Part of my work involves creating construction drawings for other cabinet/furniture makers. Using AutoCad, I engineer the project and draw it to communicate the construction process to those in the shop. Clients find it very helpful to have someone like myself with extensive fabrication experience do the drawings. It saves them time, reduces mistakes and assures the final product is well made.
This platform bed is part of a larger project my client is doing for Boora Architects. I ended up drawing it in SketchUp to help clarify their design and have a better look at the bed. It reveals “issues” not easily seen in 2D. It was helpful for me as well, to decipher some of the fabrication methods and draw it up.
In the end the client hired me to make this bed. It’s quite a large project and they needed to pass on some work. I will be posting some more video and images of the making of the bed. It should be interesting to see, especially how the curved elements are made.
This has been the year for losing our woodworking masters. First Sam Maloof in May, and most recently James Krenov. Jim’s passing is felt by many. Woodworkers, enthusiasts and collectors around the world have been inspired by his furniture and romantic writings about his craft.
I studied furniture making under Jim and his instructors for two years at the College of the Redwoods Fine Woodworking Program. Fortunately he had not retired by then. Students who came only two years later we not so lucky. During my two years there were students from Scotland, Finland, Japan, Germany, England, India, Columbia, Chile, Switzerland, Canada, and a smattering from the United States. Most had found inspiration through his writings. Specifically, his first, A Cabinetmakers Notebook written in 1976. This book put words to the spiritual emotions many had with woodworking. I believe, in the end, for all the fine skills you acquire at the school, this spiritual growth is the most valuable. It is not only to me, but the clients who receive my work. My favorite lectures were the ones he didn’t even mention woodworking.
I remember him saying “the day they roll my last cabinet out of my shop, they will roll me out right behind it”. This was not far from the truth. I will also remember no matter how revered, he was still capable of saying things like “it ain’t pretty, but it will fly”.
Farewell Jim
You can see some of his pieces from his memorial here.
A while back I designed a coffee table for a couple of green thumbs. One taught farming to school kids and the other was a landscape architect. Of three design concepts, they chose the “pattern” design. In brief, it combined a mid-century modern base with a pattern design on the top. They let me run with the top design, trusting I had a feel for their aesthetic and what they wanted to live with. I decided to create a pattern that would suggest an aerial view of farmland. I envisioned an abstract rendering of a series of plots with a road wandering through. I never actually looked for images. I’m just realizing that, and actually wondering why not, considering the ease of an internet search. It wasn’t a conscious decision, avoiding something designed by the pictures I found. I just got lucky. As I was flying home recently the captain announced we were crossing the Idaho/Washington border. I turned, curious to see what the border looked like from the air. Nothing really, but I kept looking and suddenly I saw these big circular and square crops and the roads that connected them. I also saw the round ones had sprinklers that pivoted from the center and looked like the minute hand of a clock. It was amazing to actually see where this design came from. A place I never saw. See finished table.
Since then I feel like those shapes are haunting me. They are everywhere. From a book cover to an odd piece of hardware. So I feel it is time to start thinking of a new piece that uses it. I have always thought it would make a wonderful headboard for a bed. It could be interesting to render this particular image. Maybe I will share it with everyone when I come up with something. We’ll see.
Consolidating the images and video I took of making the top of this table is difficult to do without feeling like I’m leaving something out. I will do my best in hopes that you will have a sense of how labor intensive it was. It has been a truly wonderful project to work on, one that I am very proud of. Enjoy this last post of assembling all those little pieces.
This video shows how I made all those “inlays” of varying thickness. Usually a groove is cut for the inlayed material to be fit to. This time I actually glued the pieces along with all the others. This way I could simply plane down the piece of Holly to whatever thickness I wanted.
After the Holly has been glued on and I have planed it to thickness then I join it to its adjacent panel. This is essentially the process for making the entire piece. Following is a slide show of the whole thing coming together.
In the interest of keeping it interesting I tried to keep it short. if there is anything you are curious about I welcome any questions. Thanks everyone for following along. Stay tuned as I will be starting a new series on a conference table I am working on.
Now that I have the pattern for the top I need to make the veneer to create it, but first a word on veneer.
Many have an instant negative reaction to the word veneer assuming that anything made with it is inferior to a solid wood piece of furniture. The truth is that most prized antiques have been made using veneer. One reason for this is solid wood has quite a bit of movement. If the grain is not oriented correctly a piece of furniture will quickly expand and contract and joints will fail. What can be done with the design is very limited. Intricate work like what I will do on this top cannot be done with solid wood for this reason.
There are also different types of veneer. What most are familiar with is “commercial” veneer which is of a thickness that can barely be called wood. The other is “shop sawn” veneer which is what I prefer. This is veneer I cut myself on a band saw and is quite a bit thicker (over 1/16th”). This material is easily repaired, can be worked in much the same way as solid wood, and allows me to pick the specific board I want to use for a given project.
That’s enough of that.
The board in the middle is the one I ended up using for the majority of the field. It has great color and what I like most is that the grain pattern varies so much from one end to the other. This will allow me to have consistent color, but have a tremendous amount of potential with grain movement. [Read more →]
When I first started posting about this piece I explained that one of the clients was a Landscape Architect and the other teaches in a Bay Area grade school. We had a few short conversations where they described what they wanted from the design of their coffee table. A reminder of where the material came from, stood out for me along with some other aesthetic details they would enjoy. In the end the concept I chose that tied this all together was to create a representation of an aerial view of farmland. A wandering path with its loose geometry combined with the qualities of Claro Walnut I felt would result in a stunning design. Here is the process of making that idea real.
The idea came froma very loose sketch. Often inspiration comes from these types of drawings where I can draw freely and when something strikes develop it further.
The first step was to get into the shop and start laying it out full scale. There was a lot of drawing as well as erasing…
…and thinking.
I also took some time to see if the pattern of the material I was using was going to work well with the design.
This is the final drawing I will use to lay aout the individual pieces that will make up the top. Nothing is set in stone and I will make changes as I go. One of the best parts of this process is the opportunity and freedom to make those changes you think are important.
Alright, it’s been a while since the last post for this table so its time to catch up. Now you get to see the base being glued together.
With everything laid out and in order I start spreading the glue.
First the foot.
Then the top rail.
Then I quickly clamp it together.
I had cut slots in the tenons for wedges which I hammer and glue in at this point. This helps spread the sides of the tenon to make it fit VERY tight. A nice strong joint that I will never lose sleep over.
After the glue dries I cut and plane the tenons flush.
I can’t complain. You will never see these when the top is attached, but beautiful all the same.
On to the rail which will connect the two pedestals.
It’s tough to see it in my face here, but there was a panic moment where I thought I had the rail turned upside down. A lot of work would have gone to waste. I don’t even want to think about it now, long after this picture was taken.
The base is done.
Join me for the next series of posts where you can see the top being made. Now it gets really exciting!
So there are a couple beautiful shapes here, but they need to be fit to each other. There is a round tapered post and a horizontal rail that has a curved side. This makes for some interesting fitting.
Pictures are great, but I have decided to start having a few videos here and there. I really like this one because it conveys the intimacy I have with the furniture I make. There is a lot of focus and connection with every piece of the whole. This is part of the beauty of custom furniture.
