Beyond Shape, Proportions & Size - The SHOW Face

Even the simplest piece of furniture is made up of a BUNCH of parts.
Getting each part’s shape and size right AND the joinery cut correctly -
at the right size and location can be a lot more difficult than you’d
think. It’s SO easy to end up with two left front and two right front
legs (and NO left rear or right rear legs), or a front apron or
stretcher slightly, but noticably, shorter than the rear apron or
stretcher. And when you’re cutting out the sockets of through or half
blind dovetails, it’s REALLY easy to think you’re cutting out the socket
of a tail when you’re actually cutting out the tail (MARK THE WASTE SIDE
OF THE LINE!).

With all the measuring and layout, fence set ups, stops to set, rip and
cross cuts to make, the joinery to cut - it’s REALLY easy to make a
criticial mistake somewhere along the line. Some of the OOPSes are
fixable, some mean DO OVER.

Now if you’re only concerned with making a piece of furniture that’s
“this tall, this wide and this deep”, along with some details like how
thick are the legs, how wide is the apron, how thick is the top - and
because you’re going to PAINT IT - you don’t have to worry about the
SHOW Face. And even if the wood isn’t going to be given a coat of
paint, just getting making the parts correctly is the focus - noticing
how the grain works or doesn’t work together may only be notable after
the fact - when the piece is done and finished.

But somewhere along your woodworking journey, the color, grain and
figure of the wood you use for a project will eventually become REALLY
important. You’ll spend quite a bit time laying out a bunch of boards,
flipping them around, turning them over, sliding them to get the best
grain match, arranging and re-arranging them, searching for the best
combination that’ll take your project up a notch. You may even make
full scale “picture frames” for some parts and move the “frame” around
on candidate pieces of stock, searching for just the right grain
directiona and pattern. A pair of framing squares take on a new use - a
window through which to view a drawer front or maybe a panel for a door.
And when the WOOD becomes a significant part of your idea, you’ll likely
escape “Get The Most Parts From The Least Amount Of Wood” and begin to
forget about the Per Board Foot Price Tag.

(As an aside - if you pick up nice wood when “deals” come along, even
though you have no immediate, or foreseeable use for it - when the time
comes to use it - you will have long forgotten its price. If you wait
long enough, inflation will make the price you paid years earlier seem
cheap. At that point the quality of your work can change -
significantly - for the better)

Now there is a downside to worrying about getting the best SHOW faces
for parts. The effect of a machine operation on the SHOW face becomes
vey significant. If there are any stop cuts or router operations
required to make the parts for your piece things can get a bit
complicated. How do you make the stopped rip cut so that the overcut
doesn’t show on the SHOW face? When you route a specific part, will it
require a Climb Cut to avoid possible (and probable) tear out?

So how many projects had you completed before the SHOW face of parts
became a real issue for a piece?

How long had you been woodworking before the cost of the wood you used
was forgotten?

Have you “wasted” half or more of a piece of stock in order to get the
SHOW face look you wanted?

How has the importance of the SHOW face complicated how you made a
piece?

charlie b

What's with all that header info in your post ?

charlieb wrote:
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Pat:

I have no idea where all that came from. I wrote the message in
an old version of Word Perfect then cut and pasted it to a
"To:News" message from Netscape 3.0 (ok so I'm a Luddite).

Perhaps WP has imbedded non-displayable, non-standard characters
that raised hell with giganews.

Won't do THAT again.

Apologies for the HUH!?

charlie b

Cool post, and spot-on.

I have only recent really gotten to that happy place that you describe. For
me, there were two distinct events that took place that allowed me to
dramatically change how I went about woodworking.

It was not about how long, or about how many projects completed.

In 2001, I completed a 500sf fully heated shop above my attached garage,
nearly doubling my space and my woodworking "season" enabled me to "take
things to the next level".

At that point, I was paying close attention to the "show face" but I was
getting there by judiciously pawing though the entire pile at my
not-so-local hardwood dealer with a specific list sizes for key components
of a project.

What I was lacking was space for inventory. My wife is a quilter; she has a
whole closet dedicated to (probably 1000's of square feet) of "fabric
stash". What I needed was a "stash".

Last year I built a little barn mostly for that purpose. Since then, I
have come to the conclusion: so long as you are willing to buy in volume,
overlook marginal quality, strike when the opportunity presents itself, and
generally whore one's self out, wood can be had for pennies on the dollar.

Since then, my "stash" has swollen to about 1000 bf and growing.

As Charlie suggests, going to the stash and returning with an armload
unencumbered by personal conflict is truly liberating.

That said, my personal frugality requires that I still search for the
smallest, ugliest, nastiest piece of stock that will still look really
really good.

Cheers,

Steve





** Posted from http://www.teranews.com **

Charlie,
I thought I was the only one . . .
I often wonderd if other woodworkers "wasted" as much time as I do
obsessing over getting just the right look. You captured the essence
of my journey quite nicely.

But I'll never forget one time when I worried to much about the "show"
and it bit me in butt. I was building a solid wood back about 36 X 48
for a display case. Since the back would show, I carefully arranged
the boards for the best grain presentation. It was beautiful. The
first winter, the back bowed around like it was part of a barrel. In
my obsession over grain, I had oriented every single board with the
smiles of the end grain facing the same direction. When they cupped,
they all cupped the same way with really bad results.

Now I have one more thing to worry about. In addition to show, I have
to worry about grain direction and stability too.

DonkeyHody
"Everybody is ignorant, only on different subjects." - Will Rogers