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Darrel:This is a piece from the Blacker House.
William's interpretation,
it's a nice interpretation.
But again you have this ebony spline here.
That's faux, it's not real.
But it gives the feeling of structure
without really being,
and that appeals to a wood worker, I think.
The feeling of structure that is
part of the design.
You know, um...
Oh, here's, now they did a lot of neat things.
This is what I call the leg indent detail.
What I like about that
is if you think of the classic
claw and ball foot,
you've got a big claw down there,
and it's accepting the weight
of the furniture coming down on it.
And so it gives substance to it.
You know, it's weighted down.
This is essentially the same thing
in kind of a more subtle way.
Because this pushes down,
and this area right here,
the way I see it,
this is just my interpretation,
is that all the weight of the piece
is pushing down on this part right there.
And it feels like it's anchored.
Marc:Just gives the impression of extra weight.
Darrell:Yes.
Marc:Even though it hasn't increased in thickness.
Darrell:No, no, it's a visual weight only.
Marc:Gotcha.
Darrell:Okay, this is one of William Ng's students
working on the Blacker arm chair.
The Blacker arm chair is, I think, one of the
really really classic Greene & Greene designs.
It has a lot of elements that really
attracts people to Green & Greene.
There's a lot of complexity,
like if you look at this front leg,
it's a parallelogram,
but when you get up here to the arm,
that's living in the square world.
And so right back here,
you've got a transist from square to parallelogram,
and you've got a spline in there on the back side.
It's probably hard to see from there,
but that's a lot of hand work.
There's no way around it.
And just little things,
like the brackets here,
that's got to go into an angle there.
There's all these...
It's a very complex piece,
it's got the ebony buttons
which are really common in Greene & Greene.
Right here there will be some inlay in this piece,
which is really neat.
A lot of inlay in Greene & Greene.
They did what was called "bolection inlay".
It was proud of the surface,
it's not just put in and then sanded flush,
it's out proud and it's carved out there,
so it's just another layer of complexity
and craftsmanship that's needed.
Marc:In general, what would be your explanation
for why so many plugs,
why so much ebony and inlay?
Where do you think that came from
with the Greenes and why that's...
Darrell:Oh, you know,
I think the thing about the plugs.
Another thing that
really attracts me to Greene & Greene
is they took what was an element of structure
and made it an element of design.
And actually these plugs really don't do anything.
Very seldom does a plug,
is it structural.
But it's a design element,
and to my eye,
I've been building furniture for a long time,
so I like to see the structure.
Even though it took me awhile at first.
Once I realized that the plugs were faux,
I kind of went through a little crisis period, I guess,
where I could accept that
and say, "Okay, well I do like it.
"I do like it."
Even though it is not real.
You know, this spline here,
in most cases, well and in the real one,
it only goes about a quarter of an inch deep.
You know, there's a tenon behind here
in the real Blacker arm chair.
But I just love the design so much
that I finally accepted the fact
that it's faux, and embraced it actually.
Marc:Now that particular one is out of bubinga.
How do you feel about using non-traditional materials?
Darrell:Oh, yeah.
Even though this is...
you know, I have no problems with using
a different type of wood or anything like that.
I like to say, you know,
as much or as little as you like to stick to the original,
and if you want to go way out on a limb,
do that, you know?
Cause if you restrict yourself,
then you're not going to develop as a designer.
You know, so, and I think the bubinga
in this case looks really nice.
William:Okay, this joint here is called three way miter.
It's used in a lot of Chinese furniture.
And obviously every time you join miters together,
it's always end grain
so you've got to have some strength behind that
so that's where the mortise and tenons comes in.
So the joint is actually like this.
This is one piece.
And then the other two lock into each other like so
with these other three components.
Marc:Amazing.
Where do you even begin to make something like that?
What tools do you use?
William:I think the most important thing
about the joiner is marking it out.
So you have to be able to learn
how to mark it out accurately.
So you got to have a good marking knife,
marking gauge,
and I use the marking knife to mark all my marks
because I always tell people
pencils are okay,
but if you want to be a good joint maker,
then use a real fine pencil,
but if you want to be a great joint maker,
then use a knife.
So that's the best line you can do.
It just kind of locks in here like so,
I'll put it back together.
And this piece goes in here.
The way I make this joint is
I use a table saw,
I use a hollow chisel mortiser,
and I use a Japanese pull saw.
Obviously this piece here,
you can see that this is mortised
with a hollow chisel mortiser,
and then these pieces are cut by a table saw.
I use a flat saw blade.
This one here, you can see
this is one piece.
This piece here, you can see that it's also mortised.
Just a through mortise, all the way through.
Table saw, table saw,
band saw,
then you use your chisels and your [unintelligible]
to go clean it up.
And then the joint that puts it all together
is this joint here.
This is an inch and an eighth,
so I use a hollow chisel mortiser,
and I come in this way,
I put this up against the fence,
I flip it over,
and I put this up against the fence
so this distance here is equal distance here.
Hollow chisel mortiser,
and I stop it shy.
I go in there with a chisel and I clean it all up.
And then for these two tenons here,
I use a nice marking case to find the depth,
I mark it out,
cut it up,
and then I also go in there with a chisel
and just clean this all up.
Marc:Can you put it back together one more time?
William:Yeah.
Marc:Amazing.
Awesome.
William:Well we have also
in the theme of Chinese furniture,
this is what you call the Bird's Beak.
It's a mortise and tenon,
and also has a little bit of decorative 45 angle here.
So basically it's just a mortise and tenon
with the extra glue surface.
And also for decorating and locating the joint.
And as you can see,
this is done on a table saw.
Table saw.
Hollow chisel mortiser.
And this one here, I just go in there with a [unintelligible]
Because you know that this is exactly 45.
and just clean it up.
Mark that where you are.
The gauge.
And then cut and...
Marc:And that little,
I guess what would be the bird's beak,
how much would you say that strengthens the joint?
I mean it almost makes it
somewhat of a bridle joint.
William:The glue surface,
you just double your glue surface by doing it this way.
And it locks it square also too.
Marc:Very nice.
And how frequently would you say that's used
in China, or Japan, wherever it originated from?
William:Most furnitures are done this way,
so I would say probably 99% of the time,
most furniture.
For rails, they would probably put this joint in there.
So it's a very common joint they use.
And then we also have a couple of Japanese joints.
This one here I'm sure you've probably seen.
Sometimes they call this a goose neck,
because it looks like a goose neck.
And a lot of this is done
partly table saw, a lot of chisel work.
Marc:Where would you use this type of joint?
Williams:This is actually for big temple building,
construction, that's how they do joints,
big beams together like this.
And also, this is also done by
an instructor that is actually here,
Jay van Arsdale.
This is also what I call a scarf joint.
This is a very clever little joint,
cause it takes a tiny little piece of wood like this
between the two end grains on each side
and it just locks in here like so.
And it's very strong.
Marc:Clever. Very clever.
William:And one thing about this,
because it is [unintelligible] both sides,
the strength id here,
it supports each other this way,
also support each other this way,
and then with this pin locking in,
I don't think this is ever going to come apart like this.
We have a joinery class.
We go from very basic hand cut dovetails,
to more complicated joints like this.
This is probably one of our finale,
a couple of these joints,
we do probably on the fifth day
as long as we learn all the skills
of hand cutting to the line,
that's what we use.
These are just some of the joints that we do.
Marc:And it's a five day cutting course?
William:It's a five day class.
And we end up probably doing about 2,000 joints.
Marc:Okay.
William:Well this is just a...
this is a piece of furniture that I'm working on.
I'm kind of writing a little article on this one here.
Utilizing some of the joints
that we briefly just talked about.
And this is the application.
I've pulled this one out a little bit
just to show you that
the joints are actually made that way.
Now this is a little bit smaller,
so there's more hand work involved,
and I didn't use a hollow chisel mortiser
because the sides are a lot smaller,
so I can't put a hollow chisel mortiser in there,
because they don't make it that small.
And this one here actually goes in.
But I did, cause I actually
made the tenons a little longer
because there's a top that goes on there
and this becomes my tenons,
and I put the mortise on my top,
and it just fits right in there.
Marc:Oh, nice.
Now will you use glue for all these joints,
or will they be glueless?
William:I usually use a little bit of glue.
This one actually doesn't have any glue on there,
so you can tell that just by the locking mechanism,
that I probably don't need any glue,
but I usually put a little bit of glue in there anyways,
just to keep it from moving.
This is a plant stand.
So I have a top here, the plant goes here,
a plant goes here,
and I have a little shelf here for your little knick knacks.
There is actually a door that's going to be here,
and then two little drawers.
Hopefully I'll finish it just in time.