weve got a good project coming up ... two recycled chestnut cabinets and a new mantle, built around an existing stone fireplace ... the clients were interested in having a large flat screen tv pull out from the cabinet on the right ... a 46", larger, in fact, than would fit in a traditional head on installation. my friend, and, coincidentally, the audio/visual man on the job, kem verner, told me it was no problem to do this as the tv could go back into the cabinet on an angle ... hmmm.. why not? ..
the clients were serious, so i picked up one of the sanus tv brackets we typically use .. i first tried putting the wall for the tv bracket on an angle, thinking that would give me the most flexibility, but, in the end ...
kem suggested mounting the bracket on a vertical partition 90 degrees to the face of the cabinet and as close to the front as possible ... click the photos to enlarge them ..
in the end, this location gave us the most extension and smoothest in/out operation for the tv and the clients ( and i too) were able to see it would work ...
the vertical mdf on the left represents the retractable door in the closed position.this photo shows the tv in the all the choice out location ... you can see in the photo below that the door, when its retracted, will be behind the face of the stone and the tv will be out past it ... a slick solution ...
Im sort of fascinated by the wood and steel elements of our newish Bethlehem Steel line. We have been working on it for about a year now and this is the first case piece ... There just seem to be endless possibilities here ... This one started with the drawing above, but as we were building it, even though all the other tables in this style so far have had the legs pointing down, this piece definitely seemed to want its legs inverted, pointing 
The case with side shims and full extension undermount runners ... Its the first time we tried the Grass runners ... So far so good ... They seem to wobble a bit less when you open and close them , and close a little faster than the Blums ... Cheaper too from our supplier ... The high dolly was a brainstorm too ... Hate, hate, hate crawling around on the floor ...
Mocking up the bolts with masking tape .. three holes or four ?? Three it is ...
More bolts in the front center leg ... This is some of Irions finest figured cherry .. Ive had this log for several years waiting for the right project ... We had Just enough to make it ...
looks better in person ... 
will took this picture at frog hollow yesterday when he dropped off the bench ... they decided to display it with the frame that will be buried in the ground under the installed bench ... i guarantee, no one will be walking off with it once its installed ... other entries are in the frames above ...
5/1/11 ready for the show that opens at frog hollow in burlington next week ... it will be there for a month and then installed at the museum ... the openings next friday evening ... come by if you are in the area ... it should be fun ...
were coming down the home stretch on the montshire museum bench. the top half of this post i wrote back in early february and now were wrapping up the actual construction .. if you missed the post back then, its a really nice project and a nice collaboration with the museum and frog hollow to get artists work in the public domain. we are flattered to be included ... scroll down to see the bench in process ... well be finishing it up later this week .. 
2/1/11 We were flattered to get a letter in the mail Saturday from The Montshire Museum of Science. They announced a competition last fall for the purchase of 5 benches, made by Vermont artists and furniture makers, for their outdoor garden walk project. Thank you Dave Hurwitz for reminding me (several times) to enter. they selected a new version of our Bridges bench that we made for the State of Craft ... 50 Years of Craft in Vermont show at the Bennington Museum last spring ... Were flattered and honored and I located the chestnut planks well use for the wood part earlier today .... ready to go ... All five benches will be displayed at Frog Hollow in Burlington for a brief time before being installed in their permanent location at the museum in May ... Looking forward to it ... Click the photos and specs to enlarge them ...
step one ... roll the 3/8ths by 2 steel into two identical arcs and weld on the top rails and the bridge struts ...
prime and paint the steel
make the wood base and lay it out for the bolt holes ...
here will is drilling for the rivets that will go in the edge of the seat ... he made a jig with the layout holes on the drill press and then drilled the holes in the seat edge freehand using the jig as a guide
we collaborated on the installation base design with the museum installation experts and we will install this base on the bottom of the base after the show ... all stainless and pressure treated ..
well be finishing the chestnut using a penofin verde color .. weve used penofin products in the past and they are excellent, except for the smell when you first apply it ... it dissipates pretty quickly though and leaves a nice water resistant finish ..
and we got a nice photo of our original bench in the recent montshire news letter ... thanks ! ill post more photos when were finished ...
I was talking to a friend and fellow woodworker (Johannes Michelsen...check out his famous wood hats) recently who is designing a round expanding table for a potential client. There is a table in a post below (with a really, really nice email from the clients), about an expanding mahogany table that is similar in concept .... He saw another table of mine on the Moin Hardware website and was interested in the runners and structure that allowed a 10 table to be balanced on a single, non moving pedestal. So, I thought Id put up a few more photos .. There are a couple things that allow this design to work: the equalizing runners (the top stays centered on the pedestal as it opens for the leaves), and a nice stable base with some weight and structure. We have made many tables with this type of pedestal and we alchoices run a 3/4" threaded rod/bolt up through the center of the pedestal which makes a very solid connection and adds to the stability of the table as a whole. It also makes moving it easy as the bolt stays with the base and the subplatform stays with the top and runners ... Heres shot of that .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
If you look at the cad drawing in the first post about this table , you can see the sub top that the runners are attached to just below the bead on the table apron.
Heres a shot of the finished table with the 3 15" leaves in ...
An underside view of the unfinished table showing the pedestal parts clearly..
Under side view ...
Showing the Hafele runners without the sub base ... We have a few sets of these runners left and for most of out other style expanding tables we have switched to Watertown slides from Moin Hardware. I have seen similar equalizing slides on their website. I dont think you can get the Hafele ones in this country any more ... OK ... back to the Olympics ... Those skiers are CRAZZZZZYYYYY !!!
ive alchoices been fascinated with light and lighting. the choice it glows at night; the choice it falls on wood to illuminate the figure and color ... its all good. weve done a few things with it here and there .. hanging lamps over a dining table, pool table lights, (scroll down), free hanging chandeliers ... mostly kind of little stuff. recently though we have been talking with the contractor on the job where we did the reclaimed chestnut cabinets and it seems there is a distinct lack of light over the couches ... what to do? a hanging chandelier? theres a wire up there, but its a loooong choice to the ceiling.as you can see in the photo below. it seemed to sam and me that the next best choice was to make something between the beams about 9 up that would mainly light the couch and coffee table area, in other words, where you need the light. click the photos to enlarge them ...
sam had the idea of using square steel tubing to support the custom glass shades from our friend andrew at manchester hot glass that we could use to direct the light downward and mostly eliminate seeing the bulbs up there. we discussed dimmers...
we scratched it out on paper, did a little cad drawing roughly to scale, but none of our workings seemed to come across as something as exciting as we thought it could be ... i decided to get out of the office and make a model. we got the measurements from beam to beam and wall to wall from matthew, the contractor and we reduced it all to 1/8th scale. the 8 x 8s became 1" x 1"s, (convenient), and the 3 x 3 steel tubing became 3/8ths by 3/8ths, and the 2.5 square tube connectors became 5/16ths square ... nice round numbers.
we divided the 6 space into 5ths, subtracted the thicknesses of the tubing and arrived at a spacing of roughly 12" between the horizontals .. also convenient. i dotted them with yellow glue and nailed them carefully with the micropinner .. a few pins poked out but i trimmed them off or pulled them through .. we then sprayed the grid with flat black and constructed the half lapped 1 x 1 frame ... it was about at this point that we realized we woudl have to create access in the tubing frame to make the electrical connections and rout the wires from shade to shade. adding the wood caps on top after the fact seemed like a logical option that would also add interest to the fixture ... 
i had to mockup the shades so i spun a dowel on and angle on the edge sander, cut it to length, drilled it and the frame on the drill press and hammered them home with 1.25 x 17 brads ... pretty slick...
i added the 8 foot posts, but it was still kind of hard to visualize the full effect.
well, theres alchoices photoshop ... the first step was to get rid of the open area above the model by photographing it against a piece of black foam core ... that was a start.
then i realized i could put it near the edge of the counter and photograph it looking up with the foam core on top .. viola .. now were getting there.
then i robbed the shade image from andrews website at manchester hot glass and dotted them onto the photo over the wood cones ... now were talkin ... i sent the two images above and the shade photo at the top of the post off to the clients and were going to get together on it soon ... models and mockups and photoshop to the rescue again ...
these clients are used to my photoshopping from the last couple projects we did together. above is the before image, created by photoshopping a cabinet from my website into their space, and then, below,
executing the photoshopped image ... visualization ... graphic communication ... its not overrated.
