Beech; a good wood.

Beech, in my books, is an underrated wood. It doesn't cost a lot, it's not all that flashy, but it has that kind of simple beauty I seem to prefer. The above picture is a beech coffee table that is 3/4's finished. I've also got a desk, a chair, and a side table in mind...maybe after all of that I'll be in beech overload! I've also been thinking about making a plane or two that I might add to my arsenal...

Drawing Things...with a PENCIL!!!

I saw a neat table by Tomoko Azumi that uses a semi-Japanese joint (it's not really super traditional or super functional, but nice nonetheless) to join the skirt and legs of a table together. It's basically a 3 member joint, with the curveball that the legs are titled at a slight angle. I drew it up in Sketchup to let the computer do the hard math, but while dimensioning it I wasn't happy with the visual appearance of the drawing I'd have to work with to actually layout and cut the joints. I redrew it, which you see above, and I kind of liked the process of trying to get my head around what is hidden, what is visible, and where things are pretty much the same, but not quite the same. Overall a good experience and a good chance to get off the computer and do some designing in the real world. I kind of like the drawing too...it's got something nice about it going on...

Revisited

I had built this coffee table about a year ago, and it was neat to see it again.

It's sort of nice to see your work still vibrantly existing in the universe. It was a special piece of wood and a nice thing to see it still looking great.

Show Pictures

Sam...

George...

...and James...

So the show went real well last night. My friend Peter did the three great drawings of Sam Maloof, George Nakashima, and James Krenov that you can see above and I had some new pieces as well. The table below came from my friend Mohrgan's tree and is a fabulous bookmatched set from a crotch of his Maple tree.

I'm getting my head around the butterfly joint and I'm getting confident in making them nice and tight. I used some Jatoba for the butterflies and I really like the colour match with the maple. Speaking of colour, the Padauk desk seen below came out really well.

Padauk is a wood most people don't know about and it's funny how many people asked me how I stained the top to get it that colour. Stain is not really something I use very often (or ever really) and it's funny to see the perplexed look on peoples' faces when I tell them that that's what the real colour is. So all in all a good night, and a special thanks to all of you who made it out!

Walnut Table Done (mostly)

...and finally, a fully built, legs on, right-side up table:

Now I just need to put on a couple more coats of oil, take the legs off, move it, and put the legs back on! Simple.

Walnut Side Table

I finished this walnut side table a couple months ago, but never got a chance to take a good picture. I just sanded it and wiped on some oil so I thought I'd better pull out my camera. Amazing curl and colours in this piece...just wonderful wood.

Levitating Table

Okay Matt, enough with all the pictures of your Spiers smoother...

...and a new shot of the table with the legs magically attached:

Like a well oiled...

...walnut table! Well, it's not quite well oiled yet, there's only one coat on, but you really get a great sense of the walnut contrast to the sapwood and the curly maple butterflies. Here's half oil, half no oil:

...and the full monty:

..and a close up of one of the butterflies:

Even More Walnut Table

I worked on putting in some butterfly joints today and they came out really well. I got to use my "punisher" mallet which was a lot of fun too!

I still need to track down a router plane to help smooth the bottom of my mortises and rabbets, overall I was quite happy with the way the curly maple butterflies turned out.

And here's the wide shot:

Walnut Table Update

I've been working on jointing a walnut table and got some good use out of my 5 1/2 Bailey. Sharpening has always been a weak point in my plane skills, but today everything seemed to be working just right.

After all that planing I got a shot that nicely summarized all that hard work. I had already made a new handle for this plane, but I just added the new "knob" after I got a blister the other day. A bit of a different design, but I'm really liking it so far. The plane's now definitely right handed, but it's a lot more comfortable and it fits my hands a lot better. Taking the time to make things fit is definitely worth it.

And here's the table top ready to be glued up with some biscuit joints.

Wonderful Walnut

I got some great looking walnut slabs in today that will be turned into a dining room table and some benches. These pieces are right from the center of the tree and are just amazingly clear. Wonderful pieces of wood, but they pretty much take up my whole shop ;)

I still need to figure out what pieces go into what things, but I couldn't resist planing down one end of a slab to see how things would turn out.

After a couple minutes with my 5 1/2 and my Spiers (and a rub of tung oil) I wound up with something like this:

Pass the Sketchup

Yesterday I put together the legs for that little table I've been working on and I think it's turning out pretty well. A couple more coats of oil and then I'll paper the kumiko frame and put a piece of glass to act as a table top.

On a completely different note I wanted to describe a setting in Google Sketchup that I Iike. I use sketchup for my CAD because 1) I'm a Mac user and there is approximately zero good Mac CAD software, and 2) It's free! So when you draw things they normally end up looking like this:

Which is nice, but kind of static and too computery, too perfect perhaps. So there's this setting under the styles menu that let's you render the image with a marker, hand-drawn style that looks really, well, hand-drawn.

I don't know what it is exactly, but the marker style just seems a little nicer to me. More fluid, not some rigid computer generated thing. The way you present information is really important, something I keep learning over and over.

Tables and Signs

I've been getting into woodcarving a little bit lately and I got to practice on a chalkboard sign for my favourite cafe. I basically carve out the letters, brush on some ink, then sand everything down to clean up any ink that's spread over the edge of the letters. It's a pretty easy technique, but I like the rustic look it gives to the lettering. It's obviously handmade, imperfect, and kind of beautiful...just the way I like it.

I've also been working on a table top with that maple tree my friend had cut down last fall. I've been handplaning it and I've gotten to use my new Spiers smoother a bit. It's a great tool, but I've got to get a new blade before it will reach it's full potential. The other item of note was that I hand cut the edges of the table using a ryoba handsaw, which was an interesting experience to say the least. I never thought of wax as a necessary item in a woodshop, but now I'm waxing my planes, my saws, and just about anything else that moves!

Poplar, Joints, and Uwe Senka

I just finished up a new lamp and some tables. I'm starting to use Japanese paper and I have to say that I'm really enjoying it as a material. 

This side table is based on the Fibonacci spiral. Usually I don't like things like this, but I think this  table is really nice and simple. One for all the math geeks out there.

Finally, this coffee table is made of poplar and beech. I had never used beech before and I really liked it for this table. After gluing the top together I hand planed it, one of the more challenging skills I'm still working on. The corners have some nice joinery and the bracing underneath takes some inspiration from my guitar building work.