KW · § IX·b The Daybook · from the bench ← The Journal
§ IX·b — The Daybook

A line
a day.

The workshop's daily ledger — a short note left at the bench most days the shop is open. The long essays are gathered four times a year in the printed Journal; this is the everyday record between them. Kept Tuesday to Friday, in the maker's own hand.

↳ From the bench MMXXVI
Fri 21 August MMXXVI
From the bench

The twenty-fourth drawer of № 1129 went together dry this afternoon, and not one of the first twenty-three had to be touched again.

A Riverdale dressing room, hard maple throughout, half-blind dovetails cut at the bench because the pins wanted to be finer than any jig will allow. Twenty-four drawers is enough repetition that the hand stops thinking — which is precisely when the last one goes wrong, so we cut the last one first on Tuesday and left it in the rack as the standard the other twenty-three had to meet. Closets in Riverdale & Fieldston →

Thu 20 August MMXXVI
Drawing

The third revision of № 1117 took a shelf out of the run, and the room grew taller for it.

A Brooklyn Heights library in quartersawn ash, drawn in CAD against a survey that found the cornice a half inch lower than the plan set promised. Nine shelves became eight, and the eight got an inch of air apiece — the drawing is the cheapest place to have that argument, and very nearly the only one.

Wed 19 August MMXXVI
Survey

The floor of a Preston Hollow dressing room falls half an inch across eleven feet, and the drawings will say so before any stock is cut.

The Dallas crew scanned it yesterday afternoon — both returns, the out-of-square corner by the window, and a sill height that appears on no plan set we were given. № 1108 will be built to the room rather than to the drawing of the room, which is the only reason a scribe line ever closes to a hair. The Dallas workshop →

Tue 18 August MMXXVI
The register

The brass came back from the engraver with the seven struck shallow, and № 1073 will wait another week for its plate.

The plate goes on last and stays for the life of the piece, which is the whole argument for getting it right — a number half-struck reads as an afterthought, and nothing else on a cherry dressing room out of Mott Haven is an afterthought. The register page is already written in ink; the cabinet can stand finished on the floor until the brass is worth the wood.

Wed 5 August MMXXVI
Finish

The iron-acetate wash on № 1154's walnut shelving read flat yesterday; this morning, the grain is back.

Ebonising is patient work — the tannins take the oxidation quietly, the figure disappearing behind a grey wash until the oil goes on and the wood remembers itself. Two passes of iron acetate, then a hard wax cut thin; by afternoon the surface was deep black and still entirely warm. On finish and what it reveals →

Tue 4 August MMXXVI
Finish

Danish oil on the walnut door stiles of № 1152 — the first coat cut fifteen percent with mineral spirits, so the end grain doesn't drink twice what the face does.

The library for an Amagansett house, flat-sawn American black walnut throughout. Let the cut coat strike, wipe back hard, stand twelve hours — then bring the second coat in neat and uncut. The finished surface reads as wood, not finish. The full timber palette →

Fri 31 July MMXXVI
Delivery

№ 1061 left for Bridgehampton at first light — a fitted run in oiled sycamore, the summer's largest commission.

Sycamore is the quietest of the pale timbers: it takes oil and nothing else, and at the end the surface looks less applied than grown. The barn has twelve-foot ceilings and not a true angle in it; every panel was pre-scribed to a millimetre scan taken in March, so today's install goes up clean. The Hamptons work →

Thu 30 July MMXXVI
Finish

The match coat for № 1162 took four attempts — the one we accepted came from the same tin we'd put aside two years ago.

We keep every finish mix in a dated sample tin on the high shelf, lid marked with project number and the application date. The Bronxville library addition called for a half-shade of warmth the current batch of Rubio Monocoat 2C cannot replicate; the reserve from the original build was the only answer. A disciplined archive is not sentiment — it is part of the guarantee. On a living finish →

Wed 29 July MMXXVI
Finish

Lye wash went on for № 1153 this morning — white oak silvered in under an hour.

A dressing room in Bridgehampton, twelve linear feet of upright carcass in rift-sawn white oak. Lye opens the grain and draws out the tannin rather than covering it — the difference between a finish that reads as wood and one that reads as product. We neutralise with diluted white vinegar at the sixty-minute mark; by tomorrow it will be two shades lighter than it looks wet. On what the right finish takes →

Tue 28 July MMXXVI
Finish

The first coat of hard-wax oil went onto the sapele panels for № 1154 this afternoon, and the figure opened like something seen through water.

Ribbon-stripped sapele under oil is one of the more reliable arguments for natural finishes — the chatoyance doubles, the midtones deepen, and the wood stops looking like wood and starts looking like itself. We'll leave the panels in the drying room overnight before the second coat; the shade isn't settled until we've seen what the morning does to it. On a living finish →

Fri 24 July MMXXVI
Finish

The lime-wash dried overnight and came up precisely the grey we had spent three weeks chasing.

Three panels in white oak — limed at three concentrations of slaked lime, sealed under a satin hardwax oil — and the middle one was right: not bleached, not chalky, but the particular quiet silver of timber that has forgotten where it came from. № 1152, a Bridgehampton library, gets its carcass stock cut on Tuesday.

Thu 23 July MMXXVI
Finish

It took three samples to match the color a client described as "what the sea does to a fence post."

The client brought in a cedar shingle bleached to near-silver by three Sagaponack summers and asked for that tone in white oak — № 1159, a bedroom wardrobe for East Hampton. Full-draw liming wax reads as a finish, not a history; the third pull, cut to sixty percent with the grain raised twice, arrived. We noted the formula in the spec and start the doors Monday. On finishes →

The Daybook keeps the shop's days — Tuesday to Friday. The longer pieces are gathered four times a year in the printed Journal.
§ IX · The quarterly

The daybook is daily.
The Journal is by post.

What is noted here in a line is, four times a year, drawn out at length and printed on uncoated paper in editions of 1,200. Leave a postal address; we send nothing else.

Read the Journal →

Take the next number in the register.

The daybook is where the work is noted; the register is where it is kept, in perpetuity. Begin with a conversation.

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