merry christmas to all ...

and warm wishes to you for the best of holiday seasons ... 

below are a few images from Christmases past ...

above is a christmas card by sam, circa 1987 ... kit  and i watched him draw this ..

he drew the four red feet first, then the body and the face,

 then the red nose last

 

ice storm, 2008

shop lights, late afternoon

sunset 2015

my 'glass house' gingerbread house .. 2012 ...

with furniture

front porch

no snow, and green grass

we actually golfed on christmas eve and christmas last year

backyard 2011

and this year, taken thursday when we were still working...

and to all a good night !! 

here's to a healthy and prosperous 2017

a brushed oak oval table

ok, we dropped this one off in manchester, vt today .. first local one in a while. the base was on a much smaller table that the client bought at the brimfield antique show a few years back .. we had to massage it a bit and put some oil on it, but it was a very clever, 'adjustable height' concept, and

very rigid once we made some adjustments.  great concept !!!

the finish color was somewhere between the top photo, which was whiter than it actually was, and the one above, which is darker than it actually is .. i've taken so many photos that if i get close, i just call it a wrap .. you'll have to use your imagination, but we thought i looked good.

we started with some beautiful 8/4 quartered white oak from adirondack hardwoods in saranac lake, n.y.
trevor cut the 102" long oval halves on our 100" cnc by cleverly running two half oval files and moving the blank about 8 " between files.  pretty clever of him ...

then we got to use this pretty cool makita wire brushing tool that we borrowed from a friend.

then we glued up the two halves using 'the paper bag trick' where you glue short matching

blocks to the halves with a piece of brown paper bag, add a few short clamps to give a little extra holding power and the n use your bar clamps to close the joint .. once the glue sets, whack the blocks with a hammer and the bag splits and they pop right off with no damage to the table .. 

here's a close up

here trevor is doing the final sanding before the final dull rubbed poly top coat ..

he is getting really good at finishing ..

  i hope to get an onsite, decorated photo with chairs from my client soon .. 

all for now ..

a claro walnut slab table

 we delivered this one to boston a while back, but i'm just getting around to posting

photos now .. it was a spectacular slab and it went, definitely, to a good home

 here it is, u[side down, with the base attached ...

and here is a close up of the figure in the top ... loved the curvy edges ...

 we started with this slab photo from our friends at goodhope hardwoods

 in the end, we were able to buy it without the drop pon the right end where 

it was way wider than we needed ...

 it had a few smallish cracks, but was otherwise perfect, 

which is very unusual for a slab of this size

we filled them in and it was off to the finish room ..

 here it is with a wet coat of varnish  ..

and a close up of the water jet cut 1.5" thick legs with our 'bronze' finish

for more pictures of our claro walnut slab tables, visit the 'slide shows' page on our blog
the claro walnut tables are in the 'live edge tables' folder ...

yet one more round walnut table

12/13/16 ... all in , all done .. ready to roll off to new york this week

12/19 .. home for the holidays

 high gloss laquered ceiling .. wallpaper

72" round, 2 18" leave ... below is the story ...

first, a couple of scale drawings of the table in the room

and an elevation below

i am not sure what is going on in the marketplace, but this year has been one for us

just full of round walnut tables, with and without leaves, lots and lots of live edge 

tables, claro walnut and spalted maple mostly, 3 serious steel and walnut pool tables of the same design,   and other items involving steel in some form or another.  i'm not complaining mind you, in fact, i like

the mix ... i'm just curious why the mix isn't more broad.  must be google ...

so, here comes another round walnut table, at least the 5th this year ...six feet in diameter with 2 leaves,

to be followed shortly afterwards by another round walnut table, 60 inches in diameter, no leaves. ... 

go figure ... where are the desk, sideboard, and other case piece folks?

no worries ... here's the wood we got from irion lumber for the 72" round  ... some progress photos below ..

the base is veneered and the columns are cut to a rough shape.

they will be sanded up and the base should be all assembled tomorrow or wednesday.

 trevor cut the halves of the tops today .. waste not, want not ...

he cut it close with his glue up

the two halves of the top and the apron parts .. all cut on the cnc

the sub top, the equalized runners from rockler, and the leaves waiting to be cut and fitted.

more photos as we progress ...

11/29/16  first rough assembly of the parts today

a live edge walnut coffee table

we had a request for a 4' x 4' live edge walnut coffee table
with a metal base recently ..the final cuts above were laid out with tape,
 and photoshopped for the client's approval ...

 i was lucky to find these two crotch walnut slabs

online at alderfer lumber in pensylvania.  the 

price was good to and they delivered them in their own truck
for a nominal fee ..

while we were waiting for the slabs to arrive, the width was changed to +/- 36" x 48 long ...

i changed the drawing, and we had to trim the slabs back a bit  ore

than we originally anticipated, but it all worked out ... we mocked up the metal base with
a couple scraps of plywood, and gave the 

client the option  to fill or leave the cracks.  we'll be filling them

with some tinted epoxy tomorrow ...

the defects were actually surprisingly modest, and they will be relatively easy to fill ..

i have this other american walnut slab i got from a different supplier,
and the wood in this table will look similar to the photo below when it is finished
beautiful grain !!

top 25 woodworking bloggers ...

i am honored to say that i have recently been selected as 'one of the top 25 woodworking bloggers!

here is a link where you can see websites, blogs and bios of the other 24 ...

from there you can access the home page and check reviews of top woodworking tools.  i checked a few and haven't seen much that i would disagree with yet .. the site seems to have some link to amazon but i am not sure exactly how it works or what that means .. i'm sure it's a good place to start if 

you are considering purchasing a new tool of some type ...

anyway, it's nice of em to appreciate my efforts over the last 8 years .. i'm flattered ...

 enjoy your tour ...

from there you can access the home page and check reviews of top woodworking tools.  i checked a few and haven't seen much that i would disagree with yet .. the site seems to have some link to amazon but i am not sure exactly how it works or what that means .. i'm sure it's a good place to start if 

you are considering purchasing a new tool of some type ...

anyway, it's nice of em to appreciate my efforts over the last 8 years .. i'm flattered ...

 enjoy your tour ...

if you're new to this blog, i have been writing since the fall of 2007,

and there are over 900 posts on a wide variety of topics ...

a couple of pool tables

this started out to be the definitive pool table post, but after finishing these up 

last week, i'm going to take a break before i do the serious detailed writing, which will

be mostly so we remember exactly how the steps to make one of these next time ..

these are our 4th and 5th editions of the pool table above that we originally designed and sent to chicago in november of 2012 .. here's a link ..

surprisingly, as i look back at the blog post for that table, we started it with two 

shipments of broken sets of slate.  this time, we had two broken sets also, 

only they happened in the same shipment, so we lost a lot less time ...

all but the first version of this table have been 8 foot tables, so i had my cad drawing ready to go ..

unfortuantely, they are milled as sets so you can't mix and match them,

but we were able to get started while waiting for the replacements.

a shout out here for my supplier, ae schmidt billiards in st. louis

for being so understanding and quick to ship out the new sets.

sam cut the parts and polished them up

pretty cool to do two of these at the same time .. we almost got efficient about it ...

stack em up  ...

fitting up the rails

 with the black simonis felt

with the simonis olive felt

and then we had the cue rack too ...

and a couple close ups of the rails ...