Happy New Year Again! ... A repost from 2015

new year's day 2015! .. a time of reflection and optimism .. today's sunset above augurs well for 2015.  red sky at night; sailor's delight .... isn't that the saying?  2014 was an interesting and challenging year ... (as was 2021!) .. a little above average, actually.  some jobs just flowed; some jobs were like pulling teeth .. some had easy deadlines, and some, like the last three weeks of them, were rapid fire, one after another rush, rush, rush.  it's also possible that in reality, my management skills may be fading as i enter my 36th year of this grand production.  all's well that ends well though, and it's onward to 2015. 

since this blog post, i have organized all my slide shows in a page on my blog

here's a link to them ... thousands of pictures of pieces we have created over the last 42years.

Enjoy your tour!

2014
click an image there and arrow through it.. while you are there,
you can also access more albums from other years, like the ones below
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
live edge tables
furniture from reclaimed lumber
sam's metal work
a hundred or more dining tables
digitized sketchbooks
stuff you can do with a cnc router
happy new year to you all, and all the best for 2022!

christmas eve, again

it's that time again ... christmas eve ... it kind of snuck up on me

this year, so i am going with some regular, older photographs ...  

 

my best wishes and thank yous to my friends, readers, and clients who

make what i do seem enjoyable and semm to be worth doing .. 

all the best for 2022 ... 

stay safe. be well. have fun!

(another) custom walnut dining table

 well, it's saturday, it is snowing pretty hard, the music is good,

 and i am thinking of having a beer .. 

i'm on a roll with the blog posting, two so far, so here's another ...

i've got my beer now .. here we go ...

there is our inspoiration photo from the client, and our first mockup 

using the tooling for the apron we had on hand. the apron knife i used 

was one i had made previously for big cove moldings and pencil trays ..

not perfect!  we had to have a custom knife cut based on a section of an angled oval ...

once the knife arrived, we ran em ... no problemo

we used some nice walnut from irion lumber,

5/4, 6/4, and 16/4 for the legs ... a couple thousand $$ of it .. 

54 x 88 with one 18" leaf ... pretty big table!

next we used what we refer to as our 'holes and pins' jig ... 

it never fails to line everything up

drill bushings from mcmaster-carr

center aligned ... good up to 6' diameter tables

drill one half one way, the other, the other way .. 

one of my handiest jigs ever ...

where was i?  oh yeah, attaching the legs ...

we devised a sort of complicated pair of corner blocks, 

for each corner, pocket screwed to the 6/4 aprons ...

the top and bottom blockes were, in the end, connected with pieces

of 3/4 ply that were later screwed to the vertical square tenon on

the top of the leg. we also included a 2.5" #12 wood screw 

down through the center of the top block.  a very rugged connection

considering the deisgn ...

kristian ran the fluted details on the cnc using a 1/2" round nose bit,

many passes, on 1/16th" centers perpendicular to the center line of the legs

hard to describe til you see it happen .. 

it took about 6 minutes per flute, four flutes per leg

it took 3 tries to get the leg design approved .. i think if you blow this one up

you can see the tool paths on the poplar test piece

so there you have it, upside down, and ....

 right side up ... headed to tampa sometime in early 2022 ...

anothe challenge, for sure!

an english walnut slab coffee table

 

this was a fun little project

it started with an english walnut slab from our other friends at goodhope hardwoods

coincidentally, we had this nice walnut base left over that we acquired when 

a client bought a coffee table in on of our galleries, and

requested that we make a metal base instead of the wood one .. 

perfect!

 as you can see from the photos above, there were a few epoxy repairs required, 

but in the end, the grain of the walnut was quite spectacular!

 

 another view of the table in its new home, with better lighting

lookin good!

A mid century modern oval table

ok ... it's been a while here ... almost two months since my last blog post.  but it's not

cause we haven't been doing anything, but rather that we have been too busy ...

 

here's an inspiration photo we got from the client ... we were tasked to simplify

 it a bit, make seating for 8, and then figure out how to build it ... 

from the drawing that i will post later, on the cnc, we cut a mockup mdf

top and an insert for a steel pieces that would attach to

the legs and theoretically make the whole thing strong and stable.

we got that and then just made all the parts from some

 nice walnut from our friends at Irion Lumber

we got it all together, but before we did the finishing, we 

realized that the top was 'shaky' due to the fact that there were no real

'aprons' up by the top to firm the structure up.  sam rolled a simple 

1/4" x 1" piece of steel that firmed things up considerably

good to go ... off to boston ...

an interesting, (and a little challenging), project ...

a custom round dining table with 3 leaves

 

 we delivered this one recently

here it is on site

it is a 60" round with three 15" leaves, in cherry,

with an ebony and maple burl edge inlay ..

this photo shows the layout on the bottom of the table,

runners, stiffeners, and apron attachments.

the leaves, in the end, had center stiffeners not attached yet here

with the base and sub top attached

an ancestor of this table that we first made back

in about 2015 ,,,

cad and cut list

seating layout

a spalted maple breakfast table

 

 

we recently sent this spalted maple breakfast table off to its new home in florida

it is about 27 x 62 and features one of our waterjet cut 

solid steel bases ... 

 

 

we made a quick mdf mockup on the cnc, got the client's approval

                                    and sent the file off to mainly metals in bristol, vt to be cut

the slab had been a coffee table that i made for a show, but when the client came to visit he decided it would make a perfect breakfast table for his banquet

good to go

is it october already?

 well, here we are.  it's fall, and i see i haven't written anything since

the middle of the summer ... it might have something to do with the weather 

and my golf and paddle tennis schedule .. lots of both, 

but still Kristian and i are still getting lots of stuff out the door ... 

below is a quick review of the last couple months ...

shortly after we completed the live edge table in the previous post,

the clients came with another slab from berkshire products, and another idea

the slab itself had some unusual bug damaged sections that the clients liked

that we decide to incorporate into the base for the breakfast table

a bit of a challenge, but successful we thought in the end

 

and, next up, a 60" round cherry table with three 15" leaves

a little flare on the inlay from the sunlight coming in the door

we have made this design many times in the past, but this is 

the first time we made it with a moveable base as the table opens

in some ways simpler, and more stable

a little 'burl and bars' edge inlay to dress it up a bit

coincidentally, this remodel was to a house that we made furniture for

when this dining room was added on about 20 years ago ... those clients have 

taken their furniture, and moved 'downtown' to the center of dorset ...

next we squeezed in some smaller things ... 

a couple of bedside tables ...

cherry and curly maple, part of a series of smaller tables shown on our website

upper left corner there

and then a reclaimed chestnut 'kitchen desk'

legs and color to match a dining table that we made in 2007

 in the adjacent room 

and below is one we finished last week 

a spalted maple breakfast table, that at one time was a coffee table 

that we made for a show and had managed to return to my office

where this client spotted it and had us make it into table for

a banquet in his new florida home.

solid 1" steel wishbone base waterjetted by mainly metals in bristol, vermont 

and sanded and drilled, tapped and polished by kritsian

 

and finally, this base for a super bronze eagle sculpture by 

walt matia, of curlew castings in maryland ... walt is sort of

world famous sculptor who has been a friend and fellow artist

since the early 80's

a couple of challenges:

* it had to be rugged as the sculpture weighs 150-200 pounds

* the inside had to accessible to bolt it to the floor on site and to bolt the sculpture to the base

* it had to be dark and 'not too shiny'

 

the sculpture this base will hold will a 'cut down' edition of this one

a photo shopped 'installation

if you've been to houston, you may have seen some of his bulls at the stadium there

 

i am sure i have missed a couple of other projects, but it is sunday

and time to go do some pottery ...