The Barn on White Run

More than thirty years ago I made a built-in cabinet in the living room to hold all manner of contents you would expect for a living room wall unit.  Included in the design and construction was a set of shoji sliding doors using Japanese mulberry bark paper for the screens.  I learned right quick that having paper panels on cabinet doors is not optimal for a home occupied by little ones.  I soon replaced the original papers with new ones and backed them with plexiglass to minimize the puncturing and tearing of the lovely paper.

Recently I took another look at the shoji and saw another dozen or so tears that had occurred of the intervening decades.  One by one I took them down to the basement shop to repair them.  Unfortunately all I had was scraps from the original construction and installation or I would have simply replaced complete sections of the paper en toto.

My first effort to follow that trail was to order some new mulberry bark paper that turned out to be beautiful but not a good match to the originals.  So all I could do was use my scraps of the original paper and make the necessary repairs.

Here’s an example of one repair, a protocol I followed successfully on the nearly dozen tears.

This tear is adjacent to one of the shoji frame elements, The dark area near the upper center of the image is a previous repair, still wet from the repair. As the repair dries it will resume the color of the original paper and thus become invisible to the standard viewer.

Here’s the scrap of the original paper left over from the construction 30 years ago. One edge is straight to match the shoji frame, the other is torn, or “deckled” to provide a feathered edge allowing the perfect blending with the underlying sheet being repaired.

After mixing up the adhesive, in this case dilute wallpaper past methycellulose, the repair ws laid in place and the adhesive brushed onto the margin and wicked in, binding the repair.

Next time I return to Mordo I will try to remember to take a picture of the finished project.  The repairs really do look nearly invisible, complying with the “Six-foo-six-inch rule” that governed our work in the museum.  In other words, from a standard viewing distance of six feet the repair is invisible, but close-up (“six inch”) it is discernable.

Rex Krueger has posted a very nice video snapshot of Plane Wellness’ Handtool Haven 2026, where I was one of the speakers and exhibitors.

I didn’t need to make any more blocks of beeswax for the moment, so I concentrated on turning my purified beeswax into Blend 31.

The preparation is indeed exotic (/sarc).  I weigh out several hundred grams of shellac wax, then three times as much of the purified beeswax.  It all goes into the cooker to melt together at a slightly higher temperature than is necessary for the beeswax alone.

Once it was all melted uniformly I ladled it into the silicone molds I made a long time ago that have served me well all these years.  Given the temperature of the room I can make a new pour every 30-45 minutes as the blocks cool and can be removed from the molds.  They are still pretty warm at this point and need to be set aside to cool completely.

A good day’s production is almost 50 units.  I make four at a time, and each extraction/pour takes about 5-7 minutes.

Now on to the wrapping and packaging of the wax to take it to Handworks 2026.

I re-melt the 75% clean blocks in my cooker and then filter them through my favorite medium for the task, Bounty *full sheet* paper towels.

The paper towels are placed inside a kitchen pasta strainer for support, which is then placed inside a section of stovepipe that is held up on the edges of the cookie sheet, and then the molten wax is ladled through.

The output is drizzled into cookie sheets dedicated for that purpose.

I replace the filter membrane for each new cookie sheet casting.  This is what the used filter sheet looks like after one cookie sheet casting.  This does not get discarded, it is re-used as a firestarter in the wood stove in the winter.

The result is a full-sheet roughly 1/4″ thick that is wonderfully clean and pure.  Since the cast sheet is so thin it starts cooling immediately, resulting in an uneven thickness.  It’s now ready for whatever comes next, casting the 1/4 lb. beeswax blocks, formulating and casting Blend 31, or playing with new concoctions.

Up next – Blend 31.

The latest installment of the forty-year-long conversation with my friend “retired” broadcaster Brian Wilson (who cannot shake the habit), was posted at his Brian Wilson Writes Substack.  If you enjoy provocative strident discussions about forbidden topics, give it a listen.  If you do not, don’t.

Once the molten beeswax cools in the cake pan after filtering for gross contaminates, the next day I pry out the now-solid blocks from the pan.  The contents of the pan are in two phases, the water and the block of wax that forms on top of the water.  By not disturbing the molten concoction once it is poured, the contents settle into their respective layers.  That which is compatible with water goes into the water.  That which is not water compatible remains in the wax block after having settled to the bottom of that fraction.

Flipping the now-solid block gives access to the contaminates that aggregate along the interface at the bottom of the wax.

These contaminates are easily removed by ultra low tech methods; I simply scrape away and discard the bottom layer of the wax block that contains the particulate contaminate.

Behold, the almost thirty pounds of partly purified beeswax.  At that point the material has had perhaps 75% of the particulates removed and is ready for the next step.

Stay tuned.

I spent a good deal of time and effort this past week processing beeswax and shellac wax in preparation for the upcoming Handworks 2026 in Amana IA over Labor Day Weekend.  My polissoir inventory is lacking and my broom maker is struggling with some health issues so I do not know exactly how that will be resolved.

Since the shellac wax arrives already purified straight from the factory in India, all it needs is to be melted and cast in the silicone molds I made for this purpose.

The beeswax is a different story as it is the opposite of purified when it arrives.  My end product is something that is purified using essentially old-fashioned technology.

I start with a block of raw beeswax, straight from the honey processing plant.  As I recall, the slang of the bee/honey trade is to call this mass of by-product “slum gum.”  It’s got residues of honey, lotta dirt and bee body parts.

My first step is to break up the blocks of slum gum and melt the mass 50/50 in a water bath in my largest cooking pot.

I then pour the molten mass through a kitchen strainer to get the larger particles and body parts out.  Downstream from the strainer is a cake pan, into which the remainder goes to cool.

A day of work yields a stack of cake pans that cool over night.

Stay tuned for the second day.

I’ve got a 12-inch radial arm saw down on the first floor of the barn, but it has not seen one second of activity since it was moved here thirteen years ago.  I’m just not doing anything that makes it necessary.  However, on the second (main) floor I’ve got a 10″ chop saw that gets used regularly to make long boards shorter for whatever reason.  For some tasks I use the cross-feed sled on the table saw but far more frequently I’m just chopping something up.

One of the great features of the chop saw is that it is quick and easy.  One of the lousy features is that it made a huge mess even when I hooked up the “dust collector” outlet to the shop vac.  Even when everything was hooked up properly sawdust went all over the place and it required a local cleanup with every use.

I finally got tired of this nuisance and made and installed the lowest possible tech solution, which reduces the sawdust cloud by about 99%.  I looked through my mountain of boxes piled up on the third floor and found one that fit my needs.  Equipped with a utility knife and a roll of masking tape I fabricated a box shroud to fit over the back side of the saw, complete with a port for the shop vac hose.  At this point the only thing missing is a fitting to glue to the portal for plugging in the hose, but even with just a rough hole cut in the side of the box the collection is magnificent.

The Abraham boys and their posse are at it again and Handworks 2026 is barreling down the pike.  It will be Friday and Saturday of Labor Day weekend, in the lovely village of Amana, Iowa.  I’ll be there again close to dead center of the Festhalle, hawking my wares such as they are.  Polissoirs, beeswax and shellac wax, videos, and original c. 1765 Roubo prints, etc.

The Festhalle from Handworks 2013

It’s the most amazing tool festival of hand woodworking you will even encounter with visitors and makers from around the globe if the tradition holds.

I’m already ramping up my truckload of stuff to take with me, at the moment creating a pile on and under a workbench I will be taking and making wax processing part of almost every day from now on.

This just might be my last long road trip other than family priorities.  We just don’t have the oomph for drives like that anymore.

I love tales like this.  I knew of an instance in some southern swamp where they discovered an ancient sunken cypress trunk that was so valuable the salvage company had around-the-clock guards protecting it until they could find just the right buyer who had just the right project.  I vaguely recall it went to a developer who was going to use it in all the public spaces is a huge skyscraper somewhere.  I think the dimensions of trunk were 48+” diameter at the top and 180-plus feet long.  That’s a mighty big tree.

I’d heard the asking price was $7 million.

Many years ago back in Maryland we had a micro-burst that uprooted a number for mature tulip poplar trees, the largest of which measured 24″ in diameter at the first branch, which was at the 60-foot mark.  I was unable to find a sawyer willing to deal with it, so given the cycle of life it has now gone back to the earth.

That’s right, sometimes cleanup is the exact opposite Christmas.  Usually in the aftermath of a deep cleaning and reorganizing of the barn I find that I suddenly cannot find something I need.  In the “Before” I knew exactly where that thing was even if the overall spatial composition was more similar to a maelstrom.  But at least I knew where item X, Y, or Z was.

Yesterday I needed to sew something up but could not find nor remember where I put the stinking sewing kit.

Grrr.

Samtsirhc indeed.

Now that I am in my approximately 4,000th day of organizing, reorganizing, cleaning and tidying the barn I am qualified to declare that Cleaning is Christmas.  Unlike my friends MikeM, Ripplin’ John and MartinO I am not by temperament nor habit fastidiously organized in my physical surrounding.  This means that combined with my forgetfulness about the details of my surroundings, organizing and cleaning reveals “new” contents of the barn that in truth I had forgotten either 1) that I even had them, or 2) where I put them, sometimes in a “special place.”

My current paroxysm of tidying the joint is just such a reality.   Sometimes the revelations are mundane, such as, “Oh, that’s where I put my favorite utility knife.”  Other “discoveries” are more meaningful.  Just a few days ago at the Plane Wellness shindig I was commenting to someone there that I was running low on the shellac wax I had ordered several years ago directly from the factory in India.  I was lamenting(?) the fact that I might need to send another big pile of money there to restock if I was going to continue using and selling shellac wax for more than another few months.

So, there in the corner tucked behind one of my workbenches were two full cases of shellac wax.   Enough for two or three years of consumption.  Suddenly that was one less thing I needed to worry about.  That alone made it a good day.  The cases were so embedded in the space (I had to actually cut the boxes apart just to extricate the contents) that I clearly placed them there before I built a storage cabinet and placed the workbench in its current location and then put stuff on top of them.

Then, as I was taking inventory of my polissoirs and packaged waxes underneath the workbench I use for that purpose, I found two full cases of the 190 proof grain alcohol I use for mixing spirit varnishes.

At this point all I have to do is persuade myself that cleaning is something I need to habituate myself toward.  Yeah, good luck with that.

Now I just have to concern myself with the fact that my polissoir maker is struggling with some health problems that are disrupting his broom-making output.  Yikes.

We recently traveled north to Butler PA for the 2026 edition of the Plane Wellness shindig.  What ensued was a terrific weekend of handtool woodworking fellowship.  In a way it was a smaller scale version of Handworks and a good tune-up for getting my brain and inventory set up for that venture.

My first impression of the attendees is that they were younger and more beginner-ish than other tool events I have attended, and that is a good thing.

A true delight was spending time with both old friends and new.

I was presenting on historic finishing, which drew an enthusiastic audience, and I was doing demos at my table throughout.

Keep an eye on their web site to put next year’s event in Washington PA on your calendar.

During our recent visit to flyover country to celebrate Ripplin’ John’s MFA exhibit I was able to spend most of a day with him in the shop.  John’s fascination with undulation has progressed well beyond ripple molding machines into the realm of Rose Engine lathes, of which he has at least two.

This is a gargantuan vintage machine,

which has been augmented with this modern unit made by Davil Lindell, if I remember correctly.

He let me noodle on the Lindell for a few hours, including the cutting of this pattern on the end of a small box.

What a joy it is to spend time with the people you admire doing stuff that is just pure, unadulterated fun.

My circle of friends is mostly populated with men who inspire me due to their knowledge, skills, talents, temperaments and character.   No person better embodies this than my long-time friend Ripplin’ John (you can meet him at my booth at Handworks).  Engineer, craftsman, and theologian, his company is a treasured enrichment to my life.

Mrs. Barn and I recently traveled to attend his exhibit as he received his Sculpture MFA safely into his eighth decade of life!  He is indominable rather than monomaniacal, a distinction worthy of note.  The exhibit attendees were treated to an impressive compilation of work and creativity; his thesis dealt with the question “What Is Art?”

The attendees in rapt attention as John elucidates the purposes of his artworks.

Congratulations, John, and thanks for being my friend and fellow Christian soldier.

Here are some pics from the exhibit.

One of the many beautiful objects crafted by John’s hands and tools

One of a series of miniature turned boxes John created with his Rose Engine Lathe, a creative technology completely unknown to most of those in attendance,

The assignment here was to create a sculptural artwork from a book. John excavated and epoxy-laminated a stack of pages, then turned the resulting block on his lathe.

John was exploring the realm of formed, enameled metal medallions.

One of the many facets of John’s program was to teach a class. This is the student workshop where he instructed the kids in basic metalwork. From what I could see they related wonderfully to this graduate student the same age and their great-grandparents.

No doubt, the most bizarre moment of the visit to the college campus was spotting this dispensary in the men’s restroom. Our culture is doomed.

During my ongoing/never-ending efforts to impose order in the barn I came across some pieces of very large bamboo (~5″).  These were no doubt the remaining fragments of a pickup load I harvested thirty years ago from the giant bamboo forest of Clemson University when I was there for a conference.  If I could ever connect with someone there again, I would return to get more.

These pieces caused me to reflect on what I could do with them, and once again Maki Fushimi was a source of inspiration.

Stay tuned.

About 35 years ago as our girls were getting tall enough to use the bathroom sink and help Mama in the kitchen we used large, unwieldy folding stools for them to accomplish the tasks.  I decided to use some scrap birch plywood and made a foot-high two-step stool for each of them, Older Daughter, Younger Daughter, and Mrs. Barn.  They were simple and sturdy, painted with some leftovers from unknown projects; black, red, baby blue.  They were stout enough that all three of them are still in service today after three decades of service.

A couple years ago I made a similar one for L’il T, painted in what were at the time his favorite colors with a little pizzazz.

Last week I finished the stool for his little brother, ‘Dozer.  (L’il T is long and lean, ‘Dozer is not, and not.  A nose tackle in the making.)  We weren’t sure what his favorite colors were, are, or will be so I left it to my own discretion.

In a year I’ll be making one for grandson #3, and the same for grandson #4 the year after.  These are so simple that they are not really even “woodworking,” but they are treasures that will likely last several lifetimes.

Building precious memories and robust traditions, one stepstool at a time.

Or as the distinguished Congresswoman from home state of Minnesota might say. “What Winter Hath Wrought, Eleven.”

Once things finally melted off from this past Snowzilla, I discovered another severe after-effect.

The stone foundation walls leading to the underground root cellar were pretty much wrecked by the ice-rain-sleet-rain deep freeze in late January.  After more than a hundred years of being in place the base rocks were literally pushed out of place by the block of ice accumulating behind it.  Yikes.

I’m hoping my brother is feeling strong as I plan to excavate and reinstall several hundred pounds of rock wall during his scheduled fall visit.  It can’t be all firewood fun and games.

One of Mrs. Barn’s favorite things is the annual visit from “Eddie the Spoon Guy” at the craft market during our local celebration of all things pertaining to maple syrup.  She stocks up on a multitude of wooden spoons, spatulas and similar items to use and to give as gifts throughout the year.  This year Eddie had some teensy spoons that she thought would be perfect as gifts for each of the grandsons.

Once she had them home she asked, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have their names carved into the handles?”  What could I say, other than, “Of course.”

Sorry, just can’t seem to get this image to load horizontally.

Givin the diminutive size of the workpieces my first task was to find a good work holding system, something that would hold these itty bitty pieces solidly yet allow me to have access to the surfaces to be worked.  Fortunately, I have a jeweler’s bench top rotating vise with movable jaws, allowing a close fit for the round a tapered handles.  To maximize the grip and eliminate the risk of damage I used abrasive pads to cushion the jaws.  That solution worked perfectly, padding the wood yet gabbing the spoons hard and steady.

Then the question was, “What do I use for the incising?”  Using a chip carving knife was not within my ken as the pieces were like carving names on a round pencil.  In other words, beyond my confident skill set.  I thought about using one of my engraving burins or a tiny chasing tool, but practice with them was not encouraging.  Looking through my box of carving tools I came across a 1mm veiner from a project I cannot even remember now.  That was just the ticket.

The end result was great.  I won’t show that as I strive to protect my loved ones from the netbots.

In my never-ending quest to organize and reorganize the barn, I often find myself in a Christmas moment; “Wow, I forgot that I had this!” or more likely, “Oh, so that’s where I put this.”  Four floors of tools, books, and supplies to sort will do that to you.

I recently had an instance that was and was not one of these times.  I found myself relocating a chair frame I commissioned Philippe Lafargue to make for me probably more than three decades ago.  It served for so many years as my reading and writing chair at S.I. and for some time at the barn.

Being a classically trained chairmaker at Ecole Boulle this project was like falling off a log for Philippe since virtually all of his fabrication work was curvy fancy French chairs.  This severe boxy form was no challenge for him.

He was there long before the beginning of the Roubo Project, he translated the Table of Contents for me around 1987 when he was a post-graduate Fellow with me in the Furniture Conservation Studio.  That ToC burned brightly for me, and when Michele Pagan and I started the project for real more than a decade later we knew that Philippe had to be part of it.  Philippe was a classically trained 18th Century Ecole Boulle craftsman, where he completed the full four-year curriculum, simultaneously conversant in 18th craft technique and lexicon, a native Francophone and fully conversant in vernacular and academic English.

For the years of the project until his untimely death a few months ago (somewhat unnerving to us since his fatal illness was the same one that took Mel Wachowiak from me a decade earlier) his contribution was a vital connection to reality.

I am now diligently searching for someone to take up his portfolio.  If you know anyone who fits the job description above, let me know.  Really, let me know.

This was the last time Philippe and I were together in person, at the premier of the Deluxe version of Roubo on Marquetry during the 2013 Woodworking in America shindig.  He eventually wound up back in France, fleeing his domestic life here in the States.