marc: the wood whisperer is sponsored by powermatic. the gold standard since 1921. rockler woodworking and hardware. create with confidence.
chinese wood joints pdf, and clear vue cyclones. clear the air and breathe easy. (upbeat jazz music) darrel:this is a piecefrom the blacker house.
william's interpretation, it's a nice interpretation. but again you have this ebony spline here. that's faux, it's not real. but it gives the feeling of structure without really being, and that appeals to awood worker, i think. the feeling of structure that is part of the design.
you know, um... oh, here's, now they dida lot of neat things. this is what i call the leg indent detail. what i like about that is if you think of the classic claw and ball foot, you've got a big claw down there, and it's accepting the weight of the furniture coming down on it.
and so it gives substance to it. you know, it's weighted down. this is essentially the same thing in kind of a more subtle way. because this pushes down, and this area right here, the way i see it, this is just my interpretation, is that all the weight of the piece
is pushing down on this part right there. and it feels like it's anchored. marc:just gives theimpression of extra weight. darrell:yes. marc:even though it hasn'tincreased in thickness. darrell:no, no, it's a visual weight only. marc:gotcha. darrell:okay, this is oneof william ng's students working on the blacker arm chair.
the blacker arm chairis, i think, one of the really really classicgreene & greene designs. it has a lot of elements that really attracts people to green & greene. there's a lot of complexity, like if you look at this front leg, it's a parallelogram, but when you get up here to the arm, that's living in the square world.
and so right back here, you've got a transist fromsquare to parallelogram, and you've got a splinein there on the back side. it's probably hard to see from there, but that's a lot of hand work. there's no way around it. and just little things, like the brackets here, that's got to go into an angle there.
there's all these... it's a very complex piece, it's got the ebony buttons which are really commonin greene & greene. right here there will besome inlay in this piece, which is really neat. a lot of inlay in greene & greene. they did what was called"bolection inlay". it was proud of the surface,
it's not just put inand then sanded flush, it's out proud and it's carved out there, so it's just another layer of complexity and craftsmanship that's needed. marc:in general, whatwould be your explanation for why so many plugs, why so much ebony and inlay? where do you think that came from with the greenes and why that's...
darrell:oh, you know, i think the thing about the plugs. another thing that really attracts me to greene & greene is they took what wasan element of structure and made it an element of design. and actually these plugsreally don't do anything. very seldom does a plug, is it structural.
but it's a design element, and to my eye, i've been buildingfurniture for a long time, so i like to see the structure. even though it took me awhile at first. once i realized that the plugs were faux, i kind of went through alittle crisis period, i guess, where i could accept that and say, "okay, well i do like it.
"i do like it." even though it is not real. you know, this spline here, in most cases, well and in the real one, it only goes about aquarter of an inch deep. you know, there's a tenon behind here in the real blacker arm chair. but i just love the design so much that i finally accepted the fact
that it's faux, and embraced it actually. marc:now that particularone is out of bubinga. how do you feel about usingnon-traditional materials? darrell:oh, yeah. even though this is... you know, i have no problems with using a different type of woodor anything like that. i like to say, you know, as much or as little as youlike to stick to the original,
and if you want to go way out on a limb, do that, you know? cause if you restrict yourself, then you're not going todevelop as a designer. you know, so, and i think the bubinga in this case looks really nice. william:okay, this joint hereis called three way miter. it's used in a lot of chinese furniture. and obviously every timeyou join miters together,
it's always end grain so you've got to havesome strength behind that so that's where the mortiseand tenons comes in. so the joint is actually like this. this is one piece. and then the other two lockinto each other like so with these other three components. marc:amazing. where do you even begin tomake something like that?
what tools do you use? william:i think the most important thing about the joiner is marking it out. so you have to be able to learn how to mark it out accurately. so you got to have a good marking knife, marking gauge, and i use the markingknife to mark all my marks because i always tell people
pencils are okay, but if you want to be a good joint maker, then use a real fine pencil, but if you want to be a great joint maker, then use a knife. so that's the best line you can do. it just kind of locks in here like so, i'll put it back together. and this piece goes in here.
the way i make this joint is i use a table saw, i use a hollow chisel mortiser, and i use a japanese pull saw. obviously this piece here, you can see that this is mortised with a hollow chisel mortiser, and then these piecesare cut by a table saw. i use a flat saw blade.
this one here, you can see this is one piece. this piece here, you cansee that it's also mortised. just a through mortise,all the way through. table saw, table saw, band saw, then you use your chiselsand your [unintelligible] to go clean it up. and then the joint thatputs it all together
is this joint here. this is an inch and an eighth, so i use a hollow chisel mortiser, and i come in this way, i put this up against the fence, i flip it over, and i put this up against the fence so this distance hereis equal distance here. hollow chisel mortiser,
and i stop it shy. i go in there with a chiseland i clean it all up. and then for these two tenons here, i use a nice markingcase to find the depth, i mark it out, cut it up, and then i also go in there with a chisel and just clean this all up. marc:can you put it backtogether one more time?
william:yeah. awesome. william:well we have also in the theme of chinese furniture, this is what you call the bird's beak. it's a mortise and tenon, and also has a little bitof decorative 45 angle here. so basically it's just a mortise and tenon with the extra glue surface.
and also for decoratingand locating the joint. and as you can see, this is done on a table saw. table saw. hollow chisel mortiser. and this one here, i just go inthere with a [unintelligible] because you know that this is exactly 45. and just clean it up. mark that where you are.
the gauge. and then cut and... marc:and that little, i guess what would be the bird's beak, how much would you saythat strengthens the joint? i mean it almost makes it somewhat of a bridle joint. william:the glue surface, you just double your gluesurface by doing it this way.
and it locks it square also too. marc:very nice. and how frequently wouldyou say that's used in china, or japan,wherever it originated from? william:most furnitures are done this way, so i would say probably 99% of the time, most furniture. for rails, they would probablyput this joint in there. so it's a very common joint they use.
and then we also have acouple of japanese joints. this one here i'm sureyou've probably seen. sometimes they call this a goose neck, because it looks like a goose neck. and a lot of this is done partly table saw, a lot of chisel work. marc:where would youuse this type of joint? williams:this is actuallyfor big temple building, construction, that's how they do joints,
big beams together like this. and also, this is also done by an instructor that is actually here, jay van arsdale. this is also what i call a scarf joint. this is a very clever little joint, cause it takes a tiny littlepiece of wood like this between the two end grains on each side and it just locks in here like so.
and it's very strong. marc:clever. very clever. william:and one thing about this, because it is [unintelligible] both sides, the strength id here, it supports each other this way, also support each other this way, and then with this pin locking in, i don't think this is evergoing to come apart like this.
we have a joinery class. we go from very basic hand cut dovetails, to more complicated joints like this. this is probably one of our finale, a couple of these joints, we do probably on the fifth day as long as we learn all the skills of hand cutting to the line, that's what we use.
these are just some ofthe joints that we do. marc:and it's a five day cutting course? william:it's a five day class. and we end up probablydoing about 2,000 joints. marc:okay. william:well this is just a... this is a piece of furniturethat i'm working on. i'm kind of writing a littlearticle on this one here. utilizing some of the joints
that we briefly just talked about. and this is the application. i've pulled this one out a little bit just to show you that the joints are actually made that way. now this is a little bit smaller, so there's more hand work involved, and i didn't use a hollow chisel mortiser because the sides are a lot smaller,
so i can't put a hollowchisel mortiser in there, because they don't make it that small. and this one here actually goes in. but i did, cause i actually made the tenons a little longer because there's a top that goes on there and this becomes my tenons, and i put the mortise on my top, and it just fits right in there.
marc:oh, nice. now will you use gluefor all these joints, or will they be glueless? william:i usually usea little bit of glue. this one actually doesn'thave any glue on there, so you can tell that justby the locking mechanism, that i probably don't need any glue, but i usually put a littlebit of glue in there anyways, just to keep it from moving.
this is a plant stand. so i have a top here, the plant goes here, a plant goes here, and i have a little shelf herefor your little knick knacks. there is actually a doorthat's going to be here, and then two little drawers. hopefully i'll finish it just in time.