Arts & Crafts Candlesticks

This post will be print light, picture heavy. The subject is a pair of Arts and Crafts inspired candlesticks or candle holders or whatever, I made recently as a gift. The idea is to give a little behind the scenes, a bit of how to and some pics of the finished pieces. I'm already writing too much so lets have a picture.

 The Pieces

 

 This is a picture. It is of all of the pieces that make up these candlethingies (so called from now on, if I remember). These are the pieces from a single unit and consist of a central column with plowed grooves to receive the four "fins", as well as two pieces that fit together via a lap joint, to form the base.

 

The Glue Up

  

  
Um, yeah, that's pretty much that.

  

This Picture Requires A Little More Explanation

The center column has grooves* that travel through it's length (though grooves) as opposed to grooves that stop before they reach the top (stopped grooves...obviously). Through grooves are much faster to produce, but present a problem: the "fins" must run the full length of the column or a filler must be added to the groove above them. Preferring the look of a setback between the top and the fin I cut the fin blanks to the full height, and, using a pattern and a baring guided router bit, cut the shape. The process leaves an "S", cyma or ogee curve because the diameter of the bit/baring is too large to follow the tight curve and 90 degree transition to the column. This portion must be shaped by hand using a chisel, rasp and a little sandpaper. The picture shows the fins before (bottom), and after hand clean up (top).

*Terminology: a groove is cut with the grain and a dado, also a groove, is cut across the grain.

The Finish

Being Arts & Crafts in style these pieces needed to have the right color. This is traditionally achieved using Amonia Fuming which colors the wood by a chemical reaction between the amonia fumes and the tannic acid naturally present in the oak. Although I have used this method before, with great success, I chose not to this time, mainly because some of these pieces had visible sap wood which contains less tannic acid and therefor ends up lighter than the rest of the wood. (To those of you wondering why, for such a small project, I didn't choose pieces without sap wood, I have an answer for you but it would be rude to write it here.)  Instead I used a two step process, to approximate the color tones.

After raising the wood grain with distilled water (do not use tap water with oak as any iron in the water may turn the wood black) and sanding it with 220 paper, I dyed the pieces using a half and half mixture of TransTint Dyes diluted in distilled water. The two colors I used were #6006 Dark Mission Brown and #6004 Medium Brown. After this had dried completely (I let it sit overnight represented in the picture above) I used Zar 111 Walnut Wood Stain. It is sometimes necessary to apply a wash coat of shellac in between these steps to keep the stain from penetrating to deeply and going to dark, but I decided against it after testing on some scrap pieces. In the end the color turned just the way I wanted it. The picture below shows the finished pieces next to a scrap of amonia fumed oak that I was using as a guide.

The final finish consisted of three coats of sprayed satin lacquer and a rub down with 0000 steel wool to flatten the sheen.

 

The Final Product

 

 

Looking over this post now I realize I lied a little about the "light on print" part, so to try and save face I offer the final, condensed details: the base is screwed to the column and the holes have inserts made from altered copper end caps.

In the end I was happy with how these candlethingies turned out and I hope they give many long years of service. As always questions or comments are welcome.