next !!

october 21 .. good to go ... off to boston tuesday ..

pretty crowded in the finish room .. hard to get a good photo

10/25  on site .. more room for a photo here in its new home

this is an interesting photography technique i've been noticing in more than one high fashion magazine ad .. rather then a tedious and quite time consuming photoshop backround cut, it's a fast, approximate cut that still dramatically isolates the image from what is sometimes a confusing background.

10/13/16

we shipped a 4' x 10' claro walnut slab table and 8 chairs last week, and this one 

will be ready to go by the end of next week ... it is the most popular size requested, +/- 42 wide by +/- 8 ' long.  luckily, our friends at goodhope hardwoods had a great slab on hand ..

 trevor flattened and smoothed it up with the power planer, and routed the bottom for the base.

the top is nearly finished and is just waiting for the base to be patinated
and attached before it gets its final topcoat ..

 the parts are drilled, tapped and assembled, and i hope we can start the patina process by monday ..

 the waterjetted parts.  it takes 'almost all day' to cut just one of the verticals ..

setting up to drill them on the drill press .. we have a system by now ...

updates to follow ...

a spalted maple coffee table

we are wrapping up a spalted maple coffee table later today ...

i've had this piece on the wall of the finish room for about 10 years now, and surprisingly, the log stacked up in the first photo is from the same tree.  a locally renowned artist/woodcarver, porter brown, gave me the piece above and some other slabs before he died about 6 or seven years ago.  recently his daughter offered to sell me what was left, which is what you see in the top picture ... it went through hurricane irene and was covered by water and mud, but has dried out nicely in the last 5 years.  we've got a dining table that is nearly finished too and i'll post photos of that later this week.

i've got another coffee table slab left, and it's looking for a home ..

cad drawing

first coat of finish .. dramatic change

1.5 x 3" satin steel tube base by sam

i will post pictures of the finished table later ... in the meantime, here is a photo of two pieces i made about 10 years ago from the original slabs that porter gave me.

a custom claro walnut slab table

we finished one claro walnut slab table a week or so ago, and now we've 

got another, longer version of it in the works.

our new clients stopped by and saw the one above in the shop.  

they liked the base and wondered if it could work on a longer table ..

update 8/1 ... above is the latest in the parade of claro walnut slab dining tables ... 

finished it last week.  photographed it this morning .

more photos at the end of the post ... beautiful slab!

we made a concept model, which they liked, and we were off ..
click the photos to enlarge them ..
for more live edge table photos click this link

we picked a slab from our friends at goodhope hardwoods

 sam had a convenient hole in his schedule and was able to get the two base parts welded up ..

here's one of them with the model on top of it.. almost ready for the bronzy patina ..

which seemed a little bigger once it arrived ..

after a short wrestling match, the four of us got it onto trevor's bench

where he worked his magic on what we decided was the top so that

the clients could have a look when they came by today to discuss the final cuts

to length and width .. we're not taking too much off it ..

i rough sanded a small area and put some finish on it so they could choose between 

a satin and dull rub sheen ... we're going with the dull rubbed

nice figure !!!  more as we progress .. 

6/6 .. all trimmed up today ... a little video of that process at this link .. 

below with my stihl chain saw and matching sneakers and  headphones ..

6/14 .. sam's got the base finished and ready to go ..

 all together now .. finished photos below ...

all for now ...

10/2/16 .. with the danish cord chairs below ... 

more stuff

more time flies by, and again i find i'm not doing much writing on my blog here ... been busy, and the work, 

while interesting, is not that new or challenging that it needs to be explained too much ... 

so, we'll continue with the show and tell ...

here we have a small claro walnut slab dining table, about 36-38 x 72 with a walnut bench.

headed to sag harbor soon with a nice mottled green vermont slate and steel coffee table .

'rothkoesque' i believe would be a good description ...

and we're about to wrap up this steel and pine bar .. 

a couple more coats of finish on the top and it will be good to go

'mountains and stream' steel work by sam

and this is how it starts ...

and another one of those 'oil finish in a sunny room' tables from 1991 returned for a visit.

trevor removed the breadboard ends, and rescraped it with his trusty stanley 81

to see what you can do with that tool in 21 seconds, here's a link to a youtube video.

most woodworkers have one of these tools hanging around, but few of them use them as much as we

do .. i don't think it took him more than 15 minutes to get the old finish off and expose the beautiful wood below. 

tah dah .. better than new ... the aged cherry color is beautiful ..

this one, from 1989, from the same client, was a little more of a challenge with the black milk paint details ...

we first scraped what we could, then using a piece of 1/4" mdf to shield the long sections of the center detail

we carefully removed the finish with a chiselscraper.  in case you are unfamiliar with it, a chiselscraper is

 a new tool i made by putting a scraper type hook on a 1" chisel.  a valuable leap of logic.

again .. better than new .. we left the spot where the puppy chewed the breadboard end 

and just a few of the deeper and more meaningful scratches.

and we've got a couple new claro walnut slab projects coming up. the one above is going to be 

a dining table in a half round room ...

about 60" x about 65" with a new base design that looks good on the model ..

and this one is gonna be a big coffee table about 48 x 66 ..

and, on top of all this, i have a kitchen design i'm in the middle of .. more on that later ...

the fish are biting for sam

and i'm back to painting with my friend horst ...

all for now ...

see my dorset custom furniture facebook page for a few good merle haggard videos ..

gonna miss merle too ...