A photo finish

I think I made this project far more complicated than it needed to be. But despite my mistakes and design changes, I think I actually ended up with something at least presentable in the end. I built this piece from the beginning to show at The Furniture Project, which Eli Cleveland and crew put on every year to promote hand crafted furniture to the public. Hopefully I did the show (and an unsuspecting walnut tree) proud.

Sadly, this marks the end of this project, but have a few concepts already in mind for the next one. In the meantime, I'm thinking a proper shop tour is long overdue, and it might be the perfect intermission to the next big thing.

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Slab happy

I met with a local sawyer over the summer, and while I was at his shop, he uncovered his special stash of walnut slabs. He had almost a complete flitch of 8/4 walnut slabs, and I couldn't leave for home without at least one board. I had no idea what I was going to use it for, but it was priced right and I happily made room in my shop to store it until I had a use for it.

Well, I finally decided it was time to turn it into furniture. I had a rough idea in my mind that it would become a hall table, but I decided to use the shape and size of the slab itself to dictate the design, rather than the other way around. So this project is going to be designed as I go, and I already have a few fun ideas of some twists I can incorporate into the piece.

This first episode is all about stock prep. And with a slab almost 22" wide, my power planer and jointer are of no use. So I'll be rolling up my sleeves and doing a lot of hand tool work to start. Which is perfect because it just started getting cold in my shop!


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Another spline day in the shop

Having completed the box joinery on my necklace case project, it's time to move on to the lid or top.  The client has also asked for a mitered top, rather than rail and stile in order to keep the same clean lines as the case itself.  I had several joinery options here, I could have done a mitered half lap, a saddle joint, or splines along the miter joint, or across.  I ultimately decided to do splines across the glue joint mainly because I have a jig already that I use often times for making small mitered boxes.  Once again, this keeps the exposed joinery to a minimum, but leaves a fairly strong joint. 


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