Drawing a Greene & Greene Cloud Lift with a CAD Program ...

Since I work many styles besides Greene and Greene I sometimes have to fool around for a minute til I remember how exactly to do this when I have to do it. I'm putting it here for myself and anybody else who wants it ... Enjoy ! Click to enlarge ...

This One's Got Legs

I was looking in my big template drawer for a 36" radius pattern the other day and couldn't find it. I ended up emptying the whole drawer including the 1/2" of dust on the bottom of it. I did find the 36" radius and this stack of leg patterns for our 'Egyptian' leg. I think I made the first one back around 1988 and have done, (it seems), many, many variations on it since. More 'Egypt' leg pieces here ....

A New Coffee Table (Update)

We finished the coffee table today and our shipper will pick it up Friday for delivery next week. A great collaboration with the clients who added the burl apron element to our vocabulary. We like it ....

The finished table ... click to enlarge it ...

Showing the structure ...
Update on the square coffee table

Got the first coat of finish on the top at the end of the day today. The base is finished and it'll be ready to ship off the Connecticutt next week.

Will, installing the edge inlay ... For more details on this process see this previous post..
5/7/09 below

We're coming along on the coffee table I mentioned in an earlier post called Spring Fever. Glued up the top and shelf last week, veneered the aprons and did some joinery yesterday and glued up the base today. Tomorrow we'll start on the edge inlay and I hope we'll have it ready for finish by the end of the week .... Updates later ...

gluin' up

Finishing a Sailboat Mast

I was going to add the pictures I took today to the sailboat mast post below, but I thought it would make it just too long. Here they are as a separate entry. The whole mastmaking process was great, and took me back to my Windsor chairmaking woodworking roots of handtools, spokeshaving and carving. In the day to day rush to make a living, we sometime forget the pleasure to be had from a sharp handtool and the eye/hand work that goes with using it .... And, sometimes it takes some weekend work to appreciate differently the work you do during the week ....

I knew how I wanted to finish the mast transition from square to round, and I knew the detail was called a 'Lamb's Tongue'. Googled it up, and the video was great. Hats off to Woodsmith magazine ....

square to round point

step one

quickly rough carved with chisels and finished with a rasp and sandpaper ... about 20 minutes per tongue ...

Pete and the boat co-owner, Chris with Pete doing the final spokeshaving

The finished transition

Off to the garage where Pete will paint it this week ... We'll mount it to the tabernacle that Sam is building and hang the rigging in due time ... hopefully in the next couple of weekends ... click the photos to enlarge them

Making a Sailboat Mast (Update)

The Boat ... An original Barnegat Bay Sneakbox, built in New Jersey in 1922 ..... It's 87 YEARS OLD ! Older than me... Looks better too ...

5/2/09
In the previous post, A Walk in the Yard, I talked about Pete's, (of Pete's Pizza Oven's) boat, a Barnegat Bay Sneakbox. The original mast is shown below and while it's in perfectly fine and original condition, it's not that handy a set up if you want to trailer the boat to the next small lake or out to the ocean from southwestern Vermont. So, as I mentioned, Sam's building a tabernacle for the new mast which will requare that the mast be shorter by the amount that the original mast goes through the deck to the mortise below (I'm sure there's a nautical term for that place but I don't know what it is ... step hole maybe?) Anyway, we air dried some spruce 2 x 6 's for a couple of weeks, milled them down to 1.35" and glued them up with West System epoxy ... Sometime soon, we'll joint the 15 foot long piece and square it up to begin the layout and tapering of the finished product.

The original mast

Gluing it up with the epoxy

Long view showing support and set up

Jointing and planing it straight ... long thing

5/10/09 Making a Mast update ..

Well, I learned something new yesterday. I made my first 15' long 3.5" diameter, curved and tapered chair spindle. Remarkably, now that I look at my pictures and review the process, it is EXACTLY the same as the process I used to make windsor chair spindles from scratch, back in the 80's when I was making Windsor chair spindles from scratch. Made a lot of them. Hundreds of em. Pick some wood with nice straight grain; make a long, straight square; taper it; make it into an octagon; whittle it round and fit it to the chair. Same exact process, except this spindle weighs about 40 pounds, more than a whole set of windsor chairs. It's not rocket science, but there is a logic to the steps and we have to honor the process. Pete had a book, 'How to Build a Shellback Dinghy', by Eric Dow that had some good pictures and tips on mastmaking and we read that part and had at it. Great book ... if you're not a boater though there are some amazingly obscure words they use to describe different parts of the vessel and sailing processes and some of the paragraphs and descriptions we're stunning when ripped from their context and read aloud to amuse my wife.

After transfering the diameters of the existing mast to our blank, we bandsawed the curved tapers at 90 degrees and planed the cuts to our line, first roughly with a power planer and then with a Stanley #4 handplane

Once it was tapered and square we had to make an 'octagon' jig which was detailed in Eric's book and is essentially made from a drawing like the one above. I started with a square about a half inch larger than the largest section of the mast and then to use the jig, you angle it and drag it along. Once you get the hang of it, it makes proportional lines that are appropriate to the curve as you move it along. Pete's using it below to layout the octagoning lines .. (octagoning ... made that one up)


Click to enlarge the picture and you can see the jig pretty good.

The top curved parts we roughed to the line with a 45 degree bit in the router, the bottom untapered part of the mast we cut the bevels on the table saw.

After we fared the octagon, we sketched on lines with a magic marker to make a sixteen sided object,

Planed to those lines mostly by hand, and then switched to a number 3 Stanley for the final rough smoothing and then to a spokeshave until beer time. The photos above cover about 3 hours work for me and about 2 for Pete, just to give you some perspective on what's involved. Later today, we'll cut the "Lamb's Tongues" (great short video at that link) at the points where the mast goes from round to octagon and then to square .. more on that later.

There is something extremely satisfying about a spokeshaved 15' spruce mast. ...

A Walk in the Yard ... Springtime in Vermont

It was just such an awsomely beautiful spring day that I thought I should post the pictures I took today before it turned into 'just another day in paradise' as Jimmy Buffett might say. This post is similar to 'A Walk in the Woods' , one I wrote in the fall that had the same flavor but covered a little more geography. Today, for the initial photos, I never left the yard..... If you've never seen a springtime in Vermont, it's something to see (as I guess, really, spring is something to see everywhere), but this one was mine and it was just one of those days when everything feels just right. Click the pictures to enlarge them...

I started out studying my new woodshed and had no pressing plans except to meet an old friend at his sawmill over the mountain in Bondville to get some lumber for my shed deck, stop at the other lumber yard for some red cedar for a shop project coming up and then hit some golf balls at the driving range on my way home. After that I thought I might chat with the wife, read the paper and have a beer, take a nap and do a little hammering when I woke up. Got everything done but the nap by dinner. Did the nap after dinner and here I am ... writing away ...
After my little study, I went in for another cup of coffee and went out the back door and it was just beautiful ... everywhere I looked, everywhere I went ....

Kit has the hummingbird feeders up as of yesterday. They should be arriving any minute ...

Looked to the East, to Peter's Peak, generally, the first and last sunlight in Dorset.

Turned and went past the aspargus patch ... we've been eating that for a couple days now.

Past the hay fern patch with the little (inedible) fiddleheads just coming up ...

Came around the lower edge of the lawn to the front of the house again

Past the Chinese chestnut Kit planted, also for the hummingbirds...

All that green stuff coming screaming out of one little bud at the end of each branch

Past the woodshed again and then past the crabapple about to burst into total pink on the front lawn ...

Over by the metal shop where Sam is working on a tabernackle, the part that allows the mast to hinge up and down for this Barnegat Bay Sneabox that a friend bought last year. I'm helping him with the mast tomorrow ...

Close up of the tabernackle out of it's hole. As I understand it, it's held in by gravity as the mast is held by the rigging when it's up.

Past the pear tree, about to bloom ...

and down to the ravine between the house and the shop to the wild leek patch. Came with the property.

There are also about a million red terilliams there with em.

and the stream that goes to the duck pond. You can see the shop in the backround.

Up the hill past some funky burnt sienna colored something or other

to the back of the house, and then off to Bondville, a little behind schedule ....

to Coleman Hills Farm ... About as 'Vermont Life' looking as you can get ...

Picked up my lumber and headed back over the mountain.

Stopped by Gale Meadows Pond where my wife and I fished often before we had kids...Might be fun to do that again now ...

Stopped at the scenic overlook to admire the green in the valley and the brown at the top
Had my beer, finished the deck framing, had a nice dinner, unloaded my truck, had a nice nap ... nighty night now ....