Curvy Nightstands Slide through the Home Stretch

Once the outsides of the legs were shaped it was time to shape the front faces of the legs to better define their curvy shape. This was done using a simple jig and pattern-following router bit while the case was dry-fit together.

The last step for the case parts was to finish the joinery - the shelves were joined to the sides with Dominos, while the top was joined with dowels. The latter were located using a simple shop-made positioning jig.

The bodies then went together very nicely, albeit with a lot of clamps!

The next step was to add the drawers, and of course, curvy sides deserve curvy drawers (or at least drawer fronts). To ensure smooth running of the drawer slides, the inside of the case was made square, but the drawer fronts were shaped to follow the curvature of the legs faces. Once the drawers were mounted, handles were fashioned out of solid wenge to match the rest of the accent trim.

The final result was very satisfying.

Now they just have to make their way to the other side of the country!

Transformation Complete

Well, its been a while since the last post about the boat salon tables, but they are finally finished, and look great. After wenge edging was applied to the tops and bases, they went to the finisher and got a high gloss boat-worthy finish. 

The afromosia is a great match for the rest of the interior, and they now look like they belong. A special thanks to John Gilham finishing for doing a great job with the finish.

A Monumental Coffee Table

Well, its a new year and its time to get back to the too-ignored blog. So here goes.

Currently in the shop is a very substantial coffee table, made from 3" thick slabs of Claro walnut. 

Unfortunately, unlike the rendering, the actual top slab has some significant checking going on, so first order of business was to get that under control. This is an air-dried slab, so its moisture content is only down to about 12%. That means it'll experience more seasonal movement than a fully dried piece would, but the big crack can be stabilized using butterfly keys (a technique popularized by the great George Nakashima). The first step was laying out a pleasing arrangement, which I did with paper cut-outs of various sizes.

After the layout was set, the butterfly keys were milled from 4/4 wenge stock using a simple band saw jig.

Once the keys were milled and inlaid into both the top and bottom surfaces, the edges were shaped. The curves were rough cut with a jig saw, then faired using a hand plane and sanders. You can see the installed butterflies in the photo, as well.

Here's what it looks like with all the edges shaped and faired.

Check back periodically over the next few weeks to see how the base unfolds....

 

Done and Delivered!

I don't usually post many photos of completed pieces, but I thought this one deserved it. You've seen what went into this piece, so now here's how it came out. My thanks to Paul Schraub Photography for the studio beauty shots.

To pivot the drawer, there's a small finger-pull carved into the end of each drawer.

Because the pivot point for the drawer is close to the center line of the table, about half of the main compartment is somewhat inaccessible, so I fitted a small sliding inner container to fill that space.

The shape of the drawers is vaguely boat-like, which fits well with other nautical-themed details in the house. Here's its new home in the entry way.

Museum Show Chiffonier

Here's the next installment on the making of the chiffonier that I'll be showing at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History show the coming summer.

Two of the most distinctive elements of this piece's design are the sculpted bonnet and base. Both are made of wenge, a dark, dense, black/brown wood, that will give weight to and ground the piece. Both are stack laminated and then shaped. This series of photos shows the steps involved in making the bonnet:

First, pieces are face-laminated to achieve the required thickness for shaping. In this case, to accommodate the width of the part, it was made in three sections and then glued together after shaping (you can see the mortises for the floating tenons that will help with both alignment and glue joint strength) ....

Next, the built up blanks are rough cut to shape on the band saw....

Finally, the subparts are glued together and the entire piece is shaped ....

The base was created in much the same way, with the pieces in each layer being bandsawn roughly to size before glue-up, then the whole part being shaped afterward ....

Stay tuned for the next installment on the making of this piece, when I'll talk about the distinctive features of it's seven drawers.

New Project for Museum Show

During a lull between commissions this past few months, I took advantage of the time to build a new spec piece that will be shown during the Santa Cruz Woodworkers show at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History (MAH) this coming summer. In the run-up to the show over the next few months, I'll publish occasional posts detailing how the the piece was conceived and executed.

In this first post I'll give you a couple of detail shots as teasers of what's to come, just to whet your appetite. The piece is a chiffonier, which is a fancy word for (usually) a narrow, high chest of drawers - much like a lingerie chest. The design evolved originally from a desire to use a couple of long, narrow, live-edge, book matched pieces of walnut I've had for a while. As I tinkered with what to do with these pieces, I went from table top, to table base, to cabinet doors. Their use as tall, narrow cabinet doors was what led to the idea of the chiffonier. But once I got to the overall size and shape of the chiffonier, I ended up going in another direction where the walnut pieces didn't work, so they're still in the shop waiting for another spark of inspiration. The final design for the chiffonier features a trapezoidal mahogany case with a shaped cornice and base of wenge, book matched spalted maple doors and drawer fronts, and aluminum accents.

Stay tuned to find out how the various elements were made and how they came together.

Stylish Bench from Walnut Slabs

One of the great things about making wood furniture is that sometimes you get the chance to let nature do most of the work - then all you have to do is add a little bit here and there, and you get a great looking piece. This bench is just such a case. The walnut slabs, sourced from an orchard in the San Juan Bautista area, are the real star. All I had to do was add a little styling in the form of legs, and voila. It got a great response at the Marin Art Festival, and now is available for purchase. It measures roughly 70" long x 35" high, x 28" deep.

This is a look at the back and leg structure.


As you can see, the material speaks for itself.

Designing for Movement

Even though its been dried and milled, solid wood lumber still experiences expansion and contraction with changing environmental conditions. This movement must be taken into account when building furniture because if seasonal movement is restricted, the internal forces brought to bear can cause cracking and splitting. The challenge with this piece was to come up with a joinery system that would allow the spare design, just two slabs and two leg assemblies, to be strong and rigid, while still allowing movement of the slabs. Because the grain orientation of the seat and back supports are perpendicular to the grain of the slabs, simply doweling, tenoning, or screwing the pieces together would not allow the slabs to move, and result in failure. The answer that best suited this project was to attach one edge of each slab with a mechanical fastener (aka, a screw), and the other edge with a form of sliding dovetail, known as a blind keyhole dovetail. In this type of joint a dovetail-shaped tenon fits into an elongated sloped-sided mortise - the dovetail shape keeps the slab firmly snugged to the leg structure, but allows the slab to expand and contract by sliding along the tenon.

This is a picture of one of the mortises. You can see that half the mortise is square in profile, to allow the tenon to be inserted, while the other half is dovetail-shaped.

This photo shows one of the back supports. You can see the attachment screw near the top of the support that is the fixed attachment point, and below it the hard maple dovetail tenon that will slide into the blind mortise. To the left you can see the other leg assembly already attached to the back slab.

This next photo shows the similar arrangement for seat slab attachment. You can see that the front of the seat slab will be fixed, with the rear of the slab allowed to move in and out.

Here is the fully assembled bench (upside down) showing the slab-to-leg assembly attachments.

Stay tuned for more images of the final, finished piece. Thanks!

New Bench Project

With the Marin Art Festival coming up fast, I wanted to create a new piece to show at the festival. I've had a couple of matched walnut slabs from an orchard near San Juan Bautista for a few years, and have thought from time to time that they would make a great bench. So, this seemed like the time to get off the stick and make that happen. I'm going to keep the slabs in as raw a form as possible, in other words, not hiding the worm holes and checks. To counterpoint that roughness, and give the piece a little sophistication, I'm going to use wenge for the sculpted leg structures. Although I wouldn't be so bold as to suggest that my work is at their level, I think of this as a sort of a Kagan meets Nakashima design. Hopefully, I can get it done in time!

Here's a picture of the slabs and the leg blanks. You can see the final leg form from the plywood template. The slabs will be attached to the flat seat and back surfaces. Notice the great colors in the slabs that have been preserved by letting them air dry, rather than kiln drying. The only down side to air drying is that the moisture content of these pieces is only down to about 9%, which is a little high for furniture. So, I'm going to have to design joinery that will allow for extra movement.

Take off your shoes....

This week I've started a new commission for a combination shoe storage/household organization cabinet. It will be placed near the client's garage entry door, and combines a shoe storage box with an upholstered seat, and a cabinet for briefcases, mail, and the like. Its made of mahogany, maple and wenge. In the coming weeks I'll post in-progress photos to show how its made. Here's the concept drawing...

The Finished Bench

Well, after a few coats of oil/varnish mixture and some good furniture wax, the bench looks pretty good. Now it goes to the client to help them welcome guests as they enter their home. I hope they like it.

The bench is progressing ...

.... quite nicely. Here's the base assembled and waiting for finishing.

Happily, after a lot more searching around than I expected to have to do, I found a great board set for the seat at Northwest Timber in Oregon. After refining the shape of the MDF seat template, it was used to shape the seat blank.

A Welcoming Bench for an Entryway

Last week I was able to get started on an entry bench for a couple I met at the Marin Arts Festival last summer.

Here's the design .... it has tapered, curved mahogany legs, an organically shaped wenge stretcher, and a slightly curved figured maple seat.

The shape of the legs is achieved by a technique called coopering. In coopering, the edges of the billets (i.e., sticks) that make up the leg are beveled an both sides before they are edge glued, which results in a curved surface. In this case, to get the fan effect, the billets are both beveled and tapered. To make milling easier I made a dedicated table saw jig that cuts both the taper and the bevel at the same time.

The coopering involved two steps - after the billets were beveled and tapered, a dadoe was plowed along the length of each edge so that when edge-joined a space for splines was created. The splines help maintain alignment and add glue surface for strength.

The curved stretcher was laminated from 1/8" thick solid wenge over a plywood bending form.

Here are the three parts of the base before fairing and final shaping.