Finding the Flow - The Balrog Bench

Getting Started

Life found a way to keep me out of the shop for a year. It was a tough year, and in a major way simply because of that. I'm back now, though!

It is difficult to get back in to the swing of things. There's definitely an inertia to the headspace that lends itself to creativity and focus, and it takes time to get spun up, at least for me.

I wanted to take on a project that was fairly straight forward, but still exercised skills I need to refine again. I chose a Danish Cord Bench as, well, I need something like that for my home and I really enjoyed making the last one. 

Normally I try to bring a new practice in to each project to keep learning and growing, but it was a bit hard here when even the known things felt a bit clunky and new at times. For this one, I figured I could play with something new anyway so I chose ebonization.

In testing on scrap, and if the process failed and paint was needed, I had ways out of this design idea and new practice so figured it wasn't a huge deal. In the end, I'd still have a bench, successful ebonization or not!

Well, the ebonization was in fact not successful, but more on that later. As foretold, I did still end up with a bench regardless.

Designing

I don't have access to some of the previous tools I had, and my new place unfortunately doesn't have a 240v outlet yet so my tablesaw is a big heavy bench-top. So I did have to think about how to approach this a little differently.

I had some sketches, but this is where my creative muscles had atrophied. Visualizing design, proportions, contrast, etc. was difficult and I spent a lot of time idling on this. I had some standard brown paper cord ready, but also had a couple spools of black paper cord I'd ordered previously. I was quite tempted by the black, so that's where I started thinking.

After switching around between natural white oak with black cord, or ebonized white oak with brown cord, or black on black, I knew I wanted to go darker while still having a strong contrast. I liked black on black, but then, what to contrast? 

I thought back to a box I made for a friend a few years ago. A small trinket box of wenge with cocobolo. I love that box, it's one of those you wish you'd kept. 

I followed a similar path as that box, affectionately the "Balrog Box", for this bench. I decided to use some beautiful bloodwood I had sitting in the shop I'd bought impulsively ages ago as a stretcher to provide that pop amongst the black on black frame, legs, and cord. 

I quick sketch and some colored pencils to imagine the look, and I was set!

You could say my drawing skills are a bit atrophied, too. I would say they've never much evolved beyond this. Not too bad, though, for visualizing a design and aesthetic in rough form!

Stock Prep

I love my tablesaw, and I'm looking forward to getting it back in to the fold, but this was a nice means to having to work without one. I have a well set-up shop so while this wasn't all that difficult it was surprisingly hard to break from the tablesaw-centric thinking. After all, I'm quite used to having that as the center-piece in my shop.

I started with one 8/4 S3S white oak board, which helped a lot. I did some rough estimates on the lengths of the legs and stretchers, then cross-cut the board in to sections to capture pairs of legs, rails, and stretchers.

Here I've got the rough length board for the short rails and I'm ripping those two parts out using the bandsaw.

From there, it was a matter of planing them down to the correct dimensions. I planed them side by side to make sure they are just the right matching thickness. 

I could have used my 6" helical head jointer, but really wanted to use these planes that have not gotten enough love. I did ultimately joint some parts on the machine, but had to enjoy the hand tool work a bit first.

The Legs

I did pause to think about the legs once things were prepped. I didn't want just chonky, blocky legs, I needed to break up that sizing otherwise it felt off-balance visually. I played around with a piece of poplar in the same dimensions to figure this out. I did some pencil sketches on the wood and then even some cutting of designs as the ideas matured.

I played around with a curved leg shape, roughing out some lines on my poplar test piece before using a spokeshave to create the curve. The legs felt too short and too thick to really benefit from this approach, though.

Ultimately, a nice heavy taper on the inside of the legs was where I landed and set out to mark the legs up. I used the hand planes for this partially because I love using them and wanted to, but also that I wanted to make sure to refine those skills again.

There's something really amazing about getting a finish-ready cut off the hand plane, and that is how this work went. I'm really glad I took that approach.

The Rails

My initial cuts for the rails were too long, and made a bench that was ultimately too deep. I went deeper on the last bench, and I wanted something narrower this time. I ended up taking off 4" from those rails and am happy I did.

The rails were originally 15", which as you can see here was just too long. It created a bench that was too similar of dimensions to the last bench I made. I was after something different, and definitely something less deep.

Plus, I like the proportions more.

The Stretcher

I had two bloodwood boards sitting around of equal dimensions that were perfect for this. So perfect that the final board just needed only a few inches of length and 1/4" of width removed.

My initial idea was to have the bloodwood be through-tenoned on the whiteoak it was joined to. I figured this would be a great time to finally get that power mortiser going I'd had forever and been hesitant to use.

I tried, but alas, it turns out this old Delta mortiser has a very specific chuck key that is not made anymore and definitely not generic. It also turns out that chuck key does not live with the mortiser and has disappeared. I defer my mortiser journey to a different day.

It turns out, good old floating-tenons will suffice! Given that was the plan for the rest of the build that made quite a bit of sense, too.

I did bust out some scrapers and play around with those on the bloodwood. I have an old Stanley No12 I decided to tune up finally, and it was taking some great shavings but the edge did need to be re-bevelled because it was all over the place.

This was just another detour to get my flow back and get all (err, some of) my tools tuned up and back in the mix. I swear a ton of time is really just about how to accomplish a thing knowing the tools you have at your disposal. Well, I've had to remember much about what I've got on hand.

I will say, I really liked working with the bloodwood. It cleaned up so nicely, and shavings off the shooting board and scraper were a gorgeous deep red. 

Floating Tenons

These really do make for some strong and quick joinery. I was tempted by things like through tenons but decided against it for this project. Ultimately, Dominos make for a fantastic approach. 

Two tenons were used on the long rail as the extra length would benefit from more strength at the joint as that would also be where more of the weight from a user would be transferred. A single tenon for the short rails.

I aligned the rails to all be flush with the inside edges of the legs. This makes for easy work on the Domino, but it was born from a design consideration for the Danish Cord.

My previous bench, seen above, centered the rails on the legs causing the rails to be offset 1/4" or so from the inside edges. This really proved to be an oversight when it came time to weave the seat. With that positioning, there was a gap that needed filling that neither warp nor weft could reach.

While not a deal breaker, to me it's less ideal of a design. The weave then has an offset that seems less tight both in practice and visually as there's more of a gap at the edges of the weft and causes the cord to drift a bit in to that space on the edges.

Suffice it to say, I wanted to avoid that this time. I was a bit unsatisfied with the tension, spacing, and overall look of the previous bench.

With everything Dominoed and to the proper lengths, I could do an actual dry fit. I really liked the way it was looking at this stage and was getting excited. The bloodwood is gorgeous, and even with the raw white oak looked excellent. The shape and proportions were also right where I wanted them to be.

Dry fits are great for this reason, because they really do let you properly see what's to come. What was a board, then a pile of smaller more processed boards, becomes a bench rather suddenly when dry fitting.

Round-overs and Bevels

I wanted to do a round-over edge on the rails that would receive the weaving. It seems to fit the wrap of cord better to have a rounded edge and is probably a bit easier on the cord itself instead of a pointed corner.

 

I ran the rails over the router table with a 1/4" radius bit, but left the stretchers as they wouldn't be getting cord wrapped around them.

A keen eye might be wondering, why do the two rounded-over rails here (top-left and bottom-right) have different domino setups? Well, since those rails attach to the legs at the inside-edge It meant the dominoes were going to overlap. My initial plan was to have the short rails have two dominoes each just like the long-rails. After realizing the overlap was too much, and that second domino overkill, I decided to skip the domino on the inside of the joint. Why the inside? Because that was the most overlapped with the dominoes from the opposing rail when joined at the leg. 

For the legs and stretchers I did want to ease the edges, but just not a round over. I did a quick bevel on the rest of the exposed white oak edges using a block plane. Just something simple and light, and skipped the marking of the bevels like I usually do.

This Lazarus block plane is a real beauty, and made quick work of those bevels.

For the bloodwood stretcher, I wanted a heavier bevel. I decided to just do it on the top side as I liked how it caught light more than if it was on the bottom. For this, I primarily used a larger jack plane, but did bring in the smoother a bit. 

The Lazarus planes are amazing, and the bevel was finish-ready off the plane and incredibly smooth. I did have a bit of trouble getting the bevel consistent at first, but then I realized the way I was securing the board was causing it to bow a little.

Surface Prep

Let the sanding begin! The rails did not need as much sanding because they are getting wrapped in cord. They should be smooth, but since they aren't getting handled directly less of a worry. Those I ran to 180 grit.

For the legs and stretchers, I ran those up to 240 grit on the sander.

I've found even a good orbital sanding doesn't beat hand sanding as it allows you to go exclusively with the grain. I only had sheets up to 220, but honestly 220 by hand after a 240 on the sander leaves a smoother surface. It doesn't take much to get it there after the sander, either, which is nice. 

During the ebonization process, I did to a bunch more sanding by hand of the exposed surfaces (legs and stretchers). I sprayed the whiteoak to pop the grain and do a really fine sanding a few times as part of the process and dang did it leave a nice finish. I've never bothered with the practice, but will definitely be doing it more in the future.

Unfortunately, I ended up painting over that fine work.

Ebonizing

This does fall under surface-prep, but I did fail at this and abandon that approach, but this is at least what I tried.

I needed to dissolve steel wool in vinegar. I got some #0000 steel wool and some distilled white vinegar from the grocery store (5% acidity). I let that sit a while, a day or so, and it did react a bit but not much. So I let it sit longer. Still not much of a reaction.

Then I read about stronger vinegar used for cleaning being more like 30%, so I tracked down some of that at the hardware store.

I made a fresh container of that, with some fresh steel wool, and this time also put a rock on top of the steel wool to prevent the steel from getting rusty and gross from oxidization. I let that sit a couple days.

I tried it, and it did ebonize, but the problem was consistency. I had some test pieces around I was using, and one even looked quite good but I could not replicate it afterwards. 

Looks pretty nice, huh? This wasn't even that good compared to the results I was hoping for and expecting but it would have still been awesome.

But, that was the one good piece I could ebonize, nothing else really took. 

What was frustrating was that at first, pieces would get a nice dark black to them and I'd get excited. Then, it would go a muddier brown. I don't know why, it didn't make sense to my very limited knowledge of this practice.

There are plenty of wood options available in brown, so I didn't exactly care to take that approach. Plus, the design really needed a dark black look.

The process is ultimately the acetic-acid, made from that steel dissolving in the vinegar reacting with tannins in the wood. White oak is quite up there on tannins and known for good ebonization, but alas it did not stick for me.

Further research talked about making tea to help. While a cup of tea might have helped on it's own, the intent was to brew a strong black tea to pre-apply to the surface before your acetic-acid concoction. 

Black tea is also high in tannins, so I brewed up an aggressively strong pot of tea (8 or 10 tea bags). 

I tried many coats, batches, dry times, etc. and just could not get it to go black the way I wanted. I even decided to just assemble the bench and apply it there as I figured why not? In the end, I had the black paint as back up and the ebonization wouldn't compromise that.

Well, no successful ebonization this project. 

Assembly and Glue-up

There's a bit of order of operations mixing here, as I did ebonize an assembled bench. I had everything sanded and otherwise ready for the glue-up while still experimenting with ebonization on scrap.

This glue-up was pretty straight forward as I was able to glue up the legs and short rails/stretchers separately, first. I clamped them for a bit so the glue could harden up, then connected them with the two rails and stretcher.

I did glue and seat the dominoes on the legs in this step, too, as the mortises overlapped  so I figured I might as well get the dominoes in there so things don't get trickier once it dries.

I find myself loving bar clamps more and more. I didn't plan ahead for this, though, and really could have used a third 4' clamp! Luckily I could use two K-body clamps together to serve as my third clamp. This was needed to ensure the two ends put proper pressure in to the bloodwood stretcher for a nice clean, tight fit. 

Painting

I had some black milk paint ready for this possibility, so once I made the decision to do it I wasn't waiting around to get supplies. It stung to paint over the gorgeous and ever-so-smooth white oak, but I was after a look and the paint was able to get me there.

I've pretty much always avoided painting my projects, save for some cases of the bottom of a box that's otherwise just plywood. It can be a really nice way to accent things, so I am not against it. But the whole thing? That hits different, and it felt dirty!

There's a time and place for everything, and this did align with that. It'll sting less next time if I don't spend so much time grain popping the white oak only to cover it with paint, that's for sure.

L-Nails

The rails needed L-nails along their inside length for the cord to hook on to as part of the weaving process. Along the short rails, the spacing of the L nails is every 1/2", and just under an inch along the long rails. The key thing is the long rails just need an odd number of nails so that the pattern is symmetrical across the space.

I predrilled the holes as I didn't want to worry about splitting as that's a lot of nails along the length of the grain. The needle-nose pliers for holding the small nails, and the cross peen hammer for getting them in. 

There's over 100 nails in this thing, so this got a bit repetitive. However, it goes pretty quickly when they are pre-drilled.

Finishing

I decided to use rattle-can shellac for this project. I intended to shellac the cord, like I've done previously, so figured why not give the whole project that same finish. Plus, my next idea would have been Osmo oil but that didn't seem like a good fit for a painted surface.

The cord would benefit from a brush-on shellac rather than spray, to help get it in the gaps/grooves, so I applied the finish before the weave.

This did make the process easy. I did several light coats, which dried quickly in our summer weather.

The bloodwood really popped with the finish on, and I'm really happy with the color and finish on it.

After that, it was otherwise ready for cord!

Feet

I've browsed around and tried different feet options but I don't much like the rubber self-leveling as they can look so clunky. Recessing them can help, but that didn't feel necessary or worth it here. 

I saw a quick video of a maker using leather as the feet and really liked the idea, so I found some at the store to use. 

I did a quick rough trace of the foot on the big piece of leather and cut it out. I left it nice and proud of the leg so I didn't have to worry about alignment when gluing it on. A little bit of CA glue made this a really quick task as it sets up so quickly.

This photo is also great because it shows how much the bloodwood was catching the sun and reflecting on to the edge of the leg. A gorgeous effect.

This amazing marking knife was perfect for trimming the leather. I just flushed the flat side of the knife against the leg and sliced along the edge. It left a really clean cut and just a little paring of the corners to flush with the leg bevels was all that was left.

I used some painters tape to mask the lower part of the leg so I didn't mar the finish while trimming the leather. It worked really well! Then I went to remove the tape and it pulled of some spots of shellac and paint together.

What's more, because it took it down to the wood you could see the muddy brown of my failed ebonization beneath. I'm glad I painted it, in the end. My results with the acetic acid were no where near what I wanted and the project is better for me punting that practice to a future retry. 

Weaving

Weaving the warp (front-to-back lengths of cord) was a bit clunky because I really had to remember how the heck to do this. The last time, I had a lot of difficulty with the correct tensioning so was over-thinking it a bit at first.

It's just one piece of cord that handles this portion, which is pretty cool. The L-nails seen here serve as the place for you to loop over and secure the cord.

When using nails, the warp leaves these gaps between the pairs of cord. To fill it in, you take a long length of cord and starting in the middle nail, conveniently raised slightly higher than it's counterparts for easy spotting, wrap around the rail to fill that space.

Things can a bit wishy-washy here around spacing, and it doesn't have to be exact but I also didn't want it to be an inconsistent wrapping pattern. It took me a few tries to land on alternating 4 and 3 wraps between each pair to keep the spacing right. 

It would only take a handful of sections here to see if it was off or not because the warp pairs would drift away from their position over their respective nails. Unwrapping wasn't ideal but also, in this case, not much of a set back at all.

Cricket helped a lot during this phase. It's impressive how quickly cats want to get involved when they hear the cord start flapping around while you weave. This was expected, though, as Cricket was just a couple months old when I did the first Danish cord bench and she loved participating in that one, too.

The cord can get unforgiving on your hands, so a pair of gloves helps a lot! There is considerably less cord in this bench than my last, about half actually, but I still didn't want to replicate the beat up hands from before.

The weft are the long-lengths across the bench, and this is where things start coming together. The warp wants tension, but not all that much. It feels counterintuitive given you are expecting it to be firm and supportive for sitting. Ultimately, the weft brings in the tension as it takes up slack weaving between the warp.

It's the system that makes for a well tensioned seat, not the warp or weft themselves being particularly tight.

One major lesson I learned here, which I significantly struggled with on my last one, was to trust the process more. Weaving the weft, you want it to be able to snug up against the previous row of weft. If it's too tight, it can't really do that.

I did a lot of re-doing of weaving on my first bench because of this understanding. 

This time around, I trusted the process. I would trust that any given row might need another row or two before it was properly able to snug up to it's neighbor. So I would do a couple rows and use the flat end of the cross peen hammer to snug the weft down to the previous rows.

I'm really glad, this saved so much headache from frustration and re-weaving. 

Funny enough, black on black made it hard to see things as you progress along on the warp. You're blocking out more light with the seat as it builds out, and there's just a lot of black to obscure things. Getting the end of the weft looped over the nail go a bit tricky in those tight quarters.

Complete!

I'm really happy with the overall design and look. I wish ebonization had worked, but I'll try again in the future to try and get the grain to stick around and still maintain the dark color.

It's a stout bench, and feels nicely sturdy as well. Not to mention, quite comfortable to sit on.

The weave came out much better in this project. I'm sure it will shift a bit as things loosen and settle, but I'm happy with it. The black sheen of the paper cord pairs wonderfully with the painted white oak. 

Final details:

Frame: White Oak

Stretcher: Bloodwood

Seat: Black Danish Paper Cord (~600')

Finish: Black Milk Paint (frame) & Shellac

Dimensions: 42.5" W x 14.5" D x 19" H