a custom food dehydrator

one of the local bread bakeries had an oven collapse and called in peter moore masonry to build them a new one ... while they were in the design phase, one of the things that came up was all this 'free' hot air that would be floating around ... the owner wanted to try dehydrating along with baking so pete called in sam, who took up the challenge ... he installed the dehydrator today and, from the pictures, it looks like it will be pretty slick ... the view above is a head on shot of the bread oven with the dehydrator on the left side, shown in the photo below ...
click the pictures to enlarge them ...
the 'frescoed' (colored) plaster is a nice touch ... the installed dehydrator ... the niches are for electrical junction boxes, which i'm sure will get covers before the oven is fired up ....
sam used classic 'angle and sheet' construction to fabricate the main box ... there will be heated air coming in on the bottom rear left and it will go out the top in the upper right hand corner ... there will be stainless racks inside and a small fan to move the air ...
here's a front view before the doors were added. will made the quartersawn oak doors in the woodshop and sam and i modified some hinges to accommodate the stove gasket material that we added to make the doors more airtight. . the expected temperature of the box will be 160-180 degrees so the doors are faced with 24 gauge stainless steel on the inside.
sam added the decorative dampers above to help control the airflow as the fruit is drying ... for more on pete's ovens, see this previous post
a previous vermont brick oven project ...

a pretty good miter gluing jig

cherry, walnut and abalone mirror frames ....
what have we here? i'm going to go out onto a limb and say we have just come up with the definitive 'best' miter gluing and assembly jigs yet. i don't usually make statements like that, as i know there are untold methods to get the same results. but, that said, this one's pretty good. and, over the years, i have tried a lot of ways to skin that cat ... inherent in gluing four sided picture framelike objects is the 'clamping' problem and the 'moving' problem ... how do you keep all four corners of a frame lined up, the miters tight and the frame square? we've glued them up, it seems, using endless strategies and techniques, none of which, in the past, would i have said were easy and 100% successful ... suddenly, friday, an inspiration struck, as inspirations sometimes do, and now i feel we have solved a tricky problem once and for all ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
ok, the challenge ... to help scott with his show, (see the previous post), at the last minute, (thursday night) he needed two sort of large picture frames, (+/- 39 x 60 x 2), painted black ... will said he could do them and we were off.
in the past six months or so we have made at least a half dozen or more mitered frames with abalone details (scroll down), and we know that it can be a tedious and fussy task ... get those miters perfect on all four corners. yeah, right ...
so, i had this idea ...

* take a piece of square mdf 14" x 14" ... really check it for square. length parallel, width parallel, equal diagonals, etc ...
* set up your 3/4" dadoes and run a groove 3/8ths " deep, parallel to the edges, the width of your frame stock in from the edge ...
* make some 1 1/2" wide 1" thick pieces of something ... i used mdf cause it was hanging around
* notch (rabbet) the corners of those strips (for rigidity), get a nice fit and glue them into the dadoes, and fasten the corners ... see the drawing above and the photos below ...
* try as best you can to be accurate with these corners too as they will tell you about where to clamp your first piece of mitered frame stock. see below .
* add pieces the exact thickness of the frame stock rabbet around the verticals (these can be removable for future different frame stock, to allow the mitered pieces to sit flat on the jig ..
* cut the finished square into four pieces

to use it:

* cut your four mitered pieces and clamp up your first corner, eventually clamping all four corners and checking the diagonals of the frame for square when you're finished ...
* if you're good to go, unclamp and glue each corner in turn. when you're done, you should have a perfectly square, glued up, mitered frame.
works for us .... it'll probably work for you ...

the scott lenhardt show

well, you just never know what's next around here .... a couple years ago, at the last minute, we helped will's friend, scott lenhardt, get some stuff together for his first new york show .... scott is a graphic and fine artist and sculptor, most famous for his burton snowboard graphics. as you can see in the flyer above, he's got a show opening at the firehouse gallery in burlington this coming friday. below is a description of the part of the show will helped him with this time ... click the photos to enlarge them ....
scott had a rough prototype with him and some ideas for changes on his first visit a couple of weeks ago ... he's got 6 paintings and 6 birds so he needed 6 painted 'houses'. we brainstormed it a bit and after some adjustments, arrived at the final prototype and the six houses.
naturally, the cnc was involved, as was mdf since they had to be simple, fast to construct, and easy to paint. they left thursday to be wired and painted and i imagine scott is installing the paintings and birds this morning as he's off to burlington later today and the show set up starts tomorrow ...
lots of details for a smallish object ... lights, cords, (groove down the back), discreet hanging on the wall, (french hook), ventilation (slot in the tops at the wall intersection), wiring accessibility, (rare earth magnets and 26 guage galvanized spray 90ed into place), frosted glass, hold the painting (velcro), etc ... will got them all i think ... interesting project and we're considering making the run to attend the opening ...

we also made two sort of big mitered frames (3' x 5') that led to the creation of one of our best ever construction jigs ... next post ...

3 tables

it's nice to no longer have a 16' object running across the width of our shop .... we can walk to the bandaw unobstucted, and trevor and will can move their benches back out away from the walls ... we even delivered the 2 couches and the chairs today so the finish room is unclogged too. it seems like we should be having a barn dance ... we're not though .... we're filling the shop back up again with three tables, a 46" round, (top of the table only), a ten foot race track and a 56 x 108 'big ash table' .... click the photos to enlarge them ...

below, will gets ready to glue up the apron ring ...
at the top, the aprons and bead moldings are on and the table top is in the finishing process ... the client has purchased an inexpensive metal base from an internet supplier ... he mortised them for loose tenons on the multirouter using the arc jig in the foreground ...
the racetrack table is 42" x 120" with the leaves in it and it has a pedestal base. it is one of our somewhat 'standard' designs ... we have made at least ten of these in different woods and sizes with various levels of decorative inlays ...
here trevor installs the aprons, runners and center stiffeners ...
with all the leaves in ... the pedestal is in the works ...
here, will is veneering the apron sections with walnut burl veneer from certainly wood before joining them into two half rings .. the straight sections are in the small veneer bag.
lastly, we're building a 56 x 108 ash table with a steel base by sam ... we have made others using this format, but this is definitely the biggest, and heaviest of the lot ... with the gray silicone 'smooth moves' on the bottoms of the legs though we can easily slide it around the shop. those things are pretty slick.
jointed and planed flat at 2.44" thick, but not straightened and joined yet ... shuffle shuffle to get the right grain pattern ...
here trevor and i cut the ends of the glued up table using my 1974 rockwell skilsaw and an aluminum straightedge.
the breadboards are joined with loose tenons and timberlock screws ...
big top ...

models and mockups

below is a post i wrote for the guild of vermont furniture makers blog back in 2009. i was waiting for photos of the actual show at the furniture society before i put it on my own blog, but i didn't attend the conference and so, never got any photos ... i wanted to have it here on my own space and low and behold select all, copy and paste, and here it is ... looks like i used my old camera ...

here are a couple of links to some other built projects .. models can be fast and extremely helpful ... click the photos to enlarge them

the big tables .. long mdf model in foreground
the claro walnut desk two mockups; one with the photo on top in cardboard and a welded steel one far right foreground
the duck bed ... and aluminum sample before the stee, copper and brass ... foreground center

5/9/09
The Furniture Society Conference is coming up again and, just every year, I think I'll go, and then I don't. I expect this year will be the same. Like some other things in life, we think we might be more interested at first, but then are distracted by more interesting things. Happens all the time. I did, however, submit an entry in the 'Designs in Miniature' event which called for photos of models as design tools. Since I have a fair collection of them and find them valuable study and sales tools, and I like to build them, I sent some in. Here are the pictures. I don't have many of the pieces, but I do have ALL the models ... Click to enlarge the photos ...

Tapered cherry cabinets from last fall 1/6th scale, 30 x 21 x 6

revised models

One of the finished cabinets

More models and some finished tables below





One of my favorites from 1990

happens to be currently in my home office

Night pictures are always a little color challenged .. the tops are natural curly maple

interior design 2

second post in a planned series ...

it's hard to believe because snow now covers the bench seats in the photo above, but we're only about two and a half months from this opening photo. at our house, it's all about the sunshine, all the time .... this side faces due southeast, which lets the morning sun come into the bedroom and bathroom below on the right end, and the afternoon light shine in the left end living room, and opposite side of the house. our previous house, from 1974-1996 was on red mountain road, about 15 miles from where we live now... that house was in a beautiful spot with a nice valley view, but was tucked up fairly tightly against a sizable bump in the landscape called, fittingly, red mountain. we were on the wrong side of the mountain .... in the winter, the sun was gone by 2:30 or so.

this time, either by luck or a dogged persistence, or both, we ended up with a house and shop that get very early morning sun and some of the last sun in town ... in designing both the house and the shop, attention was paid to maximizing that sunlight .... it is vermont, and winters are long and in general, tend to cloudiness. so, when you, have some sun, you want to get as much of it as you can .... our garage, for instance, is close, but detached, so as to get that morning light into the bedroom and bathroom below .... personal, (but imho, worthy), obsession ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
but, at all times of a sunny day, it's a delight ... lighting the spaces and the furniture ... yeah ... the cherry bureau was for our own house ... the first piece of real furniture i have made for us, intentionally, (not a prototype or mockup), in a long time. talk about a special spot ...
morning sun in all of these photos ... kitchen, dining and living room here ... like the shop, which we built and lived in first, we designed this house to be, wherever possible, 'one room deep', meaning you can look in the front window from outside in front, and out the back window on the other side ... a principal i think i picked up from a book i get from the library every once in a while, called 'a pattern language' by christopher alexander. one of my favorite quotes from that book goes like this:

"At the core... is the idea that people should design for themselves their own houses, streets and communities. This idea... comes simply from the observation that most of the wonderful places of the world were not made by architects but by the people".

—Christopher Alexander, A Pattern Language, front bookflap

he also goes on to say inside that 'the patterns are regarded by the authors not as infallible, but as hypotheses.' meaning to me ... read em, but do what you want with them as ideas ... we did ... great book, but expensive last time i looked ... and mirrors ... you can't say enough about them .... this one was born of a need to squeeze a full length mirror in somewhere handy. it's tapered, and angled, slightly, so the out of verticalness of it lends interest but yet doesn't distort the reflection.... we have another of these in a small half bath by the front door ... they infallibly make the room seem bigger ..
'amaryllis with prayer flags' ... and for a really nice interior design effect, you can't beat a good houseplant .... this one kit picked up cheap at the local shaw's grocery and this is its second four flower effort ... $5., well spent for about 3 weeks of flowering so far ...

the cylinder tables

2/26 ... the cylinder bedside tables left this week ... verrrrry funky objects ... we didn't get rich on this one, but hey, we love a challenge .... forgot to take a picture with the doors open and the shelves inside, but it all worked out and the client loved them .... we decided in the end to add hardware later if necessary. probably not as the doors open easily without it ...
there was a bench with a kilim covered cushion ( to be completed by the owner's upholsterer) that is in the same room as these. the legs are similar and the photos are at the bottom of this post ...
update 2 11 ... we spent most of this week finishing the 'big island' project ... more on that when it's really finished and delivered. in the meantime we puttered on the cylinder tables, trevor made a jig and figured out how to cut the powderjet snowboards on the cnc, and we moved along on four different custom seating projects i have yet to post ... also, we're tentatively entering the world of video ... slowly figuring out that people actually watch them ... i checked my you tube channel after i uploaded these two and found that a video i posted two years ago and mentioned once in my blog has been viewed 20,500 times. the others on my 'channel' have also had limited but surprising view counts ... i was just figuring it out .. anyway, we'll try to do more and better as time allows. above, trevor and jim veneer the tops of the glued up cylinder tables and the doors. they'll be ready to assemble and finish next week. the new videos are toward the bottom of this post ... let me know what you think ... thanks ...
well, you know what they say, 'no problems? ... might as well invent some' ... one of my longtime clients gave me the concept for a bedside table she had seen somewhere .. a cylinder with a door, and a space on top for a shelf, metal legs and a round top ... well, we love a new concept and, really, how hard can it be? a couple of forms, a little joinery? i mean, they're only 18" x 27" ... how long can they take? ... ok, we'll try it ... that was a while ago, and while i can delegate parts, i can't exactly delegate a process that i can't actually describe myself .. what's next? hmmmm, let's figure out this step and then we'll see ... techniques build on techniques and this one is a direct relative of this one, maybe like a second cousin or great uncle ... related for sure ... click the pictures to enlarge them....
we went through a couple 'pre steps' .. drawings, mockups, stuff like that until we settled more or less on the dimensions shown in the cad drawing above.
from the cad drawing, trevor made the form for laminating the wacky wood and bending birch sections of the cylinders ...
one still in the form ...
turn down your sound if you want to watch this video of the operation above. i forgot to record it with the sound off. i've made a lot of things with curved panels over the years and feel this to be a safe operation. some would protest and say i'm nuts ... so, disclaimer here: don't try this at home unless you have confidence in your wood working hand eye skills. you might want to use a higher reference fence to keep more of the panel in contact with the fence ... a foot operated off switch is helpful too ...
trevor also made the '1/3 jig' for cutting the sections to fit together into a circle ... another video clip here ... worked slick ...
we stuck them together, figured out the angles on the solid wood pieces we needed to join them together and recut them using the jig and the new lines...
we added some dominoes to hold the parts together until we get the clamps on them and we're almost ready to glue them up ... we still have to add the supports for the interior shelf and do some final sanding ... sam's got the first three legs made ... next week, we should have something to see...
this metal bench was part of the same project ... welded steel with rivets by sam


a short note : i hate typing ... particularly on a laptop. my fingers are like carrots and i spend about half the time i'm writing, correcting my mistakes ... so, those of you who know me know i long ago eliminated capital letters from my email correspondence, i am now eliminating it from my blog posts unless a howl of reader protest ensues ... what would miss shelley say? i say content and time are more important than capitalization ... (three typing corrections in the last sentence, even without the capitals) ... all for now ... packers? ... steelers? ... i'm originally from penns woods so i'm going with the steelers ...