Older than I thought

Turns out I had the history of the desk wrong.  I was speaking with my mother last night, and it was my other grandfather who worked for the post office, my father's father was a book keeper (in my defence both passed when I was pretty young :)), and the desk was purchased used for my father.

 I know now that it was definitely purchased used as my father was born in 1939, and on the bottom side of the middle drawer I found the manufacturer's information.  It was made by the Office Specialty Manufacturing company, and is a Office Specialty System desk.  I started searching on-line and the first bit of information I found was an advertisement in the Montreal Gazette from 1913.  The second article I found was a history of the Office Specialty Manufacturing company.  Usually when I find these they're historical stubs, in this case it was a historical background by the company itself.

Amazingly the company still exists.  They're now known as Inscape and are still in the business of selling office furniture.  So if you want some office furniture you know will last they may be your guys.

I contacted their information mailbox with a few questions, and received a very nice and quick response:

Good Morning Kevin:

Thank you for your wonderful email regarding your Office Specialty desk.  Office Specialty has been in business since 1888. Imagine, 124 years now.  We manufactured wood products up to 1954.  We then started manufacturing all steel products.  All of our wood desks were made of quarter-cut oak, walnut or mahogany.  110 was built approx 1920.  Do be so careful in restoring and keeping these numbers for value and antique reasons.  So your unit is around 100 years old.  I receive emails from all over the world and it is so exciting to know where they all end up.  I would appreciate knowing where you are from Kevin.  Would also very much appreciate a picture of your desk for my files.

110 is the serial number of my desk.  Turns out the desk is about thirty years older than I'd thought!

The Desk Itself

As I indicated in yesterday's post, the desk most likely came from the Canadian Post Office at some point in the past through my grandfather, Garnet Black.  It's a standard enough looking office desk, other than the trim which is a very striking quartersawn white oak.  Or at least it should be.

If you look closely you can still see some of the peach latex

Like many of us, this poor piece has led a rough life.  Undoubtedly abused in it's first incarnation as a working desk in an office it suffered further indignity, likely in the 1970's, when as the story goes, my aunt painted this beautifully figured desk...in peach latex.  Let me restate that one more time for emphasis, a quartersawn white oak desk was painted in latex.  In the colour peach.  I may have been born in the 70's but I sure don't understand what folks were thinking back then.

When my grandfather passed, and my grandmother moved into a retirement community, the desk along with a lot of other furniture was passed down to the family.  For years my mother used the peach monstrosity as a sewing table.

About fifteen years ago, my father decided to refinish the desk.  He worked hard at it, getting that peach paint off with stripper and following that up with the belt sander (I guess that's where I learned the belt sander fixes all mantra from before).  Once stripped he finished it with a gallon or two of uncut home center polyurethane.  Painstakingly applied by brush, or at least that seems to be the story the embedded bristles tell me.

The desk itself

Obviously I'm being hard on my dad's refinishing efforts, and it's not intended as a dig.  He did the best he could with the skills and knowledge he had at the time.  Had I tackled the job a few years ago, I'd likely have attacked it the same way. 

Beyond the two failed refinishing jobs done to it in the past, the desk is also showing it's age.  Many of the glue joints have failed, the patina on the pulls is worn away, the mortise locks still work but the keys have long since disappeared and the veneer on the pullouts is peeling away.

This is going to be the biggest refinishing job I've done to date, and I hope I can do it justice.  For reasons personal and aesthetic, this desk needs a chance to live again.

Dad's Desk

A little over a year ago, shortly after my father passed away, my mother went through a redecoration phase in her home.  One of the things she wanted was a proper computer desk and not the old desk she'd been using.  As she lives in another country it wouldn't be feasible for me to build her a proper desk, and against my advice she decided to purchase a desk shaped object from the local office supply store.  While in little under a year that $300 pile of junk has since disintegrated and she's gone on to buy another  one, it left the old desk without a home.

Ordinarily this wouldn't be an issue.  Throw it away, or donate it to Goodwill or what have you, case closed.  That was her initial intent before I pointed out to her, that a it was my dad's desk and b, it was quartersawn white oak.

Technically I suppose neither are 100% accurate.  The desk's solid visible lumber is quartersawn and the sides and top are veneered, with the non-visible pieces of several lesser wood species, mostly birch.  The desk also wasn't exactly my dad's, though it did come from his family.  My grandfather worked for the post office and it was his office desk that somehow came into his possession.  I'm guessing he either bought it when they redid the offices or took it when he retired.

The desk sat in my mom's basement until November of this past year, when I had to return to Ottawa for the funeral of my closest friend.  As I would be driving up to carry some of Adrian's personal effects back to his parents it was a convenient time for me rent a trailer for the return drive and take the desk back home with me.  Which is what I did, so let the saga of Dad's desk begin.

I'm going to die and I have 27BF of high quality curly maple

Relax, I'm not in poor health and don't plan to shuffle off this mortal coil anytime soon, and no, you can't haz my stuff.  A couple of months ago, my oldest and closest friend passed away and it's gotten me thinking about my own mortality.  Facts are facts.  One day I'm going to die.  I also have 27 board feet (give or take) of high quality 8/4 curly maple.

These two facts are related.  No the maple's not going to kill me.  At least I hope not, and it hasn't made any suspicious moves so far but I am keeping my eye on it.  No, the simple fact is that I've been sitting on that lumber for around five years, and well let's face it, none of us are getting younger.

About five years ago, I found a little wood seller in McKinney, Texas called Curly Woods. You won't find them now, as I quite literally found them the day they were having their going out of business sale.  I was able to get a great deal on a lot of curly maple, a lumber that I knew I wasn't ready to use.  It was too nice for my skillset, heck I was barely making forays into poplar territory at that time.  But the price was great and I dreamed of all the stuff I could make with it.

A small music box from my stash

I've made a couple of small, simple, music boxes with some of it but most of it is sitting in my lumber rack waiting to be used.  A lot of woodworkers hoard lumber, I think it may partially be that when we have a beautiful piece of unspoiled wood we're free to imagine.  What can we build, how will we build it, we're free to dream.  Once we give it form, be it box or chair, table or bed it's fixed.  We can no longer imagine all the things we could build with it.  It's built.  And so, without conscious thought, the wood sits and gathers dust.

Many of us have been fortunate enough to have come into some great lumber because it was sitting in someone's barn, or basement, or garage and when they got too old to work it, or passed, it was given away or sold for a song.  I don't know about you, but I don't want to be that guy.  Beautiful lumber will always be there to free my imagination, but if I have it, it's going to get used.

When they pry that last chisel from my cold, grey hands I want two thoughts to go through their heads.  Where's this guy's woodpile, I don't see it anywhere; and dang that chisel's sharp I'm gonna need a band-aid.

Flattening the bench

Workbenches.  We've all got them in one form or another, whether they're an old door on a couple of sawhorses, or a massive roubo made from exotic wood, hand cut by the natives of Pongo Pongo.  We chisel on them, saw on them, plane on them, assemble on them, finish on them, even eat and drink at them.  For something that takes that much abuse, they're remarkably low maintenance.

Shortly after I took up the hobby, I decided I needed a workbench.  I'd been working on a couple of sawhorses and a half sheet of mdf and it worked, but wasn't enough.  Money was tight, and getting my hands on an awful lot of maple was beyond my budget.  Not to mention I hadn't even worked with maple at that point, and wasn't confident I could build a bench, certainly not for the several hundred dollars in lumber it would have cost to attempt and fail.

An hour or so into the process

Luckily, Popular Woodworking had recently put out a special issue all about workbenches. The issue had several designs, one of which struck my eye.  This guy named Chris Schwarz, who I'd never heard of, had an article and a plan about building an inexpensive workbench from construction lumber.  Not just construction lumber but southern yellow pine, a very common lumber where I live in North Texas.  Pricing out the plan, I figured it'd cost me a little over $200 if I went for the fancy quick release vise.  I could afford that, and if I mucked it up too badly well I could probably eBay that vise.

I dutifully went to my local big box store and picked out my lumber, jointed it, planed it and poured my heart and soul into it.  All told it took me about a month and in the end I had a workbench.  There were a few mistakes but it was a workbench.  I was thrilled. Now I knew I had to flatten it.  I'd read that somewhere.  People used crazy contraptions with their routers to flatten stuff, some crazy old nuts even used handplanes.  Seriously.  Handplanes!  What did they think we lived in the 1800's?  I didn't own a router at the time, and the handplane I owned (as if!) was some piece of crap Buck Brothers which couldn't cut anything.  But I did have a belt sander.  Belt sander fixes all!  So I dutifully went at my lovely new bench with a belt sander, those areas that refused to flatten, I just dug down and pushed harder, that'd make it flat.

This wasn't even the worst area!

When I was done I was thrilled, the fact that the neighborhood kids came by a couple of days later with their skateboards asking if they could use my new skate park didn't register with me.  I just figured they had the wrong address. 

I did everything on that bench  I used it as an outfeed table for my first tablesaw, I built stuff on it (some stuff even turned out ok), I finished on it, I even bought some chisels and waterstones and learned to sharpen on it. 

It's flat! and back in it's normal home.

Until this past weekend, I'd never properly flattened my bench, and it was about time.  The esteemed mister Schwarz, in one of his books mentioned it takes him about forty-five minutes to flatten a benchtop.  I can only imagine he's just saying that to sound cool, or he's never encountered anything like my bench.

Going across the grain, it took me a full day, my trusty foreplane (good ole Stanley #6) and a couple of resharpenings to get the rough flattening done.  In some areas the top was so out of flat that I'd have needed a 1/4" feeler gauge to run under a straightedge.  From there, diagonal passes with my #7 and then full passes with the same took about an hour.  I'm guessing that's where Chris gets the forty-five minute figure from.

There's a little minor tear-out, but nothing impacting the use, and a couple of plane marks I didn't bother getting out.  Serendipity struck again.  I was in the middle of grabbing my smoother, while listening to Marc Spagnolo's interview of the once again mentioned Chris Schwarz and it was at that moment where Chris mentioned after he flattens there's a little tearout and a few plane marks and he does nothing about it.  I was pooped and if it was good enough for the Schwarz it would be good enough for me.

As for the belt sander.  It's been sitting on a shelf for a couple of years since I last used it.  Me I'll stick with my planes.

It's a start

Hooray it's another woodworking blog!  Terrific there'll be loads of stuff to learn!  There won't.  Insightful insights! Nope.  Pithy commentary!  Well commentary, you may have to provide the pith.  Okay well why the heck should you read it?  I dunno, I suppose it's something to do at work when you're slacking off.

Bad jokes aside, introductions are a pain, but at least they seem to follow a standard pattern.  Experience, what got you into the activity, what your goals are, why you're writing a blog, who the heck are ya etc.

May as well start with the basics.  I've been woodworking for a few years now.  I did a few small things when I lived in apartments, but didn't have anything resembling a shop until I bought my first house.  Before that my experience was lacking, to say the least.  I didn't grow up in a real handy household.  My father didn't have much interest in the craft, and I grew up as one of the first generations without shop class.  I had more knowledge of socket sets than chisels.

Without all of that I still wanted to build stuff, specifically wooden stuff.  Why?  It's funny, when I hear people talk about their influences and what got them started I generally hear the same responses: their dad, Norm, David Marks, Sam Maloof, Jim Krenov, Chris Schwarz.  All valid, and I do and have taken some influence from all of them.  But for me it boils down to an old book.  Home Repairs Made Easy by Lee Frankl. Published in 1949, this yellowing, beaten up book sat on my dad's workbench longer than I've been alive, he in turn I presume got it from his father.  It's not a woodworking book, but it does have sections on basic woodworking, framing and other related topics (as well as plumbing, plastering, etc.). I'm sure it's well written, I've never read it.  But as a child, I'd creep down to the dark corner of the basement where my father's workbench was, pull out the book and leaf through it looking at the pictures and imagining building the stuff.  If there's anything I can look back at that really woke up the desire need to build, it's that book.

So why am I writing this and what do I hope to accomplish.  Well the why is more self-motivational than anything else.  Finding shop time can be difficult.  Up until recently I traveled a lot for work, add in other commitments, the Texas summer heat and inherent laziness and shop time can fall off the charts.  Adding a journal selfishly will put a commitment on me to get my butt in the shop, whether or not anyone reads this.

Which gets to the last thing of what I can add to the blogging community.  My best guess is the follies of a half-arsed hobbyist.  I'm only half-joking there.  There are some tremendous woodworking blogs out there right now, by much better woodworkers than myself.  The biggest difference I can see, is that I'm not a professional, and I'm not as far down my own journey as many of the others.  That means there's less knowledge in my repertoire than theirs, but on the plus side it means that anyone who reads this can learn from the inevitable errors I'll run into!

Well that's longer winded than I'd planned, so I'm gonna run.  Apparently I've got a musty old book to read.