Bird Chair Restoration: Wood Carving

In August of 2020 I noticed a Facebook post by my neighbor, Vanessa, offering up a chair for which she no longer had room.  The minute I saw the red and cream bird fabric I fell in love with the chair.  I emailed back as fast as I could type and told her I would love to take it off her hands.  She responded to come on over and within the hour George and I had finagled this amazing chair into the back of our little car. Thank you Vanessa!!!

You can see in the photo above, the chair came with a broken, carved wood frieze.  I have been wanting to try chip carving for a while and when I saw the broken carving I thought, "What the heck!  I will have a go at fixing it!"  I wasn't really sure about it, but when I came across this video by Mary May, it gave me the confidence that I could do it.  In the video she shows how to use different chisels and she also recommended carving wood from a species of tree called Butternut (Juglans cinerea).  I sent the video to my woodworker friend, Tom, and told him about the project.  He said he thought he had a spare piece of Butternut I could have.  A few days later he dropped off a beautiful piece of wood for me to carve.  Thank you Tom!!!

Scan, Sketch, Vectorize

Once Tom gave me the wood I knew I had to do the project.  At first I thought I would try and re-create the original design as best I could.  But then I had an epiphany! "What if I turned the flower blooms into birds that would reference the birds in the fabric!!!" 

In order to start playing with that idea I had to scan the original broken frieze.  I placed the wood on my scanner and had to piece together several scans in Photoshop.  I then printed the scan onto paper to scale and sketched my "bird flowers."      

Once I was satisfied with my sketch I scanned my drawing and brought it into Illustrator where I traced the outline of my design.   At this point I knew the project would depend on the help of another friend, also a woodworker.  I called my neighbor Mark and ran the project by him.  He said he could cut out my design using his shaper tool if I gave him a very precise vector file.  I was super excited when he said he could do it.  I sent him my file and gave him the wood and look what he made me!  Thank you Mark!    

Transfer Sketch to Wood

The next step was to transfer my design to the wood.  I thought about different transfer methods but ended up simply re-drawing my design onto the wood with pencil.  I knew I would have to re-draw it over and over as I carved the lines away. 

Carving

I started the carving by using a sharp knife to cut the outlines of the major shapes.  I then used my Flexcut printmaking chisels to remove the wood up to the sharp line.  This helps to create "walls" that, once established, are very easy to chisel up to.  Below you can see this early carving process.

This video shows the entire carving process from rough beginning to finished carving.

Sanding

Once I finished the carving I knew I needed to sand it down to refine it even further.  What I didn't know is that I would end up sanding for a week!  At times I felt like a dentist trying to sand in hard-to-get-to places.  I ended up cutting the sandpaper and using it like floss to sand the interior of the openings smooth.

This video shows the carving in a near-finished state.  

Finished Carving

I started carving on January 4th and took these photos on February 5th.  So it took me roughly a month working on it anywhere from one to four hours a day.

The photo below is one of my favorite photos.  I really like how the reflection of the light coming through one of my dining room chairs created a reflection that mimicked the tail pattern of the left bird.

Staining

I probably should have cut this blog post in half at this point.  But I wanted you to feel the epicness of the project so I am going to keep going!  

I was pretty nervous to stain the piece.  I had fallen in love with it just the way it was...and I liked the smoothness of it unstained.  If it wasn't supposed to go back into a chair stained very dark brown, I would have hung it on my wall without stain.  Alas, it was a restoration project and so I started the process by testing the stain on a scrap piece of butternut that Tom gave me.  Around this time Tom told me that when you buy unstained furniture, (especially of soft, porous woods) you normally shellac it and then sand the whole thing down before applying the stain.  I couldn't bear the thought of re-sanding something I just spent a week sanding!  He then took pity on me and told me I could try using a wood conditioner.  Wood conditioner helps soft woods absorb stain more evenly.  Below you can see my test.

I could definitely tell the wood conditioner helped to achieve a more even stain, so I decided to use it on the carving.  Below you can see the carving with just wood conditioner.

Here is a video of me applying the first coat of wood conditioner and the first coat of stain.

I was a little freaked out after my first coat of stain because I HATED it!  It had a slight gold undertone that I detested...sort of like that brassy look when women dye their hair the wrong color.  I ended up staining it five more times with just pure Minwax stain.  I started off with dark walnut and quickly moved to ebony to try and get it as dark as the original carving.  

It soon became clear that I needed something stronger.  I ended up supplementing the Minwax stain with my printmaking ink.  I added both Basic Bistre and Raw Sepia Charbonnel etching ink to the dark walnut stain and it finally began to darken.  I stained it five more times with my new concoction to get it as dark as the original.  I let it dry at least 4 hours between each coat.  I probably could have stained it a few more times but I was so done with it at that point!

I made a rookie mistake at this point and drilled the holes in the sides of the carving (more on that story below).  Drilling the holes made LOTS of wood dust which was ever so attracted to my lovely dark stain.  I scoured the internet for solutions to this problem and came across the suggestion of Mirlon scuff pads.  I ordered them and they arrived two days later.  They worked great and were nice in that they didn't leave any residue like steel wool might.  Below you can see I cut strips of it to get in all the nooks and crannies to remove any dust particles before applying polyurethane.

Polyurethane

After doing my best to remove any dust particles from the carving I painted on the polyurethane.  

The original carving was fairly dull so I only needed two coats.  Even then it was too shiny in spots so I used the Mirlon scuff pads again to take the sheen down.  Below you can see the original compared to the new.

Here are a few photos I took on the basement table and bench.

Installation

The original carving was attached to the legs of the chair by two dowel rods inserted into the side ends.  Three of the original dowels still remained in the chair so I had to chisel them off and re-stain the area.

After the dowels were cut off, George was able to hold the carving in place for me to see for the first time.

My installation plan involved drilling holes in the arms of the chair and frieze for dowel rods that would hold everything in place... just like the original.  The problem was that when the chair was originally built the carving could be inserted with dowels on one side and then the leg could be added on the opposited side, thus sandwiching the carving in place.  Now, the arms of the chair had some give, but not much near the bottom.  I knew we could insert two dowels on the left side no problem.  And I hoped we could splay the arms apart enough to get the top right dowel in place, but wasn't really sure if we would be able to have much dowel sticking out on the lower right and still be able to insert it. I decided we should go ahead and drill all the holes anyway. Below you can see the left side went perfectly.

During the drilling on the right side we had a BIG OOPS moment.  I held the carving as perpendicular to the floor as possible while George drilled down into the sides.  He drilled the top right hole perfectly and we just had one more to go.  We were both sweating bullets and didn't want to mess up the carving I had just worked so hard on for weeks.  As George drilled the last hole the drill accidentally went all the way through the right side of the carving and came out in the interior space.  I was worried it might have cracked the whole side and couldn't even really look closely at it for a good ten minutes.  I knew he felt terrible about it and re-assured him that it was hidden and no big deal.  It was a REALLY stressful moment.   

And then George had an epiphany.  "Now that the hole goes all the way through, you can just push that dowel through into its hole and we don't have to worry about pushing the legs out so far!"  George is seriously a genius.  What we thought was a terrible mistake turned out to be a serendipitous, amazing solution! I was so pleased and couldn't believe how lucky we were.

The next day we borrowed giant clamps from our neighbor Mark and enacted the plan.  I have to be honest, it didn't go quite as smoothly as I would have liked.  I applied glue to the left side dowels and carving and they went in perfectly.  I knew the right side would be stressful because we had to push the legs as far apart as we could to get the upper right hand dowel in place.  I had to shave it down a bit but we were able to get it in.

The problem came when we couldn't push the lower right dowel through the serendipitous hole.  It wouldn't budge. I was starting to panic.  Glue was drying and we couldn't find the hole.  I don't even know how we did it, but we were able to push the arms apart and take the right side off.  I re-applied the glue and we were careful to have both upper and lower right side dowels sticking out...enough so that both would grab their respective holes.  This time they both went in.  In hindsight I could see the lower right hole was a smidge farther back then we thought.  I had been pulling it out when I should have been pushing it back.  With a big sigh of relief we tightened the clamps and squeezed it all together! 

Cushion Surgery

The next day I was so excited to finish this project!  Alas, my plans were foiled when we tried to insert the lower cushion.  Now that the legs were squeezed into proper position and had no give, the cushion was too wide.

I knew from the beginning the cushion might bulge too much from front to back and apply too much pressure to the carving.  For weeks I had been fretting about how to address that problem and knew I might have to open the cushion up to deal with it.  But I had not expected the cushion to be too wide.  I have to admit that I was pretty worried at this point.  I decided to wait until the next day to open her up and do some cushion surgery.

The next day I had a slow start because I couldn't find my mini-flathead screwdriver and the needle-nose pliers.  After searching high and low I finally found everything and removing the staples only took me about an hour or so.  

I was happy I was able to pull the fabric down without having to undo any of the corner sewing (left).  When I pulled back the batting, the cushion reminded me of an ice cream sandwich (right).  I thought it would be gross inside, but it was actually very clean.

And I was pleasantly surprised that the batting was easy to separate in layers.  It felt like I was skinning an animal and trimming layers of fat away.  Maybe I skinned animals in a past life or something, but it was very satisfying and easier than I expected.

We tried to install the cushion after removing a few layers of batting, but the frame still felt a little tight in the front where it touched the carving.  So we brought it back down to the basement and I shaved a little off the front frame with my chisel.  I then sanded it to make it smooth.

We did one final test and it fit great.  The next morning we stapled it back together and I thought, "Today is the big day!  The final day of the project!"  

Alas, my hopes were shattered one more time.  Right after George put the newly-thinned cushion in place, he barely touched the right arm and the glue and dowel popped open.

Needless to say we were disappointed.  But we immediately started to think of how we could remedy the situation.  We discussed metal plates.  I had considered metal plates all along, but the arms were essentially round and there wasn't much to attach to if the plates were to be hidden.  We considered four corner braces that would end up showing...two above and two below.  We thought about doing an "honest repair" and sending a screw from the outside of the leg through to the carving...but that option involved a screw head in the middle of the design in the leg carving.  We also discussed using the Kreg Jig which is a device that helps you drill at an angle and insert a screw.  The cons of the Kreg jig is that is is a fairly big hole and you risk the possibility of the carving cracking.  I wasn't sure which way we were going to go.  But a little while later George appeared with the Kreg jig and the decision was made.

Kreg Jig

With fresh glue and the legs clamped together, we clamped the Kreg jig to the backside of the carving.  George drilled the first hole and it went amazingly well.  Below you can see a top-down view of the jig on the left and a side-view of the final result on the right.

We let the newly-screwed-and-glued carving sit overnight.  I also did a few final touch-ups of the stain where the cushion had rubbed.

Finito!

The next morning after breakfast we inserted both cushions and gave each other high-fives to celebrate the end of a long journey.  Thank you Georgie!

I listened nervously for cracks or pops when George sat down to test it out.  Luckily, all we heard was the sound of silence.

In the end I was very pleased with how the carving now mimics the birds in the fabric. This chair was destined to live in the house of an ornithologist! 

The arrival of this chair has now transformed how we use this room.  It created a cozy reading nook at the back of the room.  And it is the perfect place to drink tea (or coffee) in the morning because the sun shines in the side window and warms you up.

On "Loving the Dark"

I debated whether to end the post with that last photo of George happily absorbed in his bird book.  But I wanted to describe how this experience, with all its twists and turns, reflected an idea I have been studying.  A few years back, my friend Frank loaned me a book called, "In Praise of Shadow" by Junichiro Tanizaki.  The book described shadowy scenes of Japan in the winter where the deep roof overhangs create a cryptic, soft and hazy darkness.  And that there is beauty in that darkness and not really knowing what is there.  This book began my interest in finding beauty in darkness.

““How terrible this darkness was, how bewildering, and yet mysteriously beautiful!” 

― Stefan Zweig, The Burning Secret and other Stories

And how does this relate to the carving you might ask?  A funny thing happened.  After I finished the carving I REALLY liked it un-stained.  It was so smooth and the wood was so light and beautiful.  But I knew I had to stain it to match the chair.  Before I stained it I thought I would take lots of pictures and decided the light carving would look great against the dark dining room table.  So I took a gazillion photos of it and loved the contrast.

“When you walk to the edge of all the light you have and take that first step into the darkness of the unknown,
you must believe that one of two things will happen.
There will be something solid for you to stand upon or you will be taught to fly.”

― Patrick Overton

Then, I had to quite literally darken the light wood.  And it was interesting that it wasn't an easy process.  The first time I applied the stain and rubbed it off I thought I had ruined the piece.  Each time I compared it to the original I realized I had to keep going darker.  I had to keep pushing further and further until I achieved a dark lacquered look where the grain was almost invisible.  Something about that process felt like going into an abyss where I wasn't sure of the outcome.  Once I finally started to add my printmaking ink to it, I began to feel a glimmer of hope that I could find beauty in this darkness.  I started to feel the allure of it.  I stained it at least ten times before I finally felt it was "gorgeously" dark.

My first thought was to photograph this dark beauty against a light surface.  You can see those first photos above.  But then I was walking one day and it struck me like a ton of bricks, "You have to photograph it on a dark background!"  

And I did.  And I absolutely loved it.

“Into the darkness they go, the wise and the lovely.”

― Edna St. Vincent Millay

Another reason I have darkness on my mind is that I am reading Bill Plotkin’s “The Journey of Soul Initiation.”  In this book he describes how we must descend into the darkness in order to find our true calling…our mytho-poetic identity...indeed our very soul.  “The way to get to soul is by going down…all you know is that the journey is a plunge into the unknown.” And who in their right mind would want to go there?  He argues there is a part of us that knows perfectly why.  “She’s a lover of mystery, a devotee of the fecund dark, an aficionado of profound change, a freakish fan of fearsome affairs…”  

His description of this process reminded me of my own life’s path.  One minute you are fine and the next you are on an unexpectedly dark path.  My “descent” into infertility over a decade ago was a very real walk into the darkness.  Sometimes the path was excruciatingly painful.  Spending years in the dark, you get to know it well.  But that time in the dark changed me and led me, ironically, to a meditation retreat where I sat for days in the darkness of my closed eyelids.  And through some miracle of fate I found something in that darkness that was so achingly beautiful I am forever and profoundly altered.  Sitting in that dark, rich silence I discovered a light in me that I never knew existed and to this day brings tears to my eyes.

"Instead of ignoring [demon god] Mara or driving him away, the Buddha would calmly acknowledge his presence, saying, 'I see you, Mara.'

He would then invite him for tea and serve him as an honored guest. Offering Mara a cushion so that he could sit comfortably, the Buddha would fill two earthen cups with tea, place them on the low table between them, and only then take his own seat. Mara would stay for a while and then go, but throughout the Buddha remained free and undisturbed." 

― Tara Brach

The epic journey described by Plotkin is certainly daunting.  But I would argue that each and every one of us takes mini-journeys on a more regular basis.  I’ve recently been struggling with a series of minor health issues.  Every time one occurs I have a low-level fear that something is wrong.  And every so often three, or four, or five of them happen all at once and that low-level fear compounds into high-level fear.  In the past few weeks I got to take this journey with fear.  I have to admit, it isn’t always pretty.  I am not always able to gracefully invite Mara in for tea and have polite discourse.  I often find myself pushing on the door trying not to let Mara in.  But every time it happens I now see there is an opportunity…there is a little more space.  I don’t like Mara coming for tea, but I can see sometimes I don’t have a choice.  And once I have cried and yelled and screamed at Mara to get the heck out, if I am lucky I calm down…slow down… and summon my curiosity to ask “What message do you have for me?”.  As Plotkin so beautifully writes…, ”For real transformation, you must be able to see how your demons are actually your partners…how they hold the missing segments of your path to wholeness.”  

Along these same lines, Matt Licata argues in his book A Healing Space, that “there is intelligence in our neurosis, wisdom in our symptoms, and sacred data in our emotions.”  “It is understandable to want to ‘transform’ fear, of course, but in my experience, intelligence is embedded within it and a communication is in its core…If we ‘get rid of’ the fear too quickly, without first heating it up in the vessel with curiosity and awareness, we will lose contact with any message or guidance it has for our journey.” 

I used to think of myself as a “lover of the light.”  I am drawn to people who can bring light to any room and spread cheer and happiness.  To some degree this is a human trait I suppose.  But lately life has also been showing me that I can be a “lover of the dark” too.  Life is a very great mystery and mystery itself is borne from darkness.  I think if we can realize that we are constantly traveling between the two polarities, we start to appreciate that we need both on this journey.  You cannot have joy without sorrow, or light without dark.  Understanding this duality is our reality and that one polarity births the other, somehow helps me to take it all in with a little more ease. 

It is my hope that in the small moments when I find “the cushion is too big”, or “the glue popped open” or "we just drilled through the carving" that I can learn to ride these little waves.  When I find myself panicking that I’ve ruined my piece by staining it wrong…then I proceed a little further along into darkness trusting there is a way through.  It is in these intimate life moments that I learn how to deal with the bigger waves that will surely come.  It is my hope that next time I find myself in the dark I will realize there are treasures hidden there.  If I slow down and still myself, I might hear the achingly beautiful call that whispers, “Take another step…Go a little further”.  And if I am lucky, two beautiful dark birds might alight on my shoulder.

“The strongest trees are rooted in the dark places of the earth.
Darkness will be your cloak, your shield, your mother's milk.
Darkness will make you strong.”

― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

A big thank you to Vanessa, Tom, Mark and my Georgie. You are my peeps!