Tag Archives: woodworking

Useful Sites

Friday Link-o-Rama

Tool collector or serious hobbyist? Either way, Jacques Jodoin’s incredible basement woodworking shop has to be seen to be believed. There’s three pages of photos of his shop with every tool imaginable; it almost looks like a store. I love all the tiny bins.

This Japanese “museum” of fantastic specimens (actually gaffs of imaginary creatures) shows what you can accomplish with papier-mâché. The museum itself is in Japanese, but the link is to a page which attempts to guide you through it in English (h/t to Propnomicon for pointing me to the site).

La Bricoleuse has been doing some interesting documentation of the armor that was rented for PlayMaker Rep’s upcoming repertory productions of Henry IV and Henry V (the same shows I just worked on). This post, for example, looks at photos of various pieces and annotates the choices made in their construction, describing what she likes (and what she doesn’t).

Die Hausbücher der Nürnberger Zwölfbrüderstiftungen has a collection of over 1300 color illustrations detailing many of the manufacturing processes and crafts from 1388 to the 19th century. The pages are in German, so you may want to run it through a translator.

Young People Today Wouldn’t Recognize New York Of The 1980s. These color photographs of New York City from the 1980s will help you the next time you are working on a period version of Fame.

This is an unfortunately brief article about working backstage in China, including a quote from a prop master. It sounds like they have to go through the same kinds of things we do over here though.

News

Top Prop News of 2011

I will be taking the next week off for the Holidays, so it will be 2012 the next time you read this. The world of props isn’t exactly one of constant change, but news stories occasionally affect us. I’ve narrowed down four of the most notable ones of 2011. Here they are, in no particular order:

  1. E-Cigarettes are banned in Boston workplaces. I am not sure how this affects their use on stage. I’ve written about e-cigarettes before on this site as their legal status and safety issues are constantly changing and evolving. Expect e-cigarettes to continue to make the news in 2012.
  2. Guns on the set of Brad Pitt’s World War Z were seized by Hungarian authorities. This story first appeared with sensationalistic flair in the gossip and tabloid sites; they got most of the facts completely wrong, and the real story was far more interesting to props people. I did my own round-up and debunking of what really happened.
  3. Occupy Wall Street began on September 17th, and dominated the news through much of the autumn, and is still happening in various forms throughout the world. If you’ve looked at any of the photographs, you may have seen some protesters wearing a certain kind of mask. “Say,” you ask yourself, “isn’t that a prop from the film V for Vendetta?” It is, and several news articles discussed who is behind the masks and interviewed Alan Moore, creator of the original V for Vendetta comic.
  4. The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) is soliciting comments from the public on new proposals for table saw safety. If you are familiar with the SawStop technology, they are basically considering whether to make that technology mandatory on new table saws (You can read the actual proposal here). The Popular Woodworking blog has been keeping up to date with this story since it began, as this will have quite the effect on anyone working on the carpentry side of things.
Tools

Olde Time Woodworking Machines

I like to look at what larger stationary woodworking tools looked like before the birth of electricity. So for today’s blog, I’m making you look at them too!

Large stationary tools which allow precision work did not appear with the birth of electricity. Though it may seem a table saw or band saw can only work off of an electrical motor, machines like these were common long before they needed to be plugged in. Running off of foot pedals, hand wheels, or a central axle driven by water, wind or steam power, these machines share many of the shapes, guards, rails and features of their electrical descendants.

This is from The complete dictionary of arts and sciences, Volume 2, by Temple H. Croker, Thomas Williams, Samuel Clarke, published 1765.

A collection of lathes circa 1765
A collection of lathes circa 1765

The next few are from Amateur work, illustrated, Volume 1, by Ward, Lock & Co., published 1883.

Fret and scroll saws, circa 1883
Fret and scroll saws, circa 1883
Band-saws, 1883
Band-saws, 1883
Band-saw attachment for hand power, 1883
Band-saw attachment for hand power, 1883
Combine circular and band-saw, 1883
Combine circular and band-saw, 1883

I imagine these kinds of tools took two people to operate; one on the wheel and one moving the material.

Circular Saw, 1883
Circular Saw, 1883

The following come from Wood workers’ tools catalogue, published by C.A. Stelinger & Co. in 1897.

Empire scroll saw, 1897
Empire scroll saw, 1897
Ajax boring machine
Ajax boring machine

Imagine if you had to tell people that your job was to operate a boring machine all day.

How-to

Coffee Table

A few weeks ago, I built myself a new coffee table. It’s not a prop, but I thought I’d show some pictures anyway. We had a set of IKEA shelves in last fall’s production of In the Wake; one of the shelves was just the right size for the top of the coffee table. I gathered the rest of the materials from scraps of lumber that had been sitting around the prop shop for a long time. I kept the design simple; it was almost like a modified trestle table, with a single center stretcher, and the legs had a slight angle to them.

Front view of the table
Front view of the table

All the wood I used was pine. While I like the grain pattern of pine, I can’t really stand light-colored wood, so I applied a coat of red mahogany stain to it. One of the things I rarely get to do when making props is put a nice finish to a carpentry project; usually we just slap a coat of polyurethane on and call it done. I decided to go with two coats of shellac. The denatured alcohol means it has some VOCs when you are working with it, but when that is fully evaporated, you are left with just the resin from the lac beetle, giving you a natural finish which is both food-safe and hypoallergenic. You can build up a really nice and hard finish by applying several thin coats with sanding in between. One of the other things that makes it great is that each coat dries in about an hour, as opposed to the 24 hours it takes for a coat of Tung Oil to dry. I applied one coat, sanded it with 220 grit sandpaper, added a second coat, and sanded that with 400 grit paper. The finish protects the stain from coming off the wood and moisture from going into the wood. It leaves the wood slick and smooth without really obscuring its natural appearance (or making it look like a shiny piece of plastic like some horrific finishes you see).

Because I built this in the prop shop, I needed to bring it home when I was all finished. Being in New York City without a car means I had to bring it on the subway.  With that in mind, I had built it so it could be broken down into four pieces which just needed to be screwed together. Basically, I had made my own “flat-pack” furniture. I shrink-wrapped the pieces up and carried it home with ease.

Wrapped up for transport
Wrapped up for transport

I even labeled the joints so I knew which way the pieces went when it came time to reassemble it.

Unpacked
Unpacked

Obviously, my cats were very interested in this new arrival. Biscuit especially seemed to approve of it.

Finished coffee table
Finished coffee table
Useful Sites

March Link Madness

Since I’m juggling four shows simultaneously at the moment, I figured I’d let the rest of the internet do the talking.

  • Woodworks Library – Over 175 complete and free books on woodworking, and related topics such as furniture design, blacksmithing, upholstery, and carving. This should keep you busy for awhile.
  • University of Texas Map Collection – A great collection of historic and contemporary maps from around the world.
  • Turn of the Century – A blog that purports to be “everything strange and beautiful from the 1850s to the 1920s.”
  • An absolutely fascinating photo gallery inside the shop of master gunsmith Nijazi Ibragimov.