The Creation of Woodies

   I apply the finish and match colors on custom architectural mill work for rich clients and corporations as a day job. In the course of that work I am exposed to some of the most beautiful wood that exists. Many years ago I began seeing faces in the figure of the wood on custom conference tables we were building and decided to "enhance" the faces so others could see them as well. Most of these faces would occur on veneer panels with the symmetry of the mirror image resulting from the book matching of the leaves of veneer. I discovered I could also make my own book matched wood by re-sawing solid wood in thin sections and gluing them up like they do when making sound boards on acoustic guitars. I made over 100 of these solid "woodies" painting eyes and other things to enhance what I was seeing in the figure of the wood. I sold almost all of these originals in a gallery in Reno, NV. To my surprise and delight everyone saw faces in the wood as well but no two people seemed to see the same things. The most fascinating thing about woodies to me was all the different interpretations everyone came up with and were even willing to argue about what each one actually was to them. That encouraged me to make them more open to interpretation when I created them. Recently I have been creating my woodies digitally. I still have access to amazing wood species and find that photographing the wood grain and book matching the veneer digitally in Photoshop is much easier, allows me to create multiple creations with the same piece of wood and allows more options.

 I have several versions of these new digital woodies available online as Fine Art prints on my website: http://rick-mosher.artistwebsites.com/ 

UV Cure Finishes

I am excited to learn more about UV cured finish systems. We have a large job that requires a UV cured water based clear finish so our shop is investing in a system of lights for our robot and a hand held system for things that can't be finished with a flat line system.

 I am really interested in the Simtec UV cured wood filler. With that product and UV cured finishes I can do a fully filled, high gloss, polished product in ONE DAY! This system is in use for flooring and guitars already. The lights are expensive and confusing with all the different wattage's and wave lengths of UV light.  We are doing some samples now with our coating manufacturer so hopefully I will have some pictures and videos soon.

This is a video from Luthier Tips du Jour 

Matching Color

 One of the most important things required to be a finisher is the ability to make and match your own colors. Depending on someone else has always been a problem for me whenever I have had to do it. I still have the manufacturer tint my solid color finishes but never have them make stains.

 There are many great places to learn color theory these days. Community colleges have great classes on color theory and color mixing. I have to teach some of our newer people how to mix colors in the next few weeks.

 The first thing I will need to do is determine if the new people can even see color properly and there is a great test online that they will be taking. I tried it myself and it is really good. Usually you take the test using colored blocks that you re-arrange but it is pretty expensive. The online test works very well and is free, give it a try for yourself.

Making Wood Work

I have worked at many shops during my career all over the country. Being on the east coast there is the problem of winter. Cold and finish do not mix well. Luckily for me Mark Richey is ahead of the curve when it comes to green thinking. We were the first in the State of Massachusetts to put in a Bio-Mass heating system to use the scrap wood to heat our shop. 

This is our Mawera Biomass furnace

These silos outside Mark Richey Woodworking store sawdust and wood waste 

from the plant and feed them to the Mawera biomass furnace

Here is an article from Woodshop News about our system  

Many shops I have worked for really struggle with the cold weather especially with catalyzed finishes like conversion varnish or pre-cat lacquer. These coatings suffer from cold checking if allowed to get below 60 degrees F for 48 hours after they have been sprayed. The cold stops the chemical reaction and the finish can shatter. The bad thing is it can happen 6 months to a year later. 

Since we have added automation our shop uses 2K urethane exclusively.

Our electricity also is manufactured on site with our wind turbine.

Here is our owner Mark Richey cleaning the blades on the turbine last summer.

Mark is a renowned climber and likes using his skills whenever possible.

The Flip Side

I like to finish the back side of my samples just as nice as the front. Usually there isn't a lot of time when making samples so I have to be able to do the back fast and still have it look good. On high end jobs I like to use a textured urethane finish. When the client is looking at the front the back feels different and they turn it over. Now they see our company logo. This isn't a big deal on the original job but samples have a life of their own after a job is completed. We have got many jobs off of a finish sample from an earlier job.

The technique for a textured finish is really simple and it is very fast as well. Usually the sample has been primed front and back so the white primer can be used as the base color. I like to use a low sheen for the base usually and a little higher sheen for the texture, just to make it pop.

 For the small texture I use the standard 1.3 fluid tip, turn the air pressure on my gravity cup almost all the way down and just let the speckles hit the sample. For the larger textures like the water drops, I use my 2.8 tip and un-thinned gloss urethane. Here are a few examples:

White primer with black texture

White primer with gloss white texture

Water drop texture

Close up

The range of possible textures is almost unlimited and it is also 

a good way to use up paint colors from previous jobs

Samples Part 2

This is one of the step samples I made. The right side is unfinished so I have a reference to check when the veneer for the job comes in. Sometimes it is a little different color and that changes my stain formula.

These are all the darker color step samples, we keep these for our reference the client never sees these.

I finish all my samples front and back and usually do a textured finish on the back. In this case there wasn't enough time and these are not final samples. When the client has decided what will be used on the job we will make 5 finish samples and get signatures before proceeding with the work.

We need samples and we need them NOW

I had to work on a pile of samples for a potential job today. 

A lot of nice veneers that are 3 different colors basically. The finish sample on the left 

is from another of our jobs and what the designer is basing the colors of this job on.

 

Finish Department Quick Tour

Continuing the quick tour of the shop, this is the finish department where 

everything that can't be done by the robot is finished. We have 3 open spray 

booths and a sample booth.

The cherry in the racks and the foreground are for the interior of the 

 Audrain building that I did the architectural ornaments for.

These are parts of the interior ceiling. They were completely finished flat

 using the Robot and then assembled in the shop.

Here a sprayer is waterfalling panels by elevation so he can apply color.

Here is a picture of the faux painted sign I did a while back in its final position in the shop.

This shelf is where we keep all the samples for projects we are currently working on.

No one applies color without using the approved sample for reference.

Quick Look at the Shop

 I took a few Pano shots of the shop Friday so you could get a sense of the scope of the work we do.

This is the main part of the shop where all the milling, assembly, veneering and CNC take place.
Here is a link to a video from the company website.

These two are of our sanding department. We try and take advantage of the wide belt sander in 

conjunction with our Bravo Robot flat line system.

This is the heart of our production now. This allows us to stay ahead of the 

production on the floor when used correctly.

Do the Ceruse

The ceruse finish is very popular these days . Many shops struggle with this one so here is a finish schedule for achieving this finish on oak. The first thing to make sure of is when building the project all the grain texture is the same. You can't mix rift grain with plain sliced grain or it will look terrible and be very difficult to get the color to match. This sample is plain sliced grain.

See how the area with rift grain looks lighter than the plain sliced? That is because there is more white in the grain closer together and gives the appearance of being lighter.

Step 1: Spray on dye stain. For oak this would be a very wet application of Keystone Nerosol Black J.
10 grams Black J concentrate to 8 oz Alcohol.

Step 2: Wash coat of sealer. TA44 sealer reduced 150%, spray 2 wet passes.

Step 3: Scuff sand lightly with red scotch brite pad (use scotch brite to avoid burning through edges)Do any color adjustments before the next step.

Step 4: Apply Camger Coating Hi Hide Water Based Sprayfill #202-010-3-1 thinned 50% with water.
I wipe it into the grain with a rag and then squeegee off the excess with a window washing squeegee.

Step 5: After the primer thoroughly dries (1 hour or even overnight if you have the time) sand excess off the surface with 400 grit sandpaper on a sanding block. Make sure not to burn through the color.

Step 6: Full coat of TA44 sealer.

Step 7: Scuff sand with 400 grit and top coat with TS0002 Acrylic 2K Urethane.

Colors may be switched around to taste but that is the basic formula.

Notes: Make SURE your base color is correct before adding the white glaze. You can't tone or adjust the color at all once the white has been applied.

Modern flat line finishing

  Several of the shops I have worked at have gone to some form of flat line finishing. We had a Makor profile sander and finish line with an automated loader in Nevada, a Cefla reciprocating flat line sprayer in Florida and now in MA we have a Superfici Bravo Robot. This is by far the best flat line I have used due to the 5th gun which will perfectly spray edges on just about any shaped object.

 The thing about using these machines is that it makes you come up with different finish schedules in order to use the machine at its fullest capacity. We spray stains through our machine (we were told you can't) and it works fantastic.  One trick I have found when trying to match a wiped stain when spraying is to use a dye stain that mixes with acetone (we use Keystone Nerosol but Sherwin Williams S61 works as well) and then add a proportion of water to the mix to force the stain deeper into the pores. Usually 3 parts acetone to 1 part water but it depends on the look.

We also have a Cyclomix so the shorter pot life of the 2K urethanes we spray are not an issue. We also do high gloss pigmented panels. (primer and paint) At the end of the line we have a forced air drying oven which really helps with production.

Tranquility at Lake Tahoe Part 3

 Here are the last of the pictures, There are several articles online about the house and the sale. Here is an interesting article that describes the property better than I can.

Library and Billiard Room

Tranquility at Lake Tahoe Part 2

This is a view of the main house and the pool house (lower left) 

with Lake Tahoe in the background

This is a view of the back of the house.Large window is the Great Room.

The underground tunnel leads from the Wine Room to the Pool House.

Tranquility at Lake Tahoe

One of the houses I worked on when I lived in Nevada recently sold for $48M, less than half the original asking price! While we were working on the house we couldn't take any pictures or disclose who the house belonged to. Since it sold recently and the owners name is all over the internet as well as pictures from Realtors I thought I would post them on my blog as well. The Entry Staircase was a duplicate of the one from the Titanic and the library modeled after the main New York Library. This project took our company 3 years to complete and we did all the interior and exterior work.

Main Entry Staircase

Spiral Staircase

The Kitchen. The beams were pine box beams 

hand planed and finished to look 100 years old.

I'll add more in my next post.

Injecting Glue in repairs

Using a hypodermic needle to inject glue in small repairs is a very important technique but it can be difficult to find quality needles for this use. I found these Glue Injectors from Stewart MacDonald and they are great.

Architectural Ornaments

Finally have all 18 sets made and they have been attached, primed and ready to ship to the job site.

Pinned and glued using urethane glue.

Primed and caulked, ready to ship to job site where they will be painted after installation.

Color Mixing Tools

I match a LOT of stain colors and come up with finish schedules all the time for large production and custom jobs. Any tools I can find to help me I am all over. UTC colors are notoriously messy to get from the can. These mix lid/dispensers from Fillon are one of my favorites. They work awesome for cans of stain also. No mess from either quart or gallon cans and they make using my gram scale extremely easy. Rockler sells the Mixing Mate which looks like the same product to me and costs more.

You can buy the automated shelf which has an explosion proof motor to keep your tinting colors mixed or they have a convenient handle to mix manually. I just bought a dozen and they were only $8.50 each.

Architectural Ornaments

We are still working on the Audrain Building's architectural ornaments that I am duplicating 

out of fiberglass. Here is a picture of the original pressed metal parts.

The project manager still has to obtain the two different moldings to trim these windows out.

 This goes above exterior windows we are rebuilding out of solid mahogany and then priming.

 They will be painted after installation.

The interior of the windows and the sill will be stained mahogany.

These are part of the Audrain Building restoration project.

Basic Touch up: Pitch pocket in Cherry

 This is a solid cherry board with a dye stain. There is an open pitch pocket which is very common in cherry. My first step was to do a burn in with Konig hard wax burn in sticks so there is no hole. 

I'll do a step by step on that process at a later date.

More after the break...