After you begin to acquire some proficiency in your work, a little beading or chamfering can sometimes be used to good advantage, but it is well not to be too lavish with this kind of ornamentation.
Wall-cabinets and other articles to be hung on the wall can be neatly attached to the wall by brass mirror-plates screwed upon the back. These should usually be sunk into the wood so that the back will be smooth.
Your furniture can be finished with oil or wax alone, or with shellac or varnish, as described in [Part V]. In the case of articles to be hung against wall-paper or where any delicate fabric will be exposed, it is well to avoid finishing with oil alone unless the greatest care is used, for a very slight surplus of oil will quickly soil the paper. For the work of the amateur nothing is better than shellac.
When your work is made of parts which can be readily separated, such parts as are joined without glue or nails, it is best to take the work apart before finishing. Unhinge doors and take off locks, escutcheons, mirror-plates, handles, and the like. Take out removable shelves, backs, and all detachable parts. Finish all these parts separately and then put the work together again. You can finish the separate parts better and more easily, but of course this can only be done with such parts as are readily separable.
In some cases it is desirable to stain your furniture, but as a rule you cannot improve on the natural colouring, which deepens and mellows with age. If you wish mahogany-coloured furniture, use mahogany, or, if you cannot afford that, simply paint or stain some cheaper wood of the desired colour, but do not try to imitate the grain of the mahogany. There are two objections to these attempts at imitation. First, they are not honest; and, in the second place, the deception is usually a failure.
Finally, be simple and honest in all your designing, your construction (which above all things should be strong and durable), and your finishing. Do not put in your room an object which appears at a distance of ten feet to be a mahogany or black walnut centre-table, but which on closer examination turns out to be a pine washstand in disguise.
There are, as you know, hundreds of articles of household utility, other than those here given, which are suitable for the amateur to make, but it is hoped that the suggestions about those which are included in this chapter will be of service in the construction of other objects.
Fig. 280.Fig. 280.