“Wood X, a Furniture Show,” will run from January 11 to February 1, 2019 at the Escondido Arts Partnership Municipal Gallery in Esconido, California. Also a founding member of the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Association, Brian started the Escondido show after wondering “what would happen if I had a show in January which didn’t conflict with the show in June?” Another motivation was his involvement in the Escondido Chamber of Commerce and his belief in its mission: “I truly believe that the chamber is the voice of business and the more that you promote your business within your community, the better it is for everyone. I’m a businessman working in my community, and I support businesses in my community.”

His own business is Murphy’s Fine Woodworking, which focuses on custom-built furniture, largely in the Arts and Crafts style. Previous business ventures have also included the proprietorship of woodworking retail stores The Cutting Edge, from 1980 to 1989, and American Furniture Design woodworking plans company, sold within the past few years to Lee Valley Tools.

He’d done some smaller woodworking projects before then, but became more involved and started building custom furniture while running The Cutting Edge. “I keep a diary, so every piece of furniture that I have made [is recorded]. The first one was ‘001,’ and it was done in 1982. It was a butcher block mobile kitchen unit, hard rock maple top, birch sides, inserts and walnut sliding doors with dovetails.” Piece number two was a grandfather clock in white oak with Carpathian elm burl inserts on the crown and base. Piece number 256 was a table that a customer picked up in December.

“The adventure of being a custom woodworker [is], unlike the big store manufacturers, when we build chairs and build furniture, we select the perfect board – not pieces, the board – to showcase the piece.” For example, the arms on a chair “are usually so stunning in grain pattern that they just kind of jump at you,” Brian said.

Chairs are a specialty of his. He’s working on two new ones, one for his own show in January and one as an entry for the San Diego Fine Woodworkers Show in June, but over the years, counting those he has made and those he has taught, Brian estimates “I have produced and influenced almost 100 chairs. That’s a lot of chairs.”

While most of his chairs are large, they are built to fit the person. “I had a gal who was extremely arthritic, and the chair had to be narrower and shorter for her to get in and out of the chair.” Stylistically, they owe a lot to the Arts and Crafts movement. “Some of that furniture was truly ultra-simple, so in my adventure with Arts and Crafts, it has been to modernize it just a bit, to make the chairs so comfortable that when you sit in them, you take a nap. In the original Stickley chairs, you can’t do that,” Brian said.

Still, he is fond of the Arts and Crafts styles. While he has produced “all kinds of furniture, from Queen Anne sideboards to rolltop desks – you name it, I have built it,” it’s the Arts and Crafts style that most appeals to him. “I fell in love with Gustav Stickley,” he explained. “I loved the turn-of-the-century Gustav Stickley, William Morris type concept.”

With the focus on mortise-and-tenon joinery in this type of furniture, Brian notes that his floor-mounted mortising machine has been a worthwhile tool investment, helping to ensure that the pieces he builds “will last for a very long time” (at least one client has the Murphy’s Fine Woodworking pieces they own included in a family trust for their children).

Brian notes that’s also “always developing new stuff, which is fun.” He’s known for a California West Greene and Greene chair which riffs off the influence of the Greene and Greene woodwork in Pasadena’s Gamble House. “It is Arts and Crafts, but it’s a softer look, and it’s truly a beautiful chair. Stickley is more square and rigid, and the Greene and Greene style is softer.”

In addition to building his own chairs, Brian has taught chairmaking at the now-defunct American Sycamore Retreat, as well as smaller tutorials in his own shop – including, through a school work-study program, to his grandson, Noah, who entered and sold the chair he built through that year’s furniture show. “Not everybody has that truly unique opportunity with your grandchildren,” Brian said. “It’s pretty special.”

And yes, the show is a for-sale show, with about 30 participants this year – up from six the first year. “And it’s only furniture. We don’t do anything else. And the pieces are just stunning,” Brian said.

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It features a built-in 4.0-volt Max rechargeable lithium-ion battery and a USB port for convenient charging. At seven inches long and weighing 9.8 ounces, the GO’s compact size and slim design allow users to work in tight spaces and awkward angles more easily. The tool operates at 360 rpm, which Dremel states is twice as fast as similar competitive products in the market.

While the GO Driver develops up to 44 in.-lbs. of torque for demanding driving tasks, it also features overdrive protection, which is controllable by a dial located at the back of the tool. It enables you to set the amount of torque required for the job to prevent damaging the material being fastened and stripping the hole. You can also set the directional switch to neutral and turn the driver like a manual screwdriver for maximum control.

Dremel’s included USB Fast Charger replenishes the battery in about 1.5 hours. A seven-piece precision screwdriver bit set is also provided (#1 and #2 Phillips bits, #5 hex bit, #2 square drive bit, #6 slotted bit and T20 and T25 Torx bits) to fit the tool’s magnetic 1/4-in. hex bit holder.

The Dremel GO Driver (model GO-01) sells for $39.98 and comes with a 2-year warranty.

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The templates are made of durable transparent acrylic for easy visual alignment during the drilling process. Once a first set of holes have been drilled, the template can be repositioned to continue the pattern using a pair of included indexing pins. Complete instructions overview the drilling process.

Each template set also includes a spring-loaded self-centering drill bit to make it easier to drill straight, accurate holes. Curved-track templates incorporate a rounded end that can serve as a pattern for routing a matching curved edge on the cribbage board. To accompany the new templates, Rockler also has added three-player sets of solid steel cribbage pegs in both 1/8-in. (item 59924; $24.99) and 1/4-in. (item 58662; $29.99) sizes.

Prices for Rockler’s new cribbage board templates range from $19.99 (item 59160; two-player standard straight track) to $44.99 (item 52403; three-player XL curved track) and are available now.

Plans for making a Reversible Gameboard using these templates can be found in the December 2018 issue of Woodworker’s Journal.

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Tim Inman: I’m guessing the bubbles are split between the shellac and poly surfaces. I love shellac and use it often. However, one thinned coat as a sanding prep/sealer would be plenty in your case. Poly does not like to bond well. It is one of its famous failings. Applying it to a built-up slick shellac surface is just asking for a failure – which I think you had. Some nice placemats used under the laptop or other hot things like a soup tureen would also provide good protection for the finish. A big stick to wallop the guy who doesn’t use ’em would be good to have on display, too. Just sayin’…

Chris Marshall: Here’s a case where “more” finish, or a combination of finishes, isn’t always better. Did the shellac contain wax? If it did, that might also have been the problem. But even if the shellac was dewaxed, some water-based finishes are still incompatible with non water-based sealer coats. I know General Finishes, for one, does not recommend shellac of any sort underneath their water-based products. Read the fine print on the can (of both the shellac and the polyurethane) carefully, and be sure to heed those instructions. The “do’s” and “don’ts” can make a difference in the long run.

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I found a somewhat skimpy plan online and added a few more touches to the project. It is made of dimensional lumber, primed and painted to match their favorite brand of tractor. The stickers are a nice touch.

I enjoy building for these two men. They are the brothers that I never had.

Scott White
Monticello, Iowa

See the Gallery Below:

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“This past year was spent improving my hand tool skills. Not quite there yet but next year will improve them even more.” – Walter Hayes

And here’s a look back at a question answered earlier this year, on how to re-glue veneer on an exterior door – and how things turned out for the questioner. – Editor

“Thank you for the many helpful. In answer to your questions, I used a FSV (flexible sheet veneer) adhesive. I did not use a cross grain layer first. Not wanting to admit defeat, I found a Formica product that comes 36.5 x 98 in. in many wood patterns. Then came the job of removing the veneer that had bubbled. It took a day of scraping with a putty knife and then removing the glue with stripper. Next, I sanded with a DA sander. I then applied Weldwood contact cement. It turned out great.” – Joseph Raber

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