test carving

I cleaned up the router marks with a plane and smoothed the sides of both upright stands, then set off to carve the designs. I started with the candle stand. It was to have the waves of the sea with the Christian fish symbol within, as depicted in the rendering at the top of this page. But I had to limber up my carving muscles a bit, so I started with carving a sunburst design on the top of the stand, to surround the candle. This was a simple evolution with a small gouge chisel, and the photo to the right shows how this carving looked. Now came the hard part. I had to get a feel for how to carve the waves, so I first sketched a rough design on the sides of the candle stand. Then, before lifting a chisel I drew a similar design on a block of scrap cherry wood and tried my hand at carving the design there. I had stopped the client's time clock, since this practice was education for me, and I took the better part of a morning to get the feel of what I wanted (for this type of commission, where the design has never been made before, I work on a materials plus time basis to be fair to both myself and my client). The photo to the left shows the scrap block with a design carved in it. I was not attempting to carve to exact scale, and as an afterthought I decided to carve part of the

Carving candle stand

fish, as well. I think the effect was pretty good, so I was ready to start on the real stand. The first step in the

Carving candle stand

carving was to outline the 'waves' with a 1/2" bench chisel and then start to carve the step that will give the wave depth. The photo to right shows this first outlining step. In that photo, which was actually taken while working on the second side (the design was to go around all four sides), you can see the finished work on the first side and see exactly what I was doing. With the outlining done, I used a #3 sweep gouge to cut back a bevel against the vertical cut. With the bevel depth sufficient to really see the waves, I next smoothed the face of each wave with a #7 sweep gouge, giving it a little texture. The photo to the left shows that carving. By the end of the day, I had used muscles I had not used in a long time, so I may require a day or two at another project before I continue!

Carving fish symbol

Carved candle stand

It's been several days since I last wrote, and my muscles have adapted to carving. The entire candle stand has now been carved, complete with the Christian fish symbol and letters - in the photo to right I am carving the fish. I think the waves and the fish turned out

Copper fish

nicely, and the photo to the left shows the finished carving. I used a series of gouges to do that, as briefly discussed above, and you can clearly see the texture in the waves produced by the #7 sweep gouge. However, the fish symbol does not stand out as much as I would like. Now, the alter pieces at the Church use copper accents, so I'm experimenting. The photo to right shows my sample practice piece with the first two letters and part of the fish painted in copper paint. You will have to enlarge the photo to get the effect, and I think that might just be the accent needed to set off the piece. I'll have to think about that. Anyway, next challenge is carving the stand for the Processional Cross. That will get a Crown of Thorns carving and the letters 'IHS'. And the wood for the cross itself is still in the kiln - it's been quite cloudy and rainy on the east coast, and the wood it thick. Both spell slow drying.

Candle cup

Well, I talked with the folks at the Church about the copper paint and the decision was made to stick with the carving unpainted. So, to make the carving stand out better I steepened the sides of the fish and the letters so they would show more shadow. I have not photographed the stand since, but it does show the symbol much better. Now it was time to do the finishing touches. In between applications of shellac polish and finishing the base pieces of the stand, I darkened the brass cup which would hold the candle. I was asked to make the cup an oiled bronze color, but all I could buy was bright brass. So I purchased some brass darkening solution, which contains selenious acid, and cleaned all the lacquer off the bright brass cup. Then I immersed the cup in the solution for a very short time (like 15 seconds) and removed it. I did a few touch up dips and then rinsed the cup in water and then neutralized the acid with baking soda. Finally I lacquered the cup with three coats so it would retain it's color, and the photo to the right shows the result. I think it turned out pretty nice!

Carving thorns

Cross stand carved

Next it was on to carving the crown of thorns and IHS symbol on the Cross stand. I spent half a day experimenting (again, on my dime) with different carving techniques, and when I thought I had it right I drew the pattern on the actual stand. Actually, I traced the pattern that I had printed out from my computer using the pattern the folks at the Church desired. I used my photo software to scale the pattern to look right on the project and then used carbon paper to do the tracings. Then I set to work with the chisels. I found that carving this totally absorbed me and I was practically oblivious to time. When I finally came up for air, I noticed that my voice was hoarse! All I can figure is that I went so long without taking a drink of water that I dried out! Very strange! The photo to the right shows me doing some carving, and the photo to the left shows the finished carvings. If I do say so myself, I think the thorns came out very well, and they are sharp!

About this time the wood for the Cross had been in the kiln long enough, so I removed it so I could build the Cross. The joint between the horizontal arms and the vertical

Tenon jig

piece was to be a bit complex, so I set to preparing the stock for the joinery. I trued and dimensioned the parts using the jointer, planer, and radial arm saw, then drew the joint pattern on the parts. Thickness marking gauges, which are guides with sharp blades make crisp markings for these joints; a pencil line is too thick to cut with a saw and get a tight joint - the idea is to "split" the scored mark with a saw for an exact fit. The photo to the right shows the finished joint so you can see where I was headed. You can see the the horizontal parts overlap each side of a cutout on the vertical part, sort of an open mortise and tenon joint,

Drill out cross waste

but cut at a miter to form an 'X' pattern in the center of the joint. Starting with the horizontal parts, I used my tenoning jig on the table saw to cut a slot on the end of each arm. I did not take a photo of this actual operation, but the photo at left shows the use of the tenon jig for another project, so you can get the

Chisel cross joint waste

idea of how it works. Since this was to be a wide tenon, I cut only each cheek of the tenon. To remove the waste between the cuts, I drilled holes across the waste piece, as shown at right, so the bulk of the waste would simply fall out. Then I used a chisel with a guide block to pare the bottom of the tenon flat, as shown at left. This method was quicker than making multiple cuts on the tenon jig, and I did not want to use

Miter cut cross joint

a dado blade to make the wide cut for a number of technical reasons. Once the tenon was cut, I used the compound sliding miter saw to cut a 45 degree angle on each side of the tenon, as shown at right. That completed work on the arms, but now I had to work the vertical piece. Using a Japanese crosscut saw I carefully cut the mating sides of the joint on the vertical piece, as shown at left.

Hand sawing cross joint

Then, using the drill press again I drilled out most of the waste. Using a chisel I cleaned up the sides and cheeks of the tenon and carefully fit the pieces together, paring as necessary to get a

Chamfer cross

tight fit. Once the joint was done, I cut all pieces exactly to length and chamfered the edges before assembly. The photo to the right shows me chamfering the edges with a 45 degree bevel bit in the router table. With the chamfers cut, I used a plane to smooth all surfaces to a shimmering finish and did light sanding before applying shellac polish to the inside faces. Then I glue the joint together.

sawing butterfly

With the basic Cross completed it was time to carve the mortises for the center butterfly and the "nails", which were to be squares of walnut. The butterfly served two purposes. First, it added strength to the joint where the arms of the Cross met the vertical part. Second, it added a

Carving butterfly

nice touch to the overall look. To cut the butterfly mortises, I first cut the butterflies from walnut stock using the bandsaw, as shown at right. With a chunk

Carving Cross

of walnut fashioned into the bow tie shape, I simply sliced off four half inch thick sections. Then I cleaned up the bandsaw blade marks using a chisel. I then scribed the shape of the butterflies on the Cross and then drilled out the wasted to a depth of a little more than one-quarter inch. I chiseled the mortises to the scribe line and made sure the bottoms were flat, as shown at left. Then I fit the butterflies to make a Greek Cross shape. The horizontal butterfly was the full bow tie shape, and the vertical butterfly was simply the top and bottom pieces cut to fit into the remaining mortise. The nails were installed similarly. Once the glue was dry on the inserts, I carefully pared the inserts t achieve an angular "chiseled" look, as shown at right. The final step was to cut and fit the staff for the Cross. I used white oak and relieved the sharp edges and finished it nicely so it would have a nice feel for the person carrying it. I was intending to make the staff something that could be assembled to the Cross once inside the Church in Utah, saving on shipping a little bit, but I found that it was a tough job to get the Cross to sit EXACTLY collinear with the staff. At that point I knew I had to assemble and glue the two in the shop to get them perfectly aligned. Here are all the finished pieces!

Cross and Stand

Cross

Cross Stand Carving

Candle Stand

Candle Stand carving

The job is not done until the client receives the pieces, and normally that happens quickly after I complete the work. One day they are in the shop receiving the finishing touches, and the next day they are but a memory -- secure in a new happy home! This time, however, the agony of separation was prolonged because I had to

Crates

crate the pieces for safe shipment to Utah. Would the shipper lose the crates or run a fork lift through them? Would the finish scuff after 3000 miles of jolting along the highways? Would the client like them as much in person as from the photos I sent? These were some of the issues that swirled through my head as I constructed the most substantial crates I could, balancing shipping costs against safety. I wish I had taken the time to photograph the insides of the crates, but the full day I spent making them was intense. It felt like I was constructing caskets, and I was none too happy to lay the pieces to rest within the custom fit cradles within the crates. No bubble wrap or shipping peanuts here! In fact, the pieces fit so snuggly inside that the folks in Utah may have choice words for me when they have to remove them! But there will be no damage - I'm justifiably optimistic about that. So here's a photo of the crated work, sitting in my shop while I wait for my insurance company to write the rider to cover the work in transit. Bon voyage, dear friends ... enjoy your new home, and one day I will visit when you least expect it!