so, im getting a lot of whered you get those doors? questions as people check out the new metal shop.  like slate on the roofs, wide recycled doors are kind of my thing.  the one above started out as half of a pair of 8 x 8 garage doors that i bought about 5 years ago from a guy up the road in pawlet, as he was tearing down an old garage on his property.  as i recall, i paid a hundred bucks for the pair. click the photos to enlarge them ...

 

on the inside view, you can see how we cut and mitered the stiles and panels to shorten them.

 the first one of that pair i used was on my garage at the house just after i bought them and i shortened that one to 7 feet too before i made the frame and hung it.  in the photo below, i used the mason miter technique on the stile and rail intersections, but on the new metal shop, i decided to keep the cope and stick joints by shortening the stiles themselves and gluing them back together.  in reality, either choice is fine.

 mason miter joinery  at the red arrow

 

the first pair i  bought at a tag sale in the 80s for $20. for the pair.  they were already only 7 high and 4 wide.  i used one on the front of the shop above, and one on the side door on the shop porch, below.

 

   i think they came from the same manufacturer as the new pair, as all the joinery techniques and moldings appear to be the same ...

the joinery on the doors originally was 4, 1/2" dowels, about 6 inches long at each horizontal
and vertical intersection.   invariably, the joints loosen and the dowels can be cut with a hand saw or fein tool and the rails removed.

i rejoined the stiles and the bottom rail with 8" timberlock screws as i couldnt spread the stiles enough to insert loose tenons or dowels ... worked fine, and im sure its at least as strong or stronger than the original dowel joinery.

i added a couple of dominos for alignment ...

and made a jig for gluing them up straight

mitering and regluing the panels and stiles was a cinch

and then we glued up the whole door and made some jambs .. love the antique wavy glass.  and, ive also made new doors like this for new construction.  i have some photos somewhere ... nothing like a generous entrance to add elegance to a building ... 

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 it didnt take too long to go from the basket case above to the reenergized table below.  good for another 100 years if my clients can keep the movers achoice from it.  it was hard for us to imagine quite how it ended up in the shape above, but it looks good now.  we cant figure out exactly how old it is either, not being experts on early factory ?? furniture.  it did definitely have some obviously hand done joinery and a bricklaid  veneered apron, which puts it on the early side, but it also ahd some factory like elements, including the little buttons over the screws holding the aprons on, some slotted brass machine made screws reinforcing the leg joints, yet the top veneer pattern had a hand done feeling to it.  id peg it early 20th century, english.  comments?  click the photos to enlarge them ...

 ta dahhhh .. striking piece with a decent, but probably not original shellac finish.

 the breaks in the stretcher were mostly on the long grain and after will stuck them back together with glue and masking tape, i routed in some 3/16ths" maple bars over the repaired breaks to reinforce them.

 i also cleaned and replaced the 4 dowel joints where the stretcher joined the legs.  there were some earlier minor stretcher repairs so it wasnt the first tragedy that befell it ... i dont believe the previous mishaps were as serious as this one though.  will also replaced some broken off pieces on the leg top yesterday and repaired the area where the aprons joined in the bridle joint.  we swabbed on the hide glue today and wriggled the stretcher into place.  no clamps necessary except on the bridle joint.  (almost) good as new.

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home stretch on the new metal shop

 when last we visited this project back in september, the carpenters had just finished getting the slate on the roof ... after that it was on to the siding and window trim outside, and the insulation, second floor radiant heat,and sheetrock inside.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

it was kind of a thrill when the lights went on and siding was mostly finished ...

we still had to have the concrete professionals back to pour the slab for the 

steel/blower/compressor shed .. 

 and we had to build the rather elaborate 20 long rack to store all the small in size, but 20 to 24 long raw materials ... fortunately, the carpenters were called achoice on another job for a day, which gave us time to figure out the rack before the roof went on .. mucho easier that choice ..

the shed is fitted here with a bronze color standing seam roof by donnie dorrs metal shop ..

 and inside, we did some coloring, and reconfigured the chop saw tables into a mockup work table so we could figure out where to hang up the welding fume extractor.  we ran the pipes to the blower thursday ..

 boilers these days are amazing ... this little guy puts out 80,000 btus, enough to heat both floors, (+/- 1500 square feet in a vemont winter), and provide domestic hot water for the sink and bathroom.  exhaust out in pvc pipe.  no chimney ...

 ahhh, the doors .. nobody made a cheap standard unit three doors wide, so we had to cobble these together with parts from a company whose name escapes me now .. we made up some quicky transoms from 8/4 pine and ordered up some custom thermopane to fill them.

 there were a couple reasons for that configuration .. #1, you can open the doors totally in the summer like below, and should we move on at some point, the openings are framed to accept regular 9 x 7 commercial overhead doors .. presto, a heated, two car garage with a mother in law apartment above  ... the plumbing and radiant for the second floor was roughed in before the sheetrock went up ..

 

 a few notes below on the quicky transoms ...

 9 3" x 16" plus the frames

 essentially, the frames are butt jointed, timberlock construction, with applied moldings to accept the glass .. framed in the shop and screwed in over the door units .. cheap, easy, and fast ... you dont get that combo often enough ...

all for now ... sam is moving in this week

the steels there waiting for him

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a double pedestal oval table

 this table is heading to california tomorrow.  its been in the works for a while and we had a small glitch when it came to the final finish color .  its a totally new color and today, will said weve got to get more of this stain  ... it was hard to photograph, and how it reads is sensitive to how your monitor is set.  its a really warm orange brown color .. click the photos to enlarge them.

close up

earthquake handles  .. i did mention california, didn;t i?

the clients original photoshopped image

this project started with an inquiry from a prospective client who had taken a image from my blog or website and photoshopped it himself to make it into something that better fitted the dimensions of his dining room.  basically, he stretched out the table below and added another pedestal.  brilliant, imho.

even though it was early in the corresponding stage and no money or commitments had changed hands, i was intrigued by the concept.  since we still had the drawings for the original table, and its model, it was a simple matter to create the new model. 

birds eye view

 

there was some talk about earthquakes, (the client lives north of san francisco), and earthquake handles, which turn out to be something to hold onto if you have to get under the table in the event of the earthquake, the design work proceeded and eventually we struck a deal.

 

above is the cad drawing showing the origin of the curves for the base elements and the seating and plate layout.  room for 12 good friends at least.

handle and base layout

even though the table is over 50" wide and about 10.5 long, trevor managed to create a clever pair of interlocking 1/4 oval templates that allowed him to lay out the wood for the glue up below.

one of the boards was just about, but not quite, long enough and we lost about an inch in width and length creating the revised oval.  not bad.  11 walnut matched sets are hard to come by, even from irion lumber.

after a rough cut with the jigsaw, trevor used the template and a top bearing flush cut bit to rout the table to final shape and add the aprons and stiffeners                                  

then, using the cnc, he cut the patterns for the base pieces.  on the original table, the pieces that ran the length of the table were longer than the ones that ran across the table.  after some study though, we decided that with two pedestals, the bases should be all the same.

bandsaw, sand, bandsaw, sand ... repeat as necessary.

then the pieces have to be mitered and dowels inserted to give the end grain of the curves some cross grain material for the lag bolts that attach the horizontals at the floor.  i missed it this table, but you can see photos of how that works in the post about the previous table, back in august 2010.  there is also a discussion there about strengthening the short grain where the top is attached also ...

fit it up ...

interesting shapes upside down too ..

sams sample earthquake handle  approved and good to go ... 9 more in the works ...

 

 reinforcing the short grain with long grain inserts to accept screws

 base only

with chairs

early on, we tried oval vs. racetrack ... oval won ...

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