Our client for the black vanity sent us the specs for the sink she had chosen and in looking it over, I noticed the highlighted sentence below ... After talking it over with my marble cutter, Johnson Marble, in Proctor, Vermont, we decided it would be safest if we got the actual sink and faucet since the top was going to New York City ... We have time to do it right, but not time to do it twice .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... 
We started by cutting a section out of the cardboard so we could trace the inside outline of the sink bowl.
Cut some holes for the faucets ... Interestingly, the pipe for the faucet was not in the center of the fixture and was a different size .... glad we checked
looking from underneath
Set it up right side up and then we had our finished template ...
Off to the marble mill, a fantastic old facility adjacent to the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.
Coming in the front door .. Its a great old industrial space ....
Looking back the other choice from the far end...
Showing the honed finish
A rough slab of Danby Montclair, with nice black/brown markings ...
showing the layout .... I forgot to take a photo of the building from outside, but its very cool the choice it relates to the rest of the site ...
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We started by cutting a section out of the cardboard so we could trace the inside outline of the sink bowl.Cut some holes for the faucets ... Interestingly, the pipe for the faucet was not in the center of the fixture and was a different size .... glad we checkedlooking from underneathSet it up right side up and then we had our finished template ...Off to the marble mill, a fantastic old facility adjacent to the Vermont Marble Museum in Proctor.Coming in the front door .. Its a great old industrial space ....Looking back the other choice from the far end...Showing the honed finishA rough slab of Danby Montclair, with nice black/brown markings ...showing the layout .... I forgot to take a photo of the building from outside, but its very cool the choice it relates to the rest of the site ...
ok ... ive lost count ... this would be claro walnut slab table number ... hmmm ... 11? 12? more? ive lost count. anychoice, they are all really fun and i will have another one coming out of the finish room this week for my upcoming svac show. this one is going to be crated and shipped to england, via boston or new york. its an easy breakdown and the base bolts together so everything can be shipped flat ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
as usual, we started with a slab from our friends at goodhope hardwoods in southeastern pennsylvania .. this one had a small issue, but we were able to work around it with a little judicious epoxy filling which youll see a close up of later in this post.
the client is an interior designer in london, and her client wanted a different shape, low to the ground for the table base. after a little model making (we sent one to england via fed ex) we got our deposit check and ordered the slab.
the slab arrived almost immediately and it was then that we learned that the house was under construction and wont be finished until may. so, we had a nice slab around for a few months and well keep it around maybe one more week to show it off and then into the crate it will go and off for a cruise.
we had our new base pieces cut at a.l. melanson in rutland, and jim drilled and tapped them, polished them up and made em black and then finished them with a little clear coat.
underview of the bases bolted onto the table ... RIGID ...
we stuck a few of our ladderbacks into the picture to make it look like guests were arriving ...
thats the hole in the front left corner ... we mixed small chunks of claro walnut in with the epoxy so it almost looks like a little burl rather than a solid color fill ... we used a knife grade epoxy from eastern marble and granite supply for the main fill and a little touch up and leveling with other epoxies and sawdust mixes ...
there were 5 butterflies total .... pretty good for a big slab like this ...
in this picture, you can also kind of see the filling of the ant spot you can see in the raw slab photo. all in, all done ... well be adding the base to the next one this week after we make a couple of deliveries to empty things out a little ...
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 !!!
well, friday afternoons ... you just never know what might happen ... as we were cleaning up, somone put this claro slab cutoff out on the porch just as i happened to go out the door to the finish room. this piece has been hanging around the end of the sander for oh, a year or so? who knows. anychoice, i suddently had this urge to clone it by resawing it with a chainsaw. kind of like the rubber stamp tool in photoshop. so i did. jim was johnny on the spot with the photos .... now comes the hard part ... whats the best thing to do with them ??? comments? were open to suggestions ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
1st obvious arrangement with the curving negative space ...
not so obvious, but maybe cool on the wall ... or, as a table with a glass top?
free standing swans
have a good weekend ....
pull up a chair ... this is going to be a long one ... i had started out to write a general discussion of expanding tables since weve had a run of them lately. but, once i looked through the pictures for the table we (mostly) finished last friday afternoon, i decided to write just about that one. we have still got a little fine tuning to do and i may do a few more formal photos if i have the time ... well see. i have a lot of pictures of this one already, but it was a really interesting project ... click on the photos to enlarge them ... here we go ..
one of the leaves and the center pedestal leg ...
my client started by combining two of our more interesting and challenging table designs. for the top, he chose the center and edge inlay patterns from this table we made in about 2001 or 2002.
and then he changed the pedestal to this one from our walnut and gilded tooled leather poker table ... heres the cad drawing of the combined design
ahhh ... where did we start? ... with the column i guess
octagonal glue up with eased corners, precut on the table saw before gluing to eliminate the points of the octagon so it will just swing over the bed of the lathe ...
i had to demo this technique as will had never turned with the floor mounted tool rest ... im a little rusty, but still willing and mostly able ... 
while will and i were turning the center column, trevor cut three pieces of 3/4 ply, stacked them up and veneered the edges....
then he made and glued up the top and bottom veneers and popped them into the veneer bag ... 
the buttresses are three glued up 3/4 pieces of cherry stacked and fitted to the round column .. by this time, we had already cut the column in half using a variation of our cylinder cutting jig from this post ... 
we added some glued up tops to the half columns and six saucer feet to the bottom and at the point below, it was ready for the runners and the top ... note the grooves ... more on them later.
the wood for the top was a spectacular matched set of curly cherry boards from irion lumber
trevor cut the 31 x 62" halves on the cnc, and at the same time routed the pockets for the center inlays. he made the borders in a block and sawed them up into 1/10th" thick strips for the center inlay border.
those are installed with brads and tape all around the central recesses
and on the leaves too ...
by this time, will had started the blocks for the edge inlay ... we needed about 25 lineal feet of it total ..
its a fussy one ... you dont get to level up the center block except for a little hand sanding so every piece has got to be dead on for thickness before you glue up the cores of the blocks ...
not quite good enough ...
heres a stack of completed cores awaiting the addition of the .1" thick walnut borders. you get 5 or 6 slices per inch of block ...
once theyre applied, the edge is routed and the .07" thick slices of the blocks are installed into the routed grooves with masking tape and flushed up with the table edge when the glue is dry the next day ..
and then it was back to the center inlay. we started with the block of big leaf male burl i bought on my last trip to berkshire products ... they had a
trevor first cut thick, slightly oversize triangles and then sliced them into .1" veneers which he could then bookmatch as he fitted them up ... not counting the edge strips there are 40 triangles of burl in the two halves of the top and the 3 leaves ..
looks hard ... is. kind of, and time consuming
heres the pattern
the curved aprons were glued up a half at a time with big jorgensen band clamps around an mdf form that trevor cut from an old spoilboard from the cnc.
then we milkpainted the aprons and saucer feet, black over barn red, sponged and steel wooled and paper toweled them and put the whole thing back together ...
but really, thats enough for now ... 45 minutes of blog writing is my mucho max ...
