Stickley No. 660 Plant Stand

This is a piece I kind of made on a whim when I realized I needed to make a trip to the sander, for some other pieces I was working on, and figured if I was going to have to pay a minimum I might as well run a couple other things thru while I was there anyway. I had no plans for this one other than the basic height and top dimensions that can be found in my “Unabridged Reprints of Two Mission Furniture Catalogs”, Dover Publications. What I did on this one was draw it in a CAD programb that I have access to, then tried to proportion it to look like the illustration in the Catalog. With the exception of the top, this piece was made with cut-offs I had lying around from other projects. This piece was also used as my test piece for the finishing process I would eventually use on the D handle rack I have posted on LJ’s also. As always I finish and then assemble. Table irons are one of the very few times I elicit the use of any hardware.

The finishing process starts with a wipe down of distilled water to promote any grain raising that would otherwise occur during application of the water based dye I use. After sanding the grain smooth again I wipe on the dye and then seal the dye with a mix of varnish, Tung oil, and boiled linseed oil. The dye alone is quite red so I glaze the surface using an very dark oil based stain which brings out the character in the grain and knocks down some of the red. I then top coat the whole thing with multiple coats of the same mix used for the seal coat. I’m relatively satisfied with how it turnred out but still convinced there is a better and more consistent finishing process to get the look I’m after.