well, friday afternoons ... you just never know what might happen ... as we were cleaning up, somone put this claro slab cutoff out on the porch just as i happened to go out the door to the finish room. this piece has been hanging around the end of the sander for oh, a year or so? who knows. anychoice, i suddently had this urge to clone it by resawing it with a chainsaw. kind of like the rubber stamp tool in photoshop. so i did. jim was johnny on the spot with the photos .... now comes the hard part ... whats the best thing to do with them ??? comments? were open to suggestions ... click the photos to enlarge them ...
1st obvious arrangement with the curving negative space ...
not so obvious, but maybe cool on the wall ... or, as a table with a glass top?
free standing swans
have a good weekend ....other chainsaw adventures
We dont dont often take on work like this, but we just did a refinish on this 19th century desk for a friend ... The story was intriguing ... It was supposedly made by the owner or son of the owner of the Estey Organ Company of Brattleboro, Vermont ... An amazing 100 plus year old Veront company that made over 520,000 !! reed organs and over 3200 full size pipe organs before it went out of business in 1960. The desk appears to be from about the right mid to late 19th century time frame judging from the look of it. It had a severely distressed, insulted and alligatory shellac finish that was beyond saving which Jim removed with a little (lot) of alcohol and a white Scotchbrite pad ... After some serious sanding, we put a couple coats of dye stain and our typical gloss/gelstain/satin finish ... It now looks like its ready for another hundred years ... Out the door Friday morning ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
This is in the sanding stage, ready for the first coat of stain ...
The completed desk with the fall front open ...
Trevor made a quick replacement arch top ... the second from the left ... It had a neat detail. The shapes are cut from 1/4 thick lumber, but the back side of the profile is relieved to 1/8" thick which gives the appearance that the wood is half as thick as it is ... clever ....
weve never used this wood before, and im not sure im real anxious to use it again. as you can see in the photo below, it is completely wrinkly off the splitter. so wrinkly in fact that we couldnt actually join the veneers, but had to glue them down to individual pieces of substrate, which we then glued into a panel. the problem was that the edge of the cut veneer actually change shape as it flattened out (duh) so unless it was perfectly flat when cut, the cut wasnt straight. im not sure how folks deal with this in a commercial veneer shop, but we did it the only choice we knew how... click the photos to enlarge them ... 
close up of the veneers on arrival
cad stuff for estimating material costs ...
in the architects specs, there was a 1/4" x 1/4" reveal, which, after making the mock up above, we determined also had to be veneered, which called for a change order for the considerable added very fussy labor.
we started with the legs and the tops of the legs ...
then will veneered the individual boards that make up the central box which was on the specs at 7 x 48 x 42 high. this is a tall table for an employee lounge ...
