the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out ...

wormy recycled chestnut ... i love it ... we're currently working on three or four projects where we will be using it ... a snatch of a childhood song came to mind today as we were cutting a log that will be used for a mantle in one of those upcoming projects .... when we cut it to length, we happened to hit on an 'extra wormy' cross section. for some reason, you can see the tracks where the worms went in and then round and round in the log ... i've never noticed it before, and i thought it was cool enough to share ... kind of made me think of a brice marden painting ... click the photos to enlarge them ..
the mantle log .. 7 x 9 x 72"
brice marden
'the hearse song'

60 degrees ... coffee in the garden

4/27/2011 ... well, ok .... first morning above 55 degrees ... it actually felt like really spring this morning ... kit and i had our coffee in the garden, wandering around .. admiring the green and enjoying the weather and the signs of spring and life in general ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
leo was chasing chipmunks, to no avail
the fish were really hungry ...
kit was tending her waterfall
admired the daffs
and the apple blossoms
the radishes and a couple of the peas are up ...
there's wood to stack yet ...
and the asparagus should be ready by the weekend ....

even a late spring is a good spring ... golf in a half hour ....

dorset custom furniture goes to facebook

people tell me over and over that 'they are getting good results from their facebook business page' ... i believe them, i do .. and now, i'll actually see ... i now have a facebook page for dorset custom furniture. like it if you like it ... thanks

i've had a personal page there for a while where i have posted family, friend and nature shots along with the occasional event, and communed with long lost people from my distant past, (which has actually been pretty amazing fun). now, lucky you, if you so desire, you can be my personal friend on facebook (just ask) or you can 'like' dorset custom furniture. the facebook thing is pretty easy now that i've got my pictures up ... i can post links to my blog posts and presto, there they are. and, who knows ... 550 million people can now easily find dorset custom furniture out there in the facebookosphere ... what a concept ... we'll see how it goes ...

i have just determined i will need help with adding the 'like' box to my blog ... later ... dan

tick tock, an aaron willard clock

4/12/2011vvi spent parts of the last couple of days reconstructing the base of a client's aaron willard tall case clock ... aaron died in 1844 so it's been around for a while ... i love a good repair. they are challenging and engage the creative process in powerful ways ... like a good puzzle, you can, and often have to, work on them over time, allowing your concentration to wonder off to other more pressing things ... perfect for the ay dee dee mind ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
my client emailed to tell me that one of the the 20 pound weights that drives the mechanism had snapped it's string (or, as it looks by the red arrow in the photo above) or the weight's hook broke. regardless, it crashed to and through the floor of the case and smashed the base of the clock ... it was easy to see upon disassembling the base that it had been poorly repaired several times in the past ... just cleaning the clots of glue off the pieces was a real challenge ...
everyone else in the shop was doing their thing and as this was an unexpected project, i squeezed it into my work week, working a couple minutes here and a couple hours there until today, it was 'back on its feet' ... ha ha ... above i started with the biggest piece and did some small glue ups to the obvious pieces monday ...
tuesday i puzzled out the side pieces and added back a few missing pieces
planned my strategy ...
until it was ready to go below at the end of the day .
wednesday i added the sides
and clamped the front feet to the rest at the end of the day
this morning i added the back foot supports and the missing glue blocks
and it was ready to go .... somehow, and it is still a mystery to me why, i needed to add a 5/16ths shim to the front right foot and an 1/16th " shim to the front left to get the case to sit level and plumb ... i measured all four feet; all were 3" tall ... but i knew it wasn't a new thing because in the container of broken pieces there were two newish shims with my handwriting on them that i added to level the case when the clock originally arrived several years ago ... now they are officially attached to the feet ... the last thing i have to finish tomorrow is to fit up a new brass piece that was missing in action ... fortunately we had some 3/16ths x 1/2" stock on hand and with a little patience tomorrow, it will be fitted up and in place ...
we'll deliver it next week and meet with the british clockmaker, ray bates and/or his son sometime soon to fix the weight and set the works and bonnet properly ...
in closing, i can say that a good repair to a worthy piece is a fine thing to take on ... there's the challenge to execute it properly, to get it to look right and function correctly, and to change what you are working on from 'not so good' to 'good for another 100 years' ... most rewarding ... and, highly recommended as a study of classical construction methods ...
all done ...
4/20/2011 ...
the clock is home now, in this beautiful room ... we made two pairs of the fancy old glass doors for this same room a few years ago. i started a blog post about them but the process was soooo complicated, it was, in the end, undescribable. at least for my writing ability ....

the worksthe dial

a walnut desk ... the bethlehem steel series

what is a desk? really? a personal space. a place to write. a place to keep stuff. a place to work. a place to contemplate ... a desk is all of those things and they come in many forms ... this one i designed with a client back in oh, december? has it been that long? i can see by the date on the drawing below that we were at least talking about it then .. i don't think we finalized things until january sometime, about the same time that a bunch of other projects rolled in. anyway, this project is with one of my favorite clients, famous for her support of our art and for her patience ... and now we have finished it up and delivered it to its new home ... click the photos to enlarge them .
this one's now in a room between the kitchen and is actually part of the family room i'd call it, overlooking the deck and pond and facing the bird feeders ... a great, sunny spot for writing and contemplating. there was a new lamp and income tax stuff on it last time i saw a picture ... i was glad my taxes were already done ...
as far as the design went, our friend had seen a number of our wood and steel pieces, including the bureau, so metal legs were part of the early discussions. at first, in the drawing above, i was trying on sort of 'planar' legs, sort of a two dimensional, flattish, 'stuck on' leg, but in the end, we could tell from the small mockup we made that that concept wasn't going to work ... back to the 'table leg' concept, but we all felt something 'new' was in order. an adaptation of our 'egypt leg' seemed like it might work and we made a prototype ... it looked good, and we were off. sort of ... next to find a one piece top 26" wide and long enough to 'fold' the sides over to become the dovetailed case ends with continuous grain ...
hard to believe, but myron at irion lumber had a piece of 5/4 about 28" wide that we milled on our cnc to flatten it ...
and sanded it with our friend steve holman's 37" wide belt sander ... nice and flat ...
we cut and marked the ends and made the half width sample with the last little cracked end of the board ... we spent sometime on the layout/design of the dovetails as it was an important part of the design .... for inspiration we did a 'google image' search of dovetails and found some we liked that seemed interesting ...
these are sometimes known in the trade as 'houndstooth dovetails', pins of varying depths and spacing ... attractive; challenging; decorative ... they seemed a perfect way to break the monotony of 26" of hand cut dovetails ... elegant too, i think ..
the fitting of the thick tails and pins was tricky, the cutting and laying out trickier because of the thickness of the sides and the tight points of the pins ... will had to stand on a stool to cut them ... and, we had to build a temporary 'wall' that we attached to a workbench face and braced so that the 62" x 26" top and bottom didn't flex during the handsawing process.
'the wall', in action .. you can see how it would hold the top and bottom boards steady for the hand saw cuts. the wall later became part of the tv cabinet mockup in one of my previous posts ...
once they were cut, it was a (sort of) simple matter to rig up the multirouter to waste the pin to pin stock ... we took off the air clamps and screwed a piece of 50" long plywood to the table and then moved it along as needed. we set up the router table to carry the outboard end ... that concept made short work of that process ... check the short video below to see how it goes.
we use this technique on all our handcut dovetails ... cut the pins on end on the table saw with a thin kerf blade, clear the waste; trace, saw, rout and cut out the corners ... a person can get really fast at it ... there's a short youtube video here of this operation.
our second initial leg concept, we also were not 100% thrilled with when we first assembled the desk, but we were able modify the tops of the legs to make them look more like 'legs' than sort of abstract appliques. this is part of our krenovian tendency to sometimes 'design on the fly', a useful process for extricating yourself from 'not quite right' design visualizations.

for the hardware, we choose an image of a brook trout and had the 3/16ths inch stock waterjetted to shape ...
sam did some shaping and chiseling to add the details and then welded 7/16ths tapped square stock to the center of the backs ... we then chiseled a 3/16ths deep mortise for the ends of the square stock into the drawer face to keep them from turning ... and we were good to go ...

in the end, we added a secret compartment, but if i told you about that, it wouldn't be a secret anymore ... anyway, it would be tough to find if you don't know where it is and involves the use of a tool to open it that will made and hid in the case of the desk ... double hidden compartment, actually. we try to get them in wherever we can... case pieces are easier ....
the back of the desk we used three shop made crotch veneered panels, similar to the drawer faces as you will be able to see the backside of the case from outside on the desk .... we always finish the backs of our desks anyway, so they can be used in the center of the room ...
as they say, 'all in, all done' ... next! ....

oversize tv, or, undersized cabinet ...

we've got a good project coming up ... two recycled chestnut cabinets and a new mantle, built around an existing stone fireplace ... the clients were interested in having a large flat screen tv pull out from the cabinet on the right ... a 46", larger, in fact, than would fit in a traditional 'head on installation. my friend, and, coincidentally, the audio/visual man on the job, kem verner, told me it was no problem to do this as the tv could go back into the cabinet on an angle ... hmmm.. why not? ..
the clients were serious, so i picked up one of the sanus tv brackets we typically use .. i first tried putting the wall for the tv bracket on an angle, thinking that would give me the most flexibility, but, in the end ...
kem suggested mounting the bracket on a vertical partition 90 degrees to the face of the cabinet and as close to the front as possible ... click the photos to enlarge them ..
in the end, this location gave us the most extension and smoothest in/out operation for the tv and the clients ( and i too) were able to see it would work ...
the vertical mdf on the left represents the retractable door in the closed position.
this photo shows the tv in the 'all the way out' location ... you can see in the photo below that the door, when it's retracted, will be behind the face of the stone and the tv will be out past it ... a slick solution ...