a 'white' oak bed

we finished this one up last week and it will be heading for cape cod as soon 

as the house is finished ...

click the photos to enlarge them ...

 

 
we had an inspiration image from the designer, and we played with several different
layouts including ones that aren't shown in the drawing above

sam welded up a nice steel base,

and chris layed out the headboard from the drawing

lots of white oak pieces, lots of grooves and lots of spline

almost ready for the frame

mitered and glued and screwed on from the wall side .. 

some minwax pickling stain and some water based poly to keep the oak white

and we're good to go ... 

looking forward to seeing it with the mattress and duvet.  it should be sharp.

good design lasts and lasts

i made that door in 1978 ... sort of the same ...

a few of our favorite things

for many reasons, things come and go from the 'popular posts' list over there to the right.  there are some posts though that i call on over and over when talking with potential clients.  and some of these posts, for whatever reason, are popular with me, but have never made the list.  'the duck bed' shown above and below was a collaboration between one of our favorite clients, our younger son will on the turning, carving and finishing and the older son sam on the metal 'carving' and patinas. 

i got to do the cad drawing and lead the design parade.  there are four posts total in the construction description, but you can access all of them from the link above.  carving spirals, cnc work on the inlays, waterjetting the actual metal parts and patinas are all covered there.

this one's got it all .. three posts total, from adapting an existing design below to a new space, cross country contractor and architect communication, custom steel railings, secret compartments, shipping details to palo alto, on and on .. lots of headscratching ... much fun.

and this 1989 project is the original staircase we built for local clients that the palo alto folks found on my website.  we recently added the railing so there is a blog post about it at this link.  a version of this project was posted on facabook by a radio station in mississippi and it has been shared i see 567,855 times .. go figure

a greene and greene style sideboard .. drawings, construction details, fabricating the hinges and the pulls, the works ... many more photos here.

ahhh, the trout desk, dovetailing 28" wide walnut planks, 'houndstooth' dovetails, and more, and below,

the 'bridges bench'  both are part of our bethlehem steel series combining the efforts of sam, will and i to create collaborative pieces in wood and steel ... 

more pieces in this series at this link

and another example of the bench above for a local museum garden

another member of the bethlehem steel series by dan, sam and will

lots more stuff here along with thoughts on interior design and custom furniture

and then we've got our on line slide shows at this link  six years of work with albums on claro walnut tables, furniture from reclaimed lumber, stuff you can do with a cnc router, some of my digitized sketchbooks with sketch and finished piece ... thousands of photos there ..

the 11 foot copper top table

loads of fun .. new processes

pool tables ... always a pleasure .. i think we are working on number 17 right now

five easy pieces  .. in addition to this fun zebra wood dining table, there are four others in wenge, hickory and steel.  one of my first ever substantial blog posts.

more photos here

as always, you can consult the 'categories' section for specific interests and the 'popular posts' section for other things that m ight catch your eye ... happy reading.  comment with your questions and i'll try to get back to you shortly ..
 also, there are slide shows available at this link that contain literally thousands of photos of our work ..
enjoy!!

a claro walnut slab headboard

our faithful delivery man ken, delivered and hung this claro walnut headboard in new york city last week.  the project has been ongoing for a month or two and it was nice to see it finally in place.

i posted this photo of one of three new slabs i received back in march.  this client picked up on it and asked us to make her a headboard from this one. 

 we did some rough planing, and wet it with some alcohol, and we were on track.

it had some unusual burl like details along the top edge. 

we made a quick cad drawing that included some drawer boxes cantilevered off the ends of the slab.  they seemed a little much, so they were dropped in the end in favor of the minimalist look in our photoshop mockup below.

all's well that ends well and this one ended very well for our client ...

 one of the three slabs from march is still not spoken for ... it's ready to be something anytime ...

A New Bed Project

Ahhh ... where to start? This is going to be a long one ... But a satisfying one for us ... It involves an interpretation of a bed we made 3 or 4 years ago, some old friends I have been working with for a really long time, and an exciting new concept ...metal bird inlays, specifically, ducks .... We started with a rough, quick Cad drawing ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

From the drawing we made a full size mockup up using new post templates we made up for this design.They are based on other beds we have made in the past, but had to be resized for this king version.
I then took the mockup to their house to compare with their present bed. I made the original queen size bed (this will be a king) as a wedding present in the mid 80's ... At that point, we considered varying the duck profiles but returned to the simpler more symmetrical layout ...
From that mockup, we worked up a new rough design which I am in the process of refining right now ... The duck inlays on this bed will be made of copper, steel and brass, instead of the abalone inlays on the original...
This is a fuller picture of the original bed, made for a member at the Winous Point Shooting Club outside of Cleveland, one of the oldest in the country.
Will turned the posts, roughing them out on the duplicator and refining/finishing them freehand.
The Vega makes incredibly quick work of getting the main blanks all exactly the same. It's the handturning and in this case, the hand carving that give them their handmade quality in the end.
Off the duplicator and ready for hand turning ... you you figure out how to sharpen the cutter properly, it is unbelievable how quickly and cleanly these can be turned ...
This process is a refined version identical to one I detailed earlier for a recycled chestnut table we made last summer. These clients have a table we made with similarly carved legs , which are actually the first spiral carvings we did. You can see the mahogany mockup leg we did for that table a couple shots above.
Close up of the layout process which is detailed here for a 6 part spiral. This one is an 8 part spiral
This bed will have four carved walnut pine cones topping each of the posts ...
Where we were yesterday ... Will completed the bed bolt joinery today and we will assemble the frame next to check the final headboard size ... Updates later ...

A Curly Maple Queen Size Bed

Yesterday, Sam and I delivered a queen size bed to a client in Saratoga Springs. She liked a cherry Sheraton style single bed from our website ... We expanded it to a queen and it all worked out fine ..... The curly maple was particularly nice. Lookin' good now that it's all finished ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Will roughed out the legs using our Vega duplicator which he tuned up to produce absolutely INCREDIBLE results right off the cutter. This minimized the time he had to spend cleaning them up after the duplicating process .

That's a four foot one piece shaving from the curly maple posts he turned

Action !! What he did exactly was grind the cutter to a sharp angled point rather than the small radius that comes standard on the diamond cutters. The difference in the results were incredibly dramatic ... the chips flew ...

Trevor made a sample headboard in mdf to confirm the stretched design ..

Drilling the bed post bottoms for the tenons on the turning tops

The bed assembled with the mocked up headboard

Considering the foot post proportions ... good to go
Better photos of the completed bed later ...