a live edge, book matched elm slab table

                                         our client purchased these bookmatched english elm

slabs from Berkshire Products in sheffield massachusetts

the table went to williamstown, mass, and now has a nice view

of mount greylock !

pretty nice pair

 

 The steel base pieces are factory made and the client purchased them from a store in Pittsfield.  

we picked them up on our way home from picking up the slabs

beautiful grain ... 

there were two small bark inclusions that we filled with clear epoxe

with approximate dimensions

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great wood, great house, great location!

to see more live edges pieces that we have 

made over the last 30 years

try this link

old man project, volume 4 ... a new house ... 2000 ...

 

here we go ...  we closed on the sale of the arlington house in april,

and we had exactly 6 months to get out of  the arlington shop where

the new owners graciously allowed us to work til the house was liveable.

fortunately we were able to get the same builder who built the shop,

in 1997, rob goepel,who had worked as my assistant for a couple months 

in the early 80s ... they did a great job on the shop, and let us work along with them

when they were building the house .. back view ...

dan's hand drawn plans ... i have the rest of the elevations

and floor plans in the slide show.

partial front view ..

 

cornices and cornice returns constructed on the ground before

tipping up the walls ... some skateboarding on the first floor deck ..

about the time of the previous framing photo, we realized 

we were not going to have any money left to have a party when we 

were done, so we had one then to thank everyone involved ...

had some live music and a great potluck.

wish i had better photos of the fun ...

 'came out good' as they say

i hope get some more construction photos together 

for a slideshow before too long

november 1st 2000 ...

rent a uhual, pick up the tools in arlington, move the furniture 

to the lawn in dorset, unload to tools into what used to be the house, 

              load up the furniture and take it to the new house .. piece of cake!        

 

i am starting to get a a house building slide show together ,,,         

this link may take you there ...   

old man project ... volume 6

 ok, now it is May 2025 and time is moving on ... 

so, i will quote james mcmurtry here:

 

at this point i have finished my 'retirement project',

 a new building for Will's machine tools ...

  Kristian is now taking over all the new requests for

 furniture that come in from both old and new clients,

and i am in the slow process of  'cleaning up my mess' ...

i spent several days in the basement of the shop organizing

patterns and drawings, jigs and fixtures. models and mockups,

 and a bunch of random slabs and other pieces of wood. 

i did the same in the attic of the garage at the house and there i

discovered a huge box of sketchbooks that have been accumulating

for over 45 years ... 

they have now been browsed ( quite a trip that was )

and arranged in chronological order with 

clients names noted on the spines ...

there are also slide shows at that link with 

concept sketches and the relevant completed

projects over the years ...

more on all this later from the 'west dorset indsutrial park'

 

12 chairs

so, we're making some chairs ... 20 of them to be exact, for two different clients.  

12 with the danish cord seats, and 8 like the ones with the leather seats below ...

first up are the corded seats ..

trevor cuts most of these parts, including the shaped rear legs and 

the mortises for the rails and horizontals on the cnc ... and he has a couple of
specialized jigs for cutting the tenons on the ends of both the
curved pieces and the straight rails.

ditto on the front legs and rails ...

and then you've got your 'most expensive nails in the world',

or at least, close to it ... there are about 170 some per chair .. they come from denmark and there are over 400 bucks worth in these twelve chairs.

in the past, our seat weaver, sandy sherman chair caning in brookline,

vermont has added the nails after we delivered the chairs to her for cording.

we always predrilled the holes for  her with the cnc, and this time i 

had the bright idea of adding the nails before the chairs were glued up ... 

duh ... much easier this way then nailing them into a finished chair ... 

sandy appreciates that for sure ...

so, here they are ready to be glued up ...

 

which happens in a number of stages.  front legs and rails ..

rear legs, rails, and slats ... and finally front leg assemblies to back legs ...

they'll look like the ones below when they are finished ..

good to go below .. waiting for finish ...

and next up .. below  are all the parts but the back legs, roughed out
for the next 8, which will have leather seats.

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 ...