My grandaughter, Hannah, had a major project for her school...the focus had to be something from our colonial period. She chose to make candles in the old style. She needed to expand the project to meet some requirements and she and I decided to make a wooden candle holder. We would only use modern hand tools that would have had colonial equivalents. Wood Selection, Milling Wood and Assembly
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We started with the basic idea of boat shaped holder for the candle that Hannah made. |
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Wood Selection, Milling and Assembley
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We used basswood...this wood is easy to work, has straight grain, no knots... Layout...we avoided the ideas of measuring anything and just tried to make things look balanced...we used dividers to get the proportions right. |
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Striking the lines was typically done with a square and a marking knife...
Other layout tools used were a rule and an angle gauge. |
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Sawing was done with a small backsaw...we tried a bowsaw first but found that our greatest problem was holding the workpiece steady and the bowsaw was a failure... This Pax gentleman's saw is a 20 tpi crosscut...we would have had more success with crosscut/rip hybrid. |
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For saw lubrication we used mutton tallow. |
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After sawing to shape, a bench chisel was used to making the joints...in chop mode... |
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...paring mode... |
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...and vertical paring for cleaning... |
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...a router plane was used to make the shallow rebate... |
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...carving tools were used to slope the sides of the boat... |
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...rasping the rounded edges. |
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A bit and brace was used to create the hole for the candle... |
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Glue up...we made hot hide glue…took crystals and soaked them overnight, heated the glue in a replica hot glue pot…and applied the glue with a brush. |
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Hannah clamped the pieces together and let it set for 1 hour...assembly complete. |
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Surfaces were sanded with a cork block and a grit progression of 150x-320x-400x... |
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Hannah padded on a coat of amber shellac..this was home made shellac…made from the secretions of the Lac beetle from India…mixed with 190 proof alcohol…these crystals were amber in color. |
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Candle inserted... |
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Hannah with her finished candle holder. |
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Hannah submitted her project in a book format...
It is available here in PDF format. |
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