A Four Poster Bed In Mesquite & Texas Walnut

A few years ago a good friend of mine lost his very lovely wife, and, for a season, I and my family were able to help him through his time of grieving and loss. In April of last year he paid us a visit and informed us that he would soon be remarrying. We were, of course, very happy for him. Then one of his adult children contacted me shortly after the official wedding announcement and told me he and his siblings wanted to commission me to design and build a new bed for their father and his bride-to-be. I was excited to be creating a piece for such a close friend and also a bit intimidated. My friend is a person of  strong opinions and particular tastes. I knew he would want beautiful wood with a story behind it and I also knew he had a trained eye for fine workmanship. At the same time he appreciates design that is very restrained and understated. His children, however, had given me a generous budget to work with and I knew they would be expecting to see a bed that looked like something pretty wonderful. Oh well, every furniture maker should have such problems.

Click to enlarge images.

The design process went through many false starts and revised drawings, but no one saw these except my wife. At the same time I was visiting several local lumber sources in search of just the right woods. I knew my friend liked mesquite, but I was having a difficult time finding enough defect free material to be worthy of this bed. I finally acquired enough wood to cut around most of the cracks, knots, and bug holes common to this local timber. In my searching I also came across a few gnarly boards of Texas walnut that had some beautiful flame figure in them. These came from  an old tree that had been blown over by hurricane Ike.

Figured walnut panels in the headboard

Walnut panels in footboard

Detail

In the end everything worked out well. My friend and his new wife were both very pleased with their new bed.

To understand how the posters on this bed were made see Tapered Octagonal Bedposts.

If you would like to see more of my work please visit My Furniture Gallery. Also, visit my Website.

 

Furniture Legs From Split Turnings

For some, creating objects on the lathe such as bowls, platters, vases, and nonfunctional art is an end in itself. These people are known as turners and they can be quite devoted to their pursuits. My own ambitions for the lathe are much more modest. The lathe is a tool I want to gain enough proficiency with to make parts that can add to my design vocabulary as a furniture maker. For several years I have experimented with incorporating simple split turnings as parts in some of my furniture. I define a split turning as a piece that is spindle turned between centers on the lathe and then split down its length into two (or more) pieces creating parts that are round on one side and  flat on the other. The legs on the table below are examples of what I have described.

I recently made an updated version of this table in Macassar ebony and bubinga, so I thought I would show how I went about making the legs for this new piece and incorporating them into the overall design of the table. As seen in the photo above, there is an upper stretcher that is mortise and tenoned into the legs at the top and a lower stretcher that passes through an open mortise cut in the bottom end of  each leg creating what I call a bridle joint.

One nice thing about split turnings is that they are a two for one deal; one turning gets you two legs. To make two of the legs for this table, I begin with two pieces of lumber 3 1/2″ wide by 1 3/4″ thick by 28″ long. These two pieces glued together will give me turning stock that is 3 1/2″ square in section, but before I glue them together, while my stock is still rectangular in shape, I will first cut the mortises that will later accept the upper and lower stretchers. To cut the open mortises in the bottom end of the legs I make multiple passes through a table saw blade with the help of a tenoning jig. Because the stock is pushed vertically through a saw blade set at 2 3/4″ high, great care must be taken for wood and jig to completely clear the back side of the moving saw blade once each pass is made. The back side of a moving table saw blade is one of the most dangerous places  in the workshop; STAY CLEAR and NEVER attempt this operation without the aid of some kind of tenoning jig.

Next I cut mortises in the upper end of my leg stock using a plunge router and straight-edge guide. These mortises must be centered exactly in the face of the stock and cut 7/8″ deep. I square the rounded ends of the mortises with a chisel.

With mortising completed, the two pieces are ready to be glued together, and here is the trick to being able to split them apart after turning. After applying a thin layer of glue to both pieces, a sheet of newspaper is placed between them, and then they are clamped together. Edges and ends must be clamped perfected flush with one another. Hand screws keep things aligned as clamps are tightened down.After the glue has dried a snug fitting block of wood is cut to fill in the open mortise in the bottom end of the turning stock and a couple of drops of super glue are applied to this block before tapping it into place. A little bit of super glue will hold it in place during the turning but allow the block to be knocked out after the work on the lathe is finished. Now centers can be located in each end of the turning stock and it can be mounted and turned. The turning is very simple for this design, just a straight taper with the finished piece being 3 1/4″  in diameter at the bottom end and 2 1/2″ at the top.

Once the turning and sanding on the lathe are finished the piece can be removed, and the block in the bottom end can be tapped out with a smaller block of wood and a mallet. Now the stock is ready to be split in two. Line up a 1″ wide chisel on the glue line at the top end of the piece and give the chisel a firm tap. The piece will separate pretty easily at the top. Then push the chisel on in, and, using it as a wedge, split the glued up pieces completely apart. A couple of light passes on the jointer and a little sanding will completely remove the newspaper and glue from the flat side of our split turnings and the two pieces are now ready to become table legs with mortises already cut. The photo below shows the split turned legs being dry fitted to upper and lower stretchers.

Here is the base of the table completely assembled.

Here is the finished table. The split turned legs compliment the over all design very nicely.

Click to enlarge these images.

To see more of my work please visit My Furniture Gallery.

 

Tapered Octagonal Bedposts

This is actually a follow-up to my recent post, Shaping And Turning A Tapered Table Leg. I am currently working on a queen-size bed in mesquite and figured walnut where I am employing the same techniques in making the bedposts as I used in creating the tapered table legs. Just hoping to show that these methods have broader applications. Here is a view of the footboard.

After completing the headboard posts I will cap all of them with an ebony finial.

The walnut panels come from lumber I was able to acquire at a local mill. Apparently the walnut tree was blown over during Hurricane Ike. I think these woods are going to be pretty gorgeous once the finish is applied.

Here is a recap of how I made the mesquite octagonal bedposts.

I did the turned elements first before creating the tapered octagon. This way I had more meat on the bedposts during the turning process which made for a little less flexing and vibration on the lathe.

Next I use a pattern to lay out curved tapers on one face of each bedpost.

I carefully bandsaw to the two lines I have drawn. Then I masking tape the waste pieces back to the post, turn it 90 degrees to the face I just cut, lay out my pattern again and bandsaw to these new lines.

I now have bedposts tapered on four faces. Here is how a post looks after I clean up the bandsaw marks with a spokeshave and scrapers.

Placing a post in V blocks, I clamp it to my work bench and create four more tapered facets using hand planes, spoke shave, and a scraper. I go back and forth between two adjacent edges until I get facets that look equal in size to the eye.

Here is a completed octagonal tapered post awaiting an ebony finial that will be attached to its top.

Here is the bed, finished and ready to deliver!

For more about this bed see A Four Poster Bed In Mesquite & Texas Walnut.

To see more of my hand made furniture, please visit My Furniture Gallery. You can also go to my Website to see even more.

 

Shaping And Turning A Tapered Table Leg

(Also see Tapered Octagonal Bedposts.)

(Also see Furniture Legs From Split Turnings)

I don’t usually take the time to photograph all the stages of a work in progress, but the client I made this table for lived 1500 miles away and insisted I email him regular updates on this piece’s construction. Since I had the pics I thought I would show how I made the octagonal tapered legs for this table. These legs are made of wenge, a hard, brittle, splintery African wood that I like for its dark color. What you see in the photo is the natural color of the wood with a clear finish; no staining is involved.

Click to enlarge any of these images.

These legs have a nice neoclassical elegance to them, but one must pay careful attention during the shaping and turning to get pleasing proportions. I begin with a scale drawing and then make a full-size template in 1/4″ material that shows the exact shape of my slightly curved taper.

I start with a leg blank that is 2 3/4″ square in section and 25″ long. Later on I will add a decorative foot made of bubinga with wenge accents. I locate and mark the exact center of each end of the leg and drill a shallow hole on my marks with a bit 1/8″ in diameter or smaller. I will later use these holes to mount the leg on to the lathe. I will also use the hole in the lower end of the leg as a visual guide to keep me on track as I hand plane the tapering facets on the octagonal part of the leg.

I come down 3 3/4″ from the top of the leg and on the table saw cut an 1/8″ deep kerf  all the way around on each face of the leg to mark where my turning will begin. Another 4″ below those cuts I make another series of kerfs to define where the turned portion of the leg will stop. These cuts can be seen in the photo below.

I lay my full-size tapering template on one of the faces of the leg, and, making sure it is exactly centered, I draw the taper on my blank, then bandsaw very carefully just leaving leaving the lines I have drawn. I then masking tape the waste pieces that I just cut off the legs back on to where they were, turn the leg 90 degrees, and, using my template, again draw the taper on this new face and then bandsaw to these lines. I now have a leg that has a slightly curving taper on all four faces.

Using hand planes, scrapers, and sand paper I clean up the bandsaw marks and make sure everything looks smooth and symmetrical. Then I make a couple of V-blocks in 2″ material that will support my leg as I spoke shave and hand plane the four sharp edges of my leg into the other four facets that will create the octagonal shape. I think this photo will explain what I am trying to describe.

Anyone who would like to try making a set of these legs should not be intimidated by the fact that these facets are achieved with hand tools and by eye. With practice and attention to what you are doing, you can make facets that look very close to equal. Properly done, the human eye cannot pick out very slight variations in each bevel. After the octagonal facets are completed and sanded, the leg is mounted on the lathe and the turning is done.

The decorative foot on the leg is made by taking two pieces of bubinga 3/4″ thick, 4″ wide, and 20″ long and gluing them  together face to face with a 1/16″ thick piece of wenge sandwiched between them. After this lamination dries, it is ripped in half down its length, making two pieces of equal width. Between these two is inserted another 1/16″ piece of wenge  running 90 degrees to the first piece and all of this is glued together. I clean this final lamination up into a square turning blank and cross-cut it into two pieces. I mount each new blank onto the lathe and turn the feet two at a time.

A 1″ long round tenon is turned on the end of each foot. The feet are cut apart, and then a hole is drilled in the end of each leg the diameter of the round tenon. The decorative feet are then glued and clamped onto the octagonal legs.

And that is how I made the legs for this table. Hope it all makes sense. This is the first “how-to” I have attempted on my blog. Let me know if anyone would like to see more of this kind of thing. For an update on this post please see Tapered Octagonal Bedposts. Also see Furniture Legs From Split Turnings.

To view more of my furniture, visit My Furniture Gallery.

 

The Passing Of Giants, Sam Maloof And James Krenov

James Krenov (1920-2009)

Photo: Senya Jacobs-Burkin

I recently learned that the incomparable James Krenov died last week. Along with Sam Maloof this year marks the passing of two truly great, hugely influential craftsmen in wood. Others, who really knew these men, will be able to write about them more intimately than I ever could. I knew them only from a distance, primarily through their books, which I poured over with utter devotion when I was younger.

I was just beginning to teach myself some of the basic techniques of woodworking when I stumbled across Krenov’s The Fine Art of Cabinetmaking and The Impractical Cabinetmaker in a public library in the late ‘70’s. Being quite impractical myself, I was totally seduced by the exalted standard of craftsmanship so poetically expressed in these works. Wow! If I could only be disciplined enough and devoted enough, with just a few machines and some well tuned hand planes, I might also make lovely, sensitively wrought objects in wood and find people to give me money for them. Yes, this was how I wanted to make a living!

Like the call of the siren, Krenov’s vision was too irresistible for me. I had no idea what I was doing, and even though I had a young wife with no work experience and a pre-school age daughter, I quit my day job and set off on a holy quest in search of the truth and beauty to be found only in the grain and figure of wood. We were poor, and even though I got work, we got poorer because I was never able to charge enough for what I made because I really wasn’t good enough to charge more.

In the beginning I didn’t even own a jointer or a planer. I made a five-drawer chest for a client out of rough sawn white oak and walnut hand planing all the surfaces front and back with a smoothing plane and jointing all the edges with a jointer plane. Even though I lost my exhausted ass on that and many other projects, I would always return to Krenov’s writings for hope and inspiration. My wife, however, was not at all impressed. With financial help from her father, she entered nursing school hoping to save us from third world poverty, but became pregnant with our second child before she graduated.

She must have been an enabler because she gave me a copy of Sam Maloof Woodworker as a Christmas gift. As I began to read this book and absorb Sam’s take on the craft, however, I could see his approach was very different from Krenov’s. Sam saw no shame in using belt sanders, routers, or steel screws in making his furniture. If he didn’t know how to do something, he came up with his own methods, his own joinery even. He looked sturdy and full of tireless energy. In some of the photos he almost appears to be wrestling his pieces into existence. Being a pretty physical person myself and being self-taught this approach really connected with me.

Sam Maloof (1916-2009)

Photo: Courtesy Sam Maloof

A couple of years later I became a member of The Austin Woodworker’s Guild and our organization brought Sam to Austin for a lecture and slideshow at the University of Texas and then a weekend workshop where he demonstrated how he made his famous rocking chairs. Along with a dozen other people I had dinner with him at a friends home. I sat beside him on a couch before the meal and got to speak with him for about an hour. He was just an incredibly gracious, loving, and precious human being. The man was even greater than his works. He clearly understood that relationships are the most important thing. I will always treasure that evening.

In most areas of endeavor our mentors intend for us to go beyond them, and I know that is what James and Sam would both want from all those they have taught, but I don’t know of anyone in my generation who is having the kind of impact on the future of fine furniture making that these two men have had. Instead, their approach and skills have been multiplied to many. Krenov’s last publication, With Wakened Hands, celebrates the work of some of his students, who are all crafting wonderful objects, and I find this book to be just as inspirational as his earlier writings. Surely we have seen the passing of two giants.

This side table I made a couple of years ago owes a great deal to Krenov both in terms of the care I took in making it and also in the design.

Krenov influenced detail

Though very different in style from a Maloof dining chair, I certainly had Sam in my mind when I was hand sculpting this one. The crest rail at the top of the chair is butt joined, glued, and  screwed just like a Maloof chair. Thank you, Sam.

To see more of my furniture visit My Furniture Gallery.

 

A Podium In Longleaf Pine

I just completed and delivered this podium to the new Stark Center at the University of Texas this past week. It is a companion piece to the conference table I show in my previous post. I was a few days late in getting the podium there, which displeased my clients who needed it to begin lectures for the new fall semester. I really worked overtime to get this project finished on time, but I just could not make it happen.

While this longleaf pine may exhibit a certain old-fashioned charm, it can be very frustrating to work. It constantly gummed up my blades and cutting tools, instantly clogged sandpaper, and had many checks and splits that had to be filled or glued together. I had to resort to the old card scraper and lots of hand sanding to bring things to completion. All turned out well, but it took lots of extra time and plenty of  muttering under my breath to get there.

Click on any image to enlarge.

I joined the curly pine in the center of each panel to the boards on either side with a wavy edge. To accomplish this I created mating  templates in MDF and then used these to route the curvy edges with a pattern bit. The basic technique is described in this article. It worked perfectly. Because much of the wood in both the podium and conference table came from a sinker log pulled from the Sabine River, I wanted the wavy edges, along with the figure of the curly pine, to suggest the rippling flow of moving water.

A back view of the podium shows holes cut in the shelves that will accommodate cables, wires, and an electronic touch panel. An additional adjustable shelf is not shown.

Here is another photo of the companion conference table showing some details in one of the pedestals. The split turnings on either side of the raised curly pine panels are mesquite as is the wedge that locks the trestle in place. This form of construction goes back to at least medieval times and probably much earlier.

About twenty years ago, I made an armoire out of some exceptional pine. The material was clear, low in sappy resin, had beautiful figure, and was a pleasure to work . At the time I had no idea how rare this lumber was. I may never have a chance to work longleaf pine this free of defects again. I made the pulls out of teak.

To see more of my work visit My Furniture Gallery.

 

University of Texas Conference Table

The  Stark Center for Physical Culture and Sports, soon to be opening at the University of Texas at Austin, now has a new conference table. I first began discussions about the table more than a year ago with directors Drs. Terry and Jan Todd, and we determined then that the table should be made of reclaimed longleaf pine in honor of the Stark family, a name closely associated with the University during the first half of the 20th century, and a family who made a significant fortune more than a hundred years ago logging longleaf pine along the Sabine River in Texas and Louisiana.

The base of the table assembles in just a few minutes using interlocking and wedged joints that provide for absolutely rigid construction. Raised panels in the pedestals are curly pine leftover from building one of the Stark family homes in Orange, Texas many decades ago. The split turnings that cap the sides of the pedestals are made of mesquite, another native Texas timber.

The top, made entirely of solid wood,  comes apart down the middle after removing the breadboard ends at either end. The two halves of the top and the breadboard ends are held together with floating tenons and mechanical fasteners installed on the underside. Assembled, the top weighs nearly four hundred pounds. The breadboard ends and the oval inlay in the top are also curly pine.

The slot in the middle of the top accomodates computer and media cables. I am currently building a podium to accompany this table. Anyone living in or visiting Austin, Texas who is interested in the history of sport should be sure to visit the Stark Center for an informative and entertaining experience.

You can click on any image to enlarge it. To see more of my work, please go to My Furniture Gallery.

 

Molly’s Table

A few years ago I had the privilege of  building a dining table and set of chairs for the late, great political observer and journalist, Molly Ivins. Although Molly was well known in political circles and filled in occasionally for Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes, she struck me as being somewhat shy and reserved though very smart. She lived in a modest cottage in what has become one of south Austin’s trendier neighborhoods.I think Molly only began to consider her personal interior design late in life. Anyway, I had a pretty blank canvas to work with. She liked the Blues Box when she saw my portfolio, so we decided to use the same materials in her table, curly maple and bubinga. I did get some inspiration for the design from a couple of Art Deco tables I had seen, but unlike most Deco furniture, which is highly veneered, this table is entirely of solid wood.

Molly's Table

The photograph is bad, I know, but it is the only one I ever got of a piece I have a special fondness for. I liked the energy and presence of this table; reminds me of a plant in bloom. You can click on the image to enlarge it and get a better view.

Fortunately, when I was making Molly’s chairs, I made an extra one for myself. The chairs were quite lovely with the table (my unbiased opinion), so I will try to post some photos of one of them sometime soon. To see more of my furniture, go to My Furniture Gallery.

 

My Photo Shoot (kinda)

My three youngest children (they are actually young adults, now, but still live at home with us) all have special needs- autism and developmental delays, and one of them, our adopted Russian daughter, Lena, had a serious reaction to some medication she had been taking. It resulted in five pretty sleepless, exhausting days for all of us and translated into almost no progress on the conference table I am supposed to have ready in the very near future. I am tired, financially stressed, and the temperature in my shop is exceeding 100 degrees every afternoon. Such is the romantic, fulfilling life of the craftsman. Thank God, though, for family, friends, fans (the kind that move air), and good doctors.

One nice thing happening is a feature article on my work that is to appear in the next issue (July 2009) of Custom Woodworking Business Magazine. One of their writers, Brad Walseth, contacted me a few weeks ago, and we began putting it together at a leisurely pace (well, at least for me; Brad is the one doing the real work). Then he called me on my cell phone yesterday afternoon as we were bringing our daughter home from the doctor, and said they wanted a photo of my furniture for the cover. Wow! That sounded exciting; but it couldn’t be a studio shot or have a neutral background. They wanted something in a room setting, and they needed it in less than 24 hours.

I emailed him four worthy candidates out of my iPhoto library, and with a quiet smile, awaited his choice. They were all rejected- not the right style, too blurry, more vertical and less horizontal. Not to be done out of my glory, I woke up this morning, got out my little tripod and my Olympus point and shoot, and waited for the sun to get around on the right side of the house. Then I dusted and decluttered the living room and went to work shooting some of the eclectic collection of things I have made that are in my own home.

These are what I sent the magazine, and, you know, photographers work hard, and that’s why they make the big bucks, and I still haven’t heard anything back. OK, these probably aren’t cover quality shots, but this is what I spent my day doing, and I insist that someone look at my pictures! Above is a little writing desk of wenge with curly maple accents. The chair is curly maple with bubinga back slats. Click to enlarge the images. To see more examples of my work go to My Furniture Gallery.

This piece is in walnut with cocobolo pulls, my homage to the antique armoires of the past. Tomorrow it’s back to the salt mines and the Texas summer heat.

 

Art Cabinet

ART CABINET

I made this manuscript cabinet a few years ago, but this is the first time it has been published on the Internet. It was a collaborative project between my good friend, Kathleen Marie Wilson and myself. Kathleen is a technically gifted professional artist with a great love for the natural world, a deep commitment to the environment, and a passion for her art. She burned all the images into the wood with various wood burning pens and then came back and highlighted certain details with Prismacolors. The entire piece was then sealed with a protective high tech lacquer.

Our client is a doctor and avid naturalist with a great love of birds. He owns an impressive collection of John James Audubon prints, which are housed in the flat file sized upper drawers, while rare books are stored in the lower section. Some of the prints are three feet by four feet, dictating a large footprint for the cabinet. The design challenge was to create a piece that could accommodate the largest prints without appearing too massive. You can see more views of this piece by going to the Art Cabinet page. Primary woods are walnut and pecan with wenge and mesquite accents. Click to enlarge these images. To see more examples of my furniture, visit My Furniture Gallery.