A Few Repairs

All in , all done .... miracle recovery .... descriptive post below
We finished a couple of interesting repairs last week and I was sending photos to clients so I thought I would post them here too ... The bureau above is one of the last pieces of furniture we have to restore that was damaged in the fire I have occasionally written about. I thought it was a goner as it took several days in the sun to even get it open, and when we finally did, it really didn't look too promising ... Looks can be deceiving though and by the time Jim stripped the smoked shellac and sanded the interior and resealed it, I was starting to be just a little more optimistic. Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Here, Jim has stripped off the toasted shellac and sanded the interior, which he is now coating with a seal coat of shellac and wax to get rid of the smoke odor.
There were then some repair necessary to the face that that you can see in the first photo above ...
I chipped off what was left of the round corners and replaced them with new veneers. The masking tape was a good trick. It allowed me to bend the veneers cold without the pieces breaking or separating, kind of like a paper backed veneer would be, only thicker...
I taped them in place with the repair man's friend, 3M 2040 masking tape, a stretchy but strong and sticky clamp..
The stripped and sanded drawers ... What's up with that top one? ..
We applied a thin coat of aniline dye, recoating some elements a couple of times to balance the color, and then shellaced with a wash coat of diluted fresh amber shellac. We'll build slowly in thin coats from here until we reach the desired shine, which will not be too terribly shiny ... The hardware has been cleaned and 'reantiqued' and is ready to go back on when the finish is complete ... I think it will look like a million bucks when it's done ...
Another fire victim in the before stage ....
In the 'almost finished' stage. The brass was polished and then reantiqued and the shellac was built slowly as mentioned above ... We finished the top with a coat of black patinating wax which was perfect for the job .... The Revere bowl was totally black and looked almost hopeless before Jim got to work on it ...

This is another repair that came through recently from Hildene, Robert Todd Lincoln's home, in Manchester, Vermont. We had a huge windstorm a couple of weeks ago, which blew open the French doors at the house and knocked the table across the room
Before ...
After

A New Bed Project

Ahhh ... where to start? This is going to be a long one ... But a satisfying one for us ... It involves an interpretation of a bed we made 3 or 4 years ago, some old friends I have been working with for a really long time, and an exciting new concept ...metal bird inlays, specifically, ducks .... We started with a rough, quick Cad drawing ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

From the drawing we made a full size mockup up using new post templates we made up for this design.They are based on other beds we have made in the past, but had to be resized for this king version.
I then took the mockup to their house to compare with their present bed. I made the original queen size bed (this will be a king) as a wedding present in the mid 80's ... At that point, we considered varying the duck profiles but returned to the simpler more symmetrical layout ...
From that mockup, we worked up a new rough design which I am in the process of refining right now ... The duck inlays on this bed will be made of copper, steel and brass, instead of the abalone inlays on the original...
This is a fuller picture of the original bed, made for a member at the Winous Point Shooting Club outside of Cleveland, one of the oldest in the country.
Will turned the posts, roughing them out on the duplicator and refining/finishing them freehand.
The Vega makes incredibly quick work of getting the main blanks all exactly the same. It's the handturning and in this case, the hand carving that give them their handmade quality in the end.
Off the duplicator and ready for hand turning ... you you figure out how to sharpen the cutter properly, it is unbelievable how quickly and cleanly these can be turned ...
This process is a refined version identical to one I detailed earlier for a recycled chestnut table we made last summer. These clients have a table we made with similarly carved legs , which are actually the first spiral carvings we did. You can see the mahogany mockup leg we did for that table a couple shots above.
Close up of the layout process which is detailed here for a 6 part spiral. This one is an 8 part spiral
This bed will have four carved walnut pine cones topping each of the posts ...
Where we were yesterday ... Will completed the bed bolt joinery today and we will assemble the frame next to check the final headboard size ... Updates later ...

Off To The Marble Mill

Our client for the black vanity sent us the specs for the sink she had chosen and in looking it over, I noticed the highlighted sentence below ... After talking it over with my marble cutter, Johnson Marble, in Proctor, Vermont, we decided it would be safest if we got the actual sink and faucet since the top was going to New York City ... We have time to do it right, but not time to do it twice .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... We started by cutting a section out of the cardboard so we could trace the inside outline of the sink bowl.
Cut some holes for the faucets ... Interestingly, the pipe for the faucet was not in the center of the fixture and was a different size .... glad we checked
looking from underneath
Set it up right side up and then we had our finished template ...
Off to the marble mill, a fantastic old facility adjacent to the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.
Coming in the front door .. It's a great old industrial space ....
Looking back the other way from the far end...
Showing the honed finish
A rough slab of Danby Montclair, with nice black/brown markings ...
showing the layout .... I forgot to take a photo of the building from outside, but it's very cool the way it relates to the rest of the site ...

Yo ! Turkeys ! (and other images of spring)

We had these daffodils on the kitchen island a week ago and they gave me the feeling that the weather was about to break ... And it did. We still have snow on the ground but this weekend was 100% sunny and warm. I think I saw 50 degrees on my car thermometer for a minute .. Anyway, it was beautiful and I was lucky to catch some turkeys prowling through the woods a few minutes before I found my first pussywillows ...
Click the pictures to enlarge them
Mr. Turkey above, and his ladies below ... He had a nice beard but he's turned just enough that you can't see it in this picture ...
I think there were 3 or 4 more ladies I cropped out ..
Pussywillows on the porch and 'Cactus Man Goes to the Pyramids' by Jim Parsons, the guy Jim you see working in the shop photos ...
Sunset yesterday ... two months to leaves ...

Hide The Wires

We're building a curly maple kitchen 'island' table for a local client ... It will have a really nice orangy,brownish, granite top ... One of the challenges was to 'hide the wires' that will come out of the floor and up to the outlets and switch on the side apron of the table ... The legs are 3.75" square, which gave us plenty of room. The 'eureka' moment was to cut the mitered filler piece out while the solid curly maple legs were still oversize at 4" square. Click the photo below to enlarge it and you'll understand that once it is glued back in, it will match almost invisibly ... Worked slick ...
Legsm aprons, face frame, drawer framing members
Close up of the corner detail and the channel down through the leg
Here we're starting the finish .. Below with a temporary top for the photo ...

Getting the Big Walnut Table Together ..

We got the whole claro walnut table together for the first time today .... There's other stuff going on in the shop but I'll have to write about that later . We're off to see Iris DeMent in Middlebury in a couple of minutes ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
Here's the process ... We made jig for routing for half the base, routed inside that and then flipped it to complete the pocket ... The slab was too big and heavy to get upstairs to the cnc ... Anyway, it was dusty, but fine and the base is incredibly rigid ...
All bolted down to flip over ...
Flipped over .... with one of the ladderbacks from a November post that we're finally getting around to making ...
With some people for scale .... It's a big one .....

Chain Saw Fine Furniture

3/2/10 We're moving relatively slowly on this project to allow the 2.25" thick slab to acclimate to our heated shop ... It had been stored in a concrete floored, unheated barn until it arrived here last week .. We took a little off both sides last week and we flip it pretty much every day. It has stayed remarkably flat and now we're working to assemble the base ....click the pictures to enlarge them .
The figured are at the crotch end of the slab
looking down from the crotch end
from the stump end
Last week, ready to cut ....

I started my woodworking career in 1974 as a logger for a local timber contractor ... I lasted about 6 months ... After that, I spent the next 23 years cutting and splitting firewood to heat my house and shop in Arlington .... I got back into the wood heat thing last year and I've become pretty good friends with my chain saw again. When we had to cut this slab to size, I thought that my Stihl might be the best tool for the job as the log had already been chain sawn to rough shape before it was milled into slabs .. Ta Dah ... The edges actually will look like before we cut it .... Don't try this at home ....

Click the photos to enlarge them .... Previous post on this table ... It was a bit of a reach
This was actually really fun .....
Cutting to 10'
All done ... ready to smooth ....