A Custom Vanity Project

Like so many of our projects, this one started with an 'inspiration photo' of an existing piece of furniture. Inspiration photos are often clipped from magazines or books or collected from the internet. In one case last fall, I made a table for a woman who claimed she had had the photo on her bulletin board for TEN YEARS ! Anyway, this particualr piece is destined to be a vanity in a formal powder room so we had to make some design modifications. The vanity will have a stone top and the sink is about 8" deep, but is glazed on the bottom so any part that shows will appear finished. The original appeared to have elements that were gold leafed so we made some samples and decided on a palladium leaf. We first made a template to rough turn the delicate bobbin style legs which were then cleaned up by hand, turning with a center steady rest. We then tried a couple of diffferent detail ideas but in the end, settled for a plain apron and leafed appliques as on the original.

6/18/08 Well, we picked up the legs with the Palladium leafing today and they are something! We'll be gluing up the rest of the vanity tomorrow and after a quick couple of topcoats, itwill be on it's way south ...Can't wait to see the whole thing finished ..
Here it is 6/26

Finished means like, in New York, with the real stone top and the sink and faucets installed ... Next week


The inspiration photo

Ready for paint and leafing. The 'top' in this photo is painted mdf.

The original turning sample

Showing the duplicator template and the steady rest.
The Vega duplicator attaches the to lathe ways between the drive center and the tailstock.

another sir edwin lutyens inspired desk

here we have another desk in the sir edwin lutyens style

click the photos to enlarge them and see it happen from start to finish below ...

nice desk, and a job well done by my man chris bowlen ... 

this desk is the third in a series ...will built the first two at the links below ..

hardware by horton brasses in cromwell, ct

sir edwin rocked!  check out his wikipedia entry, then scroll down to his list of 'major buildings and projects' any one of which would likely occupy the typical architect for many years.  in a minor aside, the entry notes that he designed a little furniture and 'some of his designs are still on the market today'  .. 

this is one of our interpretations of one of his designs seen in the photo below.

our original client in 2009 sent us this photo, which we 'interpreted' into the piece you see at the top of this post.  that one is in cherry, bubinga and walnut, as was the second version we made in 2013 ..

the new cousin is in walnut, ebony, and walnut burl, and has a couple more drawers than the original.
 we're coming down the home stretch on it now ..

at 28" x 72" x 31" (the client is taller than most), it's the largest one we've made yet ...

we went back and forth a bit on the details and palette and finally settled on walnut burl panels with
an ebony line, quartered claro walnut borders and an american walnut legs, frame and top ..
we've done some finish samples and i'm pretty sure it will be striking when it's done ... 

it started out as lots of  parts

we started with our revised cad drawing of the original desk, lengthened it and added a second row of drawers and since it will be in the middle of the room, a stepped up back panel
and interior panels in the kneehole ..

chris roughed out the legs from a template modified from the original on our vega duplicator,
i did the final clean up and shaping of them .. just keeping my hand in .. i also worked on the structure off and on for a couple weeks while chris was in australia and new zealand .. i was happy when he got back.

we got the walnut burl veneer from ben barrett at berkshire veneer in massachusetts.  we've been buying veneer from ben for quite a while and he's always got some good stuff when we need it. we also got the drawer pulls from horton brasses in cromwell, ct.

tricky construction with the step up in the middle

and lots of edging on the top and the panels ..

only sixteen like this one .. probably 30 pieces on each panel ... lots of tape.
onward ...

Three Quarter Turned Columns

Making a bunch of columns is always fun if you're like me, the one watching ... And, according to Will, if you are turning them too. I think I got burned out on the thousand or so chair legs and stretchers I turned when I was starting out as a furniture maker and thought I wanted to be a Windsor chair maker ... I like to turn still occasionally, but Will is soooo good at it that he just does it ... It helps to have the Vega, which he has tuned to deliver superior results in amazingly short order. Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
We got some excellent .dxf files from the architect/designer which, after deleting the dimensions, went right into our cnc toolpathing program so Trevor could cut the template for the duplicator on the cnc. Slick.
After a little brainstorming and sketching we came up with the jig to remove the quarter section that you see in the top photo.
This picture shows the smooth cut Will gets right off the diamond tool on the duplicator.
He then removes the duplicator and hand turns the final details with traditional chisels, giving them their handturned look.
We thought we could make hollow columns as there is no 12/4 white oak available that I could find, but in the end, we made them solid with core wood added to the inside.
There are 8 columns in white oak, 6" in diameter at the large point ... It's gonna take a lot of wood ...

A Curly Maple Queen Size Bed

Yesterday, Sam and I delivered a queen size bed to a client in Saratoga Springs. She liked a cherry Sheraton style single bed from our website ... We expanded it to a queen and it all worked out fine ..... The curly maple was particularly nice. Lookin' good now that it's all finished ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Will roughed out the legs using our Vega duplicator which he tuned up to produce absolutely INCREDIBLE results right off the cutter. This minimized the time he had to spend cleaning them up after the duplicating process .

That's a four foot one piece shaving from the curly maple posts he turned

Action !! What he did exactly was grind the cutter to a sharp angled point rather than the small radius that comes standard on the diamond cutters. The difference in the results were incredibly dramatic ... the chips flew ...

Trevor made a sample headboard in mdf to confirm the stretched design ..

Drilling the bed post bottoms for the tenons on the turning tops

The bed assembled with the mocked up headboard

Considering the foot post proportions ... good to go
Better photos of the completed bed later ...

The Lutyens Desk

Finished the interior structure and the base stretchers today .. 2 19
If you blow it up, you can see where we left extra stock where the curved stretchers join the side stretchers. We'll cut that curve and sand it to a point just before we glue up ...

Inspiration photo
Long post coming here .... Lots of stuff working up to this one. It's a desk based loosely on a design By Edwin Lutyens, a British Architect who worked from the 1890's into the 1940. And, whoa, was he prolific. There is a great book by Elizabeth Wilhide on his life and work ... Amazing dude. So, we took a big desk in a castle he designed and chopped out the center section, redesigned the palette and the turnings a bit, and we're having at it. It's going to be a good one ... Lots of challenging techniques too ... Click the photos to enlarge them

The finished elevation

The desk as it is today ... 2/18

Leg stock pregrooved for moldings

Rouhging out the legs with the Vega Duplicator ... chips are FLYING !

The CAD files for the stretchers

which were cut on the cnc

So they fit real nice

We mortised the legs and the lower stretcher structure on the Multi Router ...

More later

Update on the Recycled Chestnut Table

11/30/09 ... We recently went back to visit this table and do some remedial work on a new light fixture that hangs over it now ... Lookin good if I do say so myself ....

home stretch ... delivery Friday ....

hand applying the varnish finish

Update on the new custom dining table coming up here. This post is getting to be a long one, but tomorrow we're ready to start the finishing ... Click the photos to enlarge them ..

Will glued up the base yesterday. First, he put the first coat of water stain on so he could sand the legs on the lathe before gluing them up. The runners went on today and it was kind of interesting. Because of the 30" inside dimension of the aprons we couldn't use our normal 2.5" high extension runners so we ordered some extra section, short, 2" high ones from Moin Hardware. These folks are very knowedgeable and when I described my problem, she suggested I use a set with extra length which is kind of counterintuitive I admit, but she explained that the sections would not then be fully extended and thus more rigid, and, with the extra sections, we could add a center leg if we needed it to one of the non moving sections.

There are no aprons becuase we wanted to be able to push the arm chairs under so we have added thin stiffeners to prevent warping.

Jeremy is putting all the screws in the runners before....

Trevor does the 'dancing (or meditating) on the table' test...impressively, negligible, very slight sag .... it should hold the turkey OK ...

As is usual with recycled wood, we had a crack or two to stablize with butterfly keys

glued up the panels yesterday ... 1/23

Scraped and cut them to shape today (funky late afternoon color above)

Pins and leaf cuts Monday

The legs and the lumber .... 1/22 ... The two on the left are hand turned and sanded and the two on the right are as they come off the Vega duplicator if both the cutter and the operator are nice and sharp.

Will, cleaning up the turnings by hand

1/15 New custom dining table coming up here. We finalized the designs early last week and the wood arrived today from my friends at Appalachian Woods "a premier provider of reclaimed antique lumber" in Stuarts Draft, Virginia, and, I might add, especially speedy on this order ... I have been getting recycled chestnut from them off and on for several years now and this latest load did not disappoint ... We just got it today and haven't milled any of it yet, but it appears bright and clean with just the 'right' amount of worminess. It's stacked in the finish room to acclimate for a while until we finish the projects were working on ... won't be long though before we get started on it ...

The table is a 64" diameter expanding round with leaves and it's loosely based on a rectangular expanding farm style table we made for another client a few years ago ....

Plan view closed

Plan view with leaves

The chestnut including turning stock for the legs ... The inspection dog is checking the lumber for edibles...

Inspiration table ... Half of a 23'6" table we made for another client ... This table 36" wide, hooks onto this table, also " 36 " wide