maple table, steel base

we finished a sweet maple table last week .. very minimal, clean design

steel base by sam, wood by irion lumber

two choices that boiled down to 'a little wider on the A end'

1.25" thick top, 1.25" square tubing

interesting mineral streaks in the bookmatched hard maple

going to try to shoot a better picture before it leaves ..

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'

more stuff

more time flies by, and again i find i'm not doing much writing on my blog here ... been busy, and the work, 

while interesting, is not that new or challenging that it needs to be explained too much ... 

so, we'll continue with the show and tell ...

here we have a small claro walnut slab dining table, about 36-38 x 72 with a walnut bench.

headed to sag harbor soon with a nice mottled green vermont slate and steel coffee table .

'rothkoesque' i believe would be a good description ...

and we're about to wrap up this steel and pine bar .. 

a couple more coats of finish on the top and it will be good to go

'mountains and stream' steel work by sam

and this is how it starts ...

and another one of those 'oil finish in a sunny room' tables from 1991 returned for a visit.

trevor removed the breadboard ends, and rescraped it with his trusty stanley 81

to see what you can do with that tool in 21 seconds, here's a link to a youtube video.

most woodworkers have one of these tools hanging around, but few of them use them as much as we

do .. i don't think it took him more than 15 minutes to get the old finish off and expose the beautiful wood below. 

tah dah .. better than new ... the aged cherry color is beautiful ..

this one, from 1989, from the same client, was a little more of a challenge with the black milk paint details ...

we first scraped what we could, then using a piece of 1/4" mdf to shield the long sections of the center detail

we carefully removed the finish with a chiselscraper.  in case you are unfamiliar with it, a chiselscraper is

 a new tool i made by putting a scraper type hook on a 1" chisel.  a valuable leap of logic.

again .. better than new .. we left the spot where the puppy chewed the breadboard end 

and just a few of the deeper and more meaningful scratches.

and we've got a couple new claro walnut slab projects coming up. the one above is going to be 

a dining table in a half round room ...

about 60" x about 65" with a new base design that looks good on the model ..

and this one is gonna be a big coffee table about 48 x 66 ..

and, on top of all this, i have a kitchen design i'm in the middle of .. more on that later ...

the fish are biting for sam

and i'm back to painting with my friend horst ...

all for now ...

see my dorset custom furniture facebook page for a few good merle haggard videos ..

gonna miss merle too ...

a fun steel based console

well this one was interesting ... it started with husband and wife clients who were looking for 'interesting wood'.  they had already committed to a small slab of claro walnut that i had on hand for their coffee table and were wondering what else i might have 'around'.  i just happened to have this curved log of cherry that was sawed up by my friend mike stock of stock's tree care in west pawlet.  it came from the edge of a house adjacent to the 16th tee at the dorset field club where
we had done some work back in 2012.

the concept started as a full length bench, but after taking the mockup home with them, they decided a behind the couch console table would be more appropriate.

 

i made a couple of photoshopped sketches from the taller mockup

because the base looked kind of empty with the top up at table height.

 

we took elements from these two previous pieces

and combined them into the finished piece... the steel end pieces were originally 'temporary' to keep the top piece flat while we worked on it, but we all liked them, so they stayed as part of the finished design.

cool project !! the clients are happy!

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!!