Blog Table of Contents

I've been writing this blog now for about six months and some of the early stuff is buried so deep you'll never go back there to see it ... Soooooo, to give it some second life, I've decided to create this "map" of the blog with some photos and archive locations. Click on the pictures and see if there's something there for you ....

New custom metal project,Lotus bed,Fix the pics, (a photoshop tip), Custom cnc projects

February and March .. Bubinga Art Deco pieces .. A crotch mahogany console.. An expanding table with inlay start to finish, A mango wood desk with inlays, A fancy Art Deco bench with a CNC video

April And May ...Some Arts and Crafts stuff, A Greene and Greene Sideboard, A Resonator Guitar (Open Studio) and How to make Greene and Greene Hardware

November and December 2007 More Art Deco Pieces, Foam core mockups and other visualization tools

May ... Arts and Crafts mantle and hinge fabrication, December more Art Deco

Custom Metalwork ... Custom snowboard contest trophies, Custom stairway railings, A giant single slab of walnut table, Wood and metal potrack ... Old metal A 1970 Cutlass Supreme

Scroll down for newer unindexed posts .... More to come .... Enjoy

An Art Deco Macassar Ebony Cabinet

Will, signing the piece .. click to enlarge the pictures Be sure to check the comment below from 'Lurch' about the inlay in the inspiration photo ... power of the internet ...

Close up of the finished inlay

All in ... all done ... delivered to the city

12/23/ 08 ... the cabinet is off to the finishers. Shown above, the construction is totally finished and Tuesday Will and I took to a friend's shop (Holman Studios) and disassembled it to the bones to be sprayed with a fine Art Deco style lacquer finish .... Click photos to enlarge them ...

This is a quick update before we rout the doors for the circular inlay. We fitted the doors and edged them with 2/16" strips of ebony so we can sand them for final fitting. The doors themselves are quartered mahogany vertical grain panels panels with 1/16th" crossbanding. The poplar board on the right is a test fit for the rather fussy to locate, (but extremely elegant), knife hinges.

Here the doors have been veneered and the hinges have been cut in .... central inlay tomorrow

11/23/08

OK, here comes another long one ... We're wrapping up a cabinet that is loosely based on a period piece by the French designer Clement Mere who made fabulous Art Deco Style pieces in the 20's ... When my client sent me the picture, her exact words were "Hi, We don't have to copy it exactly, so we'll work with this as an inspiration." ... Good thing ... I'd like to meet the guy who could copy that one .... How did they do that inlay or whatever it is ???? .. Here's the picture .. Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Anyway, I did some trial sketches for the central inlay and we finally settled on part of a design from a Tiffany vase that the client liked.

We tried doing it like the picture with two different ovals alternating around a circle, but settled on four the same.

Drew the inlay and cabinet in our cad program

Trevor made a sample inlay confirming that we wanted the oval designs all the same

We got some Macassar ebony veneer from our friends at Certainly Wood ... They have a GREAT website where you can actually pick the flitch of veneer you're buying, which was extremely helpful for my client.

Veneered some mahogany legs (with ebony corners so we could bevel them a bit) and some mahogany panels for the top, bottom, sides and doors ... see the photo at the top of this post ..

And now we're ready to veneer the doors and wrap it up ... Update later this week or next

And cut the ebony and mother of pearl for the central door inlays.

The central inlay is almost complete

Back to Work

Ok .. Holidays are over ... Back to work ... We finished three pieces so far this week. The first was the Art Deco inspired cabinet below ... see the previous post about it in December ...
The inlay from the Art Deco Cabinet ... Inlay by Trevor ... Ebony and MOP pulls by Will ... REALLY NICE SHINY LACQUER FINISH by Steve Holman of Holman Studios, just a mile down the road ... This piece is/was extremely hard to photograph .... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

The Art Deco Cabinet ... Macassar ebony, Gaboon ebony, mahogany secondary and mother-of-pearl ... Got it back from Steve on Tuesday and reassembled it ... All done ... and I'm glad. that one was A LOT harder then it looks ...

Tomorrow Will and I are off to Martha's Vineyard to install the pool table and the light Sam made below. If the pool table clients are close enough, we make the effort to set them up ourselves. They are always in nice places like, for instance, Martha's Vineyard. The last one was in Greenwich, CT ... Anyway, I've never been to the Vineyard in the winter but the client has a guest house for us and it should be as they say 'nice in the off season' ... No problem getting on the ferry I bet ....

The pool table ... Handhewn beams and recyled ?hemlock? rails and blinds ... Virgin timber whatever it was, with beautiful unbelievably fine grain .. I hope to update the Build Your Own Pool Table post I started in December at some point, but it won't be for a minute .... Surprisingly, there are quite a few new inquiries coming in since the holidays ....

Sam's latest from the metal shop ... nice green glass shades

An Art Deco Bar Cabinet

We delivered a nice Art Deco influenced sideboard/bar last week ... It was a fun and challenging project. Someone referred to it as 'Dean Martin's Bar' ... I lived in Palm Springs in 1970 for a winter, and it would have been right at home in the house we rented for sure ... The design was a quick sketch I doodled off after a series of rejected CAD drawings ... Sometimes the quickest drawings are the best ... Anyway, there was more to building this then first meets the eye when you look at the sketch. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Trevor fluted the legs on the cnc ... we stopped the detail at the tops and bottoms of the door/panels

Will then mortised the legs and created the back and side panels

We couldn't come up with any way to easily do the concentric squares, so we filled the micro pin holes with hide glue and walnut sawdust and sanded them off the next day ... worked sweet and even took the stain and paint ...

Panels finished and case parts ready to assemble

Assembly without the panels

After we applied the moldings to the 1/2" mdf doors, we had to rabbet the door edges and install solid wood edges ... hence the masking tape in this photo

Corner and door close up.....stainless steel knife hinges from Brusso Hardware

Trevor put the lights in even though they were cut from the budget ... We had them on hand from another project and it didn't seem right without them ...

Then we mocked up up the metal end pieces and mirror frame size and got those dimensions all finalized

The finishing process for this piece involved applying a coat of fairly strong brown/red aniline dye, sanding that pretty aggressively and then applying a second coat of the stain along with some black latex paint at the same time ... That mix was sponged around until 'it looked right' and then polished about a half hour later with steel wool and paper towels ... This paint/stain mix makes a nice durable finish as is, but we always add a couple top coats of oil varnish mix for a little shine ... I finished my kitchen with this finish 10 years ago and with a little damp spongeing it comes back to looking pretty much like new ... I have reoiled once or twice in the last 10 years ...

Before the oil coats

after

With the steel galleries by Sam in plce. They had threaded rods welded to their bottoms and were bolted on from under the frames ... We REALLY liked this piece and felt it was one of the most differect and strongest designs for the year ... Happy New Year !

Deliveries,Deliveries,Deliveries

Happy Holidays !

It's that time of year again ... Holiday Season .... And we've been finishing stuff up and getting it out the door ... I went to Boston last week for the snowstorm, to visit my sick sister, to deliver a table, and to meet with a new client. Yesterday we finished up a couple projects and started some new ones. Today, we delivered a steel base for a recycled hemlock table top that a client had his builder glue up ... Sam did a good job on that and it looks great with the client's chairs ... While we were there, we also got to see the steel clad mirror we made a while back and talk about a couple other possible projects ... We dropped the mirror off around Thanksgiving and now it's been hung over the fireplace where it belongs ... a very cool piece if I do say so myself ... Click the photos to enlarge them

Tomorrow we'll deliver a bar we've been working on to the house with the walnut paneled room .... Will has been working on the bar for a while and it's a really nice Art Deco inspired piece. I'll post more on the process of building that one after the holidays ... Gonna do a lot of stuff 'after the holidays' ... You all have a good time now .... Don't drink and drive .... dan


Main street of Watertown, Mass, Sunday morning @9:30

Skiing along the Charles

The steel base for the table

With the client's chairs

The mirror hung up ... Love the light fixture ....

Close up

The Art Deco Bar Cabinet ... leaving tomorrow

The whole deal

Delivery accomplished ...

An Art Deco Vanity

We're doing an Art Deco style vanity based on the bar we built and delivered just before Christmas. It's for a different client but they were intrigued by the look and we adapted it to their vanity project. It's coming along now and I think it's going to be a very cool item. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
The CAD drawing showing the overall layout and dimensions ...
The original bar cabinet with an blackened finish on the walnut ...
We started with the legs. Will made the notches for the moldings on the tablesaw.
Next we ran some panel details on the cnc which defined the centers of the stepped panels, defined the center molding location and gave him a place to start with his 'frame' pieces.
The end panel and front apron are completed ... doors and moldings next ...