Sunday, October 31, 2010

The Half Round Tables Are Done

OK, except for the black, diamond shaped pulls that we'll add to the drawers tomorrow, these tables are complete ..... Beautiful job by Will on all the details ... I hope you all enjoyed following the process ... Here are the other posts ... Build a half round table, start to finish ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Post #1
Post #2
Post #3
Before the finish on the tops and without the drawers
Joinery check on the pattern or on your full size drawing ...
Close up of the joinery ... center drawer border tenons on the left
We sort of winged the drawer joinery as I have found in the past that efficiently dovetailing sides to curving fronts is next to impossible. Once the radius gets below a certain dimension the parts don;t merge together gracefully ... You could do it but there is only so much labor intensive work you can ask your clients to pay for ... If I were doing it for myself .... I would still do it this way ... You can leave questions on this post in the comments section if you like ... I'll do my best to get back to you on them ... All for now ...

Saturday, October 30, 2010

A Short Video Tour of Dorset Custom Furniture

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Dorset Custom Furniture from Junction 133 on Vimeo >.

">A Video Tour of Dorset Custom Furniture

Here's a very brief visual and oral history of Dorset Custom Furniture. We've been working on it for a while now and it was harder than I thought. What to include? What to cut? .. a whole new process ... Duncan Lake of Junction 133 Productions got it all together for us. He's been a friend of Sam and Will's for a long time and did a great job ... He's back at his 'day job' for the season now, videoing snowboarders out west ... Looks like fun ...

ps ... this video shows best if you click it to full screen

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Niche Market

Sam and Will took a truckload of our latest niche product, the Wagatha dog treat rack, to town today. There were 75 of the bag racks, 25 more to go, and Trevor made 10 of the bulk biscuit racks below. The client thinks he can get us more work like this if we're interested and he actually has a third compact counter top display design in mind. We're working on that ... It's interesting work from a design and engineering standpoint but I would hate to burn Trevor out with the mass production thing ... Once you figure it out, it's time for a new challenge ... The racks assemble with hooks and by sliding, the tolerances being crucial to the process. but, once they're together, they are amazingly strong and rigid ... I don't have a picture of a rack fully loaded with bags and graphics yet, but I think it will look sharp ... Lots of pieces ...click the photos to enlarge them ...
75 rack times 4 = 300 shelves right off the cnc
Only half the backs
Ten of the bulk racks, ready to go ... we'll be posting an assembly video online shortly ... Trevor really got the intricate joinery worked out perfectly ... He gets a gold star ...
The original prototype.

Sunday, October 24, 2010

The Week in Review

Busy week ... Lots of stuff went on ... Click the photos to enlarge them ... Will almost finished the half rounds ... actually they are half ovals, which complicated the process even more... The drawers are finished and the bottoms are fitted... Above, he has the first coat of stain on the tops and tomorrow he'll sand most of that coat off as it is mainly to raise the grain, and next he'll apply the second coat, being careful not to get the inlays too dark ... Varnish Tuesday ... out the door soon ...
Trevor started a new 'partners desk' project. It's actually for a husband and wife and their new home office in upstate Vermont. We found some really wide (30") mahogany at Irion Lumber that allowed us to make the top and the end panel out of just two boards ...
The lumber arriving from Pennsylvania ...
We rough assembled it Friday, did the inlays and built the drawer box ...
We've got to finish up the screen porch and the Wagatha racks this week so this one might be on the back burner for a minute ...
We also got some really fin curly cherry in the same shipment for a dining table and we finalized the design on that this past weekend ... I have a drawing somewhere ...
And my wood 'Revolving Door' prototype finally bit the dust .. The luann plywood just couldn't hold up to the wind and rain and if fell down piece by piece ... Sooooo ... time for the steel version.
The wood version was up since early summer and it spun nicely in the wind .. we'll see if the steel turns more slowly and less violently .. I hope so ...
I changed the proportions of the rectangles slightly and got the first three together inside the shop today ... It was a rainy Sunday and it seemed like a good thing to do ..
We're also working on posting items to our new home on www.custommade.com ... We haven't tried much online marketing outside of our own website and blog, but given the times, Will and I thought we should try some ... I signed up for a year and we'll have a lot of photos there by the time we're done with it ... What a time sink though ... Hope it works ... I think I'm about half posted now ...
We also made a prototype chair for a client's dressing room ... we made several dark, rich pieces for it a few years back and our client found this Ruhlman inspired design on 1st dibs ... With the client's input and fabric choice, we'll be doing our take on it in East Indian rosewood.
The inspiration photo ...
The bookend raffle went live at the library ...
And we reviewed some very nice drawings for an upcoming project ... Best shop drawings by an architect ever ... My hat is off to Ramsay Gourd Architects ...
And, lastly, I dug out a photo of my original Arlington shop that I built in 1976 for a video we're working on ... The new owners removed most of the second floor, added a kitchen, a fireplace and a big screened in porch off the back, and it is now a fine guest house for them ... It was a good shop for me ...
All for now .. Back for another week tomorrow ....

Friday, October 22, 2010

What I'm Reading Now

Yowza! ... What am I reading now ??? Hmmm ... I'm all over the map these days. Click the pictures to enlarge them ... Upper left corner is David Mathias's excellent new book on Greene & Greene furniture ... I'm kind of picking my way through it, savoring it a couple pages at a time, admiring his detailed photos and written observations on both the Greenes and the talented makers of their designs, the Hall brothers. Without the brothers' talents, the Greene brothers's furniture would, in my humble opinion, have looked assuredly different.

To the right there, a classic from my design library that I visit over and over and encourage my guys to consider from time to time ... It was written by David Pye, I believe in the 70's and has been a sort of 'guide' for me over the years. It's all about the 'mark of the hand' and how a design without that mark is different from one with it ... Keeps us all from obsessing too much, and helps to eliminate the danger of a 'perfectly executed' (dead) object. It's many other things too ... design + art, seeing beauty, 'seeing' in general ... it's all there ... try it, you'll like it ...

ahh Carl Haiisen ... this one had characters from The Ocean Reef Club, a place on Key Largo where I lived for the winter of 1970...classic light, humorous entertainment ... suspend disbelief, laugh ... Classic Carl ... See here too ...

The New Yorker article on the new surge in uranium mines. A psychological mystery about people who actually want to have uranium mines in their towns even though some of their relatives died early and horrible deaths from the last round of it .. go figure...
And then a serious article in Rolling Stone on glacial melting ... absolutely frightening ... ditto with BP and bankruptcy ... These folks are digging pretty deep and doing some excellent writing about it ... I'm a returning RS subscriber who lapsed when Hunter Thompson died a few years back ... Now I remember .... They are good.

And, 'Islands in the Stream', a Hemingway classic I missed somehow. Some of the finest writing on deep sea fishing, family, friends, war .... the big picture ... For the first time, I got a serious linear connection between Hemingway and another of my favorite storytellers, Cormac McCarthy ... A fine piece of writing that stirred some deep thoughts on the creative process. Phew! Those folks drank a lot though ...
And lastly .. one of my clients sent me this one ... 'Shop Class as Soulcraft' by Matthew Crawford. Crawford is an educated man with several advanced degrees who has gone from working in a 'think tank' (knowledge work), to working with his hands as a motorcycle mechanic and electrician. He compares 'knowledge work' with 'manual work' and makes the point that the manual kind has been somewhat demeaned in today's hierarchy of education goals. He discusses the kind of diagnostic thinking and brain action that come with working and learning with your hands ... He's preaching to the choir here, and it was a bit of a heavy sled, but I stuck with it. He's got a point. I find my work as a designer/craftsman/builder/maker/customer relations person totally and completely engaging. I didn't need to read the book to know that, but it's nice to have it pointed out to me and my employees by an obviously very smart person, that we are indeed on the road to intellectual fulfillment if not that big pile of dollars in the sky. I can't imagine myself behind a desk full time, or in a situation where, at the end of the week, I couldn't point to some concrete evidence of the effort I had put in for that week ... It's Friday; it was a good week; we worked on a ton of different stuff and I feel really good about all of it.

This is one in a series of post I have written on this subject. For others, here's a link ... and here, another ... Get out of the shop from time to time ... read a little

You Can't Leave Em Alone For Even a Minute

Will and I went home for lunch the other day and when we got back, Trevor had us rolling in the aisles with his new Halloween decoration. He was in the middle of a big mdf run and had an extra piece so he whipped this up for the kids in his neighborhood ... He says he has some glossy white spray paint for the full effect ... BOOOOOOOOOO ! ... Loved it

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Bookends Again

My kind of post ... I just went back to 10/22/07 and did a little cutting and pasting. Same deal this year. The party is on the 13th, 6-8 .. if it's like the last one, it should be good ... This year my bookends above are called 'Identical Twins' ... 2" solid steel on 3/8ths by 2.5" steel.

Monday, October 22, 2007

Dan Mosheim donates bookends to fundraiser at Mark Skinner Library

The Mark Skinner Library in Manchester, Vermont recently asked 25 local artists to donate a pair of bookends for a fundraiser/raffle that will take place on November 10th. Tickets are $5. each, or 5 for $20. Each ticket can be placed in the raffle box for the particular artist's bookends that you'd like to own. Proceeds will benefit the adult collection at the library. Tickets are available at the Mark Skinner Library and at The Northshire Bookstore as well as Factory Point and Chittenden banks. Or, if you're not going to be around, call the library at 802-362-2607. For my bookends, I visited the metal shop and whipped up a pair I called 'Bookends for David Smith' in recycled chestnut and forged and welded steel. I had a blast. The party looks like it might be fun too. See you there.

My 2007 bookends , won in 2007, (fortunately), by my friend Cynthia Murphy
Click the photos to enlarge them ...
Good luck ...

Wednesday, October 20, 2010

More Half Round Stuff



Will put the inlays in the edges of the tops today ... He first sliced them with a thin kerf Makita 6" blade on the table saw, then sanded the edges slightly and in they went ..
First Will trued up the 8 degree angles with a fixed block on the edge sander ...
Brushed a coat of glue into the channel and taped them into place ... They are cut just thick enough to be raised from the surface of the edge of the table so the tape puts a little pressure on them. He'll sand them off in the morning and start finishing the tops. The bit is hard to find in your typical lumber yard but here's the number and maker .. click the picture to enlarge it ... Go to your favorite online router bit store and type in the name and number ...
Home stretch ... Drawers and finish ...

Friday, October 15, 2010

Progress on the Half Rounds

Will and I are making some progress on the half round tables. He's not yet made any of these from start to finish and I haven't made one personally for quite a long time so we're both kind of feeling our way here through what's next and how to go about it. Click the pictures to enlarge them...These posts will be helpful next time ...
Trevor routed a full size template in mdf from our cad drawing and we placed the male section of our glue up forms on the template on the inside of the apron curves. We than struck our angles on the form in pencil and moved the forms to the chop saw where we cut the angles on the bordered aprons.
Next we used parts of the female glue up forms to set up the multirouter to cut the mortises for the loose tenons we use for the joinery. The loose tenons allow us to adjust our angles slightly if necessary for the final fit up.
We clamped the back legs and then checked the fits. next step was to stain and paint and move those parts to the finish room before the final glue up. You can see the haunched loose tenons in the photo below.

While those parts were being finished, Will cut and glued up the pieces to make the inlay blocks (the very last photo in that post) in the drawing above. They were ripped on the tablesaw on an 8 degree angle, cut to length and glued up in the simple jig below.
After the center block was sanding to 3/8ths, Will added the 1/1th" plus shop made walnut veneers for the top and bottom and glued them on in the veneer bag.
The finished inlay blanks are below. they'l be sliced into 1/16th inch strips and inset in to a routed groove sometime in the next post.
We got a nice wide plank from Irion Lumber to make the 20" wide one piece tops and Trevor cut them to shape on the cnc. Hopefully our nex inlay bit will come tomorrow and we can inlay the tops, but in the meantime, will will dovetail the drawers and fit up the drawer fronts .. All for now .. Thanks for sticking with me ...