Well, after Labor Day, it was only a four day week, but still it seemed to go by unusually quickly ... What happened? It's Sunday night already ... Back to work tomorrow ... Oh well ... good things are happening, and it seems there's always a little time for a little golf ... Click the photos to enlarge them .... There's a flag out there 87 yards away .... There are tree hazards, but the pond is dry, for now anyway .... click the photos to enlarge them ...
Will will finish construction this coming week on a mahogany vanity he's been working on off an on for a while now. It has real, solid wood raised panels, for heaven's sake....We haven't done any of them in years and I had to scratch my head for a minute to refresh my feeble memory. It will be a nice dark finish with a Danby marble top from Johnson's Marble ... It''l be real nice in its new home.
The front face frame is glued on and we'll glue the mitered sides to it first thing in the morning .. Hang the doors and bang out a couple of drawers and it will be ready to finish ...
We made another thirty display racks for
Vew-Do Balance Boards last week and the week before ... I thought I had a picture of them, but since we have made many of them in the past, I might have missed them this time. They are totally CNC produced with only a little bevel edge hand routing. As a result of the Vew-Do project, we were introduced to the owners of
Wagatha's Vermont Made Organic Dog Biscuits, made right her in Manchester, Vermont. They are sold all over America and Canada, and when I was touring the factory last week, they told me they make about 100,000 human food grade dog biscuits A DAY !!!! Right here; in a space about the size of my shop ... Verrry impressive. Anyway, we spent a couple hours brainstorming and whipped out our first prototype of a display rack for them ... It will ship flat and 'key' together on site ... They liked it and now we're working on the graphics and another prototype with open, lidded compartments for bulk, unbagged sales. A fun project, particularly for the dogs around the shop.
The mirrors are done ... we're thinking of shipping them to their home in Aspen unmirrored ... safer that way ... Beautiful cherry, beautiful abalone ... Wait til the curly cherry gets a couple years of age on it and they will be really sharp looking...
Ah ...
Vermont Wood Manufacturers Design Contest coming up at the
Woodstock Vermont Fine Furniture Show in two weeks ... (Why wait til the last minute?) ... We were kind of joking around with some cutoffs from the center of
the elm oval table ... But now, maybe it's not so funny ... I think it will actually be a cool piece with potential spots in many a home ...
I think we'll add a little more flare to the legs at the bottom. With a metal base though, we're thinking it could be quite stable.
On another note, in this month's
Woodshop News, I wrote a
"Pro Shop" column (wow, I see they even put my smiling face in there) on the pros and cons of CNC in the really small shop, and out of the blue we received a gift from the
Center/Edge Finder folks ... Thank you, Thank you ... We'll try it out next time we have some inlay work to do ... Looks like it will be cool for that, and maybe some other stuff too. We'll write a little review once we have tried it out a couple of times ... 'Used on the space shuttle and other US Government Projects' ... should be good ...
And, after a what seems like a forever and a half of dinking around with wires, swivels and various connectors, I finally got my sculpture prototype to hang up, swivel, and make it through a couple of wind/rain storms. I thought for a minute I was going to have to burn it before I got to the steel version. You would think a 350 lb test stainless steel deep sea swivel from Cabela's would hold 15 pounds of painted luan, but I'll tell you, it won't ... I'm not sure where I'm gonna shop before my next blue fin tuna trip ...
Anyway ... it's kind of nice I think ... Painted one side .. Inspired by
Sam Ogden ...the original
Plain the other ...
And, we're still working on the big table. We're picking up the steel base pieces tomorrow at Melanson's and Trevor is ready to do the inlays to stabilize the drying cracks. .
He is also in the process of gluing up the chairs tomorrow and they will go off to
Sandy Sherman Chair Caning to have the
Danish cord seats woven on to them ... 140 nail holes per chair ... now that is where a cnc is REALLY handy ...
And .... Hot off the press on Friday, we got a little concert from Banjo #2 by Will ... Due to a switch in the tone ring wood from walnut to bubinga, even I can hear the difference .. It's brighter, louder, and warmer all at the same time. Want to build your own banjo ?? ...
click this link for the one we made last year ...
Same apple and walnut pot. Rosewood fretboard and peg end with gold abalone inlays
Very fine detailing on the inlays (click this one)
A nice original peg head design ... Take a bow Will .. Love the 'W' at the top ... Short video clip coming soon... it's a different banjo, but here's
a link to a 45 sec video clip
All for now ... I'm outta here ...
