The Big Move

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    here we have our long time friend Noel Dydo, in 2005, with  

  our brand new mullticam CNC and another friend's Lull. 

 at the time, Noel was quick to describe that Lull as a 'piece of sh**'.

not comforting at the moment, as the cnc had to go up a couple 

of floors and fit through a hole in the wall 

between two windows ...

click the pictures to enlarge them ... 

   back in the day, that's 'Mr. Lucky' there with the sawzall.

when we put the wall back together after getting the cnc in, 

we realized that someday it would have to come back out so 

we put everything back together with stainless steel screws.

a lucky good decision!

since things don't last forever, we decided that since Kristian 

had a rented 'Skyjack' lift at his house site a mile up the road, now

would be a very good time to make the move to the empty shop and

give will some more room in the upstairs of the main shop.

out it comes!

 after a short trip across the driveway, Kristian maneuvered

it through the doors, onto machine skates and to it's new home ...

all set now ... we are going to hook up the dust collection

today, pipe that up, and we'll be good to go ...

 

the next day, the pieces went back and you'd

 never know anything had happened ... 

a small world story ...

so !  another small world book story, very similar to the one

 with my w.c. heinz book below ... this new version was sent to me

(again) by gayle heinz, savior of 'once they heard the cheers' ...

almost as good a book story as mine ... 

click the pictures for easier reading ...

   

 

 

 

 below from September 23, 2025 

 

 so, it was 1980 when i first met the  

sportswriter WC Heinz, who lived in Dorset, VT,

a 20 minute drive from where we lived in Arlington at the time. 

he asked if i would build a hutch for their daughter Gayl

and i willingly agreed, as i was just in the process of

becoming a full time furniture maker. 

below is a note on the history of the hutch that i received,

i believe, on the 20th anniversary of the delivery of the piece!

you can click the picture to enlarge it ...  

 

W.C. was a gracious gentleman 

and we hit it off pretty much immediately ... 

 

this photo is from 2022.  it took a while for the project to play out:

saw the logs, dry the lumber, for me to figure out what i was doing,

but in the end it turned out to be a real piece of furniture! 

i remember being very proud of it, and i was thrilled

when i delivered it to Gayl who welcomed 

it into her home outside of Boston.  on the completion of

the project, Bill gave me a copy of his book

'Once They Heard the Cheers', with what i remembered

as a wonderful inscription on the title page ... 

 time passed, and though i occasionally stopped to visit with

Betty and Bill before they passed, i don't think i saw Gayl again until 2023 

when she was in town for a high school reunion. it was

the year that Will was inducted into the Burr and Burton

hall of fame for the arts.  she recognized the name and touched

base with me afterwards. 

after she left, i looked high and low for the book, 

but i came up empty handed ... 

time passed again, and she had a gift for me when she arrived today!

 a copy of the book i couldn't find ... 

how she came by it and what it actually is, 

is the small world story ...  

 

her daughter got married this past summer in new hampshire.

before the wedding one of the bride's friends was in a used

bookstore, knew the relationship of the book to the

bride's grandfather, bought it, and passed it on to her. 

because of what was inside, the daughter passed it to

her mom, who passed it to me today.  you can't make this up!

the book her daughter's friend bought was 

 ACTUALLY MY LONG LOST BOOK!!!

how this happened, i have no idea 

Kit says it was 'karma' ...and i'll buy that. 

 i may have loaned it to someone who didn't return it, 

or we may have accidentally de accessioned

it when we moved from Arlington to dorset in 1996

but, who knows?

below is some more info on mr. heinz, the sportswriter ...

click the photos to enlarge them ...  

the front and back inside flaps

 

the back of the book .. 

here's to Karma! 

 

one (almost) final note ... 

W.C. Heinz is justly famous for two other things:

 #1. his collaboration with former military surgeon

Richard Hornberger to get the 1968 book 'Mash'

published.  the rest of that is history:

book, movie, television show! what a legacy!

 

and #2. a short article from 1949 in the New York Sun

titled 'death of a racehorse' .. an essay justly compared to 

Hemingway and others as one of the 'finest short stories'  of all time ...

the link to it above goes to a discussion of the story, 

but this link will take you to the actual story.

 

and still, on it goes ... 

when i got an email from gayl in september telling me that 

she would be in town for her reunion, i looked one more time

and then ordered a copy of it from thrift books.

that one didn't arrive until two days after she left so

i then asked her if i could send it to her daughter ... 

her reply is below ...

 

 

 on we go! 

 

 

 

a shout out to will and his banjos

there was a time in the not so distant past when i thought will might follow me into the world of furniture making ... however, music was more important to him and for the last 12 years he has been building and selling banjos and guitars.   

here's a link to his website 

 and below is some nice press ...

'six of new england's best instrument makers'

 

  an in depth article by a local writer in  

the stratton mountain magazine

and most recently, in seven days, from burlington, vt 

Welcome New Readers !

sometime around the end or beginning of the month

i often look at my 'stats', a feature of blogger that tracks your

traffic and shows some of the sources of it ... 

recently i have noticed some surprising trends ...

currently over 2,500,000 page views !

and already on the 13th of this month we have had

more traffic than all of last month, which was likely

my biggest month ever ...

so, thanks for reading, and since there are almost a thousand

posts, below i give you links to some of my favorites  ...

leave a comment or drop me an email if you like .
 

below is a post from January, 2023 

titled a 'few of my favorites'.

 

 conveniently listed on the home page of my blog

are, according to blogger, my 'popular posts' ...

 the one at the top of that list has been viewed 

more than 35,000 times, which does make it 'popular',

at least in my book.

below i list not my 'popular posts', but some of my 'favorite posts'.

ones that feature projects that i enjoyed writing about,

and/or feature projects that i am proud of.

here we go .... lots to read here ...

'all the pretty pool tables'

at the time i was writing this post i was also reading

a cormac mccarthy book titled 'all the pretty horses'.

hence the post title, which explains what that post is about ..

the duck bed

i could go on and on about this one, 

and in the duck bed link above, i do ...

 

'chance to be a hero'

this was a rather miraculous repair if i do say so myself ...

we were able to get all the veneer pieces back to flat 

without disturbing the original finish ..

 

some libraries we have built

at least 6 of them there ... one of them took

nearly a year from cutting the trees to installing it

on the upper east side in new york city ...

some big projects there ...

 

all claro, all the time

about a dozen live edge tables in the blog post at that link

and about 45 more at this link

 

algebra and geometry in the workplace

 
a real, deep, head scratcher here ..

create the supports for a conical ceiling ... 

here are the 'plans' from the architect

Ensure Slope Matches Side Wall Angle for Conical Ceiling'

at 2 and 1/16th x 12

and there is always the onsite variable where

the concrete wall on the right is maybe on 2 and 3/16ths x 12

instead of the required 2 and 1/16th x 12, which in

7' adds up!  crazy stuff !

 
a 1/8th" to the foot scale model ...

and your basic algebra here ...

and in 2010 we collaborated with a 

friend to build two rather large conference tables

at 20' x 8', this is the 'small one'

'small' because this one is 26' x 9'

about 2' of granite hangs out over the base pieces
we cnc'd and joined the knockdown parts, 

we did the steel that supports the granite

 and did the wood borders around the granite pieces ...

our friend steve did the finishing and onsite assembly.

                                                                             the crow bar  ... below

i think this will do it for today ... 

more 'favorites' to come sometime ...

and a few more favorites at this link

 

and there are literally thousands of photos in the 'slide shows' 

lookin back down the road ...

 in the early stage of my retirement now, one of my projects

has been to organize my 60+ sketchbooks from the past 50 years

so, a little history tour here ...

arranged now chronologically with important client's

names noted on the covers and spines 

                                        1999, the year was a good one with many important 

clients and interesting projects.

 

i have been reviewing these sketchbooks off and on now for a while

and i have accidentally created more than one album of photos

of some of the sketchbook  pages ... here's one album

here's another ... 'some of the best' 

there will definitely be some overlap

between the slide shows, but

there are many in each of them that 

aren't in the others ..

. 'good ones' 

 45 years is a long time!

here's another !

'early portfolio pictures' 

and then there's all the slideshows of  

'work from 2000X'

through 2023 ... i need to add one for 2024 ...

sometime ...
i leave you with a few words from the singer James McMurtry ...

he is always worth a listen ! 

 
 

 

Long Ago and Far Away

 Long Ago and Far Away

last summer, some long time friends closed their store in manchester

after 7 days a week for 38 years, and moved to an online version

at a newly constructed building at their house nearby.  

while visiting Grant after some Achilles tendon surgery

he and Betsy mentioned that  they felt that their new building was

'a little plain', and asked me 'what do you think?'

i had the same problem with a blank wall at my shop,

and over the years i have added some random elements

to 'spruce it up'

a piece of ash, left over from the curved benches

and a blade from a big crosscut saw ...

that seemed like enough, so i never added the cutter bar

that hung vertically off to the side there ...

i had some cherry on hand from a curved log i had sawed

about 10 or 15 years ago and, while i have some ideas,

i still have six or s even slabs left, plus another similar log.

we then did some noodling ...

and some mock ups

the pointy thing seemed 'not right' and they wanted to use the 'globe'

from the sign on their store ... i added the cutter bar ... BINGO!

 i went up Thursday and hung it up

 big hit!