(folksy upbeat music) (logo swooshes) - Welcome to the "Volunteer Woodworker."

I'm your host, Charles Brock.

Come with me as we drive the back roads, bringing you the story of America's finest woodworkers.

(door slams) (folksy upbeat music continues) We're going to Chattanooga, Tennessee to meet Ronnie Young.

Ronnie is always busy, always doing, always figuring things out.

He is persistent and very prolific.

He has been awarded the highest honor for his work in crafting some of the most beautiful American furniture reproductions.

With paterae inlay, it's amazing.

Let's meet Ronnie Young.

- [Announcer] "Volunteer Woodworker" is funded in part by...

Since 1970, Whiteside Machine Company has been producing industrial-grade router bits in Claremont, North Carolina.

Whiteside makes carbide bits for edge-forming, grooving, and CNC application.

Learn more at whitesiderouterbits.com.

Real Milk Paint Company makes VOC-free, non-toxic milk paint available in 56 colors.

Milk paint creates a matte-wood finish that can be distressed for an antique look.

Good Wood Nashville designs custom furniture and is a supplier of vintage hardwoods.

Keri Price with Keller Williams Realty has been assisting Middle Tennessee home buyers and sellers since 2013.

Mayfield Hardwood Lumber, supplying Appalachian hardwoods worldwide.

Anna's Creative Lens.

- Ronnie Young.

- Chuck, good to see you again.

- Oh, I tell you what, it's great to be here just surrounded by all of this beautiful period furniture made at the hands, made by the hands, of Ronnie Young, yes.

Wonderful.

You know, have you always been into period furniture?

- Well, no, when I started out... Let's talk about building things.

When I started building things, I was a young kid and liked to build model airplanes, loved model airplanes, loved to build little plastic models.

And I've always had a shop in the basement, even from when I was just a little kid.

And when I got out of college, we got married, my wife and I, and we started looking for furniture.

I was not pleased with the quality of the furniture or the style.

The things I wanted to buy back in those days was Ethan Allen.

You remember Ethan Allen furniture?

- Oh, sure, I used to go in there and crawl around the floor and measure it and then make something that they had on.

- I liked their style, but I couldn't afford it, so I started making furniture.

And back then there were no places to find furniture plans.

You may find a few books in the library, but "Popular Mechanics" did have in their magazine once every few months a woodworking project.

And that's where I got started making things, out of "Popular Mechanics."

The first piece of furniture I made came from a packing crate at the plant I was working at made out of pine, and it was a cobbler's bench.

Remember the cobbler's bench?

And I made that, and I didn't have any tools.

And from that I progressed on and on until I was able to get enough tools together and enough knowledge together to make the furniture that I do now.

- Well, you are trained as an engineer, is that correct?

- Right, engineer, right.

- Yeah, you went to school locally, I guess?

- Tennessee Tech in Cookeville, went to school there, majored in engineering.

Got out and went to work for the Tennessee Valley Authority as a mechanical engineer at the Browns Ferry Nuclear Plant.

So I was a construction engineer, once again building things.

I did not want to be in the office drawing things.

I wanted to be out there where things were being put together, and that's what I was able to do.

And it was a blessing because that was what I was meant to do, was to build things.

And any other job I think I would have gotten, I would've been not satisfied with.

- Just riding a desk.

- Yeah, I wouldn't want any of that.

Be able to go out there and see all that stuff go together and talk to the men that were building it.

And then the topper was when we got the plant at Browns Ferry built, I was a startup engineer, and I was able to start all that stuff up.

So, many times during the time I was there, I thought, I said, "This stuff's too complicated."

It'll never run."

Well, it did.

(Charles and Ronnie laugh) And to be able to say you had something to do with making it run, that was a great accomplishment.

Probably the best job I ever had was starting those plants up for the first time.

- Well, I tell you what, (sighs) there has to be some interesting story about how you got into period furniture and especially at the level you're in.

Did somebody inspire you?

- Yes, I have a good friend, I had a good friend, Jim Cardin, who lived in Huntsville, Alabama.

We were living at the time, working at Browns Ferry, I was living at Athens, Alabama, which is very close to Huntsville.

And I had been making things out of pine packing crates, and I wanted to upgrade.

I wanted to make something better.

I wanted to make something out of walnut or cherry or something like that.

So I looked in the want ads in the Huntsville paper, and a man had an ad in there, "Walnut lumber for sale."

That's all it said, had a number.

And I called him, and it was Jim Cardin.

And he said, "What are you making?"

And I said, "I'm making a grandmother clock, and I wanna make it out of walnut."

"Come on over.

Let's see what I can find."

So I went over.

We looked through his wood, and we became friends for the rest of his life.

And we bought and sold lumber, bought and sold woodworking equipment.

And he was a great fan of Tennessee furniture.

He had a lot of antiques, and he showed me what was good and what wasn't good, you know?

And he also, he loved the construction methods and showed me how something should look.

And so I learned a lot from him on making Tennessee furniture.

And then after I got interested in that, I got interested in the furniture of the Federal Period, 1895 to around...

I mean, 1795 to around 1815, that period.

And it was a simpler form of furniture.

It didn't have the heavy turnings and things of the Queen Anne Period or something.

It was much more elegant, and it had inlays on it, which I liked.

I loved to make inlays.

We're gonna talk about that later, that I love to make inlays.

And the Federal furniture had inlays on it.

So I have concentrated in the last several years on two things, Tennessee furniture and anything having to do with Federal furniture.

- So you're a member of the Society of American Period Furniture Makers?

- I am.

- It's a great organization.

- Yes, it is.

They have chapters all over the country.

The majority of the chapters, of course, are in the Northeast where the furniture makers were.

As you moved west over time, furniture styles changed.

And here in the East, they were much more fancy than they were here in Tennessee, which was the west country.

The furniture makers that came into the Tennessee Valley came down through Virginia and down the Great Wagon Road, got up to the Cumberland Gap, and they split.

Some went to Kentucky.

Some came to Tennessee.

The people that went to Kentucky carried the inlay, fancier furniture with them.

Some people that came to Middle Tennessee brought a little of that, but you very seldom see much inlaid Tennessee furniture.

Kentucky, you see a lot.

The only exception to that is right up in the corner of East Tennessee, Greene County and Washington County.

That place was a hotbed of inlaid furniture.

And most of those cabinet makers had escaped (chuckles) from the large cities in the East, where they were burdened by pattern books and guilds.

They weren't able to make what they wanted.

They had to meet what the guild wanted them to make.

So their design was fixed, you know.

They could only charge what they wanted to, and they had a certain plan that they had to follow that the guild demanded.

But when they got to the west country, Tennessee, Kentucky, they could do whatever they wanted to.

- Freedom.

- Freedom, they had freedom.

And so the Tennessee and Kentucky furniture is a expression of that freedom, yeah.

And they took some of the elements back there and some of the design, but the furniture in this part of the country was always several years behind the most modern stuff on the East Coast.

If it was popular in 1750, say, in Boston, it wouldn't reach Tennessee, the style wouldn't reach Tennessee until 1800.

You know, it would take years for it.

We are spoiled today by instant communication.

Those guys didn't have that.

I mean, you had to carry it by a wagon, you know?

- Yeah, it took a long time for it filter down.

- Right, took a long time for it to filter down.

- To get here, yes.

- Didn't have magazines to look at.

Didn't have books to read.

Somebody had to tote, as we would say in Tennessee, tote that piece from over in on the coast into the central part of the country.

- And some of these pieces weren't easy to tote.

- Oh no.

- Yeah.

- Big.

- Imagine that on a wagon.

- Right, yeah.

- The history is just amazing.

- Well, that's part of what the Society of American Period Furniture Makers does.

They study that.

And we meet every year at Williamsburg where we have a meeting there and go over it.

Williamsburg has a great furniture collection.

And then we have a midyear meeting, usually at some other place historically relevant to furniture making and specific sites, styles.

This year we're meeting up in Pennsylvania.

We've met in Knoxville before.

We've actually had a meeting in Knoxville a few years ago at the Tennessee Historical Society up there.

They've got this secretary very similar to this one there in their office.

- Well, you have been honored, I think it was what, 2017?

- [Charles] 2016.

- 2016.

- Right.

- With the Society's Cartouche Award.

- Cartouche Award, yep, yep.

It was a slow year.

(both laugh) - Well, what is the Cartouche Award?

What is it doing there?

- It's awarded not just to SAPFM members, or society members, but to any person who has promoted building and teaching about period American furniture from the 1600s up until the Arts and Crafts furniture of the early 20th century, you know, promoting those designs and construction methods and that sort of thing.

- Well, Tennessee has, I think three- - They do.

- Cartouche Award winners.

- Yeah, yeah.

- That may be more than any other state.

- I think it is.

There's two... No, there's only one in Georgia, and I think there's a couple in Pennsylvania, and there think there's two in New Hampshire.

New Hampshire and Vermont, hotbeds for period furniture.

- Oh, yes.

- Because they have a clientele in that part of the country not only that appreciates it but can afford to buy it.

- There's not only yourself, but there's Alf Sharp, or Alfred Sharp.

- Yeah.

- And Jeff Justis.

- That's correct.

- Yeah, what a legacy there.

- That's right.

- What's been hard for you in this pursuit of making great American period furniture?

- I am no carver.

I cannot carve very well.

(Charles and Ronnie laugh) And so much of the early period furniture had a lot of carvings on it, fans and filigrees or acanthus leaves.

And that's one of the reasons that I tend to go toward Federal furniture, has no carving.

- Has lots of inlay.

- Had lots of inlay.

- Which is your strong suit.

- Right, but it does not have a lot of carving, and the Federal furniture has essentially no carving.

So that's one of the things that drove me toward Tennessee furniture and toward Federal, because you don't have to be strong at carving.

- I think another one of your strong suits is that you don't give up, like the Thomas Elfe piece.

- Right.

- It had this great piece of pierced work on it.

- [Ronnie] Right, yeah.

- [Charles] And I think you did, what, 10 iterations of that- - Oh, I did- - [Charles] Trying to get it right?

- I worked for several weeks on that just to get that strip of pierced inlay right.

Took a long time, but I learned how to do it.

And so if I ever do it again, it won't take that long, but the learning curve was pretty steep on that.

- Well, that's a great story.

I'm always inspired by you and being surrounded by your great work.

Yeah.

- Well, thank you.

- Well, Ronnie, this is just a beautiful piece in cherry.

Tell me about this.

- This is a copy of a Newport chest of drawers, and it has the traditional Newport shells on it.

And this piece, there was two ways to make this piece.

You could apply these shells, or you could carve them in the solid.

I chose to carve them in the solid.

So this drawer started out to be (handle clacking) about that thick.

And you can see where I have removed wood here.

This wood has been removed so that the drawer front's not too heavy.

Otherwise when you pull the draw out, it would drop down.

- So this was like 10 quarters?

- Oh, yeah, well- - 11 quarters?

- [Ronnie] Yeah, yeah, 10 quarter.

- Yeah.

- So, it was all done just to be able to put this, make this wood having the grain line up.

The grain lines up all the way across here.

- So it just flows.

- Flows right across.

And if you get an applied piece, if you made this piece separate and glued it on there, it would not look the same.

- Yeah, that is just gorgeous.

- Yeah, I like it a lot.

Again, one of my favorite pieces.

(laughs) - [Charles] And I love the feet down there.

- Yeah, the feet were difficult to make.

You see the scroll work down there at the bottom where they come back in?

Getting all that to match up was, that was the first time I'd ever done a foot like that, and it was hard to do.

But I finally figured out how to do it.

You'll be interested to know that this mirror was made from scraps from this wood.

I had some pieces left over, turned it into a mirror.

- Oh, it's beautiful.

- So this wood and that wood match.

And you can see the grain up there in the top matches this grain down here.

- Well, that's gorgeous.

- Yep.

- Well, Ronnie, you build some beautiful big pieces of furniture, but you also specialize in very small, delicate pieces with inlay.

Tell us about some of these.

- Well, as I get older, it's easier to build a small piece than these great big pieces of furniture.

And I've been making these for the last few years.

This is an American tea caddy.

It would've been made to hold tea, which was a valuable commodity during the Colonial Period.

And it was under... As you can see, it has a lock on it.

And also down here is a little drawer that could hold miscellaneous things that you might use for the tea, measuring spoons, that sort of thing.

Now this one... Oh, also, while we're talking about that, this has a federal eagle on it, which puts it between 1790 and 1815, somewhere along in there.

- How do you know that?

- Well, the number of stars that are in the paterae sometimes can tell you when it was made.

This one has 17 stars in it, and I think Louisiana was the 17th state.

I think they came in at 1815, 1816, somewhere along in there, so that would fit.

- Now a paterae that you mentioned, is that the inlay?

- That's it.

- Decorative inlay.

- That is called a paterae.

Now, this is a document box.

It's made to hold important papers under lock and key, and it has the federal eagle.

One thing you might notice is the eagle is looking to his left.

In time of peace, the federal eagle looked to his left.

In time of war, he looked to his right.

- Ah, how interesting.

- So you can tell that.

- Now, paterae, you're going to take us to your shop.

- Right.

- And show us how you make the design.

- That's right, how I derive this picture to cut out of wood to make the paterae.

We'll go over that.

- Looking forward to that.

- Yep.

(folksy upbeat music) (logo swooshes) (folksy upbeat music continues) (folksy upbeat music continues) (folksy upbeat music continues) - How do you start with paterae, and what is paterae?

- Well, paterae is a floral or organic shape that's used for decoration in furniture.

It comes in all styles.

The pateraes have all different kind of shapes and forms and sizes.

And they have shells.

They have eagles, which are very popular on Federal furniture.

And now, where do you get the pattern?

Well, if you're lucky enough to have an old catalog like I have from the Dover Inlay Company, then you've got pictures of the pateraes.

You can copy those on your copier, blow 'em up, shrink 'em down, and take that copy and put it on...

This is a little light box that I made just out of scraps.

And it's got a piece of translucent plexiglass on the top and some LED bulbs on the inside.

And light boxes are very common among artists.

So you put the pattern down, tape it down, and then you use, I use a piece of vellum.

Vellum is way better than just regular cloth paper.

You also, if you wanted to, you could use a piece of Mylar, but I have better luck with vellum.

So once you get it down, I like to use a number 2 HB pencil.

And you can trace around the paterae.

And you can get a much better definition of where the lines are than you can by just trying to use this as your pattern, See how much better that looks?

When you get through, you've got something that looks like this.

- Oh, yeah.

- [Ronnie] See how much easier that is to follow than this would be by itself?

- [Charles] Yeah, that's perfect.

- Now, now that you've got your master, then you can put that in your copier, and you can blow it up or down to fit the size you need.

And this one is...

This is a 95% size shell.

Go to Microsoft Word, and in Microsoft Word, you'll find a thing that says insert, insert a shape, and insert the shape that you want.

You want to insert a circle.

It'll come up, and it has a grid.

And you can drag the grid to the left, to the right, up and down, and you can make an exact size that you need for this pattern right here.

Let's say this one, we were gonna make an oval for it.

We would want the size to be about 5 1/2 by 3 1/8, So you drag your circle into that size, print it, and then stick it on a piece of, I like to use plastic, and then drop it down over the top of it.

I used to use just plain wood, but it's hard to center it.

But if you use a piece of plastic, then you can put center lines on it.

- Yeah.

- Put it right on there.

And you can make all kinds of sizes as you can see, some big ones, little ones, all kinds of sizes.

- And so then where does the wood come into play?

- All right, you're gonna want to make a packet.

Here's an eagle that I started, and I have my pattern that I sized on the copier.

Glue it down to a piece of cardboard.

See, it's a piece of cardboard.

Between these two pieces of cardboard, there is a maple and a mahogany piece of veneer.

This will be mahogany out here.

This would be maple.

And you cut it out, and you come up with each of these little pieces.

And then you put 'em all back together again, and you come up with an eagle.

And you put this filler material on the back.

This happens to be a black filler material that I use, but I have quit doing that.

I now use hide glue and ground-up mahogany dust, which is what traditionally was used.

It works better.

It fills in all the little tiny cracks.

And if you look at a commercially made inlay like these, I've got some of these in back, some old ones, and if you look at those, the lines are not good.

They left a gap in every one of them, but they filled them up with that mixture of hide glue and dust.

You can't see it.

- Sure.

- Can't see it at all.

And even if you're looking for it, you can hardly see it.

So that's the way I make those.

Now, there's some little tricks you can do.

This one right here I found on the internet.

I did a search for federal eagles, and this one came up, and I copied it off the internet, ran a copy of it.

And it is a, you know, just a screenshot of it, and I wanted to make that one.

Well, notice all these little things here, little... Those are not cut out.

Those stars aren't, and neither are those little feathers.

- So how do you make those?

- Ah, you use a soldering iron with the tip ground to make the little (imitates scorching).

And then you also have another tip that's filed to be cross rather than straight, and you can make the little stars.

And that's the way they were done.

- Gosh, that's wonderful.

- [Ronnie] The eyes always hard to make.

I used to take a drill and drill the eye out, just drill a hole and then put a filler in it.

But now I use a soldering iron with a round tip on it and just (imitates scorching) burn it.

- There you go.

- Yeah, so see, you can get a pretty good representation of the same thing.

- The beauty of paterae by Ronnie Young.

- There you go.

- That's a great way to set off a piece of furniture.

- It makes a lot of difference, and it's something that you can be proud of because not everybody does this.

- Thanks for sharing.

- You're welcome.

And I hope everybody enjoys this and can learn from just what little we've seen today that you can make these.

They're not that hard.

(logo swooshes) - I'm gonna be heading down the road to find a story of another great woodworker.

See you next time on the "Volunteer Woodworker."

(door slams) (folksy upbeat music) (folksy upbeat music continues) - [Announcer] "Volunteer Woodworker" is funded in part by...

Since 1970, Whiteside Machine Company has been producing industrial-grade router bits in Claremont, North Carolina.

Whiteside makes carbide bits for edge-forming, grooving, and CNC application.

Learn more at whitesiderouterbits.com.

Real Milk Paint Company makes VOC-free, non-toxic milk paint available in 56 colors.

Milk paint creates a matte-wood finish that can be distressed for an antique look.

Good Wood Nashville designs custom furniture and is a supplier of vintage hardwoods.

Keri Price with Keller Williams Realty has been assisting Middle Tennessee home buyers and sellers since 2013.

Mayfield Hardwood Lumber, supplying Appalachian hardwoods worldwide.

Anna's Creative Lens, crafters of resin-on-wood decorative arts.

Visit charlesbrockchairmaker.com for all you need to know about woodworking.

If you'd like to learn even more, free classes in a variety of subjects are available for streaming from charlesbrockchairmaker.com.

(gentle upbeat music) (upbeat music)