The Half Round Tables Are Done

OK, except for the black, diamond shaped pulls that well add to the drawers tomorrow, these tables are complete ..... Beautiful job by Will on all the details ... I hope you all enjoyed following the process ... Here are the other posts ... Build a half round table, start to finish ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Post #1
Post #2
Post #3
Before the finish on the tops and without the drawers
Joinery check on the pattern or on your full size drawing ...
Close up of the joinery ... center drawer border tenons on the left
We sort of winged the drawer joinery as I have found in the past that efficiently dovetailing sides to curving fronts is next to impossible. Once the radius gets below a certain dimension the parts don;t merge together gracefully ... You could do it but there is only so much labor intensive work you can ask your clients to pay for ... If I were doing it for myself .... I would still do it this choice ... You can leave questions on this post in the comments section if you like ... Ill do my best to get back to you on them ... All for now ...

Read More..

two cherry side tables

heres a quick little project.  a little trickier than it looked at first, but happy in its new home now.  the challenge was to make a pair of tables for either end of a couch in a 30 degree bump out in a clients home.  we made a quick, screwed together mockup below to check our angles and used that to formalize the final joinery.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

 after placing the mockup at the clients home, we decided to make the tables an inch and a half wider across the front and added an inch and a half along the angled sides.

these two views show the challenges of the joinery more clearly.  the right angle joints were made with traditional mortise and tenons on the apron.  the pattern for the tops, with joinery shown on both sides to make a pair, is in the background of the photo above, with the grain orientation cut plan shown.

the angled aprons were joined with loose tenons cut parallel to the faces of the legs ... the tapering of the legs was the last thing before gluing them up and all legs read an inch and a half at the top tapered 7/8th" at the bottom.  clampng was a trick, and in fact, the angles were just fitted snugly, glued, pushed together and left to set overnight on the table saw in the picture below.

i sent this photo to the client and he questioned whether we actually had a pair of tables, or two the same,  i had to go look in the finish room to confirm that they were, indeed, a pair.  you figure it out.

relaxing in their new home ... all is good ...

Read More..

a claro walnut slab dining table

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 ...
the three photos below are from previous blog posts that you can find by clicking the category claro walnut slab tables off to the right there.

Read More..

a studio style console table

   will has been working on this studio style console table/sideboard for one of our midwest clients. wwe made a coffee table for them back in 2003? or so and after going back and forth on woods, colors and designs, we ended up with this design, a slightly contemporized version of a sideboard from my own house. its a classic example of our studio style and below you can see it go from conception to completion ... click the photos to enlarge them ....
start with the legs and mortise them and fit up the tenons on the frame parts below ...
than add the dust frames that the drawers ride on ...
fill out (shim) the sides to keep the drawers running straight ....
add the knife hinges for the center doors ... we went back and forth on other hinge options but while these are the fussiest and most time consuming, they also are the cleanest and least obvious ...
lots of pieces ...
make the top and add the inlay and the breadboards ends ... wow .. these pieces have a really lot of work to them ... they seem so simple when the are finished that i almost invariably underestimate them somewhat ...
here will is gluing up the case and preparing to add the ends. the interiors are shellacked and waxed and ready for the final fitting of the drawers and doors .. wrapping it up soon ...
love the hat ... i ended it up with it after my father died. my uncle picked it up for him on one of his road trips. mosheim market was/is? located in mosheim tennessee, small town likely named for one of our unknown mosheim ancestors ... there arent many of them that i know of ... a branch in argentina, one in austria ... i remeber in the 80s that my uncle said they gave him the keys to the city as he was the only mosheim in anyones memory that had ever come to town.
ok .. home stretch today ..
we made several photoshop mockups and cad drawings to help the clients visualize the space .. more on that later ...
here are some shaded cad drawings showing a few different possibilities, and above, the finial cad drawing ...

Read More..

What Im Reading Now

Yowza! ... What am I reading now ??? Hmmm ... Im all over the map these days. Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Upper left corner is David Mathiass excellent new book on Greene & Greene furniture ... Im kind of picking my choice through it, savoring it a couple pages at a time, admiring his detailed photos and written observations on both the Greenes and the talented makers of their designs, the Hall brothers. Without the brothers talents, the Greene brotherss furniture would, in my humble opinion, have looked assuredly different.
To the right there, a classic from my design library that I visit over and over and encourage my guys to consider from time to time ... It was written by David Pye, I believe in the 70s and has been a sort of guide for me over the years. Its all about the mark of the hand and how a design without that mark is different from one with it ... Keeps us all from obsessing too much, and helps to eliminate the danger of a perfectly executed (dead) object. Its many other things too ... design + art, seeing beauty, seeing in general ... its all there ... try it, youll like it ...
ahh Carl Haiisen ... this one had characters from The Ocean Reef Club, a place on Key Largo where I lived for the winter of 1970...classic light, humorous entertainment ... suspend disbelief, laugh ... Classic Carl ... See here too ...
The New Yorker article on the new surge in uranium mines. A psychological mystery about people who actually want to have uranium mines in their towns even though some of their relatives died early and horrible deaths from the last round of it .. go figure...
And then a serious article in Rolling Stone on glacial melting ... absolutely frightening ... ditto with BP and bankruptcy ... These folks are digging pretty deep and doing some excellent writing about it ... Im a returning RS subscriber who lapsed when Hunter Thompson died a few years back ... Now I remember .... They are good.
And, Islands in the Stream, a Hemingchoice classic I missed somehow. Some of the finest writing on deep sea fishing, family, friends, war .... the big picture ... For the first time, I got a serious linear connection between Hemingchoice and another of my favorite storytellers, Cormac McCarthy ... A fine piece of writing that stirred some deep thoughts on the creative process. Phew! Those folks drank a lot though ...
And lastly .. one of my clients sent me this one ... Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford. Crawford is an educated man with several advanced degrees who has gone from working in a think tank (knowledge work), to working with his hands as a motorcycle mechanic and electrician. He compares knowledge work with manual work and makes the point that the manual kind has been somewhat demeaned in todays hierarchy of education goals. He discusses the kind of diagnostic thinking and brain action that come with working and learning with your hands ... Hes preaching to the choir here, and it was a bit of a heavy sled, but I stuck with it. Hes got a point. I find my work as a designer/craftsman/builder/maker/customer relations person totally and completely engaging. I didnt need to read the book to know that, but its nice to have it pointed out to me and my employees by an obviously very smart person, that we are indeed on the road to intellectual fulfillment if not that big pile of dollars in the sky. I cant imagine myself behind a desk full time, or in a situation where, at the end of the week, I couldnt point to some concrete evidence of the effort I had put in for that week ... Its Friday; it was a good week; we worked on a ton of different stuff and I feel really good about all of it.
This is one in a series of post I have written on this subject. For others, heres a link ... and here, another ... Get out of the shop from time to time ... read a little

Read More..

a round expanding table with a steel base

9/25 .. all done now
9/10/11 ... were moving along on the table were making from the model above. i posted that picutre, i think, in one i wrote back in june sometime. great concept; exceptionally stable for a small base/big top table. the 3" hollow steel tubing has a nice weight to it, and the 30 x 30 footprint under a 60" diameter top allows plenty of room for chairs and knees.
sam did a great job mitering and welding the pieces. he did have a nice jig that trevor made for him on the cnc, but i cant find the photo of it. it was a simple piece of mdf with a u shape the size of the base routed into it. it made mitering, fitting and welding the pieces of tubing a piece of cake.
add the aprons
and the top plate ...
and the moin equalizing slides ...
i think the model is 1.5" = 1 or 1/8 scale
these runners actually opened further than we needed them to ..
with the leaves in (96" long)
closed, and ready for the black conversion varnish that will go on the top. sam still needs to roll and polish a piece of 1/4" x 2" steel that will be attached over the 1.75" wood apron currently seen under the top and it will be ready to go. fun new concept. gold star to my client for her design input ...

Read More..