Quilt Rack

This hand-made quilt rack is an excellent choice to display your own hand-made craft. This rack protects your work as it displays it, making it the perfect compliment your own hand-made piece of work.

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tick tock an aaron willard clock

4/12/2011vvi spent parts of the last couple of days reconstructing the base of a clients aaron willard tall case clock ... aaron died in 1844 so its been around for a while ... i love a good repair. they are challenging and engage the creative process in powerful choices ... like a good puzzle, you can, and often have to, work on them over time, allowing your concentration to wonder off to other more pressing things ... perfect for the ay dee dee mind ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
my client emailed to tell me that one of the the 20 pound weights that drives the mechanism had snapped its string (or, as it looks by the red arrow in the photo above) or the weights hook broke. regardless, it crashed to and through the floor of the case and smashed the base of the clock ... it was easy to see upon disassembling the base that it had been poorly repaired several times in the past ... just cleaning the clots of glue off the pieces was a real challenge ...
everyone else in the shop was doing their thing and as this was an unexpected project, i squeezed it into my work week, working a couple minutes here and a couple hours there until today, it was back on its feet ... ha ha ... above i started with the biggest piece and did some small glue ups to the obvious pieces monday ...
tuesday i puzzled out the side pieces and added back a few missing pieces
planned my strategy ...
until it was ready to go below at the end of the day .
wednesday i added the sides
and clamped the front feet to the rest at the end of the day
this morning i added the back foot supports and the missing glue blocks
and it was ready to go .... somehow, and it is still a mystery to me why, i needed to add a 5/16ths shim to the front right foot and an 1/16th " shim to the front left to get the case to sit level and plumb ... i measured all four feet; all were 3" tall ... but i knew it wasnt a new thing because in the container of broken pieces there were two newish shims with my handwriting on them that i added to level the case when the clock originally arrived several years ago ... now they are officially attached to the feet ... the last thing i have to finish tomorrow is to fit up a new brass piece that was missing in action ... fortunately we had some 3/16ths x 1/2" stock on hand and with a little patience tomorrow, it will be fitted up and in place ...
well deliver it next week and meet with the british clockmaker, ray bates and/or his son sometime soon to fix the weight and set the works and bonnet properly ...
in closing, i can say that a good repair to a worthy piece is a fine thing to take on ... theres the challenge to execute it properly, to get it to look right and function correctly, and to change what you are working on from not so good to good for another 100 years ... most rewarding ... and, highly recommended as a study of classical construction methods ...
all done ...
4/20/2011 ...
the clock is home now, in this beautiful room ... we made two pairs of the fancy old glass doors for this same room a few years ago. i started a blog post about them but the process was soooo complicated, it was, in the end, undescribable. at least for my writing ability ....
the worksthe dial

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mr oriole feeds the kids

I was having my coffee yesterday morning when Kit said that the baby orioles were on the feeder. I didnt have my tripod at home, but managed to get a couple of decent hand held pictures anychoice. This is something I have never seen before and I dont know how long it will go on, but it is a really cool thing to watch. This morning I was prepared, and the light was a little better. They didnt stay long, but I did get a short video that you can see at the link below. Click the pictures to enlarge them ....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89oXq5AjUqY
Scene of the action ... I usually have my coffee while sitting on the couch in the foreground with the wide purple arm. To take the pictures yesterday, I rested the camera on the green couch arm and the feeder is about 8 feet from the window in the orange circle ...

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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 ...

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and then it was friday

quite a lot went on this week ... i wasnt sure i was going to make it through all of it, but, in the end, i did ... click the photos to enlarge them ...

will is finishing up a new version of this sideboard we made back around 2004 or 5.  it will be stained and have walnut hand turned pulls.  hes got the top moldings installed now and will be starting the turning and finishing process on monday.

and sam had a busy week, working on some BIG turnbuckles for a local  remodel project

 

and the stratton rails are finished except for some touch up paint on the welds .. complex project.  angles, level changes, drainspouts ... all done now. 

and he welded up a whole new railing job ... straight rail sections plus the stairs ... paint em black next week.

and jims working on some curved benches from some curved planks we have had air drying outside the finish room for at least a couple of years.  (actually they are in that link from 2010 ... finally made a decision.

first we curved the front and back edges of the tapered ash supports, then we burned them with the big torch, and then we swabbed on some red and black oil based paint ... these bookmatched benches will be good for indoors or out .. they are homeless for the moment and looking for a place to live ... price on request.

and trevor finished up the curly maple trestle table with some stain and varnish.  that one will be around until the room where it is going is finished in a couple weeks ... nice color!

and he started a new 116" long version of the table above, also from the mid 2000s.

 

roughing out the top made us think of bar shuffleboard .. all we needed was some wax.

the scale was different so we made mdf mockup aprons and a new, 4" square leg sample.

approved by the client ...

and the top is glued up .. nice cherry from our friends at irion lumber.

  and im working on my pottery chops, with a new technique of my own devising.

 

i have never had the time to put in to learn to throw shapes like these, so i devised some lathe turned mdf forms. first i roll out a .2" thick slab, then after it is on the form and rough trimmed, i put it on the wheel, add a snake for a foot and throw the foot onto the bottom of the bowl form ... it has allowed me to make shapes that my pottery throwing skills will most likely never be up to, and, i love the target shapes.  i can pretend im jasper johns or josef albers for a minute or two ... more on this technique later.

and were fooling with some new zinc table top concepts, like maybe a hammered over edge on a round top ... it could work .. 

and jim picked up a few items from a temporarily closed gallery in massachusetts ... ready to go and attractively priced for sure.

including this very fine claro slab table ... +/- 44 x 90 ... it has a polished rebar base, but we are open to other options .. call for prices and details on all these former gallery items .. 802-867 5541

   and the last of the ice went out of the pond today with the sunny skies and 50 degree temperatures.  i thin it is finally gonna be spring now ...

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