Progress on the Claro Walnut Slab Table

9/19 ... Update on the table progress ... The chairs left Friday morning and will return mid week...
And we assembled the table as we went out the door Friday afternoon ...
9/16
Were making progress on the big Claro walnut slab table I described in the two most recent posts below. We should have it upright on the base tomorrow and ready for the finish next week. It looks like it will be a beautiful piece ... The slab has some pretty interesting and incredible color and grain variations and we like the new base design that the customers encouraged us to create ... It is going to be a heavy one though ... Hope they have a good floor system ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...
The top is butterflied and scraped relatively smooth. Well assemble the base and complete work on the bottom of the table and hopefully have it upright for the weekend ...
The chairs will be leaving in the morning to get their Danish cord seats at Sandy Sherman Chair Caning in Brookline, Vermont ... Its our first effort with the Danish cord and Im looking forward to seeing how it works how ...
We started the day with a couple hours of drilling and tapping ...
and a test assembly before we finish sanding and varnishing on the bottom tomorrow... all for now ...

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The Shelburne Museum

Interested in spending a day or so looking at a bunch of humbling woodworking and artwork? A trip to The Shelburne Museum would be worth your while then ... I big recently went to see a Ansel Adams show and found that that was just a small part of how I spent my time there ... I had been a long time ago when the kids were small (15 years maybe ??) but had forgotten the depth of their collection ... I do remember the Dentzel carousel though ... probably the best carved and painted carousel youll find anywhere ... They have extensive documentation of the ongoing restoration and conservation on Facebook and there is more info there ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
the artistic color choices and details are really good ...
In person, they sort of seem almost alive ..
and they are housed in a beautifully detailed round barn at the entrance to the museum ..
with beautiful framing
and a wonderful quilt exhibition on the lower level of the barn ..
Two other displays of interest to me were regarding painters who lived and worked for years in the Manchester, Dorset, Pawlet area, Ogden Pleissner and Jay Connachoice ... They both had a whole building dedicated to their work and Pleissners actual studio (below) was assembled there on site
on to the tools
and metal stuff
and the working blacksmith shop which Kits counts as perhaps one of the things that sparked Sams interest in blacksmithing and metalworkThen there is an excellent collection of carved decoys in original paint, with info on the makers as well as at least a half dozen sneak boxes and market guns displayed in a house moved to the museum from its original location in North Dorset.
Then theres The Ticonderoga, a 220 foot long steam powered ferry that was moved from the lake across a mile of frozen cornfields to its present location ... It has recently been re-restored and is a gleaming example of curved and angled ships carpentry ...
I didnt have time for the Electra Havermeyer Webb mansion which houses Electra Webbs high Federal furniture and other objects from her New York City apartment ... Been there, done that ... Its beautiful ...
There is much more to see than I have covered here .. check it out if you are in the area ... Youll be glad you did ...

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