a few more favorites

in a previous post i promised 'a few more favorites'

and here are 'a few more' ... with almost 1000 posts to choose from, 

it gets a little tricky ...

click the pictures to enlarge them ...

interior design, and

'the spaces we make'

the blog post for the link above is mostly highlight 

general thoughts on architectural and interior design, and

comments on the furniture design/make process ...

 

drawing and thinking : thinking and drawing ...

this is an excerpt from an article by ashley ericsmoen,

an australian based furniture designer/maker and professor of design ... 

i have been drawing for pleasure since i bought the book

'drawing on the right side of the brain' by betty edwards,

back when i had to learn how to present my ideas to 

potential customers back in the late 70s. sadly, i made it

through high school and college without ever having an art course.

there are two relevant posts at the link above and both are 

discussions of the creative process

and two articles recently in the new york times and the new yorker

on ideas and creativity

new york times   temple grandin .. visual thinking

 new yorker  'how should we think about thinking?'

'handwork'?  'machine work'? cnc? does it matter?

 

some cnc work ... 1997, using a cnc at a friend's shop

all 'handwork', no cnc ... 1993?

a cnc router is 'just a tool' that lets us

do things no one would likely pay us to do without it.

the tansu stairs .. both of them 

                                     

these stairs went to california, along with about 15 lineal 

feet of railings for the second floor

the photos the client sent that we used for the concept drawings;

the builder provided onsite measurements to create the shop drawings.

the original tansu stairs,  a local project we did in 1989 ... 

with the railings we added in 2014

sam's belt buckles

pretty much anything you want on them ...

and in case you missed it back in july, 

there's my 'old man project', still a work in progress ...

there are 6 posts there that i still add to from time to time .. 

story of my 51.5 years of life in vermont, and a little bit

from before i stepped off the bus in arlington to visit my sister.

i had $6. in my pocket, and everything i owned in one hand.

all for now ... 

more new projects

 following up on some stuff from the previous post, and getting some other new projects underway.  happy to clear the decks a bit and make room for some new stuff.  we hung the big mirror yesterday, all 13' 5" of it.  it was interesting as the building is old, the floor and ceiling or both out of level and when we hung it up level, it was just so obviously wrong that we had to move it around until it looked right with everything else that is going on there.  as it hangs now, the right end is about 7/8ths higher than the left end but it totally looks 'right' given the other stuff that is going on .. haven''t had to do that for a while.  click the pictures to enlarge them ...

 

 and the cherry bookcase clients will be in town this weekend ... that piece will be 

joining its friends that we made previously ...

 and the dart cabinet is happening now ... it can be fun working with crooked old barn boards.

 you certainly can't be fussy, and you definitely have to go with the flow.

 and it's been a good excuse to have a dartboard next to the chop saw for a while.

recipe for a railng .. cut a bunch of steel up into very specific lengths, and weld it all together,  

then take it to the client's house and bolt it to the posts you put there last week ..

 looks easy when it's done ...  

 

and sam's got a couple other table bases in the works.  the one above will have a danby marble top.  that's 1" rebar .. polished .. it's a nice look and the rebar is becoming popular with our customers .. 

 

 and another nakashima style base 
he's just making the base.  the client is making his own top.

and there's a new claro walnut table happening too ...  4' x 8' x 2.75" thick, with a 

beefed up steel base to go with the beefier slab.  it's gonna look good.  we've done a 

heavier base before in 1.75" steel, but this looks fine in our regular 1.5" steel.

the price of steel has increased so much lately that it's hard to justify working in the thicker stuff.

 

 the slab had a few surface, non structural, cracks that we filled with our usual advantech tintable epoxy.

  

chris finished the chest of drawers for the shaker piece .. we may install that tomorrow.

and trevor's underway on a new 60" round walnut table with a 22" crotch walnut inlay in the center of it.

 

more on that as we progress ... all for now ... dan
update: i'll do a complete blogpost when we're finished