An English Elm Slab Table

We're working on a new table project with a client in Connecticut. We went back and forth on the design a bit and explored various shaped tops and base options ... Yesterday we finalized the shape and size of the top and we glued up the planks today .... The grain matched nicely, and it's going to be an interesting looking table ... It's our first time for English elm, but it won't be the last I'm sure .... Berkshire Products in Sheffield, Mass. has a good supply of wide, interesting and reasonably priced slabs .... Check them out on the internet, or check them out in person ... Very cool wood source ....
The English elm has a really nice natural brown color, quite different from any of our domestic hardwoods... The table will have a polished steel base similar to a table we finished recently ....
I actually made the trip to Sheffield to meet the client and select the wood ... I thought I might find some other interesting slabs, and they had plenty to choose from. I came home only with the two for this project, an unusual display of restraint for me ...
The client has a built in banquette and we explored various shapes for the top ... Here we were thinking about trying to use the natural edge of the bookmatched slabs
and various shapes for the steel base. Below is an inspiration sketch from the client from which we made a quick model on the cnc ...
It was cool, and I may revisit it later on, but for now, we have moved on ...
We also explored several oval variations, but in the end settled on a 'regular' 42 x 78 oval ...
This was a photoshopped 'fatted' oval, a shape we sometimes use to add width to the ends ... In the end, the 'real' oval shape was the most pleasing ...
Glued up now, ready to cut to shape ...

The Maple Leaf Table

6/12/10 Home stretch now ... A couple of polish coats and it's out the door next week ... Tough one to photograph ... 42 x 90 is too big for my background paper ....

The maple leaf table ....

Every design comes from somewhere ... In this case, take an interesting leg with carvings. Simplify the design of the turnings, add a Vermont maple leaf and get rid of the edge inlay .... Change the wood to curly maple and get rid of the black .... presto ... new design ... We really liking this one, and Will did a great job handling the turnings, carvings, and, really, the whole thing ... Love it ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ....
We started with this concept of a table leg with some kind of detail on the corners ... We discussed a leaf as a metal applique since, at the time, we were working on the duck bed ... In the end, we decided on a carved maple leaf ....
The clients chose this leg design, one of our standards, and we added some detail to the apron, but eliminated the black paint and changed the wood to all curly maple ...
Went out the door and grabbed some maple leaves to get the feeling of the carvings right ...
We glued up the top next and made up the apron parts. Here Will is doing some after work banjo finishing ... more on that project later ... banjo #2 ...
Fitted it all up and laid out the corner cuts on the top ...
The first coat of stain was applied to the legs and aprons and sanded before the base was glued up ...
The curved corner legs complicate the base glue up somewhat, but it all went smoothly ...I hope to deliver the table before the weekend and have dinner on it with my friends/clients Saturday night .... The first coat of finish went on everything today, but we've got a couple coats to go ..... We'll see ... it'll be close.

Show Time

There's a show called "Out Of The Woods" opening Saturday at The Southern Vermont Art Center in Manchester, Vermont. It will feature the works of 11 New England furniture makers included myself and fellow locals Bill Laberge and Steve Holman. The show has been a long time in the making and for a change we were one of the first to drop off our pieces so I'll be seeing all but one or two pieces for the first time myself on Saturday. There's a 'meet the artists' reception from 4 to 6 and their openings are always fine events. Happening at the same time will also be the opening celebration for the 81st Annual Members Exhibition, a sure to be interesting display of the members's fine art and sculpture work. Come by if you can ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

We'll be showing one of our Bethlehem Steel series pieces, a walnut and steel table and six complementary walnut chairs.
A close up of the plates Sam made to cover hardware 'wounds' in the 20" wide walnut boards.
A few photos from the SVAC website showing some of the other artists's work.
Steve Holman's sideboard ...
Close up of one of the bronze wood burl sculptures from the photo at the top ... Mother Nature is a pretty good sculptor too ...
There is also a very cool building on the site designed by the award wining architect, Hugh Newell Jacobson.

Another Update on the Recycled Oak Table`

As soon as we get the approval on the most recent finish samples we sent to the client, we'll get this table into the finishing process ... Trevor used the end grain from a cutoff to make the patches, a nice touch .... Click the pictures to enlarge them ...

Here's a close up of the angle iron we used to help hold the table flat across its width where it was cut to insert the leaf. Traditionally, we run the grain the grain the short way on our expanding tables, but this client wanted the wood grain running the long way since she plans to use the leaf only occasionally ... It presented this design/engineering challenge, but we all like the way the top looks with the long, matched grain ...

Except for a couple of patches in the top and some aprons on the leaf, we finished construction on the recycled oak table (see post below).

Need some aprons on the leaf

this picture shows the steel and the Watertown runners on the underside of the top .. It's a heavy one ...

We weren't sure about the mismatched grain and the breadboards on the leaf until we saw it all together today. With the recycled lumber, it all seems to make perfect sense ...

This is the jig Trevor made to taper the 3" legs on the bandsaw ...All for now until we get final approval on the finish samples ...

Update on the Recycled Oak Table

We're wrapping up the recycled oak table i wrote about in a previous post... The client suggested a change in the shape of the top to sort of a modified oval... It's a little fatter at the ends, giving her a little more space for plates and placemats ... We did a freehand sketch and cut the top to that shape ... Looks good ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

First we glued up the top with the long boards ... Here's Trevor lining up the tops of the boards with the heavy hammer before the glue sets ... Where are your earmuffs Jim?

Checking for flat ... looks good ...

The bottom side the next day ... perfect glue squeeze out over the whole top

The top, cut to shape

In this picture, you can see where we added steel under the middle of the table ... This client wants to use her table mostly without the leaf and wanted the long grain of the boards going the long dimension of the table ... We have never done that before but it turns out, we all like it and think it's a novel idea .... ALWAYS listen to your clients ... "Give the poeple what they want' ... I think that was Ray Davies, of the Kinks ... Anyway, we thought the reinforcement of the top with the steel will help keep it flat over time . You can see where Sam notched the steel for the runners. The leaf, with it's short boards and breadboard ends is in the background ...

More, lighter finish samples ...

We've got a couple of defects to make decisions on ... patch or leave? This one we'll probably leave .... love it ...

This one we'll probably patch .... more later

The Mysteries and Art of Finishing

The photo above is from my big Matisse book and it shows '16 of the 22 photos sent by Matisse to Etta Cone', showing 'states in the development of Large Reclining Nude', 1935. I wish I had photographed the various stages in the finishing of this table. I wouldn't have 22 photos, but I'd have a bunch....

For the first 10 years of my career as a furniture maker, I worked mostly in natural woods, cherry, walnut and figured maple, finishing them with clear oil finishes, sometimes with accents of milk paint, slowly developing what I came to think of as my 'studio style'. Most of my customers either lived in Vermont full time or had second homes here and were content with the sort of contemporary or Shaker look that my style evoked. For the next 20 years, some of those clients and others who came my way asked me to make more formal pieces, often designed to blend in with antiques or family pieces they already owned. I found I enjoyed the new design challenge, making pieces fit with an existing environment. It's never been easy though, this coloring of wood, And, even now that I've been doing it for a long time, it's still a challenge. Just this last week, we struggled somewhat with a table for a Boston client, who, from the start, requested a formal, somewhat shiny finish for his table ...Not too shiny, but just the right shiny.... Shiny's tough. If it's too perfect, it can look just like an off-the-rack piece from a local furniture store, but with the right shiny combined with our method of handscraping the big flat surfaces, you can get that wonderful, waterlike surface you find most often on really fine antiques .... It takes patience, a willingness to experiment, and sometimes a certain fearlessness that you just know you have to just have at it and things will be fine. I've stripped a few and that's never fun, but when you get one just right, well, that's really fun ... I tried to write down the process both before I started and after I finished this one, but no matter how hard you try, it won't be exactly the same next time. Make samples, in this case, include the inlays in the samples. For this table we used several coats of diluted Lockwood water based aniline dyes, occasional masking tape on the inlays, some shellac, and after many samples two coats of Minwax brush on fast dry poly, gloss under, semi gloss over, sanded lightly with 1200 and top coated with an oil poly mix. It took, off and on,most of a week. You feel like Matisse, a little ....

Click the photos to enlarge them

The photos below were all taken with the florescent lights on. We weren't totally happy until we turned them off and turned on the chandeliers that Jim cleaned and are still hanging in the finish room ... Nobody has florescents lights in their dining room anyway...

Two of our many varnish samples .. same color on the left, natural cherry on the right

The underside is finished just like the top ... Watertown runners from Moin hardware.

Will, burning in the mark and date

Leg and apron and inlay

The shine under the regular lights

The leaves
Winston Churchill said once ' Success is the ability to move from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm' ... Just have at it ...