at my age, 64.5 years, i think that most people would agree, time accelerates (is it already the 15th of january?), memory becomes less able, and when we think back, we sometimes wonder, where did last year go? so, for the last 3 years i have collected relevant (to me) photos in folders on my computer appropriately called 2011, or 2010 or recent work 2009. this morning i uploaded the 2011 folder to my picasa account and it is now online and i can access my photos from anywhere with an internet connection. looking through it, i might have included too many pictures but it makes me realize that the year was actually full of life, full of work, and full of important moments. if you are a new reader, there are dates attached to some of the groups of photos showing the relevant blog post, which, if you are interested, you can access through the archives of my blog.if you are interested in how to create online slide shows for your ownself and dont have an easily accessible young person, i wrote a blog post back in december of 2010 with instructions for downloading picasa and uploading your pictures ...
its a beautiful sunny winter day and i am outta here ... on to 2012 ...
one more time .... every year, as im lugging stuff around the shop, i threaten to swear this event off, (its almost 20 of those threats now), and every year, once were all cleaned up and set up, im looking forward to it getting under choice again ... its a chance to catch up with the friends and neighbors who might not stop by if they know were working, and a chance for the thousands of folks who come to vermont for the event to maybe stumble across our studio and buy or order something from one of us. lots of woodworkers come by, and sometimes, even mr. lucky stops by, and, well, thats alchoices fun too. click the photos to enlarge them ...
look for the yellow signs ...
see the amazingly clean office
and the (almost) sawdust free workspace ...
this year we got some lucky free publicity in one of the local shoppers ...
and we have a few new versions of old pieces
and kit and penny get to hang out in the finish room for the weekend
with her colorings and kits jewelry ... (rush photos here; much better in person ... )
gold wire and lots of precious stone beads
banjos 4, 2, and 1
and an expanding recycled chestnut table ready for finish next week
you can admire the freshly mowed the lawn and the freshly smoooothed drivechoice ... sams steel lily in the foreground ...
and check out the mountain pinks (wild azaleas) down by the pond ...
and this year, due to our superior organization (hah) and early start, we even had time left at the end of the day for a beer .... just woke up from my nap ... bedtime now ... see you this weekend. if youre in town, come on by ... dan
I had a wonderful conversation the other day with an old friend about the current vagaries of the custom work business ... the slow pay .. the 
Error and Trial .... We often say we work from one recovery to the next ... No mistakes, no progress.
We dont know .... in some choices, another part of the story of my life ... listening for inner voices .. Id like to write some this year about creativity. Where do ideas/designs/processes come from? Can you teach other people to have ideas? Im interested in your thoughts ... Comments?
Failure to failure, one recovery to the next ... obstacles into opportunities .. variations on a theme ....
More on having ideas above... We do know,however, that every idea is not a good idea ... Then there are a few humorous ones ...
I love Roz Chast ... she often has her finger on the pulse of the thoughts in the back of my mind.
How can you not buy that coloring after a good ad like that ... ?
A little Zen .... I guess this means that hings are just as they are, regardless ... 
Who can tell how events will be transformed? Indeed ... I love this story .. Its from the reference section of the Steven Mitchell translation of the tao te ching. It also, along with the one below, has the most thumbtack holes in it and I now can retell it almost verbatim ...
Tom Peters gave me this one one day when I was complaining about teenagers (Will, I think) ... Nature? Nurture? Coincidence? All Of The Above? Who knows?
Good thing ...
The Moby Dick guy .... Hand lettered and posted by the time clock for about a year by yours truly .. Everyone should memorize this one ...
Jim Harrison ... another favorite ... ready and attentive .... love the concept ...
And, I would have written you a shorter blog post too ...
we had an inspiration photo and overall dimensions, but no angles which, since you cant tell much by sitting on a drawing, encourage us to make a full size mdf mockup, complete with foam and batting.
it took an hour or two, but was well worth it and allowed us to debate the incline of both the seat and the back cushions ...
from there it was on to the cad drawings, which gave us dimensions and an actual plan to work from. 
the little recessed base was interesting and gave the piece a little more of a furniture look but added a few complications to the construction process start up ... lots of little offsets and surface plane differences to create shadows ...
plywood carcase design
but once the structure was defined by the plywood carcase, it was a little more straightforward as we added the layers.
moving along here, about to add the ends and top rail ...
a little oil primer and paint ..
a test fit on the cushions by local upholsterer, isaiah mccauliffe, and we were out the door. in the top picture above, the carpenters will cut the baseboard and fit the bench top to the wall when the clients table arrives, for the complete built in look .. nice house ...
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 ...
