a claro walnut sideboard

final update 6/7 ... ready to go ... click the photos to enlarge them ..

 all in all done ... rolling to north carolina soon ... good job boys ... will on veneers, drawers and finishing, sam on base, and trevor on case work ..

another update 5 29 ... almost ready for finish .. lookin' good

update 5 22

 faces of the drawers  .. inside of the doors

will is working on the faces of the doors and they should be glued up sometime tomorrow.

we're working on a fun one.  we have accumulated a small pile of cutoffs from the 15 or twenty claro walnut tables we've made in the past couple of years and now we've got a use for them.  this client bought our table back in february and it is being used as a desk in a law office down south.  so, next is the credenza and coffee table.  i made the sketch above assuming we would cut the cutoffs up into veneers and use them for the faces of the doors and drawers.  we're just starting that part of the project now, and i hope to have it into some kind of viewable shape by the weekend, when it's vermont open studio again !!!

more on that later.  in the meantime, click the pictures to enlarge them....

case with square pieces of mdf to straighten it up; before we added the back.  there is no face frame, so case stability and the connection to the steel base is paramount. 

here, the assembled case is sitting on a timber strand base mockup to work out the sizes and kinks in that.

and for the top and ends, we got these three incredible 28-30" wide walnut boards from irion lumber.

 

one piece sides about 24" wide and a one piece top, about 25.25" wide

here, we're working out the mdf substrate sizes for the doors and drawer faces.  in the end, trevor cut them back and installed 5/8ths x 5/8ths solid claro edges, which you'll see when the doors and drawers are opened.  it's now on its custom steel base that sam finished last week.

will, slicing up the veneers with out new starrett band saw blades,  mighty sharp!

 a quick mockup of a few of the slices ...

another

inside of the first door ... figuring out the process

ready to glue on ... i think we'll do the last piece of veneer and some butterfly work on the cnc after gluing.

the coffee table is ready to go and patiently waiting ... more later ..

here we go

 

 well, here we go ... new metal shop.  it started about a year ago.  we thought we were all set to go last summer, but the appraisal underwriters declared our property 'mixed use commercial' because our shop was more than a certain percentage of the square footage of our house and that threw us out of the fannie mae/freddie mac underwriting guidelines.  so, 8 months later, we have subdivided our 10 acres, and refinanced and now we're underway on a new metal shop for sam.  the photo above was yesterday around 8:00 am.  the digging and site work will be done by dydo and company.  noel dydo helped us dig our first house foundation in 1974 and we've been friends since 1971, over 40 years. 

 some scraping and digging and we're ready to extend the culvert which will allow us to expand the parking area.

 end of the day yesterday ... a little deeper than we thought we would get.  a little ledge on the back side.  about a four foot wall on the front.  good to go ...

 today, tony genier, of concrete professionals, arrived to form up the footings. 

 

 and they really are professionals.  they showed up around 1:30 and were out the door around 4:00.  finish it up and pour the concrete in the morning ...

lots of steps, due to the ledge

we're hoping that sam will be welding in the new shop by labor day ... the old one is about 12 x 24 and cramped, cramped, cramped.  it consistently spills into my garage and moving it to a new spacious building in the same area as the wood shop will be a huge benefit to us all.  progress updates as they happen ...

here's the concept via photoshop ...
update 6 7 ... concrete professionals ,i guess.  tony and his crew showed up yesterday morning to  pour the footings they formed up wednesday afternoon.  then they came back after lunch, stripped the forms and poured the walls at 4:00 in the afternoon.  gone by 5:00.  today they stripped the forms off the walls and were gone by lunchtime.  total elapsed time, footings and walls, and gone ...44 hrs?  rain was predicted today, so he had the concrete folks add some 'accelerator' to the footing mix.

VERY professional

 

 waiting for a couple days with new rain in the forecast to pour the slab

just a simple country table

 

 this one snuck into the shop to be fixed during open studio weekend ... i didn't pay much attention to it until i turned it over  ...

 very cool .. i love the little recurves where the aprons flare out to join the legs.  it's got some nice caryatid type ormolu thingys holding up the top as well as some flared foot details.  it's hard to see from these photos, but the flared feet are simply nailed on over curved legs, but you wouldn't know that unless you turned it over.  it's all good, and a little humbling.  it also appears that the veneered apron panels were done while the top veneer was flat, and then the whole stack of 8 or so 1/6th" veneers were laminated on curved forms.  very neatly done.  a very sophisticated piece.

  there is a piece of marble inserted from the bottom, framed by that beveled edge cutout.

just a simple country piece ...

ebay find ... before and after

a little before and after here.  a client brought us the chair below.  it had a lovely mousey bouquet about it and some really funky red fabric, but the bones were good, and the hardware was complete and functional.  our friend isaiah at bespoke upholstery carefully disassembled it, saving the original fabric and frames for patterns .. the headrest is finished and will be reunited with its chair tomorrow.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

and i happen to have on hand a skin of maine chili pepper leather from universal leather company that the client thought was perfect for it.

we sanded the walnut veneer lightly and touched up the black painted edges.  we then gave it to our friend steve holman and he sprayed a little lacquer on it to freshen up the shine and get rid of the mouse odor.

  pretty righteous upholstery work by isaiah ...

 parts and patterns .. we made two new frames for the seat and back upholstery .. all the foam and burlap was replaced too.

 very cool upholstery foundation design.  obviously a factory chair. i tried to find one like it on google images but no luck ... info anyone?

 

 very nicely laminated frame.  i have no idea how they did that ... lots of pressure somehow.  it's kind of 'folded' into shape.

 the client asked us to reinforce the base so we added a 14 gauge plate 

between the swivel and the seat.  good to go ..
update 5/31

 

a claro walnut slab headboard

our faithful delivery man ken, delivered and hung this claro walnut headboard in new york city last week.  the project has been ongoing for a month or two and it was nice to see it finally in place.

i posted this photo of one of three new slabs i received back in march.  this client picked up on it and asked us to make her a headboard from this one. 

 we did some rough planing, and wet it with some alcohol, and we were on track.

it had some unusual burl like details along the top edge. 

we made a quick cad drawing that included some drawer boxes cantilevered off the ends of the slab.  they seemed a little much, so they were dropped in the end in favor of the minimalist look in our photoshop mockup below.

all's well that ends well and this one ended very well for our client ...

 one of the three slabs from march is still not spoken for ... it's ready to be something anytime ...

open studio 2013

here we go again  ... vermont open studio weekend.  year 21.  i missed a few in the late 90's when we were building and moving, but typically, we're there, opening our doors and welcoming the public into our freshly cleaned workspaces.  it should be called spring cleaning weekend, at least here at dorset custom furniture.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

here we are, thursday at 5 pm.  looks ok, but, man, when you start to move stuff around, it is unbelievable the dust and clutter lurking, like everywhere.

 

 two truckloads to the dumpster and a totally full pickup for our wood scrap collector ... jim is tackling some seldom seen areas behind the shapers ...

 

 and here's trevor, at around 11 am, attacking the cnc area.  dan starts to freak out ... we'll never be done !

 sam and jen around 2:30, and the shop is starting to come together

 we set up the claro walnut table that recently returned from a gallery show in massachusetts.

 detail of the table above

 and will was excused from morning clean up to fit and hang the doors and install the hardware on this cool claro walnut credenza .. we got rid of a lot of small claro cutoffs making the veneers for this one. we did make him vacuum the office in the afternoon.

 

 and he'll have some banjo stuff to see.  this one is gone,  but there will be others, both finished and in process

and sam cleaned the metal shop ... the new metal shop construction will get under way soon.

 and all these pieces have some sam mosheim metalwork on them .. all for sale ... memorial day clearance sale in process ...

  and kit and penny viscusi are ready for visitors in the finish room ... actually, in the end, we were more organized, and we finished setting up earlier than usual.  come on by if you're in town .. saturday and sunday, 10-5 both days ... lots to see ...