a custom stair rail

just before christmas we installed the final sections of 

this custom stair rail a local clients house. 

we have been working with this client for, literally, years ... 

we made seme nice cherry shelves when my brother in law was

redoing the masonry of the fireplaces, and then a few years back we made

a nice cherry bar ... here's a link to that project

and after that we made four new vanities, also in cherry ...

 

we talked about replacing the existing stair rail for 

quite a while, and i made several sketches and drawings, 

finally settling on the tapered 3/8th steel spindles we had 

cut by wayne jones metal shop and his cnc plasma cutter.

from the cad drawing we made some full size mdf templates 

that we checked and adjusted (slightly), on site

since they were to be finished with a custom powder coat by

r&b powder coat in poultney, vt

we test fitted them before the powder coat, which

turned out to be a good plan in one case ... 

anyway, the finish was beautiful.

it was a 'translucent' powder finish which meant the

fabrication marks were still somewhat visible giving the 

railing more of a 'handmade' look.

we made the handrails in the wood shop and installed the last sections the day
before the clients arrived for the holidays .. nip and tuck ...

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.

the engineers table

 

 so here's a new project .. it's been in the works since maym but we just got 

underway on it a couple of weeks ago ..

9/3/16 .. all finished now and ready to go

more photos soon of the finished table at the end of this post .. click the photos to enlarge them ..

 it's for the conference room of an engineering firm  on long island.

 one of the partners sent us a sketch with the I beam sizes called out .. 

sam says it's the first time he has order steel by the 'pounds per foot'

6 x 18 .. 16 x 22 .. something like that .. width and pounds per lineal foot ..

 big stuff

 the client supplied the wood for the top, which is ovangkol from tropical west africa

it's a member of the bubinga family and it is very similar in density and figure

read 'heavy and hard'

 there will be a 3 x 3 angle iron frame around the outside, and we didn't have quite enough

width to make it to 47".  the oak on the edges will be covered by the steel frame

 like this

 finish sample .. 3 coats of conversion varnish

 gonna add some wire channels

 

and the client suggested end cuts of 4" I beam for the wire grommets .. cool!

 the pieces themselves are not perfectly square and/or parallel

buyt trevor cnc'd them in after a couple of test cuts ..

 wetted down with water for the final sanding

 close up of the joinery

wrestling it up the stairs to the cnc ... just made it .. 4' x 10'

another steel and walnut pool table

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