Cherry table and stuff

First off I want to wish all a Happy Holiday, for us it’s Christmas, but irrespective, it’s a good time to think of others and help those less fortunate than ourselves, and remember to help the animal shelters, the critters need love and attention as does all of us..but they depend on us…help them out, make ya heart feel good.

Here is the cherry table I did, we have to hinge the back leaf, but you can see how it works, not sure who or why the table was made this way, but it was different, and like me, the client found it interesting, so we made it. It’s all hand planed and glazed to give it that old look. Thought you would enjoy seeing it. Also, photos of the completed Shaker sewing stands made out of tiger maple. For those of you following the show, this is the color we will be using on the corner cabinet… it’s the number one color for tiger maple, I love it!

This has been a very interesting and busy year and 2010 is shaping up to be no different. Looks like we might get a few days off here and looking forward to that, but I feel sure I will be in the shop doing some things I’ve been looking forward to. I mentioned in the newsletter that woodworking is still my hobby and my passion..love it!

Again have a blessed and safe Holiday.

Writing today

well finally got to my newsletter , writing to day…, got all shoveled out, hope that does it for the year , shoveling snow is like eating something super sweet , doesnt take alot to get enough…later, writing hard

Snow and More Snow

Its midday Saturday , sitting here at home watching it snow, we got about 20 inches on the ground and still coming hard , other areas have 26+ , and still coming , every now and then we get one of these , but its been a while , but we are well supplied and remember well as a kid getting snows like this quite often, as i look out the window , its almost a white out , had to go shovel the dogs , a bathroom, ….they were quite grateful, they are inside watching it as well and quite restless, the yellow retriver with his thick coat, wants everyone to go play in it , he thinks its cool, the Red Bone coon Hound with his short hair and thin skin, isnt so excited, hes fine curled up on a warm bed , and watching , so for now , its just let it snow, and tomorrow we shovel and clean snow..it will require a backhoe or big plow to get the main drive …but we will manage .
In the mean time ..its just chill out, rest , and let it snow….keep the coffe pot going, and something hot on the stove …

later ya’ll

bubinga table and other stuff

It’s that time of year, slamming to get projects done and completed so we can have a little time over the holidays, been hard at it. I’ve about got the bubinga table completed as well I am working on a unique cherry table that is being made to look old, so i simply hand plane all the surfaces then a light scrape and a little hand sanding. Here are a few photos of where both projects are at at this point and the corner cabinet we are doing in the show….hope to have more up as we progress along.

Saturday hope you get in the shop

Its saturday morning , sitting here at my bench , laptop and having a cup of coffee ( or 10) , getting ready to stand my bubinga base for the table , got the top sanded and one coat of seal a cell oil on it to pop it , now its time to get some topcoats on it , I will anxious to see your opinion of the cherry/bubinga contrast.
I have already mortised my legs , and cut the tenons , but I ran a small bead on the bottom of the aprons , and as well I have the aprons setting back from the leg approx 1 /4 of an inch , to create a revel , so before I assemble this , I want to get the aprons scraped and sanded….Bubinga scrapes better than it sands, but I have to tell you this , we put this top thru the big drum sander up to 120, Bubinga likes to burn easily , on a drum sander…so getting to 120 was great, going any further , would be tough , it all depends on how much mineral and resin the wood has , when you see the table , the top we got to 120, the front apron 80 was it, with 120 , no matter how light the pass it burned , so we scraped it with a card scraper and a stanley 80 hand scraper…then sanded it to 180 , normally you will go thru sand paper like crazy , on super hard woods like this, or brazzilian cherry , and the like, these woods make hard maple look soft , believe me, tough stuff , but beautiful… anyway we sanded everything first with a litle 120 , then finished it out with some 180 , we used the white rhyno sandpaper from Industrial abrasives , and one sheet of 5 ” paper did the entire table , and is still going strong…no Joke ..I could not believe it , and we had the top sanded in about an hour …This may not sound like alot to you , but if you have ever sanded and sanded , and changed paper constant on something like this , then you understand…I am just beside myself as to how well this did , amazing…I was working on the aprons and Ed was sanding some , he kept coming out and saying , you got to see this , I cant believe this , you got to tell them about this , so here ya are…
Ok well my coffee is getting cold , cause I been typing, Sherri is off with her sister , so its just me , and Ed here , the contractor he works for full time , just ran out of work, first time in about 15 years…so I got Ed’s back here…we got work, and some extra help here to get caught up is a good thing, so we do what we have to do , just how it needs to be . ok another coffee , and start assembling…later yall…hope you get some shop time this weekend

Bubinga Table …Stretching wood

Don’t let the title fool ya, hard as one may try, making wood longer is not a real doable thing although sometimes we can get a little “creative”. The whole reason for banding this table is to make it larger. We have some really nicely figured Bubinga and we want a nice simple period table, tapered legs , not fancy and not contemporary. So we want to band it with a subtle compliment. The walnut was just not making it so we had decided to use some tiger maple, that was looking good, but was too much contrast. Dying it and maintaining the 1/8″ inlay would be all but impossible. Dye will bleed from the tiger to the hard maple. The glue line will help seal it off but it still bleeds and a blotchy inlay isn’t what we want so we want something that we can go natural with. I then remembered some nice figured curly cherry I had, so I went and got it, immediately I liked it. As the cherry ages and darkens a bit the subtleness will be more so, again, a nice contrast but not drastic. I would usually go for a more dramatic contrast, but not here, for the setting it will be in nor for a simplistic table such as this.

The next challenge I faced was that I did not have enough Bubinga for the balance of the table. I had purchased some for leg stock and aprons but it was just straight grained Bubinga, but I had a plan. What I did was I veneered the legs after tapering them with some 3/32” shop made veneer ( re-sawed and drum sanded), but it had to be applied with polyurethane glue, not fun. I had to do the tapered sides one side at a time, the straight sides I could glue the veneer to two legs by clamping them back to back (wax paper in between), took some time and a lot of scraping, cleaning each side before gluing, took some time but I got them all done and they look super and match the table grain better. I had a smaller section of the old original countertop that I was able to get the veneer out of , and another 3″ wide piece that was 1 ½” thick, so I re-sawed it and book matched it, that will make the front apron and the counter top also yielded enough for me to get two drawer fronts out of, I will use the straight Bubinga for the side aprons and the back, but I plan to give the table nice 6″ overhangs on the sides, so the “regular ” Bubinga will be tucked in under the top, in the shadows, so to speak, but the front and all the “show” area will be figured , so we had to do a little creative thinking and wood stretching here…but we got it…. Today I will bread board the top, and hopefully get the base standing, and move on now that we have all the wood made, tomorrow we will see how it’s progressing.

Bubinga Table

Wanted to share some photos from the client of the Huntboard and ClothesPress in their new home.

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Time to back up and re-think, I just don’t care for the walnut and the bubinga, not enough contrast and pop. This bubinga is beautiful, the walnut by comparison is dead, soooooooooooooo, with the client’s permission I’m going to band it in some tiger maple, that will get it screaming “Charles Neil” style. Yep, means I cut all this off and start over. It isn’t the first time and doub’t it will be the last. I have never let some extra work stand in the way of delivering the best I could, so here are a few shots of a small area so you can see what i mean…and when you read this it will gone from this table and the tiger maple will be in process…later

Bubinga Table

Mornin’!

Some of you will recall a while back we removed a bubinga counter top that had cupped and warped and replaced it with one properly made and finished…. The counter top we removed which was all cupped and twisted is being salvaged it to make the client a table for his office and that is one of the projects I’m working on this week.

Yesterday I did a lot of hand planing to get the twist out. I had stripped the top to open the wood up and allow it to equalize to the unfinished bottom (which was the issue that caused it to cup and twist in the first place) a lot of the cup came out. The slab was 1 3/8″ thick to start with. By the time I put it through the drum sander using 36 grit paper to get the twist out and bring it to a flat level plane, I ended up with approx 1″ thick material. Great thickness for a desk top.

Now, to get the width and length we want 30″ X 72″, we will need to do some “adding “. So what I am going to do is add some walnut edges and a white maple inlay, (tomorrow’s blog) … to bring the top to where we need it to be. After that it’s then on to the base.

The top you are looking at is drum sanded to 80 grit so it has a ways to go to get smooth. I will do the top and then finish it out as a whole, this is a super nice figured piece of bubinga, and I am certainly glad we will be able to save it and make it gorgeous again

Monday again

It has been a snowy, cold weekend, and i didn’t do alot of anything. Had to rest up a bit, but today I’m going full tilt back to some more projects. One will be a bubinga table with a white maple and walnut border. We will have to get a little creative to do this….we cant just band it as it will not allow for expansion and contraction, so we will have to do a bread board ends…I will take you along as we do it, it’s not a difficult table, tapered legs and a couple drawers…but should be quite nice. This morning I have to process the bubinga, which is pretty heavy, but we can handle it. I just wanted to drop in and let you know we are working hard and will have some additional posts in a day or so, as well, this is newsletter week, so stay tuned

Clothes Press & Huntboard

Well, I must say that we accomplished a lot in only three days of building on the Bombe! Yesterday I spent the day putting together some previous pieces that we had been posting on the blog – the Huntboard and the Clothes Press. Sherri wants a Clothes Press now, she said it is the most awesome piece I’ve ever made. I don’t know about that, but it is pretty cool. The piece has concealed openings and lots of hidden compartments, turned out pretty good if I say so myself and it is a really fun piece of furniture. I had fun building it too. This was a piece made from a photograph in a book, all the little extra things like the concealed doors and hidden compartments, I added myself and it was fun.

So here they are finished and they will be spending the night in their new home!

So, it’s Friday, had a pretty hectic week and I’m ready for a little down time, think I might call it an early day today and take a breather! Need a haircut so we can film some more for the show…..having a great time doing that as well. Next week we’ll get the December Newsletter out so if you haven’t subscribed, now is the time, it’s free and you can subscribe from our web site.

Mid next week we’ll be starting some new projects – looking forward to sharing as we go along. Later!