Repairing a J. B. Van Sciver Chair

I volunteer for an organization called the "Repair Cafe", whose purpose is to rebuff our throw-away culture by fixing things for people (for free) and thereby keeping stuff out of landfills.  A client brought in an incredibly rickety chair that belonged to his mother.  It wobbled excessively front to back and only a little less side to side.  Usually we fix things right there at the repair event, but this one was going to need a workshop and some tools that I didn't have at the event, so I brought it home.

The Van Sciver chair

This chair had an emblem on the underside of one rail indicating the J. B. Van Sciver Co., of Camden, NJ.  A quick internet search found this company was in business from the late 1800s to about 1980.  I'm not good at dating furniture, but it was all mortise and tenon construction and it used hide glue, so maybe it was made more than 50 or 70 years ago.  The screws that held the seat to the rails were slot head screws, but they were clearly manufactured screws (not blacksmith-made).

J. B. Van Sciver

I've seen several videos of furniture repair, but have only ever worked on a couple old pieces that needed some help.  The first thing I did was to label all the parts so I could get them back in the right position during reassembly.

Parts labelled

Almost all the joints in the chair were very loose, so it didn't take much to get the chair apart.  Two "spreader" clamps helped with that.  One complication was that the upper backrest rail was screwed to the legs (and probably glued), with plugs in the countersunk holes.  Those joints were solid and I didn't want to take them apart, which meant I had to disassemble the chair in a certain order so as not to stress those joints.

Before I could do this, though, there were corner blocks under the seat that needed to be removed.  And each had 5 or 6 small nails in addition to the glue holding them in place.

Arrrgh!  Nails!!

Some of the nails were proud and easy to remove, but others were tough.  I bought a tool called a "cat's paw" that helped to remove the nails.  What a bummer, though - I had to chisel out some wood around the more stubborn nails and thought I might have to replace the corner blocks, but in the end they were still good enough to use.

Almost fully disassembled

The builders used hide glue in the joints, but it was mostly gone and what was still there was extremely brittle.  I tested it to make sure it was hide glue.

The water test to see if it was hide glue

The weird thing about this chair was that the mortises were WAY longer than they needed to be for the size of the tenons.  It's no wonder that the chair was racking so badly!  So I added some wood to the sides of the tenons to get a better fit.

A poorly fitting mortise and tenon

Gluing some wood onto the tenon with PVA glue

All the seat rail mortises were way oversized and inconsistent - some were about 1 1/2" long, some 1 1/4".  But the tenons were about 1" wide.  The wood I added allowed me to get a far better fit to the mortises and this should help keep the chair from racking over time.  The stretcher mortises fit much better, but I had to thicken the tenons by gluing on some shavings.  Some of the seat rail tenons needed this, too.

Here's a dry-fit before glue-up

Since my hide glue is about 5 years old, I did some testing before using it.  It has been in the fridge all that time, and it performed perfectly.

Testing the hide glue on scrap with and edge joint and a face joint

I glued up the chair with the hide glue and left it to cure overnight.  Later, I glued and screwed the corner blocks back in place.  I managed to find some slotted-head screws in my stash that matched very well the screws used to hold the seat to the seat rails.

Two new screws holding the block in place

And that was it.  The chair is now solid as a rock and should be good for another couple of generations of users.

The repaired chair

I did not try to fix any dents, scrapes or finish problems.  But I did scrape away some tiny paint droplets from the seat.  This was a very interesting chair and the owners are thrilled to have it in good condition again.

Issues With the Ohio Tool Plow Plane

I've had this Ohio Tool #96 plow plane for a number of years now and I really love using it.  So much so that I haven't used my Lee Valley plow plane since I fixed up the wooden plow.  But recently I worked on a project that required cutting a groove in the ENDS of a board, and the Ohio Tool plow was not up to the task.  It cuts great (usually) when going with the grain, but across end grain was not good.

Ohio Tool Co. #96

Left side view

My set of Ibbotson irons
From right, numbered #1 (1/8"), #2 (3/16"), etc. through #8 (5/8")

Probably 99% of the grooves I make are 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4".  The iron that inspired this post is the 3/16".  I'm trying to figure out why it's not performing as well as I would like.

To get a comparison, I pulled out (for the first time in several years) the Lee Valley plow plane to test it making an end grain groove.  It performed very nicely, with the groove having a smooth bottom and walls.

Nice clean groove in end grain - Lee Valley plow with 1/4" iron

So this had me take a close look at the wooden plow.  It wasn't that my irons weren't sharp - they were.  It just felt like the iron was not well supported well.  This hasn't seemed to affect the plane at all when grooving with the grain.  But with the extra resistance plowing end grain, the plane had a really hard time.  And this was true with a very light set.

I had a close look at the business end of the plane and the first thing I noticed was that there was a little gap between the wedge and the iron.

Showing the skate, iron and wedge

Pencil pointing to a small gap

That gap did not go all the way to the other side of the wedge and iron.  So there is good contact for the unseen part.  I trimmed the wedge a tiny bit to try to get a better fit, but didn't go far out of fear that I might ruin the overall fit of the wedge.

Looking further, I saw that there is not very good contact between the iron and the skate.  Most of you will know that the back of the iron has a V-shaped groove that fits on an inversely similar shape on the front of the rear skate.

Showing the V-grooves on the backs of the 1/8", 3/16" and 1/4" irons

This is where I don't have good contact

A piece of paper easily fits between 3/16" iron and skate

I was able to place that single thickness of paper about 3/8" - 1/2" up between the iron and skate.  This gave me an idea.  I stuffed a double thickness of paper between the iron and skate and trimmed it so that it wouldn't get in the way when I tried to plane a groove.

The double paper thickness went about 3/16" up between iron and skate

But it allowed me to plow a better groove in end grain

I decided then to look at the other irons.  I found the 1/8" iron fit well with the skate - no gap at all.  But the 1/4" iron also had a gap.  When I plowed a 1/4" groove with the grain, I could see the telltale sign that the iron is not supported well.

See the juddering lines in the bottom of the groove?

That means the iron is flexing and jumping as it's cutting - it's not well supported.  And while I was able to cut an end grain groove, it wasn't as smooth an operation as it could be.

1/4" groove in end grain

I ended up testing the 3/16" and 1/4" irons with a couple thicknesses of blue tape between the iron and skate.  I got much better cuts, but that is not a good permanent solution.  Somehow, I need to move the rear skate forward or get the iron to move back toward the skate.

If anybody out there has ideas of the best way to handle this situation, I'd love to hear them.  Please leave a comment.

Making a Potting Bench

This is a project I've thought about for a long time.  We don't do a whole lot of gardening here at the humble abode, but when we do get a new plant it would be nice not to have to re-pot it on the ground or at the kitchen sink.

The completed project

It started with an internet search for some ideas and then later a Sketchup drawing.

Sketchup drawing

I did end up changing a couple things from the drawing, most notably I didn't use the shelf supports that are shown with the upper two shelves.

This project is far from "fine woodworking".  The lumber is just common pine 1x4s, with 1x6s for the upper shelves.  None of the boards was straight and there were lots of knots, but I wasn't looking for anything more.

18  1x4s, each 8' long

The construction was fairly simple.  The 36" front legs and 64" rear legs are each made of two lengths of 1x4, glued together at right angles.  I planed the edge on one piece, but did not bother planing the face of the mating piece.  The two main platforms, one at 8" off the ground, the other at 36", were basically boxes glued and pocket-hole screwed together.  Each was 20" x 47 1/2".  I added slats that were supported by a piece that was glued and screwed to the inside of the long sides of these boxes.

The two "boxes" roughed out and screwed together

I got to pull out the miter box to cut the 24 slats.
There's a board clamped upright in the end vise acting as a stop for repeat cuts.

Here, I'm checking the fit of slats in one of the boxes

I got to use a variety of hand tools for screw holes and screws

Attaching a slat to the support piece

The gap between slats was 3/8".  Twelve fit into each box, with the first and last slat made less wide to fit the space and leave a 1/4" gap at the end.

To support the boxes on the legs, I glued and screwed small blocks to the inside of the legs.  The boxes rest on those blocks and are later screwed to the legs.

Starting to come together.  Here it is dry-clamped.

I fit the two upper shelves similarly with blocks glued and screwed to the inside of the back legs.  I cut those shelves for a good fit between the legs and they are also pocket-hole screwed to the legs.

View from underneath an upper shelf.  You can see the support
block and also the pocket screws from shelf to leg if you look closely.

The back edges of the upper shelves were planed straight so that I could glue on a strip to keep things from falling off the back of the shelf.  Those pieces were glued to the back edge of the shelf and also pocket-hole screwed to the legs.

Back view showing the strips glued to the upper shelves
and pocket-hole screwed to the legs

I thought I would glue and screw the main boxes to the legs, but after just screwing them together without glue and feeling how solid it was, I decided the glue was unnecessary.  This will allow me to disassemble it later if the need ever arises.

For the moment, I'm thinking there will be no finish applied.  It will reside under a balcony and will rarely, if ever, get wet.  I might change that decision later.  Maybe BLO or a poly on the main work surface to make it easier to clean off the dirt and cuttings.  Oh yeah, I might still add a shelf just below the right side of the main work surface.  The shelf would hold a plastic bin to catch dirt that falls between slats.

That's it.  A rough project, but I like the way it looks.  And it should make it better for us to do some gardening work.