What We Can Do With Metal

Sam's been working with metal now for about 5 years, full time for the last two. He's a great welder and fabricator and his artistic and problem solving sense is evolving everyday. As we get more and more requests for pieces both entirely of metal and as furniture, in combination with wood, often questions of finishes, materials, and capabilities arise ... Rather than answer the same or almost the same questions over and over, this post will serve as a general outline for potential clients who want to know more about what we can and can't do ... Click the photos to enlarge them ....

We have a fairly well equipped metal shop. We could use a little more space, a milling machine and maybe a more professional drill press but mostly, we're pretty well set. We also have a company we work with for custom CNC waterjet cutting and custom CNC plasma cutting, as well as chrome plating and powder coating ... Right here in Vermont ....

Sooooo, what are the options as far as materials, finishes, fabrication? For a quick overview, visit the 'Sam Mosheim' category off to the right there or any of the links directly below....

We work in steel, both hot and cold rolled, stainless steel, brass, copper, and punched 'tin'.

Possible finishes are:
Natural oiled mill finish .... 'The Williams Store Railings'Blackened steel, done with a cold patina chemical called 'ready brown' ... works great on brass and copper too .... It can be nicely highlighted with steel wool, then oiled ....
Polished natural steel finish. Essentially a process of grinding off the mill scale and polishing with finer and finer grades of abrasives ... While we have not as yet done any pieces in polished stainless, our satin finish stainless is typically looking a lot like the project above .... Perhaps just a bit brighter .... 'A Custom Contemporary Railing'
For antique or Art Deco style pieces, golf leafed, natural or antiqued, might be a good choice ...
For outdoors, we recommend two coats of primer, two of paint with refreshing when necessary ... any color ... 'A Fine Outdoor Railing'
For indoors, primed and painted, any color also; here with a nice gold paint from Fine Paints of Europe which will be glazed and antiqued later ...
A mix of finishes and materials .. blackened, natural,polished, brass and copper ... We're currently working on designs for a bed with inlays in a variety of metals and finishes ...
'A Door For a Pizza Oven Thermometer'

Products and Services .....
Custom Outdoor Chairs and Table Parts

Lighting, railings, sculpture, belt buckles, custom tools, fireplace accessories, furniture parts, metal repairs and custom welding ....

Whatever else you can dream up that you think we might be able to do ....
dan@dorsetcustomfurniture.com
sam@dorsetcustomfurniture.com

The Chandelier Project

We made a nice big recycled chestnut table for a client back in January and since then, they have acquired a very appropriate chandelier to hang over it ... The fixture was meant, I think, to hang a bit higher overhead, as the builder left the wires and ends of the tubes exposed. In this instance, however the wires were eye level and in your face so my client's design assistant called us in for help ... It was a challenge first to imagine how to cover them and then to actually do it. We all thought it came out pretty good though ... We were even able to kind of match the funky finish on the rustic fixture once we bought a new toy to help us .. Click the photos to enlarge them ....

The fixture with the new piece on it

The 'before' shot

In process before the first test fit and onsite routing

Will, operating our new toy, a 500,000 ??? btu torch, with which he toasted the fir to get the black, irregular surface on the finished piece ... Essentially, you get some flames going a little... (they die out when you move the torch away), sand the results and add the stain and finish ... presto ... old looking wood ... I imagine it works best on softwoods like fir, with flammable sappy wood .. The torch was handy on another project already too, blackening some piano hinges for the big tv cabinet ... update on that later

The finish sample on a cut off of the recycled fir plank

Fixed It

Like an old house, you never where you're going to end up once you 'open the door'. We started out fixing the obvious broken leg in the second photo below, and before we knew it, we had both the back legs and the back splat off, which turned out to be a good thing. We were able to clean and reglue the joinery and the glue blocks and now I feel as if I can actually let the client sit in the chair when he gets it back. Construction was typical of the era, mortise and tenons on the seat rails and legs, a joint that solves the connection problem but also, over time typically develops weakness where the leg is mortised all the way through. It's not like new, but then again, I'm not either and I'm still going ....

We all just loved the face in the top rail

The obvious broken leg

The other back leg

The band clamp pulled it all together ... we'll put the screws back into the glue blocks tomorrow after the hide glue sets up ....