first fall open studio

this weekend is the first vermont fall open studio weekend .. saturday and sunday, october 1st and 2nd, 10-5 ... there are a few fewer participants than in the typical spring event, but there are still plenty of things to see. just in our area, bennington to west pawlet, there are 19 artists's studios you can visit as well as some incredibly beautiful vermont foliage. the 'peak' viewing according to the foliage 'experts' usually happens around now or a little later, and take my word for it, it looks pretty good and will be even better in a couple of days. stop by if you're in the neighborhood. look for the yellow signs and then pick up a map with a driving tour at the first studio you stop at ... for more background, here's a link from the spring event with more pictures and info .... the usual suspects will be here: kit will be showing her handmade jewelry, penny viscusi will have her local pastel landscapes, banjos by will, metalwork by sam, and i've got a ton of projects completed and in the works in the woodshop ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
in the shop now ...
an expanding cherry table with a curly maple and ebony inlay
a sideboard to go with it
a steel and black round expanding table
a recent 'fish in montana' belt buckle by sam ...
iand will is making a new neck for a circa 1900 banjo using the original inlay design that he found in a picture on the internet ...
and these projects are waiting to be shipped ... a fumed, quartered, eucalyptus table base
a 17' elm slab table
and a 10 footer too ...

psychology ... getting their heads on straight

well, this was fun ... we got to do a little 'psychological repair work' last week, you know 'getting their heads on straight' ...

this is actually a pretty amazing story. my friend lisa bought this special shona sculpture called (i think) 'the family', for her new husband dave on the occasion of their marriage and the joining of their boys from former marriages into a new family. it resided in a special spot on their lawn for several years, and then one day about a year and a half ago, it just disappeared. gone ... not a trace ... poof! granted, it was on their lawn, on a quiet dorset street, but you wouldn't think a 3 or 400 pound sculpture would just vanish, but it did. it stayed missing for about 5 months, and then last thanksgiving day they got a call from the poultney police saying a deer hunter had found their sculpture on the edge of a field. back it came with some scratches and the two heads that were broken off, but it was back! .. they asked me to help them fix it this spring, and eventually, i did. a little special stone epoxy from eastern marble and granite supply, a couple steel pins, and a couple deep breaths while i was drilling ... good to go ... click the photos to enlarge them ..
getting the holes to line up in the matching pieces took a little trial and error, but the epoxy allowed for a little wiggle room .. above, we employ one of our best clamps, 1.5" blue masking tape.
with lisa, smiling away
and back together again ...
you'd hardly know on this one, but the other head will require a little paint touch up
rover approves

apologies to my readers

10/15
update from my friend jeff branch has fixed the problem !! gold star for jeff ! here's the recipe if you have a blog of your own:

"The lightbox feature is back, but Blogger has added a setting to disable it. From your dashboard go to Settings, then under Settings, find Formatting and there is an option: Open Images in Lightbox, where you can select no. This worked for me.

Jeff"

worked for me too ... what a relief ... thanks again jeff

10/14
they're baaaaaaaack !!!!! aaaaahhhhhhh !!!!! the slideshows are back ..and i STILL hate them !!!!!

9/25 .. update
well now i have to take back my rant on google below. miraculously, my blog is now back and working how it used to work. click the photo; it gets bigger, like always. unless will did something that i don't know about, i give google a gold star for hearing blogger's complaints.

9/18
well, the folks at blogger seem to think they know how i want the photos to be displayed on my blog. after 4 years with them, they have now decided that everyone wants to see facebook slide shows when they click on an image ... that feature disconnects the photos from my text and effectively pretty much ruins the continuity of a post. it also, at least at my house, now takes every blog post longer to load. my apologies. this new format is not my choice and unless they change it or unless will can figure out how to work around it, i'll most likely be looking to move to wordpress or some other platform. in the meantime, thanks for your loyalty, comments and support ... we'll see what happens...

best,
dan mosheim
dorset custom furniture

ps ... after a little reflection, the lightbox thing kind of works but you have to wait for all the pictures from each post to load (which may or may not be a problem, depending on the speed of your connection,) before you see them. to exit the slide show, just click anywhere outside the box, which will return you to the post.

fsc, figured, quartered, fumed, eucalyptus

we've never used this wood before, and i'm not sure i'm real anxious to use it again. as you can see in the photo below, it is completely wrinkly off the splitter. so wrinkly in fact that we couldn't actually join the veneers, but had to glue them down to individual pieces of substrate, which we then glued into a panel. the problem was that the edge of the cut veneer actually change shape as it flattened out (duh) so unless it was perfectly flat when cut, the cut wasn't straight. i'm not sure how folks deal with this in a commercial veneer shop, but we did it the only way we knew how... click the photos to enlarge them ... close up of the veneers on arrival
cad stuff for estimating material costs ...
in the architect's specs, there was a 1/4" x 1/4" reveal, which, after making the mock up above, we determined also had to be veneered, which called for a change order for the considerable added very fussy labor.
we started with the legs and the tops of the legs ...
then will veneered the individual 'boards' that make up the central 'box' which was on the specs at 7 x 48 x 42 high. this is a tall table for an employee lounge ...

we finally got it all together and created these extra 'legs' so that it can be shipped in pieces.
there are metal plates that join the aprons on the inside, so the set up will be:
* set the central box in place
* remove the temporary legs and install the steel plates.
* move the table base to it's approximate final placement.
* add the central support frame, adjust the legs and aprons to suit
* add the stainless steel screws to complete the joinery.

tough stuff

basket case rescue

i wish i had taken a picture of this one when it came in the door. the back legs were completely sheared off at the seat, and the front legs were both broken off about where you see the hole in this one and we didn't have all the pieces. it was riding peacefully in the back of an open picked and was sucked out by the current created by a tractor trailer going in the other direction. the chair did not belong to the owner of the pickup, who was moving it for the owner, and he felt responsible for fixing it. i was going to take a pass, but i could see the fix he was in and also, he's a fellow member of the dorset chamber of commerce, will was friends with his daughter .. you know, all that stuff ... in the end, i took it on and it was kind of a 'test' if you will, and, in the end, i enjoyed the challenge. click the photos to enlarge them ...
in the end, there are three metal braces that sam made, two from 1/4 x 1/2" stock, and one from 14 guage flat, on each back leg. the front legs were considerably more complicated.
butt the broken piece on where it broke off ...
neaten up the hole, make a piece that fits in there; glue it in ...
make some saw cuts and bridge the break with a reinforcing piece
patch in the missing chip at the top
let it all dry and shape back to what it used to be ... add a little latex paint and stain for color.
move on to the other leg
cut off the broken, missing part
add something back with a couple 3/16ths dowel up into the leg
shape it and redo the little carving at the foot and...
ta dah ... all in, all done ... oh happy day ...

two chestnut cabinets

we finished one up yesterday that we've been working on for a while. it was good to wrap it up since we first started with our design work back in april. there were delays along the way while the stone was changed on the fireplace, which added to my work and required some additional site visits, but all in all, they look about the way i imagined them in my photoshop paste up below ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
here's the 'before' shot. the clients purchased this house last winter and remodeling started in earnest in the early spring ... sam made about 65 feet of new steel and wood railings for the stairs and the balcony; we made an expanding pedestal table in chestnut, and this pair of cabinets. nice job ....
here's my photoshopped mockup using a picture of a cabinet we built back in 2002 ...
the cad drawing showing the interiors of the cabinetsone of our first design issues was accommodating a tv that was wider than the space between the retracting doors. we made a couple of mockups using our standard sanus bracket, with different ways of mounting the bracket and decided on the 'sidewall' approach, which worked fine ...
we also had some fitting issues as the client requested that both cabinets be identical in width. after they changed the stone on the fireplace, that increased the width of the space and thus the cabinets, and brought a twisted spruce beam into play that was previously not an issue.
the tops and molding backer boards actually slid into a slot created in the masonry
we also had to revise our installation plan from a grouted board against the existing stone to a 'slot' created by the masons when they reset the facing. that made me define my spaces pretty exactly and while it was fussier to install made for an elegant look of the cabinets integrating into the whole fireplace surround ... looks greatwhile we were checking the twisted post, we also mocked up a paneled end, which is what you see when you come down the stairs.
tight fit; twisted beam; all ok in the end ...
we also had a kickspace heater on the job and had to integrate a design for the grill into our finished cabinets, as well as make the heater accessible from the top for later repairs.
so, a removable floor was installed,
and the drawers in the lower case are in a separate cabinet that slides in and out of the main cabinet.lots of door parts, something like 85 or 90 pieces, plus the panels.we finished and assembled everything in the shop before loading it up for the jobsite.
below you can see the way we accommodated the 46" tv in the 44" cabinet opening with the retractable doors....
and yesterday, we installed the 'turnstyle' hardware that arrived last week from england.
the finished interior of the left cabinet ... it's a wrap ....
with the big windows to the right, this was a hard project to photograph so i have included these two other images. the sunlight sort of emphasizes the 'orange' in the finish that is much more subdued in person. a challenging project, all in all .. below are a couple pictures of the original cabinets that inspired them, and here is a link to my website listing on them ...