a few more favorites

in a previous post i promised 'a few more favorites'

and here are 'a few more' ... with almost 1000 posts to choose from, 

it gets a little tricky ...

click the pictures to enlarge them ...

interior design, and

'the spaces we make'

the blog post for the link above is mostly highlight 

general thoughts on architectural and interior design, and

comments on the furniture design/make process ...

 

drawing and thinking : thinking and drawing ...

this is an excerpt from an article by ashley ericsmoen,

an australian based furniture designer/maker and professor of design ... 

i have been drawing for pleasure since i bought the book

'drawing on the right side of the brain' by betty edwards,

back when i had to learn how to present my ideas to 

potential customers back in the late 70s. sadly, i made it

through high school and college without ever having an art course.

there are two relevant posts at the link above and both are 

discussions of the creative process

and two articles recently in the new york times and the new yorker

on ideas and creativity

new york times   temple grandin .. visual thinking

 new yorker  'how should we think about thinking?'

'handwork'?  'machine work'? cnc? does it matter?

 

some cnc work ... 1997, using a cnc at a friend's shop

all 'handwork', no cnc ... 1993?

a cnc router is 'just a tool' that lets us

do things no one would likely pay us to do without it.

the tansu stairs .. both of them 

                                     

these stairs went to california, along with about 15 lineal 

feet of railings for the second floor

the photos the client sent that we used for the concept drawings;

the builder provided onsite measurements to create the shop drawings.

the original tansu stairs,  a local project we did in 1989 ... 

with the railings we added in 2014

sam's belt buckles

pretty much anything you want on them ...

and in case you missed it back in july, 

there's my 'old man project', still a work in progress ...

there are 6 posts there that i still add to from time to time .. 

story of my 51.5 years of life in vermont, and a little bit

from before i stepped off the bus in arlington to visit my sister.

i had $6. in my pocket, and everything i owned in one hand.

all for now ... 

The 2009 Tansu Stairs On Site

ok, today i was talking with some friends and one of the projects 

we discussed was the tansu stairs ...

scroll down, a few more onsite photos there

someons asked if i had any on site pictures and 

after searching a bit, i realized i have never posted any

so here we go ... front entry way

a door they added to the project

in the shop

ready to go

on site

warmly lit

looking up

my cad drawing ...

over and out ... quite a project!

The Tansu Stair Project

besides the post below, there are several other blog posts about these stairs. here is a link to the final one and you can work back to this post from that one ... great project !!!

3/9 ... Had it all together around 1:00 today. It's all disassembled now and the cabinet interiors are being shellacked and waxed ....

Proposed railing design including second floor landing

The case taking shape today 3/6/09

The cad drawing showing the three subcases seperated by color

About 20 years ago I made the tansu style stair cabinet above for clients who were remodeling a house up the road in Danby, Vermont. Last spring, I made another tansu style cabinet for a New York City entryway and one way or another, last summer a gentleman from California found my pictures on the internet and contacted me regarding a stairway project he had in mind. We went back and forth for a while, and now, they're underway on construction of the addition to his house and we have started the stair cabinet. Unfortunately, my contract doesn't call for me to install so I'll just wave goodbye to it, and, maybe, by then, it will be spring here and I won't be wishing I was in sunny CA.. It killed me back in January to get pictures of carpenters in shorts and sunscreen while it was zero or so here. Anyway .... More to follow .... This'll be a long one ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Last summer's tansu cabinet in walnut

A sketch for the cabinet we're working on made by laying trace over the photo in the top left corner in the collage below

Photos from the client (sent in January) with my photoshopped sketching of the railings etc.

Tansu Stairs Update

3/20/09 Trevor made some progress this week on the tansu stair cabinet described in the post on 3/9. It's pretty much his baby, with the rest of us brainstorming with him as needed. He's doing a great and careful job on a complex project. The main cabinet is complete now with the face frames and cabinet backs glued on. Yesterday and today he's been working on the templates for the three steel railing sections that Sam is making parts for. He cut some cardboard railing outlines and mdf post prototypes on the cnc to discover minor corrections that need to be made before cutting the real templates and posts on Monday. He also took a little time out this afternoon to do the butterfly inlays on the walnut plank in the foreground of the end of day shot above .... (click to enlarge it) ... On the face frame. rather than do the half laps the old fashioned way with a manual layout and tablesaw dados, he convinced me he could cut them as fast using a combination of the cnc for marking and layout and the tablesaw for halflapping. I think it took him a little longer than usual as it was his first time, but I want to tell you ... that face frame is perfectly square with not one drawer front off 90 degrees. I'm coming around to his way of thinking ....

Checking the rail to wall and mocked up ceiling fit

Checking the post notch and rail taper angles

Some of the drawer parts with some of the risers and treads stickered in thebackground ... Lots o pieces.

Small two man brainstorm session

Sam Mosheim Metalwork

OK ... Well, I posted quite a bunch of Will's work recently and now it's time for a little of Sam's .. You can see more details regarding these photos by clicking on the 'sam mosheim' category below to the right. Using Picasa 3 and the 'slide shows' post instructions, I put up a a slide show of sam's work, most of it from previous blog posts .... Take the tour at this link if you have a minute and give him a call if you need some custom metalwork ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
The hanging lights
Custom belt buckles
The Classic 'Vermonter'
'Bridges' Bench
The Tansu Stairs
The Balcony
The Cockatoo Chairs
A Cool Signpost

The Tansu Stairs are Done

Well, I was redoing the jobs list on my office bulletin board this morning and the little clipping above was pasted onto the corner of it. I put it there a while back and forgot about it but today, it caught my eye again. So true .... Most every big project takes 'a little longer' than expected and this one was no exception. But, now we're pretty much done. Shipping to Palo Alto has been arranged and all that's left is the shaping of the wall mounted handrail and a little welding on the mounting brackets for it. We had a few 'last details; to work out this week and they are detailed below. There are two other posts to this project .... here ... and here... Great project ....

The finished cabinet ... Click the photos to enlarge them ..

The boys got a little happy as they were about to put together the back cabinets ...

Tricky post moounting details and

tread to riser joinery

Shows the breakdown for shipping

and the skids with wheels we put under the base cabinets

Assembling the back cabinets ... More info on this project here ... and here ...