the beautiful music all around us .. stephen wade stops by ....

we had a great event in manchester last wednesday evening.  the verrmont council of the humanities 'first wednesdays' program featured stephen wade, a grammy winning banjo player and music historian.  he is a stunning performer and great story teller.  he spent an hour or so describing his travels through the south, meeting and playing with the old time musicians in the 60s and 70s interspersing the story with song on about 7 or 8 historic banjos from his collection.  naturally, at the end of the show, will needed to buy his book, 'the beautiful music all around us ... field recordings and the american experience'.  more about that book at this link.  while doing that, he struck up a conversation with stephen and his friend sandy, a banjo collector.  next day, wouldn't you know, they showed up at the shop for a visit and to test out a few of will's banjos.  great music, great banjos, and a great time was had by all ...

sandy, with a new one, hot off the press

 

and will plays a tune for stephen ..

see more photos of will's banjos and their construction on his seeders instruments instagram feed.

and speaking of fall in vermont ...

i seem to take the same photos every year .. same but different though. this year it was warm and really dry, and for a while we thought foliage season was going to be actually, a bust.  little did we know that mother nature was just waiting for the tourists to leave after columbus day to hit us with the good stuff.  well, that was tuesday, and every day seems to come on better than the one before.  

below are a few highlights.  

if you are at your desk and not on your phone, click the photos to enlarge them

standard 'backyard pond with japanese maple' photo

a longer range zoom with a little interesting sunlight

 some golf, with occasional rainbows ... it don't get much better than this

 

it's zinnia season

 and tomato season ...

  more to see through the weekend ...

and paddle tennis season starts sunday ... all good ... 

a built in cherry desk

well, long time no blog ... 3 weeks at least ... lots going on here at the end of summer, or should i say the beginning of fall.  i turned the heat on in the shop when i left today.  some in the area had a frost on their windshield this morning.  the light is changing, and the foliage is beautiful.  life is good. particularly since we installed this built in cherry desk this afternoon.  chris has been working on it for a few weeks now, and i'm glad to see it in place in its new home.

click the photos to enlarge them ... 

we started with a drawing and then moved on to the full size mockup below

it is in a bedroom, and the space, while not exactly tight, wanted to not be confining.  hard to tell that on paper so we built the mdf and notched luan mockup, which the clients actually used while we worked on the desk. 

great sun .. great view out the windows ...

the construction was a mix of table joinery and case joinery ...

drawers everywhere .. 10 in total, and chris got a real dovetail workout. 

      

ash boxes with cherry ply bottoms ...

more photos tomorrow when the installation is complete ...

it's a short drive, but a beauty of a drive ..

a round cherry expanding pedestal table

well, here we go again ... always one of my favorite designs, and we're happy to do it again and again.  the one above is from 2003, and it had three 18" leaves.  the one we are making now will be the same, only with just one leaf.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

we started with a cad drawing testing the water for 52 vs 54".  in the end, i sent them a cardboard template via ups and after putting it in the room, they decided on the 54".  i've blogged about a similar table before in this post back in 2013, and a smaller version in mahogany, way back in 2008.  

but here it is again anyway ..

get yourself a nice matched set of curly cherry boards and glue them up ..

and then cut and stack your plywood 'propeller' pieces and veneer the edges and top.  glue up your column pieces with the angles on the top and bottom then too.  

i have a taper jig photo somewhere ... 

and get yourself some equalized table slides from moin hardware

then, if you've got one, cut the half round sections on the cnc, and cut the inlay pockets at the same time .. let me say here that we did not have a cnc in 2003, and we made many, many tables with central inlays without it.  faster now with it though.

start with the borders;  in this case end grain walnut, burl and end grain vertical grain fir, glued up in a log and sliced like baloney ... put some glue on it, drive a headed brad in next to it 

and bend it to press it tightly against the edge of the pocket.

check your fits with some mdf templates

and cut your burl pieces  ... still need to add the edge inlay and do the finishing.  more photos to
follow

home stretch ... in the finishing room now

all in, all done .. couple views below

with the 20" leaf in

 other sizes and variations on the form ... "take an object; do something to it"

big piece of claro walnut

well i think you'd have to agree that this is a pretty big piece of walnut ...  17.5' x 66" ..

it's certainly the biggest piece i have ever had anywhere near my shop ... 

somewhat unfortunately, it's actually too big for the client's room and we have to cut it to 

13'6" x 53", which we did when it arrived last week at my friend noel dydo's shop.  

he had to get it out of the truck with a lull and a forklift ... 622 pounds.

on our end, we had to do some thinking about how we would manage it once it arrived here.

after working on this table last spring, i realized that it was going to be difficult to work on it in the actual shop and that we would have to move to my garage, where we built the 26' x 9' and the 20' x 8' tables a few years back. 

here it is last thursday at my friend's shop

first step, cut one end ... blow this one up and note the D9 in the background ... 

serious earth moving equipment at noel's shop .

here we're preparing to add the rotating feature to this slab ... at about 450-500 pounds, we had to rethink how we were going to flip it .. sam made two 24" pieces of 5" channel with a 1 and 3/8ths" pin going through it.  we drilled and tapped the ends for 3/8th" bolts to clamp the metal pieces to the slab with wood shims. in this photo, i am wearing my special matching stihl sneakers while i cut 'a little' off the width of the slab so it is the right size for the room.  way down at the other end, it's still 66" wide and about 40" too long.  we'll get to that in a minute ... 

well, here we are, ready for the local lumber company to send their sheetrock truck to move it to my garage .. too big for the shop with the other stuff that's going on in there now. you can see a little piece of pipe in the top of the tarpezoid, which the greased pin fits into.  we let sam have the honor of the first flip today, which he was able to do by himself almost with one hand.  should of had this rig about 7 or 8 years ago.

flipping videos to follow soon.
videos of flipping the slab at this link    

here's another video .. you remove one of the side ties and flip it halfway, and then you have to replace it and remove the opposite tie piece and replace that once the slab is horizontal ... we could remove both tie pieces, but hey, the ends are on wheels and we wouldn't want to drop it, would we?

 

 crazy figured !!

did a little rough smoothing and alcohol splashing on what will most likely be the bottom of the slab.

 

all in all done and in miami .. hard to photograph, but with a little photoshopping ...

you can get the idea ... big piece of wood!

37 years ago

every once in a while, if you've been making things a long time, you stumble on something you made a long time ago that you have maybe forgotten about.  like this door above ... made it in 1978, 37 years ago.  all heart, eastern white pine, no finish, no rot, outside, facing east no less, and sound as a dollar.  the owner and i agree that when you've got good pine installed in a vertical orientation, the very best and longest lasting finish is no finish at all ...

18 years and counting on the wood shop, center, 15 years on the finish room, right, and the new pine on the metal shop, 2013.  no finish, except for paint on the window trim ..