merry christmas to all ...

and warm wishes to you for the best of holiday seasons ... 

below are a few images from Christmases past ...

above is a christmas card by sam, circa 1987 ... kit  and i watched him draw this ..

he drew the four red feet first, then the body and the face,

 then the red nose last

 

ice storm, 2008

shop lights, late afternoon

sunset 2015

my 'glass house' gingerbread house .. 2012 ...

with furniture

front porch

no snow, and green grass

we actually golfed on christmas eve and christmas last year

backyard 2011

and this year, taken thursday when we were still working...

and to all a good night !! 

here's to a healthy and prosperous 2017

a couple of pool tables

this started out to be the definitive pool table post, but after finishing these up 

last week, i'm going to take a break before i do the serious detailed writing, which will

be mostly so we remember exactly how the steps to make one of these next time ..

these are our 4th and 5th editions of the pool table above that we originally designed and sent to chicago in november of 2012 .. here's a link ..

surprisingly, as i look back at the blog post for that table, we started it with two 

shipments of broken sets of slate.  this time, we had two broken sets also, 

only they happened in the same shipment, so we lost a lot less time ...

all but the first version of this table have been 8 foot tables, so i had my cad drawing ready to go ..

unfortuantely, they are milled as sets so you can't mix and match them,

but we were able to get started while waiting for the replacements.

a shout out here for my supplier, ae schmidt billiards in st. louis

for being so understanding and quick to ship out the new sets.

sam cut the parts and polished them up

pretty cool to do two of these at the same time .. we almost got efficient about it ...

stack em up  ...

fitting up the rails

 with the black simonis felt

with the simonis olive felt

and then we had the cue rack too ...

and a couple close ups of the rails ...

the spalted maple dining table

 we delivered the spalted maple dining table today .. we've been working on it for a couple 

of weeks now, along with the coffee table in the previous post.  

luckily the elevator was of a generous size ..

here's it is in the shop

cad drawing with two base choices

in process .. the clients wanted some 'fairly straight', not crazy edges ..

close up of the figure and clear fill for the center hole

next up a couple of claro walnut projects ...

a spalted maple coffee table

we are wrapping up a spalted maple coffee table later today ...

i've had this piece on the wall of the finish room for about 10 years now, and surprisingly, the log stacked up in the first photo is from the same tree.  a locally renowned artist/woodcarver, porter brown, gave me the piece above and some other slabs before he died about 6 or seven years ago.  recently his daughter offered to sell me what was left, which is what you see in the top picture ... it went through hurricane irene and was covered by water and mud, but has dried out nicely in the last 5 years.  we've got a dining table that is nearly finished too and i'll post photos of that later this week.

i've got another coffee table slab left, and it's looking for a home ..

cad drawing

first coat of finish .. dramatic change

1.5 x 3" satin steel tube base by sam

i will post pictures of the finished table later ... in the meantime, here is a photo of two pieces i made about 10 years ago from the original slabs that porter gave me.

another steel and walnut pool table

i'm working on a definitive pool table blog post here ..
will finish the words later ...