Saturday, December 30, 2017

a cherry and burl coffee table

update 12/31
we made this coffee table originally back in may of 2009. 
will made that one, but tyler and trevor and i made this one ... ready to ship now.
i hope to get a good studio picture sometime this weekend.
we got some nice curly cherry for it from our friends at irion lumber
we milled out the legs, and fluted and mortised them in the photo below.
above, is the structure of the lower shelf and stretchers, ready for final sanding and finishing.

test fit up on everything .. good to go ..
lots of clamps and glue blocks
here we are getting started after routing the groove for the edge inlay
gluing and taping it in place

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
and stay warm .. it's zeroish here in vermont ... 10 below this morning ..




Monday, December 25, 2017

r.i.p. john tingley wall 1948 - 2017

we lost one of our longtime vermont friends, john tingley wall, this past friday night.
he went to sleep and didn't wake up ... he died of a heart attack at age 69 ...

as it happened, i got off the bus in arlington, in july of 1971, to work at the Roundhouse,
a local bar in manchester.  The Roundhouse opened july 6th 1970, and my first night there in 1971 was the one year anniversary of the opening.  my sister was friends with one of the founders, and she had gotten me the job on my return from a couple of months traveling in europe.  i ended up working there for about a year, and after my first month in local low rent dive, my friend jim and i moved into the 'wall family gallery' in downtown manchester, a building that housed a pottery studio (beriah and janice) and several apartments where the owners, John Tingley Wall and Kathy lived, the apartment my friend Jim and I shared, and  our soon to be long term friends, noel and peter, lived in the basement where there was also a mechanic shop for tinkering.  i was traveling with jim at the time, (scroll down), and after the summer season in Vermont, we planned to go back to the ocean reef club in key largo where we had worked for the winter season of 1970.  tingley's wife worked in a local real estate office and she one day sent this blonde chick to see our apartment, as we were scheduled to move into a two bedroom unit that was almost finished next door.  well, i answered the door, and the blond chick instead moved in with me before jim and I moved out, and she's still living here with me now ..

johnny was a fairly fearless business go getter.  eventually, I grew tired of tending bar and Tingley recruited me to help in his various businesses, landscaper, tennis court builder, excavator, carpenter, and eventually after the economy collapsed in 1973, as a logger.  i am still connected with many of the people who lived there and who i worked with then, my brother in law, the mason, peter moore, my snowplow and logging guy bruce waite, and my dirt and pond guy noel dydo. all three of us went on to establish our own long term businesses.  another woman who lived there at the time is still a friend, as are tingley's ex wife kathy and their kids Abigail and jonathan, brothers, beriah and david, and sisters, hope and nancy, and beriah's ex wife janice ... it was a very formative time ...

johnny, in his happy place on his jd 450, helping clear our land in arlington ..
david wall, peter moore, me, and beriah wall outside the wfgallery, circa 71-72

eventually, tingley and kathy bought an old house at the corner of richville road and lye brook road and i got my first real introduction to carpentry.  strip it down to the studs inside, insulate, shore up the stone foundation, pour a slab in the cellar, replace some rotting exterior details, frame up some new interior walls and a stairway, sheetrock and tape, build a kitchen, hang the new doors and trim them out .. a complete, paid course in remodeling and carpentry over the course of a year.  this experience gave me the confidence to tackle our own house, pretty much every stick, every nail, every wire, pipe, and slate the next year, 1974.  there was a recession on, and we were logging an hour and a half away at somerset reservoir, but during the winter of 73, we were tackling the outbuilding at john's house, and he had a wood shop set up there where i built my first real piece of furniture which is still in our dining room today.

there it is, under the painting on the right

given that i have had two days off here to reflect and consider, i can honestly say that though we sort of lost touch with john over the year after he moved away to run other peoples bigger businesses, my encounters and work with john tingley wall profoundly shaped my life.  it's unlikely i would be living where i am, with the woman and kids i am with, doing what i have been doing for the last 40 years without those first three years kit and i spent at the wall family gallery..

thank you tingley and kathy !!!



Saturday, December 23, 2017

the other bamboo cabinet

 another part of the bamboo cabinet project.  this cabinet is an angled 
parallelogram shape to fit the angled wall .. there are more pictures of the process for this one in the previous blog post.
 we started with a rough scale model whose design was revised 
as we translated it to full size

we eliminated one set of doors
we did a test fir up once we had the cabinet roughed out
had the electricians move the three switches

and installed it thursday, just ahead of the holidays and a
substantial snowstorm on friday ..
 looking toward the house from the office porch
up the driveway past the metal shop and finishing building
party time friday morning with our new slab and new sweatshirts from
goodhope hardwoods ... thanks skip!
tyler, chris, will, dan, sam .. missing from the photo trevor ..
too much snow for him!





Sunday, December 17, 2017

some bamboo cabinets

coming along on a pair of bamboo cabinets
the first cabinet was an extension to the existing island,
about 26" x 104" x 31" high, virtually doubling the
existing counter space ..
according to the previous owners, the bamboo ply was made by a company that is either no longer in business or not distributing their sheet goods on the east coast .. we did find a supplier
in virginia who represents a company called plyboo.  this is the quarter split, natural finish.
it is a different cut from the original and we had to tint the finish slightly
 to match the +/- 20 year old existing cabinets
here chris is installing the 6 maple pull outs
and here is the island cabinet in place waiting for the 'ubatuba' granite from
b m & g did the original stonework in the existing kitchen, and had 
the exact match for the new stone ..
in place, with the finish on the cabinet
in the shop with the template for the stone
and there is another challenging part of this project that 
involves adding a cabinet to an area with another angled wall ..
we tried some square cabinet concepts, but ended up going with a trapezoidal
shaped cabinet similar to the scale model below ..

which also required a test fitting
and moving some wires and switches
home stretch on the angled cabinet today .. off to the
finishers tomorrow ..
tyler, rocking his new bamboo belt that he made as he was trimming the doors ...

Saturday, December 16, 2017

stART Space

there's a new 'emerging artists' contemporary art gallery in nearby
manchester, vermont .. we have long had high quality, established galleries such as tilting at windmills, the southern vermont art center, and lisa helmholz fine art showcasing very high end, representational art from longstanding local painters.  the ellenbogens hope to encourage a new generation of collectors
whose focus may be on the more contemporary side.
mission statement
a few photos of the gallery, in the former ems store in manchester,
a busy location with lots of parking .. below are some selected works
from the stARTSpace website .. i have not made the website yet as i just joined
the other five founding artists this week.




it's a big commercial space, and it has only been open a week,
but i am excited to be included as i actually consider myself
as a still 'emerging' painter ... below are six works from the last two months ..
and below are four from the spring of this year
and i have also included some paintings i did with my friend horst rodies
that i have blogged about here before ...
and they allowed me to sprinkle in a piece or two of furniture to give the space
a place to perch and read for a moment.

stop in if you are in town.  lots to see.

Thursday, December 7, 2017

hot off the press .. claro walnut slab for sale

i've got a new claro walnut slab looking for a home .. it is sort of an unusaul size,
 +/- 30 x 105 .. could be a desk, a librry table, a couple of coffee tables,
a des and a table ... whatever ..
it's got  nice satin finish, and the reflections you see are
because i didn't take the time at the end of a friday to get a good  reflection free shot...
 also, i am willing to cut it for the right person
nice figure and color variation .. the 'whites', in my experience,
become 'less white' over time .. 
kinda fun while it lasts though

for more claro walnut and live edge pieces,
you have to be logged in to a google account to view them .