the wood that you have ...

we finished this unusual coffee table last week. i never would have come up with this design on my own without having an unusual shaped piece of wood to start with. you work with the wood that you have ... it's actually a very cool piece in person, and everyone who has seen it so far has had some kind of positive comment to make about it. of course, it's hard not to like wood like this ....
it's vaguely nakashima influenced with its simple, square legs, but the box originated with the project that involved the other half of the original claro walnut slab.
that project involved one of the 3 original claro walnut slabs that i purchased from goodhope, oh, back in about 2006. in 2010, one of my clients purchased the last of those slabs to use for an interesting console that had to be notched around a carving from bali that hung over a wall hung heater. the design was driven by many factors, and i can't find a photo of the finished piece, but when we were finished, we were left with the half slab you see below with a piece missing on each end. click the photos to enlarge them. more photos of claro walnut can be seen by clicking on the 'claro walnut slab tables' category below the archive
the cut for the console table marked out in tape ...
the leftover has been standing in my office closet since and the project has been on again, off again for a couple of years ... i am glad it's finally finished.
above is the cad drawing from the console project and you can see the shape of the coffee table slab in the negative space of the plan view ...
no date on the sketch, but i'm betting it's from 2009 sometime ..
and here's what i did with the left over, though i now see i somehow got the notch for the box in the wrong place from the sketch ... we somehow got past that though, and the table will be delivered soon ... it will be a cool story if it ends up in the same room as the console ...
not much to detail on the process ... the box is mitered play with a ply top with 1/8" thick veneer, rabbeted and dropped into the open end so only the veneer was left and then flushed off and beveled. looks like solid wood, though you know it can't be ... fun project ...

new camera !!

well, another 3 years, another camera. i think i got my first kodak 1 megapixel camera in 2001. what a novelty that was ... i used that for a couple of years, and then a friend who worked for field & stream sold me his e10 olympus. that was really the camera that got my attention. it took (and still takes) incredibly clear and detailed images, but it eats AA batteries and takes about 60-70 seconds from when you push the shutter to when you see the photo on the 1.75" screen. that one got me started though. click the photos to enlarge them ...
in 2006, i bought a nikon d70, which took some great pictures, and then in 2009, the d90 you see below with the scotch tape over the shutter release. it will take a minute to get comfortable with the canon, but i'm pretty impressed so far. these handheld, casual snapshot images are compressed from 6 MB to 200K and they are still incredibly sharp.
after briefly and unsuccessfully trying the nikon d7000, i went with the canon t2i, which as mr moore prophesied, more powerful (18 mega pixels) and less expensive, than its predecessors. this brand new t2i was less than either of my nikons.
it seems to do really well in high contrast situations. all photos here are handheld on the 'P' for program setting which automatically selects the asa and exposure ...
our dining room at sunset
the kitchen, same sunset
my d90 ... i ran over it with the electric seat in my convertible, and after about 4 months at the repair shop, waiting for parts, it came back and the shutter button shot across the room two weeks later ... it still works though and will be fixed 'when the part comes in'. it seems that nikon is shutting out it's independent repair shops from receiving new parts, which is sad ...
the new one ... i've already dropped it once .. no problem !! haven't tried the video feature yet ...
i'll leave you with this one, a zoomed image, shot from the same seat on the couch as the shot of the dining room above, cropped and lightened ... it's all there ...

a round walnut dining table

a quick turnaround on this one ... i wrote a blog post on the table below back in january, and a couple of weeks later ... bingo, we received a new order for a similar, smaller, simpler, fixed size version ... the power of the internet ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
this was a challenging and complex project with lots of details to work out ... the inlays, the expanding part, the curved crisscrossing thing, but the new version was a delight ... it wasn't so long ago that we had lost the drawings or forgotten the steps to make it, so trevor went about it in exactly the same way as last time. after scaling the drawing down in our cad program, he scaled down the size of the elements, made new patterns and proceeded exactly as before, without the leaves and the inlays ... he cruised through this one ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
the 64" version

rescaled to 52"
as before, he started working on the base in the upside down position, which yielded this interesting shape i'd like to do something with sometime ... glass top? ... larger round top? i don't know ...something ... on its feet; add a top, and pack it off to the finish room ..
ta dah ...
our standard antique walnut finish ...

angle of repose

i read a book by wallace stegner a few years back called 'angle of repose' ... everytime i see a pile of dirt or sawdust like this one, i enjoy thinking about the term ...

from wikipedia "Explanation of the Novel's Title

The title is an engineering term for the angle at which soil finally settles after, for example, being dumped from a mine as tailings. It seems to describe the loose wandering of the Ward family as they try to carve out a civilized existence in the West and, Susan hopes, to return to the East as successes. The story details Oliver's struggles on various mining, hydrology, and construction engineering jobs, and Susan's adaptation to a hard life."
a good read, and an enjoyable, thought provoking, though only very occasionally, useful term ....

a hickory sideboard

to go with the reclaimed chestnut table in the previous post, we were also commissioned to build this natural hickory sideboard. it's a long one, almost 9' and 32" high. when it gets its 2" thick stone top, it will be 34" tall ... click the photos to enlarge them ...

it's a fairly straightforward piece of construction ... doors and drawers with adjustable shelves, but it was fun to compose the lights and darks and see them slowly all come together ..

it's got two silverware storage inserts in the drawers ....
arranging and rearranging the patterns ... the grain and color of the two center drawer faces was particularly interesting ...
it has a hickory ply case
with some applied face frame details to lend substance and contrast
and full extension undermount drawer runners for the 15" deep drawers ...
turned feet, similar to the table and applied raised moldings .. a fun project.

a reclaimed chestnut table with self storing leaves

sometimes you start out headed for one place and end up in another. this is one of those times. this table with the self storing pull out leaves on the ends grew from a design we created with another client, in another place, a table with round ends, and without the leaves ... you can see it in the photo below, and loyal readers may remember it from this blog post from may of last year. my current client liked that design but wanted a rectangular table ... no problem i thought ... or almost no problem in the end ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
basically, i thought i would just cut off the ends and add the pull out leaves, which i did in the drawing below, and we agreed it was great ... off we went ...
until we arrived here, where i noticed that sitting at the end of the table would not work, as you can see below, unless the leaves were pulled out. so we discussed this situation ... 3 chairs per side for six, pull out the leaves for 8 or more ...
not so good we decided in the end ... fortunately, since the table was made from reclaimed lumber and already had a few patches, after considering some reconfiguration options, we decided to remove the lower, mostly decorative understructure entirely, giving our client the seating flexibility she desired ... our previous design for pull out leaves was fussy to fabricate and sometimes confusing for the clients to operate, so using another table as a model as well as a nicely written fine woodworking article by tage frid from the 70's, we decided we would improve upon our design. will made a 1/4 size mockup using the math in the article, and we decided this was the way to go ... it works slicker than our old design and by applying the large areas of felt you can see on the bottom of the top below, it works really smoothly and the leaves are protected from scrathcing. you can see a very short you tube video of the opening and closing process at this link.
the top is not actually attached to the base but rather 'floats' up and down via a pair of steel pins in holes in the center of the center frame. you can see that in the video. in the picture above, the leaves are in the closed position but you can see the little guides that will made that are attached to that center frame and keep the leaves square as they open and close. a little shellac and wax on the runners and guides and they slide like a dream.
we routed a half inch wide channel, an 1/8th inch deep, around the felt area so we could staple the felt and not just glue it ... ta dah .. 88" closed to 132" open ... thank you again fine woodworking website ... the online access is the best $15.00 you can spend ...

seeders instruments banjo #8

well, seeders instruments banjo #8 arrived in northern ireland on friday ... it was will's first international website order. the shipping was a concern at first, but the US Postal Service handled it flawlessly. it left tuesday afternoon ... 3, or 2? days ... reasonable cost considering ...
it sounds great, as you can hear on this one minute clip of will playing and singing. link to the video here ...
i didn't get a lot of progress pictures. it got itself together and out the door mostly on evenings and weekends and went without a hitch, so i only occasionally glimpsed the progress as it went along.
great saturn peg head inlay. that pot and drawing on the right is his next project
regular old hard oil finish ... 6 or seven coats i think ...
the whole deal
and the label
great combo of woods and restrained design collaboration. i liked the no fretboard inlays much more than i expected to ...
back viewstay 'tuned' for more ... ha ha ...