woodworking tools tips

its fall. the light is changing. you start to notice stuff. like chicken feathers. you gotta love those barred rock feathers ... this one has been stuck in my van dashboard for a few weeks now ...
and then theres the foliage... click the photos to enlarge them ...

makes the old back yard sparkle .. and vegetables !

and tomatilla skeletons

and the asparagus bed on almost frosty morning

and the last of the zinnias ... days are dwindling down ... a few more golf days, a few more tennis days, on to winter paddle tennis ... and more big claro walnut tables

all for now

Sabtu, 06 Agustus 2016

A Few Repairs

All in , all done .... miracle recovery .... descriptive post below

We finished a couple of interesting repairs last week and I was sending photos to clients so I thought I would post them here too ... The bureau above is one of the last pieces of furniture we have to restore that was damaged in the fire I have occasionally written about. I thought it was a goner as it took several days in the sun to even get it open, and when we finally did, it really didnt look too promising ... Looks can be deceiving though and by the time Jim stripped the smoked shellac and sanded the interior and resealed it, I was starting to be just a little more optimistic. Click the photos to enlarge them ...

Here, Jim has stripped off the toasted shellac and sanded the interior, which he is now coating with a seal coat of shellac and wax to get rid of the smoke odor.

There were then some repair necessary to the face that that you can see in the first photo above ...

I chipped off what was left of the round corners and replaced them with new veneers. The masking tape was a good trick. It allowed me to bend the veneers cold without the pieces breaking or separating, kind of like a paper backed veneer would be, only thicker...

I taped them in place with the repair mans friend, 3M 2040 masking tape, a stretchy but strong and sticky clamp..

The stripped and sanded drawers ... Whats up with that top one? ..

We applied a thin coat of aniline dye, recoating some elements a couple of times to balance the color, and then shellaced with a wash coat of diluted fresh amber shellac. Well build slowly in thin coats from here until we reach the desired shine, which will not be too terribly shiny ... The hardware has been cleaned and reantiqued and is ready to go back on when the finish is complete ... I think it will look like a million bucks when its done ...

Another fire victim in the before stage ....

In the almost finished stage. The brass was polished and then reantiqued and the shellac was built slowly as mentioned above ... We finished the top with a coat of black patinating wax which was perfect for the job .... The Revere bowl was totally black and looked almost hopeless before Jim got to work on it ...

This is another repair that came through recently from Hildene, Robert Todd Lincolns home, in Manchester, Vermont. We had a huge windstorm a couple of weeks ago, which blew open the French doors at the house and knocked the table across the room

Before ...

After

Senin, 25 Juli 2016

A Mahogany Expanding Table a few more photos

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 !!!

Senin, 27 Juni 2016

Redwood

Sometimes you have stuff around that you knew was extraordinary when you first discovered it, and then, somehow, it becomes part of the scenery and well, its just there. Like these two pieces of redwood burl hanging on the wall of the shop. They caught my eye at Berkshire Products in Massachusetts, maybe 5 years ago and I had them on a shelf for a year or two, waiting for a worthy project ... One day, we sanded them up and oiled them thinking someone would come along and be inspired and they looked so great, that I was inspired. I made a couple of french cleats and hung them on the wall ... Time passed and they got attention every once in a while. A few people tried to buy them and I answered that I would think about the price, but really, I think, they just belong there. We dusted them off and oiled them up about a month ago and they looked great ... Good for another couple years... Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Amazing wood ... Who knows how old ?

A couple of black mahogany bedside tables we delivered to Boston last week on Wills bench

Another close up

Right side

Left side .... Kind of humbling actually .... Cant paint like that ...

Minggu, 15 Mei 2016

a few case pieces

im on a quest to salvage some digital images from my many 4 x 5 transparencies that i had professionally captured by my friend cook neilson over the first 20 years of my business. im currently at the beginning of the process and it will take a while to get them all up here, but its certainly a nostalgic process. click the photos to enlarge them ...

im using a crude device of my own design along with a sunny day and my nikon d90 camera on a tripod to digitize these things. i have tried scanning (expensive and not hat good in the past) and scanning prints, also not that good. these images arent certainly as good as the transparencies, but unless i want to spend a ton of dough with a real professional scanner, i think, for now, they are good enough.

here we have a piece of our greene and greene influenced work. it is from the same era as the tapered piece above, the late 80s, early 90s. cherry and cherry, greene and greeney, without being a reproduction. in the style of, so to speak.

this design was influenced by a client supplied photo of a tall piece by c.r. ashbee ... an english architect. also in my interpretation of the arts and crafts style.

this piece, tapered on all four sides, in curly redwood and curly hard maple was part of a bedroom for a pennsylvania client. i am currently looking for an on site, high resolution photo of the bed that went with these two pieces. it was one of our more powerful and unusual beds.

the double bureau, in the same pallete

a variant of the above, for a different client. mother of pearl snowflake inlays

one of our early bureaus. the design was a collaboration with a client and actually, the others above are derivatives of this same structure. take an object; do something to it.

ok, i know these arent case pieces, but i had to build these two tables, strict reproductions of a federal card table in the clark art museum in williamstown, massachusetts, before i could get to the two case pieces below. these tables were, i would have to say, pretty challenging.

so, we strip the style down, use the same stained mahogany and light wood palette, and add a bunch of those little string inlays on the case frame. modern federal

mahogany, curly maple, rosewood, ebony, the works, in a traditional arrangement.

ok, crazy time ... this one could be with the sideboards, but, it was for the clients bedroom, to hold a tv and the related electronic stuff and display a few objects darte. what you cant see in this photo are the tapered turned legs that are covered with hammered sheet copper that match the shop made hammered copper door pulls. love the curly redwood veneer and the rosewood combined with the birdseye. where are those adventurous clients who are not afraid to commission a challenging piece these days. there were certainly a LOT more of them in the late 80s and 90s than there have been in the last 5 years. people in general, imho, are not taking the same chances that they were back in the old days.

and i marvel at this one. 1983. how did we do that ???? first, your friends at mother myricks have to trust you, and trust that you can pull it off, and pay you to figure it all out. as i recall, we had a snapshot of a candy store in the airport in chicago, a very rough section drawing by a local architect, and a couple days of air sketching that led to a full size mockup of the section drawing and some plywood templates. it was 46 around it, with 3 pairs of matching sections, a long straight section, the piece with the angled glass with a straight section attached to that, and the rounded ends with the step backed shelves. curves, brass, lights, glass, wires, mirrors, plumbing.... i wish i could find the progress photos, if there even ever were any.

mother myricks moved a few years ago and we cut the island as it was affectionately known, apart, changed the angles, and reassembled it in its new home. wow, is about all i can say.
going back through this old stuff is kind of interesting. more below ...

a pennsylvania dutch style kas cabinet, whose design was strongly influenced by a photo on the cover of a sothebys auction catalog. as i recall, it was about 60" wide and 7 tall, and knocked down in the traditional manner: base with feet, two side panels, back,two doors, and top cornice piece.