Well, after a rainy weekend, during which I got to catch up on some emails, drawings, bookkeeping, (ugh), shopping, and reading, Ive actually got a minute to do a little writing here. May was quite a month, with two show openings, Open Studio, some smaller projects, and work on two big tables, which, if you could find a place to put them end to end, would stretch 46 from one end to the other .... Lots of cnc files, (like, probably more than 100), lots of engineering and problem solving, lots of mdf and lots and lots of moving parts around, some of them 3cm thick and solid granite ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Weve had to move most of the work now to my 28x 30 garage, where they just barely fit side by side ... In the foreground is the working base, made from Timberstrand, which allows us to work on both the bases and the tops in our separate shops ...
Surprisingly, one of the unexpected problems was swelling mdf ! We tend to think of mdf as a totally stable, man made, inert material, which was one of the reasons we chose it for the substrate .... Turns out, over 48", mdf can expand by as much as 1/16th of an inch as humidity rises and moisture is absorbed ... It doesn;t sound like much until you consider that the solid wood edging expands in
width, but not in length, so molding pieces that once butted tightly together no longer fit quite so tightly together. Our solution was to take off the moldings and joint the sections (thats the
smallest section of all of them in the photo above), so that the cherry now touches, but the mdf doesnt. No problem, as the substrate is covered with granite and other, curly maple veneered panels.
Thursday last week, for the first time, we set up the completed base for the 20 table in Steves shop, after disconnecting a few tools and dismantling some of his dust collection system. The open center sections are for electrical access and will later be closed in with veneered panels held in place by super magnets.
Next, we added the steel. The entire outside two feet of both tables is Canadian, 3cm thick granite, at approximately 150 lbs per piece, hanging out there in space. There are 18 24" wide pieces in the 26 table and 12 24" wide pieces in the 20 table ... The substrate, with its cherry moldings, is bolted to the steel. After load testing, we decided on 2.5" x 1.5" rectangular tubing with 1/4" walls. Those pieces are of diminishing lengths to follow the curve of the tops of the tables and 8" less in width than the table at all points.... They were cut on a sharp, 67.5 degree angle, drilled, tapped and capped by Sam.
In Steves shop, we were able to assemble the sections temporarily on their permanent base to be sure that once the table is finished and assembled on site, everything will fit together smoothly.
Thats Steve Holman in the center (its actually his project and were just the helpers), his assistant Kevin is on the left above, and Trevor, my cnc guy, is on the right. Trevor has done an amazing job figuring out how to cut all this stuff, including the solid wood edges, bolt holes, holes for the electricals, and the granite patterns on our (second floor) cnc. Its been a lot of hauling....
Trevor was at Steves shop to deliver the outriggers, the pieces that hold the steel supports for the 26 table, which we will test assemble in my garage when that base is completed, later this week. After we checked the granite templates for the 20 footer, we disassembled everything and Steve will start the finishing process on that base this week as he finishes up construction of the base for the 26 table.
I then drove to Proctor to deliver the templates for the small table to Herb Johnson at Johnson Marble, and got a little education on granite cutting. The straight lines are cut using a beam saw that appears to be from an earlier era, but still chugging along fine ... The templates are traced onto the slabs of granite with a scribe, and the straight cuts are lined up with a laser that is pretty accurate but checked after setting with the actual blade of the saw before they are cut. Then, Herbs assistant, believe it or not, cuts the curves freehand with a diamond blade on a right angle grinder, a truly Olympic display of hand eye coordination. He says hes been doing it that choice for a long time and it is amazing to see how the finished granite pieces fit against the curved cherry moldings. By the choice, the miters, which are about 30+ inches long fit as well as the templates. Herb told us that we did the hard part by making the templates .... well ... maybe ....
While I was dropping off mitered end templates for the small table I was also picking up the cut pieces for the 26 table and we now have 10 of the 16 pieces in place. After some truly small adjustments to the 6 center templates, they will go to Herb when we pick up the 6 mitered granite pieces for the 20 table ...
The 20 table with its missing end templates is now assembled on the working base in my garage, next to the 26 and my convertible is out in the rain. The center mdf panels for both tables will be final fitted after we have all the granite and then veneered and finished in Steves shop.
The granite is beveled and raised about 3/16ths above the cherry moldings and the center sections. I wish I had taken this photo looking down the miter as the fit (all of them so far), is perfect ... The granite has these wonderful blue flecks in the right light, but reads mostly as black ... More later in the week I hope .... Two other posts HERE and HERE ...
well, seeders instruments banjo #8 arrived in northern ireland on friday ... it was wills first international website order. the shipping was a concern at first, but the US Postal Service handled it flawlessly. it left tuesday afternoon ... 3, or 2? days ... reasonable cost considering ...
it sounds great, as you can hear on this one minute clip of will playing and singing. link to the video here ... 
i didnt get a lot of progress pictures. it got itself together and out the door mostly on evenings and weekends and went without a hitch, so i only occasionally glimpsed the progress as it went along.
great saturn peg head inlay. that pot and drawing on the right is his next project
regular old hard oil finish ... 6 or seven coats i think ...
the whole deal
and the label
great combo of woods and restrained design collaboration. i liked the no fretboard inlays much more than i expected to ...
back view
stay tuned for more ... ha ha ...
well, another 3 years, another camera. i think i got my first kodak 1 megapixel camera in 2001. what a novelty that was ... i used that for a couple of years, and then a friend who worked for field & stream sold me his e10 olympus. that was really the camera that got my attention. it took (and still takes) incredibly clear and detailed images, but it eats AA batteries and takes about 60-70 seconds from when you push the shutter to when you see the photo on the 1.75" screen. that one got me started though. click the photos to enlarge them ...
in 2006, i bought a nikon d70, which took some great pictures, and then in 2009, the d90 you see below with the scotch tape over the shutter release. it will take a minute to get comfortable with the canon, but im pretty impressed so far. these handheld, casual snapshot images are compressed from 6 MB to 200K and they are still incredibly sharp.
after briefly and unsuccessfully trying the nikon d7000, i went with the canon t2i, which as mr moore prophesied, more powerful (18 mega pixels) and less expensive, than its predecessors. this brand new t2i was less than either of my nikons.
it seems to do really well in high contrast situations. all photos here are handheld on the P for program setting which automatically selects the asa and exposure ...
our dining room at sunset
the kitchen, same sunset
my d90 ... i ran over it with the electric seat in my convertible, and after about 4 months at the repair shop, waiting for parts, it came back and the shutter button shot across the room two weeks later ... it still works though and will be fixed when the part comes in. it seems that nikon is shutting out its independent repair shops from receiving new parts, which is sad ...
the new one ... ive already dropped it once .. no problem !! havent tried the video feature yet ...
ill leave you with this one, a zoomed image, shot from the same seat on the couch as the shot of the dining room above, cropped and lightened ... its all there ...
The English elm has a really nice natural brown color, quite different from any of our domestic hardwoods... The table will have a polished steel base similar to a table we finished recently ....
I actually made the trip to Sheffield to meet the client and select the wood ... I thought I might find some other interesting slabs, and they had plenty to choose from. I came home only with the two for this project, an unusual display of restraint for me ...
The client has a built in banquette and we explored various shapes for the top ... Here we were thinking about trying to use the natural edge of the bookmatched slabs
and various shapes for the steel base. Below is an inspiration sketch from the client from which we made a quick model on the cnc ...
It was cool, and I may revisit it later on, but for now, we have moved on ...
We also explored several oval variations, but in the end settled on a regular 42 x 78 oval ...
This was a photoshopped fatted oval, a shape we sometimes use to add width to the ends ... In the end, the real oval shape was the most pleasing ...
Glued up now, ready to cut to shape ...
We had some cracks that we filled with eboxy tinted with aniline dye ...
All together now
The client decided the natural elm was a little too light so we made a board with various color/dye strength options ...
