Nothing too fancy here today other then a quick, not so well shot, video I took of my hand on the Bosch, making it glide oh-so- smoothly.
Im again blogging from my phone, so while Ill be keeping it brief, I do want to thank Rob from Woodwerks Supply. After posting my photo of the saw on twitter, Rob & I got into a conversation about it. He was nice enough to test out their in-store model against the Festool Kapex and post about it in the woodtalkonline.com forums. Though the Kapex won in dust collection, they seemed evenly matched on all other terms. As the Bosch requires 2" less space behind the fence, accepts standard 12" bladed (I love the Forrest ChopMaster) and is $500.00 cheaper it has won my heart and I placed an order for one yesterday. Once I get it Ill share my review and thoughts on the new cross cutting king.
Until then, how do you cross cut?
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Im again blogging from my phone, so while Ill be keeping it brief, I do want to thank Rob from Woodwerks Supply. After posting my photo of the saw on twitter, Rob & I got into a conversation about it. He was nice enough to test out their in-store model against the Festool Kapex and post about it in the woodtalkonline.com forums. Though the Kapex won in dust collection, they seemed evenly matched on all other terms. As the Bosch requires 2" less space behind the fence, accepts standard 12" bladed (I love the Forrest ChopMaster) and is $500.00 cheaper it has won my heart and I placed an order for one yesterday. Once I get it Ill share my review and thoughts on the new cross cutting king.
Until then, how do you cross cut?
I ran into some long time clients yesterday at the local hardware/general store. We were talking and they mentioned they were considering building a library next year and could I send them some pictures ... I rounded up a few and realized that rather then send them in an email, I would post them here with some comments and explanations. Most of the these projects were before I started writing this blog so there is not much in the choice of construction photos .... They are not all libraries, but exhibit some of the various book storage design possibilities ... Click the photos to enlarge them ... More pics later ....
This stained cherry library had some beautiful details...The soft lighting for the miniature decoys over the windows, a fly tying desk., a secret gun cabinet with lighted storage and opposite the wall shown above, a complete home office ... I have that picture somewhere ...
A classic natural cherry home office and bookcase circa 2004 I think. The clients and I got a couple design awards for this one, a portfolio award from Custom Woodworking Business magazine and one from the VWMA.
The opposite wall with a custom, built in fly tying desk ...
A mini library. This room was about 8 x 10 but we squeezed in two walls of floor to ceiling bookcases, a desk and a beautiful door with stained glass ... 
This wall is adjacent to the one above with the door in between them.
Not a library per se, but a really fine cabinet full of stuff. Down lighting on each shelf, uplighting on the top of the case ... An incredible collection of objects and only a very small portion of the clients extraordinary all original decoy collection.
My largest project ever and my favorite drawings ever ... This was choice before CAD for me and I recently stuck these to the ceiling of the closet in my office ... If you enlarge this one, you can see the whole room. The photos below really dont do the room justice. For this project I had to take on a partner, Andrew Pate of Andrew Pate Designs in Cambridge New York for this one ... He had a much larger shop than I did at the time and more experience in long distance built ins than I ever want to have ... Yikes! What anxiety. Will this thing fit? Its four walls, floor to ceiling in a Upper East Side Pre War ... I mean, really ...
A. from drawings above ... Well it all fit ... It was a huge installation and four of us had to spend more than a couple nights in the city ...
B. from drawing above ... Lots of details ... The wood was cut from the clients Vermont land; dried in New York State; fabricated and assembled in Arlington and Cambridge; finished before delivery; and delivered to NYC and installed there ... It was also the year we moved from Arlington to Dorset .... Did I really do this? I guess.
C. Lots of details ... The stereo all pulls out; the vertical drawers on either side of the tv pull out and hold boxes of flies ... Not shown, wall d. above, and the fly tying desk and custom rod and reel storage. The arrow in the sketches above points to a view of the room ceiling if youre lying on the floor. There was a challenge there to make that all make sense too ... Wonderful clients, wonderful project ...
And, you can alchoices paint them ... This project we finished this summer and it actually has a blog link ... The Wall
The installation day
In the shop ... See the blog link for more info on this one
And here we have a totally minimalist approach ... live edge curly maple and fir supports ... All for now ...
we finished this unusual coffee table last week. i 
its vaguely nakashima influenced with its simple, square legs, but the box originated with the project that involved the other half of the original claro walnut slab.
that project involved one of the 3 original claro walnut slabs that i purchased from goodhope, oh, back in about 2006. in 2010, one of my clients purchased the last of those slabs to use for an interesting console that had to be notched around a carving from bali that hung over a wall hung heater. the design was driven by many factors, and i cant find a photo of the finished piece, but when we were finished, we were left with the half slab you see below with a piece missing on each end. click the photos to enlarge them. more photos of claro walnut can be seen by clicking on the claro walnut slab tables category below the archive
the cut for the console table marked out in tape ...
the leftover has been standing in my office closet since and the project has been on again, off again for a couple of years ... i am glad its finally finished.
above is the cad drawing from the console project and you can see the shape of the coffee table slab in the negative space of the plan view ...
no date on the sketch, but im betting its from 2009 sometime ..
and heres what i did with the left over, though i now see i somehow got the notch for the box in the wrong place from the sketch ... we somehow got past that though, and the table will be delivered soon ... it will be a cool story if it ends up in the same room as the console ...
not much to detail on the process ... the box is mitered play with a ply top with 1/8" thick veneer, rabbeted and dropped into the open end so only the veneer was left and then flushed off and beveled. looks like solid wood, though you know it cant be ... fun project ...
