Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Blog

Table For One Drink

2012-01-01T19:22:00.015-05:00

Happy New Year!!! Here's a very small custom end table I completed last month for a customer in New York City. He wanted a table with a top only large enough to hold one drink. The base is carved cherry, a smaller variation on a side table I did years ago. The table is 19" high, and the top is a 5" x 8" oval in dark green Vermont Verde Antique marble from Rochester, Vermont.

I really love this verde marble. It only comes from one spot in Vermont, a small quarry in Rochester, right over the mountain from me. It has beautiful rich green tones, with lots of depth and detail when taken to a fine polish. I'm totally hooked on it, so stay tuned for more designs from me using this marble.

Click the images to enlarge.

www.DavidHurwitzOriginals.com

8th Annual Vermont Fine Furniture and Woodworking Festival

2011-10-02T19:27:00.014-04:00

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers participated in the Vermont Fine Furniture and Woodworking Festival as they have done for the past eight years.

The show was held at the Union Arena at Woodstock High School on September 24^th and 25^th. The spacious Guild booth displayed the newest and finest work made by the top furniture makers living and working in Vermont. Many of the Guild members from around the state brought their custom furniture to display, including George Ainley, Jas. Becker, Hugh Belton, Dave Boynton, Kit Clark, Johns Congdon, Chris Ericson, Bob Gasperetti, Erin Hanley, William Laberge, Mario Messina and Walt Stanley.

Top Honors: first, second and third in the Festival's Design Competition, Custom and Studio Furniture Category went to Guild members.

Johns Congdon of Charlotte, VT was awarded First Place for his Alienor Desk. Johns wife, Giovanna Brunini Congdon, designed the desk, Johns built the desk. The desk is named for the famed Alienor of Aquitaine, a powerful woman of the Middle Ages. The desk uses a strong and elegant sculptural silhouette utilizing intensely figured Sapele Pomelle veneer to make its statement. Johns used traditional mortise and tenon and dovetailed construction and applied the finish of shellac polished with wax. The piece is accented with custom solid silver pulls and feet.

First Place - Johns Congdon's Alienor Desk

Johns Congdon's Alienor Desk Close-up

Mario Messina of Fairfax, VT was awarded Second Place for his Japanese inspired Abacus-Soroban Table. The table is constructed with mitered dovetails, mortise and tenon and breadboard joinery. Mario chose the combination of Spalted Maple, ebonized Mahogany, Wenge and granite beach pebbles for his award-winning table.

Second Place - Mario Messina's Abacus-Soroban Table

Mario Messina's Ababus-Soroban Table Close Up

David Hurwitz of Randolph, VT was awarded Third Place for his State of Craft Console Table. David’s design of this piece included the use of carved Vermont Ash, painted Poplar and Tamo, Japanese Quilted Ash for the top. David was invited to exhibit a piece in the “State of Craft” exhibit at the Bennington Museum in 2010 and this was the piece he built for that exhibit.

Third Place - David Hurwitz's State of Craft Console Table

David Hurwitz's State of Craft Console Table Close Up

In addition to placing work for display in the Guild booth, several members had a booth featuring just their furniture. Members with individual booths include: Jas. Becker, Timothy Clark, Janet A. Collins, David Hurwitz, Bob Gasperetti, William Laberge, Maguire Family Furniture Makers, Charles Shackleton and Walt Stanley.

In spite of the sagging economy and recent storm damage in Vermont, the Eighth Annual Fine Furniture and Woodworking Festival was a success for the members of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers, not only in capturing First, Second and Third place in the Design Competition, but also in the number of sales reported and orders received for custom pieces of furniture.

Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Facebook Page

2011-08-23T21:45:00.001-04:00

Become a friend of the Guild on Facebook..........

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Guild-of-Vermont-Furniture-Makers/156352884444866?sk=wall

Guild Show of New Work and Furniture in Brattleboro

2011-08-23T20:19:00.010-04:00

What has become an annual show for the Guild members is now under way at the Vermont Artisan Designs and Gallery 2 in Brattleboro, VT. Several members of the Guild have new work on display throughout the month of August and September. The exhibit includes walnut and cherry mirrors, cherry side chairs, cherry and ash side chairs,walnut queen size bed, Shaker style clocks, walnut rocking chair and curly maple rocking chairs, cherry, walnut and maple side tables, walnut coffee tables, standing cabinets and maybe even a sideboard! All pieces are available for sale and each maker can build that special piece in your choice of wood; cherry, maple, ash, walnut, curly maple or a combination of woods.

Here are just a few of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers participating in this year's show:

Chris Ericson of South Newfane, VT has created this original upholstered queen-size bed for this year's show. A quick visit to the gallery is advised if interested in this custom made bed as the bed he made for the show last year sold early! Tim Clark of Waltham, VT has his signature cherry and ash side chair on display at the show. Bob Gasperetti of Mount Tabor, VT has placed a rocking chair and hall table in the show.The McGuire Family Furniture Makers of Isle La Motte, VT have included table and chairs and their signature Shaker curly maple clocks. In addition, there will be one lucky person that will walk away with a free mirror! Visitors to the gallery are asked to vote for "best in show" and a drawing from the entries will be made at the close of the show.

Plan on visiting the Guild Show on the first Friday of the month for the next Gallery Walk on September 2nd.

Please visit the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Summer Exhibit which is open from August 5 to September 22, 2011. The Vermont Artisan Designs & Gallery 2 is located at 106 Main Street, Brattleboro, VT. 802-257-7044.

Compass Star Inlay

2011-07-10T20:27:00.010-04:00

Ever since my days as a student of furniture making, I have been intrigued by the Compass Star or as some say, Compass Rose inlay. As a student, I remember spending many a spare moment at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, standing in front of the tall mahogany secretary desk adorned with several inlaid compass stars. This form of inlay, originated in England, was popular between 1730-1750. It was first introduced in Boston, Charlestown to be exact, by a cabinetmaker named Ebenezer Hartshorn. Probate records have Ebenezer working as a cabinetmaker between 1729 and 1743. It was his secretary desk that I stood at, in awe of the inlay into the mahogany doors of the case.
My first attempt at this style of inlay as a student and I remember it took me a full 8 hours to complete,and that didn't include the prep of the material. I have since become a bit faster and it now only takes me about 2.5 hours to inlay one star the same size as the first (7" x 12").
The inlay material is traditionally holly and rosewood, two distinctly different colors, perfect for the contrast. Over the years I have tried many combinations of contrasting wood. A suggestion is to use two contrasting wood of the same hardness/density. The inlay material is prepared by planing the two contrasting woods to the same thickness and gluing them together. The center line of the two becomes one of your references when inlaying the wood.
The strips are ripped on the table saw, with a zero clearance insert, and wooden push stick to safely push the pieces past the blade. I also use a 1/16" thick sawblade to cut down the amount of kerf waste.
The layout of the compass star is just geometry. North & South, and East and West compass star rays are perpendicular and NE, NW, SE & SW are 45 degrees. Draw a circle with a compass to determine the inner circle of inlay.
Use the dividers to measure one half the thickness of the compass star stock and mark that dimension on each side of the compass cardinal and ordinal directions.
Use the same dividers to set the length of the rays of the compass star.

I use a scalpel,actually a post-mortem knife to scribe the lines to determine the area to be excavated and receive the inlay.
Pictured below are the low tech (Stanley 271 router plane, the way I did the first compass star) and medium high tech (Dremel with router base attached) way to excavate the area to receive the inlay. I guess the high tech way would be a CNC machine.
I use my scalpel to completely excavate the area that the Dremel bit can't get into. The excavated area becomes the template for cutting the inlay to fit. Remember the center line of the stock lines up with the cardinal and ordinal points.
I use a sharp chisel or plane iron to cut the stock close to the line.
And, I use a block plane to cut the point to make an exact fit.
I glue one section in place before I go to the next, leaving a section in the center unexcavated to prevent the delicate background area between the points of the compass from collapsing.
Inlaying one compass point at a time.

The photos above were taken by me to accompany the text for an article I wrote for WoodenBoat Magazine published in the 2008 May/June Issue. The article has much more in depth description of the process of inlaying a compass rose. The background wood in the above images is mahogany and the inlay is holly and rosewood.

The photo below is a compass star that I put on a desktop for a piece I recently made for a client. The desk is cherry and the inlay is holly and rosewood.I will be teaching a one day workshop on Inlay for Furniture Making, August 13th at Dartmouth College's Woodworking Studio located at the Hopkins Center, Hanover, NH. Use this link for more details.http://hop.dartmouth.edu/calendar/summer-woodworking-at-dartmouth

Please visit my personal website: www.jacwoodworking.com to see my work and more examples of inlay that I have used in my furniture making.

A Different Twist on Marketing

2011-07-08T19:24:00.002-04:00

In February, we participated at the Designer Craftsman Show and Historic Home Show in Philadelphia. While there, we met another exhibitor from Vermont, Connor Homes, who told us about an interesting show they did last year and suggested we apply for admission. It turns out it was an antique show, and the promoter had established an area called "New Traditions". Based on our interests in antiques and our background in that field, this was an interesting opportunity. A show promoter, whom we have worked with in the past from lower Connecticut, was attempting to incorporate antiques and reproductions in one show, but to date has not been successful. The show in Maine is the 30th Annual Maine Antiques Festival, August 12-14, in Union, Maine. If you are in the area on those dates, please stop in and say hello! We will be focusing on 18th century and Shaker Chairs at the show.

Furniture Making Techniques

2011-07-02T09:03:00.013-04:00

We held our Guild summer meeting last Saturday, June 25th at my shop in Ryegate. The weather was nice and several members made the long journey to the Northeast Kingdom (or Southern Canada as some might say!) for the meeting. One interesting and inspiring aspect of our meetings is when members share and demonstrate a technique they use to build or design their custom furniture. Most of us work in our shops by ourselves and sometimes struggle to come up with a way to get a job done quickly and efficiently while maintaining the quality and craftsmanship (speaking for myself, at least!). These demonstrations not only teach us a new technique or a variation of one we already use, but also serve as a reminder that each of us has had to problem solve and there is so much we can learn from each other. In the past we have had demonstrations by Mario Messina on the bent lamination technique he uses to create his Cephalopod Lamps. Dan Mosheim has demonstrated how he uses his CNC when building his custom furniture such as his custom cherry bed with inlay. Bob Gasperetti hosted the Guild meeting soon after building his new shop compete with an expansive finishing room and showroom of his custom cherry, walnut and figured maple furniture. At Saturday’s meeting, the Guild’s newest member, Hugh Belton of Woodstock gave us a demonstration of the two-part router fixture he designed to make chair backs that are concave from side to side and convex from top to bottom in a single operation.

Hugh has graciously supplied the following text and photos of his ingenious fixture and his custom walnut dining chairs. “Chair backs that are constructed this way are more comfortable to sit back against than those that are flat or only curve in one dimension. Typically, I start with a chair-back blank that is 14" long, 7" wide, and 3" thick. The wood is centered in the box with matching curved sides and secured so that it cannot move during the routing operation. The router, preferably a plunge router, is secured to the second component of the jig.

It is best to use a spiral down cutting router bit and cut no more that 1/4" at a time to minimize tear-out. The final pass should be 1/16" again to minimize tear-out. Be sure that the router bit is long enough to cut both ends of the chair back, which will require the greatest depth of cut. Depending on the depth of cut in both dimensions, you may have to raise the chair-back blank after some of the wood is removed. With experience you can bandsaw some of the wood away before placing it in the jig to speed up the operation. This router technique can be used to produce curved fronts on much larger pieces of furniture.

Be sure to wear ear protection, a dust mask, and a face shield when performing this procedure and always unplug the router from its power source when changing or adjusting the router bit.”

Walnut Dining Chair

To see the extensive body of work Hugh has created over the years, please visit his website www.hughbelton.com

Cherry Trestle Table with End Leaves

2011-06-25T07:59:00.001-04:00

I just finished this table yesterday and am now sitting and waiting for the shippers to get here to take it to California. Ok, I am working on the computer. You caught me.

Below is a shot of the table with the end leaves attached. It is 6' long without leaves and 8' long with the leaves. The challenge of this project was to make the method of attaching the slides work well, be strong, and look great. I think I succeeded on this one. My feeling is that, I hate to cut a table in two in order to have it extend. I like the main table to be rock solid on its own. That is why I like the idea of end leaves.

The darker strip of wood is the breadboard end that is part of the table itself. The leaf is shaped to mate to the convex surface of the breadboard end.

The hollowed edge of the leaf is designed to mate to the convex edge of the end of the main table.

Here, you can see the keyed saddle joint that holds the leaf firmly in place.

This shows the leaf support slides in their resting position, with the leaves off.

Here is the table without the leaves with one of my New Waltham side chairs.

You can see more about this table at my website including a few videos showing how the leaves go on.

Have a good one,

Tim

Timothy Clark

Cabinetmaker/Chairwright

TimothyClark.com

News from the front lines of the upholstery world

2011-06-04T11:11:00.006-04:00

I just heard some shocking news about a man who fell into an upholstery machine. He's now fully recovered.

www.DavidHurwitzOriginals.com

A Carved Cherry Coat Rack and a new Cherry Dining Table with Glass Top

2011-04-08T19:16:00.017-04:00

Well, my carved "Taffy" theme continues. I just completed a commission for a couple in Texas, for a wall hung coat rack in carved and painted cherry, that takes the carved taffy concept of my mirror frames, tables and lamps in a more sculptural direction. It has a waterproof top coat, 48" long and mounts on the wall with two hidden clips on the back. This coat rack replaces a more typical Shaker style coat rack they had, which was basically a rectangular board with wooden pegs sticking out of it.

I also recently completed a new dining table design, in cherry with a tinted glass top. The top is 1/2" thick x 48" diameter with a polished edge and tempered. Is was a custom commission for a home on the waterfront in South Burlington, Vermont.

Both of these pieces are made of FSC certified sustainably harvested cherry.

Here are some shots (click them to enlarge):

www.DavidHurwitzOriginals.com

Afghanistan Order

2011-02-18T13:17:00.006-05:00

One of our most interesting orders for a table came to us in an email from Afghanistan. A U.S. Army Captain emailed a request for our Canterbury Shaker Tiger Maple table. Initially, because we receive emails every day from every country in the world requesting products, and asking for us to send them our email address, we dismissed this as a hoax. Only after mentioning that he would like the table shipped to his wife in Florida did we consider this to be legitimate. After working out all of the details through email, the order was finalized. We promised the table would be delivered before Christmas. The blanket wrap service assured us they would be able to deliver before Christmas, but because it was a company that we had never used before, and blanket wrap deliveries can be delayed, and the fact that we promised the table before Christmas, we decided to make the delivery ourselves so that we were assured it arrived as promised. We had another table and 8 chairs that had to go to Georgia, so we combined the two orders and had 2 very pleased customers.

6' Bench on Schedule, making it right.

2011-01-17T10:30:00.001-05:00

I have a hole in my work schedule due to needed mattress dimensions from a client, so this gave me a chance to get a project done on time for another client's desired delivery date for their party. So far, I am on schedule.

I don't consider myself to be a very compulsive person but in some ways I guess I can be. When something is not right in my work, I do everything that I can to make it right. I had to throw out the first crest rail that I made for this bench. I rushed the drilling and neglected to look at my notes from past jobs. This resulted in a rail that would have been passable but would not have given the spindles the grace that they should have. So, out came the glue-up jig again and I made a new one.

Then.... after the bench had its first coat of oil on, I noticed some blemishes due to incomplete sanding on the seat. (many times things are visible after oiling that are not visible before) I consulted some friends about the look who said it was fine but I really hate to let things like that go. I really noticed it, so last night I took the whole seat down to bare wood again with 40grit paper and bringing it back to 220. It had to be done last night in order to meet the delivery date. Now it looks great.

For me, the extra work is worth it since the reward is being able to deliver a piece that has my full confidence. I sleep better too.

Below are some shots showing a stack of cherry veneers (you can see the edge of the log on the left side of this first shot) . The veneers are sawn into strips and then glued and clamped over a jig to form a rail with matching grain and great strength.

arm rail, just off the glue jig

seat blank, drilled for spindles, before shaping

finding the right splay for the end spindles

adding spindles, first two, then one at a time, unlike a chair that gets them all at once. This is actually easier than a chair because I can leave it unfinished to go have dinner or run an errand.

grinding the seat down to bare wood and below blemishes.

The seat after finish sanding for the second time. Ready for oil, again. (the line in the middle is a shadow)

I forgot to mention that this was a custom bench. The client asked to have the bench as shallow (front to back) as I could make it in order to fit in a specific space. I took an inch off of the depth and I actually like the look. It did not suffer for it. I may make them this way in the future.

Well, we have great snow here today and warmer temps. Later this morning my wife, kid and I will head off to go snowboarding at the Middlebury College Snow Bowl.

Have a good one,
Tim TimothyClark.com

The "Trick or Treat" bed

2010-10-31T16:32:00.006-04:00

Happy Halloween! Here's a photo of a giant candy corn bed my teacher and mentor Doug Sigler made. Doug is a master craftsman and professor emeritus from RIT, trained by Tage Frid in the early 60's. I slept in the bed in his guest house when I visited Doug and his wife Kathie in in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina last month. It's a queen size bed, so those candy corns are pretty huge. They are solid stack laminated basswood, 8" thick and over 2 ft. wide. The title of the bed is "Trick or Treat".

www.davidhurwitzoriginals.com

Fine Furniture and Woodworking Festival in Woodstock, Vermont

2010-09-27T19:43:00.001-04:00

A bunch of Guild members spent the weekend in Woodstock at the Fine Furniture and Woodworking Festival on Sept 25 and 26. We had a group booth that included work of around 15 members and a handful of members also has their own booths at the show. At this point it is hard to say if the show was a financial success or not. Selling furniture is different from selling scarves and such as usually there is some back and forth before a sale of furniture is made.

For me, the opportunity to chat with members and other furniture makers and woodworkers was well worth the effort to do the show. We spend so much time on our own that this can be a great opportunity to recharge the mental batteries. Having the opportunity to bounce ideas off of each other over a couple of days is a great thing rather than through an email or short phone call. Mostly just laughing together. Being a member of the Guild has financial reward for me by feeding customers to my website from the Guild site but has the even greater reward of community in an otherwise solitary endeavor. Even though many of us are potential competitors, we actually have a good time when we get together.

Why be a member of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers? The Guild is great. Long live the Guild.

Thanks,
Tim (Timothy Clark, Cabinetmaker/Chairwright)

Below are some shots of members and member's booths and our group booth. These shots are taken during the quiet times at the show when I had a chance to leave my booth.

David Hurwitz featured in his own work.

Janet Collins hard at work on some of her inlay work that she demonstrated at the show.

Janet's daughter, Lauren was a cheerful addition to the group.

Jim Becker

Bill Laberge had his own booth

David Hurwitz and Dan Mosheim

David Boynton helped man the Guild booth

Walt Stanley wondering where he left his shoes.

My (Timothy Clark's) shaving horse (center) that allowed me to demonstrate and get some work done.

Timothy Clark's booth

Janet Collins answering questions in her booth.

David Hurwitz's booth. David , center, his dad , Art , right and winner of the Studio and Custom portion of the Design Comp, Doug "sideboard" Clarner.

Jim Becker in his booth

Charlie Shackleton in his booth.

Walt Stanley's booth.

Janet Collins carving one of her turned bowls.

McGuire Family Furniture Maker's booth

Dave Boynton and Dan Mosheim in the Guild booth

Guild booth

Guild booth, Kit Clark's chair center

Guild booth, Timothy Clark's bench.

Guild booth

Champlain College Receives Gift from the Parents of the 2010 Graduating Class

2010-07-24T22:43:00.007-04:00

McGuire Family FurnitureMakers/Vermont Clock Company was recently commissioned by Champlain College in Burlington, Vermont to produce a Tiger Maple Tall Clock. Champlain College is currently completing the extensive renovation/addition of Perry Hall, which will become the new Welcome Center. "To honor the achievements and collectively recognize the 2010 graduates, the Parents of the Class of 2010 have begun a tradition of dedicating a Vermont made item to add to the beauty and mission of the Champlain College Campus." With the aid of an anonymous parent challenge the parents of the Class of 2010 made this possible. The Tall Clock is produced in Tiger Maple with a special hand painted dial that depicts Perry Hall in it's original state. The dial is inscribed"Parent Gift Honoring Class of 2010". We are very proud we were chosen this year for the privilege of providing a Handcrafted, Vermont made Clock. Currently, the clock has been on display at the College Library. The clock will be moved to Perry Hall upon completion of the ongoing renovation.

A Step Beyond- New Works by the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers

2010-06-30T21:33:00.001-04:00

Below is an invitation to a great show that we are putting on beginning July 9.

It should be a bunch of great work.

My piece is below.

To see more of this piece go to my website and take a look at my What's New page.

We hope to see you at the opening.

Tim (Timothy Clark)

Hackensack Chairs

2010-05-08T11:14:00.004-04:00

This past winter McGuire Family Furniture Makers had the privelege of working with the Historic NewBridge Landing Park Commission in the production of 43 Hackensack Ladder Back Chairs. This commission was through the State of New Jersey, as the Newbridge Landing Historic Park was awarded a grant. Newbridge Landing is located in River Edge, New Jersey. The site is one of great historical significance, as it is the site of a pivotal bridge crossing . George Washington led his troops of 2000 infantry men in retreat from the British forces and crossed the Hackensack River at New Bridge. This preserved Washington's troops from an entrapmeent between the Hudson and Hackensack Rivers. The original home on the site was Steuben House, which is still standing today. It has been restored and is used for many functions for the Bergen County Historical Society. The chairs were produced for Steuben House. We were supplied with a photo of the Hackensack Ladder Back chair to work from, as they did not have an original chair.

Working with what you have

2010-03-28T10:29:00.000-04:00

Right now, I have four custom Windsor benches underway. Pictured above is one of the bench blanks having one of its legs holes drilled. In the past, I have used small hand held drill angle jigs to drill holes in bench seats but nothing beats the mechanical advantage of a drill press to drill a large hole with ease. The chain fall is the real star here can be easily adjusted up or down with one hand so that I can get the angle just right before drilling the hole. This way, there is no straining on my part to hold the seat blank up. Also, the chain fall is mounted on a trolly so that it can roll along the steel beam that runs the length of my shop. This tool can lift about a ton so it is grossly over qualified for this job but it works well and saves my back and arms from a lot of stress and strain.

This blank is for a 6' Waltham Bench. Also under construction now are two 3' Waltham benches and a Cod Rib side armless bench at 4 1/2 feet. These benches are not on my website yet but you can see my other benches here. TimothyClark.com

Thanks

Tim

Below is a shot of the 6'bench. It is painted with a very light gray, specified by the customer.

A Bunch of Stuff We've Been Working On

2010-02-28T20:33:00.008-05:00

Hmmmm ... Looks like I've missed a couple of my 'turns' posting to this blog ... I have, however, been posting away on my own dorset custom furniture weblog for the last couple of months (years) .
Below are some photos of projects that are either in the works or recently completed. I won't bore you with the details here, but if you click the links you will see process photos, design comments, finish schedules ... All the details ... Check 'em out if you're interested ... Click the photos here to enlarge them ...

Dan Mosheim
Dorset Custom Furniture
A Really Nice Curly Maple Jewelry Cabinet by Will
A Wall Hung TV Cabinet
Same house .. A free standing tv cabinet with folding retractable doors
An Art Deco Lighted Bar Cabinet really black walnut ...
A 10' Claro Walnut slab table we're working on
Another post on that here don't try this at home ...
An Art Deco Style Vanity ... different client !! but another 'black' walnut piece
A Single Pedestal 6' Mahogany table that expands to 10' ... no drop down legs ... stationary pedestal

A 40" Wide piece of mahogany we made into a coffee table
And a two board 40" wide x 85" walnut table with some steel 'patches' As well as a bunch of other stuff ... read .. comment ... enjoy ...

Construction techniques - Not how I would have done it

2010-01-31T12:23:00.001-05:00

The other day I was in the wrong place at the wrong time and was roped into helping my brother load a family heirloom bookcase into his minivan. This is a bookcase that my father got from his father who got it from I don't know where. It's fairly large - about 6 feet tall and 4 feet wide with two large doors with beveled glass. Below the door is a low case (maybe 12 -14" high) with two drawers. Above the doors is a section of molding about 8" high. For my whole life the bookcase has held books that must have come with it when it was built - old leather bound classic that are covered in dust and starting to crumble and some huge family bibles with 1/2" thick raised panel covers. It's a piece of furniture that's been around my entire life and I've never really looked at.

The bookcase was too wide to fit in the van and my brother had discovered that the top section with the molding could be taken off by undoing a couple of bolts inside the bookcase. It seemed obvious that the bottom section would do the same leaving 3 pieces - the bookcase section with two doors, the top molding section and the bottom drawer section.

We took out the two bolts that held the bookcase to the drawer section and found that it still would not lift off. After some close inspection I decided that the back was screwed to the base as well. Once these were unscrewed it was obvious that the bookcase section was not in fact one piece but totally disassembled into 6 pieces - 2 doors, 2 sides & 2 back panels (frame & panel construction ship lapped together in the center of the bookcase). This seemed pretty clever and certainly would make it very easy to move.

As we disassembled everything I noticed something very peculiar about the drawer section. The vertical divider between the drawers extended up through the top of case. The top of the drawer case (and therefore the bottom of the inside of the bookcase) was completely split in half by this drawer divider. I took a few quick snapshots as we loaded the case into the minivan:

Photo above shows the drawer divider extending through the top of the drawer case.

Top of drawer case (inside bottom of bookcase) showing drawer divider extending through it.

Two drawer base of bookcase. It appears the only piece of wood that extends the length of the case is the bottom face piece.

This is the bottom front of the drawer divider. Notice the odd patched molding. The piece of wood below the patch is the only piece that appeared to run the entire length of the case. The decorative piece at the very bottom of this photo is a portion of the top of the bookcase.

I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would construct a case this way. It would seem to be the hardest way possible. Anyone have any ideas?

You can see my Shaker furniture at bissellwoodworking.com

Richard Bissell
Putney, Vermont

Back in Action

2010-01-23T15:14:00.000-05:00

This is a shot of my 1956 Massey Ferguson tractor ready to move bags of sawdust down to the road. This is a sign that things are busy again in my shop. I used to compost my waste sawdust but the piles were just getting too big and the wife... . Well, so now I bag it and put it out on the road and mysteriously it always disappears after no more than 1 1/2 days. This last time I finally heard from the man who took it. A local dairy farmer using it for bedding his cows. This is the first time in a few years that I have met the recipient or even seen them. I have heard through the grape vine that someone else has been taking it for their chickens. I am glad that someone has a use for it.

Anyway, it is good to be busy milling out rough lumber after 4-5 months of not hearing from any potential customers. A bunch of new work came in just before Christmas and a few orders since then. At this point I am back to a 6 month back log of work. As it is just me, it does not take a whole lot to keep me busy, but this was the biggest slowdown for me in the last 10 years. It really does rattle your world when there is no work. As a creative laborer, the psyche really takes a hit. Is it me? What am I doing? Should I be doing something else? A lot of self doubt and rethinking of things. Then business picks up and everything looks a brighter. It is amazing how close we all live to the bone. At this point, I am very happy that I did not take out that loan two years ago when things were really hopping. I was thinking about adding on to the shop, buying some expensive tools, maybe a car with less than 200,000 miles on it. Keeping it simple seems to have worked for me over the years. I have always wanted to expand my business but "how" was always the question. Now the question is; Is it a safe thing to do?

Well, I have great orders to work on now, chairs, benches, pencil post beds. The family is healthy, the cars are running, tires are fair, and the tractor is running to clear the driveway and to haul the sawdust.

A good year to all,
Tim

Take a look at my work at TimothyClark.com.

(Let me know if you want sawdust.)

A Custom Console Table

2009-11-11T09:00:00.000-05:00

Hi everyone,

Here's an attempt to get some activity going on the blog again. What are you working on these days? Anything new? A new twist on an old theme? An old twist on a new theme? There was a lot of interest expressed at the last meeting about sharing what we're doing and talking about our work and techniques, etc. I'm all for it, and while this may not be the best medium for everyone for expressing and sharing those ideas (depending on your comfort level with blogs), it's probably the easiest way to do it for now... I hope that we can start having some occasional smaller meetings at different people's shops in between quarterly meetings too, to talk shop, process, design, and all those other important topics we never seem to have enough time for at meetings.

Anyway, here's a new piece and new

design I completed during the summer. It's based on a smaller piece I had made (a new twist on an old theme) that had the same color scheme, texture, and wood for the top. This one is much larger, and based on dimensions requested by an interior design firm: 32" H X 60" W x 16" D. I hadn't made a console table that long and low and wide before, but those proportions worked out well for this one.

Conceptually, I was playing with the interaction of the simple geometric shapes of both positive and negative space - how the rectangle of the top relates to the rectangular cutout under it, and how the curved sides of the carved form relates to the curve of the arch base, and the space under it by the floor. Since it is a pretty massive piece (that sucker is heavy!), I wanted to give a little feeling of some lightness, and make it a

little more dynamic by arching the base up off the floor, instead of having the base sit flat and very planted and static on the floor. The texture of the carving and the quilted figure of the top were two other elements that I wanted to create a little visual interaction between - both are very active and busy in different ways... The texture is painted with iridescent silver paint... A trip to Japan last year had a pretty strong influence on the design of this piece.

More pics below, including the raw piece before paint and finishing. All critiques, positive and negative accepted. I've stared at this thing so long while building it, that it would be nice to hear how others see it. What works and what doesn't work about this piece? What do you like and what do you hate about it? Don't worry, I can take it.

www.davidhurwtizoriginals.com

Building A Design Library

2009-11-08T09:50:00.007-05:00

As a custom furniture maker, I am often asked to make things in styles that may or may not be totally familiar to me. So, to make up for my lack of a formal art education, and to satisfy my ongoing curiosity about design, I have been building a library of design related book over the last 30 some years. To complement my at home collection, I also use the interlibrary loan feature of my local library where I can request books from other libraries around New England and keep them for as long as 3 weeks. I have gotten obscure and out of print books that way and some of them have been surprisingly helpful. So if you don't want to just go out an buy a bunch of books, try checking them out on Amazon or Google first, then go the interlibrary loan route if they have been around for a while, and, then, if you really love em ... shell out the bucks and put them on your shelf ... IMHO you can't have too many books ... I've also written an expanded version of this post on my own blog ... Also, on my dorset custom furniture blog I have added a 'categories' feature where you can find posts on various subjects like 'models and mockups' , 'antique repairs and restorations', and Sam's custom metalwork' as well as others. I'd be interested to learn of your favorite design books as I'm always looking for new sources of inspiration ...Leave a comment below with their titles or send me an email ,,,, Click the photos below and you can see some of the titles in the enlarged photos. I have red dotted my favorites .. 3 dots being the most favorite ...

'Art' books below

Have you backed up your computer lately?

2009-10-28T08:59:00.001-04:00

Last weekend I had the misfortune of having something on the motherboard of my computer malfunction. In less than the blink of an eye I had absolutely no access to my hard drive - a totally dead compute that wouldn't even begin to boot.

Fortunately, I have an external USB drive that I purchased a few years ago and use to back up important files on my computer's internal drive and to store photos on. However, how recently had I back things up? What files had I not backed up that I realized now were crucial to running my business and operating in the modern digital world? I started coming up with a list of files I wanted to make sure I had:

Quickbooks file - This is automatically back up weekly so at worst I'd have a week of data to reenter.

Outlook email folder - These I back up occasionally. Maybe 6 months ago.

My website files - These are all on a server off site so they are all backed up somewhere - EXCEPT the templates I created that the site is based on. These are not on the server. I had made some very recent changes to my templates so these were not backed up but i do have the older versions.

FTP login information - I have login and password information for a number of website. This would be stored in my email files and therefore is backed up but not easily accessible.

Assembly instructions - I have a number of word files that are assembly instructions for beds I sell. I have a rush job for a bed that needs to ship Monday (computer died Sunday). I think I have this files stored on Google documents which I was trying out a couple of years ago so I'll have easy access to this from my wife's computer.

CAD files (drawings) - These are all backed up EXCEPT that 3D sleigh bed drawing I spent all day working on a few weeks ago.

Passwords to various websites - These are mostly backed up with my email files but again access to these will be difficult without a new computer to load the outlook backed up files to. For less important sites these are often the same or similar. But some financial sites require hard to remember passwords and require they be changed on a regular basis.

So all in all I'm pretty well backed up but even so it will be a major inconvenience to get a new computer and restore everything.

As it turned out I was able to come up with a better solution. I had purchased my computer (in late 2003) at about the same time I bought my son a computer for school. He no longer used his computer as he got a laptop about a year ago. I was able to swap my hard drive with his and get back up and running without any loss of data.

I have since backed up everything I need so it's up to date and created a word document with all necessary FTP and other login info. This is backed up on my external drive AND printed out. I have also ordered a new computer and will slowly get that one set up with what I need on it. This is much more preferable than replacing my computer after it dies.

Have you backed up your computer lately? What information would you not be able to operate without? I suggest you start working on your list today. As they say "It's not a matter of if you'll need your computer backed up, it's a matter of when."

Richard Bissell builds Shaker furniture in Putney, VT

President and Michelle Obama's Wedding Anniversary

2009-10-10T20:41:00.005-04:00

The Obama's celebrated their wedding anniversary at the Blue Duck Tavern at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Washington, D.C. a week or so ago.

At the restaurant, they were among furniture that I made for the Hyatt a couple of years ago. Here, you can see my Waltham Rocker , and here you can see the 29' Windsor bench that I made for the the hotel . These are links from the Blue Duck Tavern website.

There are eight of my rockers at the Hyatt and six of them are spread around the common areas on the first floor. The long bench is in the

Blue Duck Tavern and there are also eight 4 1/2' benches in glass walled booths in the Tea/Lunch area. For more information on these pieces, take a look at images from the project at my website.

It is very satisfying to have work in a place where it is appreciated and seen and experienced by many influential people. After the hotel renovation was completed, my family and I were invited to stay at the hotel for the grand opening where one of my rockers was gifted (by the Hyatt) to Terry McAuliffe where Hillary Clinton spoke and many Mucky Mucks rubbed shoulders. I am the HaySeed in the plaid jacket that my wife picked up at a thrift shop before the trip. How was I to know that a dark suit was the thing for an evening event. Vermont Formal is a nice shirt and a pair of clean jeans. The whole thing was pretty amazing. The suite that they gave my wife, son, and I for a few nights, was a bit larger than our house and cost more than three months of mortgage payments per night. We do live in a different world here in Vermont which makes it even more noteworthy that many of us here, of meager means, do things or make things that touch the lives of those who run the world.

This was a great job for me not only because it was a large order with great exposure but mostly because these are all some of my favorites. They are pieces that I enjoy making again and again. So, feel free to order more of the above.

Have a great day,

Timothy Clark

Cabinetmaker/Chairwright

www.TimothyClark.com

2009-10-07T08:40:00.005-04:00

I have been drawing furniture with 2 dimensional CAD (Computer Aided Design) programs for many years (probably 20+ ) and have always found 3D programs (where you draw the piece and rotate it to view it from any angle) intriguing. However, only in the last few years have I found any of the 3D programs affordable, easy to use and powerful enough to accomplish what I think they should be able to do.

I now use two 3D CAD programs. The easiest to use is Sketchup which was bought by Google a couple of years ago. Sketchup has a free version available (Google Sketchup) which is really quite amazing and easy to use. They is also a Pro version which currently costs about $500 and has some added features. One feature of Sketchup I found lacking was the ability to "stretch" things easily. For example, if you draw a raised panel door and then want to make it larger or smaller. With Sketchup I could scale it to make it larger or smaller but that would also make the door frame members larger or smaller in both dimensions. There was no way of making the panel larger or smaller and the frame members longer or shorter without also making them wider. I found this disappointing and started looking around for other 3D programs that could do this properly. (I should note that I believe Sketchup Pro now has the ability to do this.)

I had read about another CAD program Alibre Design at some point (perhaps even before finding Sketchup) and had download a free version of it but had found it difficult to learn. Alibre design is quite different from any other CAD program I've used. It seems that most CAD programs I've seen are primarily intended for architects and builders. Alibre is designed more for engineers designing products. Parts of a product are built individually and then are assembled which is the same way furniture is built. Subassemblies (such as a frame and panel door) can have dimensions assigned base on the overall width and height of the door. For example:

Door width = 12"
Door height= 22"
stile width = 2"
top rail width = 2"
bottom rail width = 2.5"
panel width = door width - 2 x stile width + 1"
Panel height = door height - bottom rail width - top rail width + 1"

Once these dimension are defined all you have to do is change the door width and height and the assembled door size changes. This is the same math you do in your head when working from a simple drawing in the shop. For something like a bed design all dimensions can be defined as a function of the matress width and length. When you want to change the bed from queen size to king size just change the mattress width dimension from 60" to 75" and all appropriate dimensions change in the entire drawing. The number and spacing of spindles can be defined as a function of the width and more spindles added as needed. This type of dimensioning is referred to as parametric. Alibre can also generate cut lists for all the parts of an assembly.

Of course learning a program like this takes time but the results are worth it. Basically you can build the entire piece on the computer, figuring out all the joinery issues before you go into the shop and cut a single board. From a customers perspective they can view the finished piece from all angles in the wood of their choice and know exactly what they will be getting. For complicated pieces this is a very valuable tool.

Here's a rendering (done with Alibre Render) of a sleigh bed design I have been working on:

Here is an exploded view rendering of the same bed:

Note: Sketchup is available for Mac or PC. Alibre is currently only available for PC.

Richard Bissell
Putney, VT
View my Shaker furniture at Bissellwoodworking.com or read more of my blog posts here.

Innovative New Furniture from Potatery Barn!

2009-10-05T23:37:00.012-04:00

Sometimes it's good to look to the youths, to stay in tune with what's new and fashionable in pop culture and design. My 11 year old nephew just sent me four pages from the new Potatery Barn catalog, featuring their amazing and mouth watering new furniture collection. It's sold by the pound. Have a look and enjoy! (click on images for larger version - the descriptions are worth the read).

www.davidhurwitzoriginals.com

Woodstock Fine Furniture Show

2009-09-23T21:13:00.006-04:00

Link to the show website below

It's that time of year again .... Time for the Vermont Wood Manufacturers fall furniture show in Woodstock, Vermont ... I participated in the Guild of Vermont Furnituremakers booth last year and plan to have some stuff there again this year .... Come on by if you get a chance. There are about 40 exhibitors in the show as well as demonstrations and other events. There will be lots to see .... I plan to finish an indoor version of the steel sculpture pictured above, 'finish' the bench in that same picture, offer a cherry and steel dining table for sale and maybe show off the banjo that Will and I finished recently .... there will be I think, eleven Guild members represented in our 10 x 30 booth and quite a few members will have booths of their own ... The list is on the VWMA website linked above .. It should be a great show ... Click the pictures to enlarge them ....

Cherry and steel two board dining table ... 38 x 83 x 29.5 by Dorset Custom Furniture

Process photos and more info here ...

Banjo by Will and Dan Mosheim ... Dorset Custom Furniture

Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers Show

2009-08-05T23:01:00.008-04:00

The Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers will be opening it's Second Annual Show at Vermont Artisans Designs Gallery 2, 106 Main Street, Brattleboro, Vermont this Friday . There will be a reception this Friday from 5:30 to 8:00 at the gallery. Fifteen members of the Guild will be participating. I took these snapshots of some of the pieces that were already set up when I was unloading my curly redwood console table last Saturday. More picture to follow after the opening...Stop in if you're in the Brattleboro area .... Click the photos to enlarge them ..

A list of the participants ...

A top view of Dan Mosheim's curly recycled redwood and steel table

A less dramatic view of my redwood console

A Macassar ebony cabinet by Johns Congdon

A mahogany bed by Bill LaBerge

Bill Laberge's Arts and Crafts cherry desk

Steve Holman's tv cabinet and one of Mario Messina's lamps
LOTS more to see at the show ...

What comes after the recession?

2009-07-17T22:22:00.003-04:00

In my neighborhood there is now thousands of board feet of maple, hickory and birch lying at the edge of the new power line clearing. The market is so depressed as to make it almost foolish to haul out any but the most spectacular or easiest to get logs. Sadly, our economy does not adapt well to the raw materials easily at hand. I will use everything from my own land, and what I can afford from my neighbors. I know I'll use the lumber some day. There is a desire around the area to get the logs out and see them used, but will that translate into spending the time and money to do so. If the logs are milled into lumber, what will it be used for? Flooring? Cabinets? Furniture? Pallets? Plywood? Vehicles? Machinery? Spools? Egg cartons? Musical instruments? Only a few of these are likely, but once all these things were made by woodworkers of wood. It grows on trees!

I received yet another resume from a woodworker looking for some work that pays. This is not an easy time, especially for high end woodworkers without the benefit of large customer lists. I find myself wondering what the future could hold for woodworking in general and studio furniture more specifically. Looking back, we find the studio furniture movement gained a whole lot of momentum after the energy crisis of the 70's. (I think these are related, but indirectly.) Custom furniture making seemed to really take off in the 80's. After the recession of the early 90's, investment in specialty wood products seemed to tend toward building equity in one's home (or second home!), so custom cabinetry and specialty flooring have been the thing until now.

What's next? Will the spray from the real estate bubble bursting soften peoples desire to invest in their home, at least to the extravagant extent of the last decade? Will people, instead, invest in fine furnishings that enhance any home, and are portable, like so many careers? Will the buy local and "localvore" movements increase the demand for regional furniture design, as South Western furniture exemplifies? Will the desire for thriving local economies create a demand for objects made from locally grown, harvested, milled, dried, and worked wood?

Will the "green movement" bring about a resurgence in renewable, reusable, wooden packaging? I recently bought some 4" butt hinges with which to hang four doors I built for a client. I found two sets at a used architectural salvage place, and had to buy the rest new. The old ones were sold three to a box, made of boxboard with a pasted on label; the new hinges were sold one per plastic hang card. You know the kind, that you can't open except with the sharpest of knives, and then the screws fall out all over the floor!

I don't want to make my living building apple crates or cheese boxes (although barrels could be interesting.) I do, however, look for small products that can add to a revenue stream, like recipe boxes or childrens' block sets. These are not artistic endeavors, but they bring in some money and use up scraps. Many woodworkers got into it because they were attracted by a craft, a way to use one's hands to make useful objects. Is it time to return to a craft ethic. I remember a picture I saw once of some Shaker workman with a pile of oval boxes. There must have been over a thousand piled up around him. The caption said it was his winters work. These were not considered artistic, nor fancy. They were just boxes, and cheap to make. Today they are held up as beautiful artifacts from a craft centered economy. Can we ever regain the will to employ our neighbors to build such simple and needed things? This need not keep us from building magnificent pieces of furniture or cabinetry, but can employ us through the hard times and keep us away from manufacturing unnecessary plastic trash.

Is it possible, also, that people will come to appreciate custom or studio furniture as quietly satisfying? Not as status symbols but rather objects to be used and appreciated for the quality of the work, the harmony of the design and the calm created by the design and workmanship.

Jason

JasonEBreen.com

Wooden Cremation Urns

2009-07-09T08:56:00.006-04:00

I always feel very honored when I am asked to build a cremation urn but, needless to say, it's almost always a very difficult task emotionally. I've made 4 of them in the last few years and 3 out of 4 were for the ashes of a family member or close friend. The first one I made was for my 24 year old nephew who was killed in a car accident. I came up with a simple design that can be made fairly quickly. It is a simple dovetailed box with a sliding top that is secured with a brass screw. Like most furniture makers I save scraps of wood with interesting grain and a box like this is a perfect use for such pieces of wood. The dimensions of the box are 10" x 7" x 4 1/2" high so just about any cut off will be large enough.

Richard Bissell
Putney, Vermont
See my Shaker and Mission inspired furniture at BissellWoodworking.com

Linseed Oil ... A Cautionary Tale

2009-07-06T08:07:00.007-04:00

Linseed oil can create a beautiful finish on fine furniture and metal work. It's an easily renewable finish, a natural product in some of it's forms. I use it to refresh my wood counters and the finish on some of my earlier oil finished pieces in my home. The counter you see above is now in the 'once a year for the rest of your life ' phase of the finish process, is used hard daily and looks terrific with little care. That little pile of rags in the foreground though could completely wipe out my house or yours if you weren't paying attention. Tragically, it happened to a friend/client a few weeks ago. They came by yesterday and now that they have seen that some of their furniture will be coming back, I think it's ok to publish this cautionary tale. Wikipedia says: Linseed oil is extracted from ripe flax seeds by cold pressing. It has natural characteristics that make it an excellent product to produce a beautiful and durable finish on wood products. It does, however, have a potential downside as Wikipedia points out in the second sentence of the description .... 'Linseed oil can polymerize and the reaction is exothermic, and rags soaked in it can ignite spontaneously.' True enough. Only the prompt and professional response of the Dorset Fire Department and other mutual aid companies prevented the building from being a total loss. So, I now have, in the upstairs of my garage, a large selection of smoke damaged furniture and we are currently working through the cleaning and polishing of some of the pieces. It's a sobering but rewarding process. DISPOSE OF YOUR RAGS PROPERLY !!!

The vanity cabinet after the fire

The vanity cabinet after the total disassembly, cleaning and sealing

The dining table we made in 2005, after the fire

The dining table cleaned

Some pretty important chairs, before and after...
More info and photos on my blog HERE

The New Shop Begins

2009-06-17T23:41:00.008-04:00

Finally the building begins. After waiting for the permit to arrive in the mail and the two week waiting period following, I am now legally allowed to build my new workshop. I started small. You can see the sonotubes being filled with concrete, thanks to Jay and Bekah. Thirteen sonotubes will either support the sills or posts going up to the sills.

The timbers are mostly milled. A few more and then its on to joists. These will be the hickory trees felled to make way for new high voltage wires. They are small enough to get out of the woods with my one horse, yet big enough to serve as hefty timber joists. I also have 1000 board feet of maple waiting to be milled. These are thinnings from our sugarbush which will be milled into flooring, although I doubt I'll get to laying the finish floor this year.

I have actually done some fine woodworking in my old shop! I mentioned the blanket chest as wedding present in my last post. Of course, it was a surprise, so I could not publish the photos until after the wedding. I made the hinges in the forge. Nothing fancy, just traditional strap hinges. These are a lot of fun to make. A little fussy fitting the pin and "fingers" of the barrel, but not so much as to be discouraging, and shaping the strap itself is fairly quick and straightforward.

So here's to Anna and Marco. After making dozens of similar chests, I still send them out with warm wishes for their owners. A lot of love goes into building them. I hope that emotion is not lost on those who haven't seen it being built. Is it Gibran's "Prophet" who says,"Work is love made visible."? I believe that is what a master craftsman strives to do.

To see other examples of my work go to my website:

jasonebreen.com

Jason

A custom Cherry Taffy Mirror, a hall table and lamps

2009-05-28T23:42:00.011-04:00

All of my designs can be customized in terms of size, different woods and different colors. I recently completed and delivered an order for a large wall mirror, a hall table and two lamps to a home in NYC. Each of these pieces were customized at the customer's request. The large mirror was built to a custom size in all natural cherry (my first time making one of these in this size in cherry without paint). The hall table was a scaled down version of a larger previous console table design, and the two lamps were painted in a custom color of milk paint, with handmade paper shades, and carved in opposite curves, to mirror each other on each side of a bed. Here are some photos of those pieces:

To see more of my work, please go to www.davidhurwitzoriginals.com
A complete redesign of my site with lots of new work coming later this summer.

A Fair Curve

2009-05-19T11:54:00.003-04:00

A fair curve is something that even the untrained eye can appreciate. It may be taken for granted when it is fair and true but it is easy to see when it is not fair and true. It will stick out like a sore thumb.

A fair curve does not need to be constant like a section of a perfect circle. It can have a changing radius along its length. I love this curve of my Waltham arm chair rail where it transitions from the side to the back of the chair. Complex , yet simple. Or simple but complex.

See all of my chairs here.

So you want to be a furniture maker?

2009-05-08T07:42:00.004-04:00

I frequently get emails from people who are interested in becoming a furniture maker or have recently started a furniture making business and are wondering if I would be willing to give them some advice. Usually they ask a very broad question along the lines of "What do I need to know to become a successful a furniture maker?"

My first thought is always a joke my father used to tell.

Question: How do you end up with a million dollars in the dairy farming business?

Answer: Start out with 2 million dollars.

Furniture making is tough way to make a living. The start up costs are high (tools, shop space, materials) and there is a lot of very good competition (see http://www.vermontfurnituremakers.com/ for some of the competition in Vermont alone) and a lot of very cheap competition (China, Indonesia, etc.).

When someone dreams of becoming a furniture maker they are probably dreaming of working in their own shop making their own furniture designs out of beautiful lumber with all the tools they need. Certainly there is that aspect to it (which is very satisfying) but there are a lot of other aspects that are often overlooked.

I think the most important skill needed to become a successful furniture maker is the ability to sell your furniture. After all, if you can't sell it you'll very quickly run out money and have to get a "real job". Don't think that just because you're making really nice furniture it will sell itself. When you've finished that really nice dining table it will just be a really nice dining table sitting on the floor of your shop. It will not sell itself.

There are many approaches to selling your furniture. Many furniture makers get started by making pieces for family and friends and letting word of mouth sell their furniture. This is certainly the least expensive method but can take quite a while to build up.

You can sell through galleries. If you can find a gallery that will display your furniture and they manage to eventually sell it the gallery will typically take at least 40% of the sale price as their commission. That adds a lot to the cost of your furniture. A piece that you need to get $1000 for will need to be priced at $1700.

If your shop is in a good location you may be able to get enough traffic to be able to sell through your own showroom at the shop. Usually if this is the case then shop rent will be much higher than it would be in a less desirable location.

Since the advent of the internet most furniture makers now have a website that they use to help sell their furniture. This can be extremely effective but building a good website takes a lot of time and knowledge if you do it yourself and can get very expensive if you hire someone to do it for you.

There is also newspaper and magazine advertising, direct mailing of postcards and catalogs, radio advertising and craft shows.

None of these approaches is a silver bullet that will solve your marketing problems so that you can forget about it and just make furniture. Selling is a fact of life if you're a furniture maker. And in addition to selling you'll need to learn about taking photos of your work (or pay to have them taken), accounting, doing drawings (most drawing is done with CAD these days), writing effective copy for ads, websites, brochures etc.. The number of different skills that a successful furniture maker needs is almost limitless but, for me, that is what keeps things interesting. There is always something new to learn.

Richard Bissell builds Shaker Furniture in Putney, Vermont

Entering a Contest

2009-05-05T22:59:00.006-04:00

The Furniture Society Conference is coming up again and, just every year, I think I'll go, and then I don't. I expect this year will be the same. Like some other things in life, we think we might be more interested at first, but then are distracted by more interesting things. Happens all the time. I did, however, submit an entry in the 'Designs in Miniature' event which called for photos of models as design tools. Since I have a fair collection of them and find them valuable study and sales tools, and I like to build them, I sent some in. Here are the pictures. I don't have many of the pieces, but I do have ALL the models ... Click to enlarge the photos ...

Tapered cherry cabinets from last fall 1/6th scale, 30 x 21 x 6

revised models

One of the finished cabinets

More models and some finished tables below

One of my favorites from 1990

happens to be currently in my home office

Night pictures ar ealways a little color challenged .. the tops arre natural curly maple

Thailand

2009-04-26T03:10:00.007-04:00

I am
off in Thailand with my son, wife and new daughter, who we are in the process of adopting. With language barriers and a major difference in the ways of the U.S. Government vs the ways of the Thai people, it has been a challenge. I actually sat at a computer in the orphanage and wrote an "official" document to be used in the process. Don't tell anyone.

We did get a chance to visit a furniture factory / showroom in Chiang Mai, in the north. I was impressed by the quality. There was an acre of teak tables for outdoor use but they were much better quality than those that we see here. Much heavier stock than we see here. The logs pictured are teak and rosewood from left to right. The woman in the purple shirt is cutting mother of pearl inlay like that in the table and chairs (pictured). The man carving in the blue shirt is working on a deep relief carving that will take him around 6 months. Check out the George Nakashima knock off. I think the addition of a brace was a good idea.

That's all.

Tim

See my work at TimothyClark.com

Thoughts on Rainy Night

2009-04-21T21:33:00.007-04:00

Here is the monthly stream-of-consciousness about my shop construction. I have a permit to build - at least, the development review board approved my application, so I will get the paperwork in the mail in the next few days. I have milled about a quarter of the major timbers; and the pile of 1" sheathing is growing fast. I will be out of easy space to store lumber in a few weeks. I'm not sure what I'll do with it then.

I need to be out in the woods more in the next month cutting trees for the joists (timbers to which the floor is nailed). VELCO, the local electricity transmission folks are putting in a new line and will begin clearing their right-of-way in June or July. I want to get the hickory trees out before they are piled in a big heap. The trees are only eight inches in diameter, but thirty to forty feet to the first knot. Each tree contains two 12' joists and the top can be used for a pole for two-horse implements, or some of the best firewood southern Vermont has to offer.

It seems a shame to clear all that land for dubious reasons. All those trees would grow to fantastic specimens if they were given the time. But instead we will clear-cut God knows how many acres so that we can be assured of having more than enough electricity to run our televisions, refrigerators, Christmas lights (year round) and blog on our computers!, not to mention use table saws and the like. I sometimes feel like a visitor from an earlier century. I don't quite understand the desire for bigger, shoddily constructed and more in debt. Debts of money, debts of oxygen, debts of community, debts of understanding. When will we ever learn?

On other fronts, I have been building furniture in my shop! The third blanket-chest-as-wedding-present for a particular client. Nothing fancy or innovative about this design, just pine with dovetails, bracket feet and names and a date carved on the front. However, this time, I have made the hinges from scratch in the forge. In the past, I used screen door strap hinges and customized them in the forge to look good. It is satisfying work to take a straight, blank strap of mild steel and transform it with heat and hammer into something useful, in fact, something that does work.

Sorry, no pictures this time. Every thing looks like sawdust, anyways. There will be something to see (and show) next month. You can always see pictures of my work at JasonEBreen.com

Thoughts on global warming, trees and lumber

2009-04-08T19:32:00.004-04:00

Every since I saw Al Gore's movie The Inconvenient Truth I've been reading a lot of books about global warming - both the science that leads to the conclusion that this is really happening and possible solutions to the problem. I find it is a very interesting but also very scary subject. As I've been reading these books and articles I have found myself wondering what I should do about the fact that I'm a woodworker who relies on someone cutting down trees so that I have lumber to make into furniture.

Since an increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is the main cause of global warming and trees absorb carbon dioxide as they grow, it would seem that cutting down trees is a bad idea. Less trees means less carbon dioxide removed from the atmosphere. However, when trees die they decompose and release the carbon back into the environment. When a mature tree is cut down and sawed into lumber the carbon remains stored in the lumber rather than being release through decomposition. Of couse the whole tree is not usable for lumber. The limbs can be cut into firewood or chipped and burned. This releases the carbon but no more than would have been released if it had decomposed and burning it provides heat that can be used for heating or generating electricity or both.

This all makes it sound like cutting trees down is good. The problem is if all the trees are cut down this can change the enviroment of that area. In the rain forests this is particularly true. These forests have developed over thousands of years and are perpetuated by the fact that the forests themselves create a lot of the moisture necessary to sustain them. The Amazon rainforest creates up to 50% of its own rainfall (http://rainforests.mongabay.com/0201.htm). This means that cutting portions of the rainforests down threatens the viability of the remaining rainforests. This is why it is important that forest are responsibly managed so that they remain viable as forest while also providing trees that can be harvested for lumber and other uses.

Because I believe it is important to encourage and reward those who are making the effort to ensure that forest are being responsibly managed I now pay very careful attention to what the source is for the lumber I use in my furniture. I currently have 2 main sources. The first is lumber that has been harvest from forests that are enrolled in Vermont's current use program. Forests enrolled in this program must follow accepted forestry guidlines for sustainable management. The other reason I prefer this lumber is that it has not travel a long distance to get to me. It is grown, sawn, dried and turned into furniture all in Vermont. When Vermont lumber is not available I purchase FSC certified lumber. This is lumber that is certified to have come from forests that are responsibly managed. Only when I can't find what I need from one of these two sources do I purchase lumber what I refer to as "traditional sourced" lumber. This is lumber that may or may not have come from responsibly managed forests.

When I receive the lumber at my shop each board is marked as to its source. When lumber is picked out for a piece of furniture the quantity and source of all the lumber in that piece is recorded so the customer can know what percentage of lumber in their furniture was harvested from responsibly managed forests. This system takes a little getting used to but I think it is very important to encourage the responsible management of forests and lumber suppliers who sell this lumber as well as customers who care about where the wood for their furniture comes from.

Richard Bissell builds Shaker Furniture in Putney, Vermont

It does get easier

2009-04-08T16:59:00.005-04:00

This is a rambler. There was no alcohol consumed during the writing of this and no animals were harmed, but you may want to think about it if you get through this (drinking that is, not harming animals). I have been building furniture professionally for 23 years now and wondered many times over the first few years whether or not I could make a living at this. After about 5 years, I was able to quit my part time jobs and just build furniture. I remember the great feeling that I had when I was able to pay all of my bills and have a bit left over for fun, all from doing something that I really liked to do. There were a bunch of years where I had to make it by way of lifestyle choices that made for very low overhead. Bartering for shop space, then living in that bartered-for shop space, living on a 25' sailboat(leaking) with only sitting headroom. Having very cold workshops (shops#5, 12, and 13), not being able to hold a plane for a while until the woodstove got going enough. Burning bags of sawdust for heat. Thinking about getting a horse because it probably would not get stuck on the way to my shop (#5). Thinking about getting a tractor because it would need a bit less care than a horse. This idea came from an old man I knew who drove around on an old Farmall tractor because he lost his drivers license. In the end, driving old cars(still). Cars that others are throwing away, sailing old boats that others are throwing away or have already thrown away. Building a house of straw so that I could afford to have a house. And , that house, in it's simplicity saves money and allows for the building of a workshop with radiant heat (finally). Nothing fancy but this is shop number 14 in about as many years getting to it. To afford that, it is all done out of pocket. No hired help. That was 8 years ago. There is always the thought of adding on, building a garage etc but at least now there is not the day to day struggle that there was years back. When we begin on our own it is lucky that we are strong and maybe not so smart. The struggle was half the fun back then. Now it is great to have time to pick up my son from school every day, take guitar lessons with him, coach his soccer team and be able to save up enough money to travel to Thailand to adopt a little girl to complete our family. Ok, maybe it does not get easier, but it keeps getting better. And here are a couple shots of the last order that shipped off to Ireland last week.

2009-04-07T06:45:00.004-04:00

Well, the office work has slowed some lately and I'm enjoying being back in the shop a bit more ... Today, there was a desk top fresh out of the planer and everyone else was working away so I got out my trusty Stanley #81, spent 5 or 10 minutes tuning it up and had at it. It's been a while since I have actually been the one scraping a table top and I want to say, I forgot what a NICE thing it is to do. The quiet, sliding, cutting, whisper sounding action is just a fine experience. Planing's nice too, but if you haven't tried one of these two handled scrapers, push one around your next curly maple or figured cherry or birch top and you'll wonder where you've been. They are tricky to sharpen, but worth the effort. Fine woodworking has some stuff on line to help you tune one up and a quick search of the tool catalogs makes me think Stanley has maybe discontinued them, so, check your antique tool dealers or your local flea markets. Or you can probably talk a friend into giving you his if he's never taken the time to figure it out ... It's worth the effort ... Click the photos to enlarge them ....

The Big Thaw?!

2009-03-27T13:05:00.006-04:00

I just walked the 200' from my shop to the house for lunch in gorgeous warm sunshine, on soft grass! What a delight! The moment reminded me to order the timbers I need for a landscape project, too long in the planning. Any excuse to get outside and work in the earth in the Spring is reward enough for having waited through another Vermont winter. Sure, there were moments of skiing bliss after the family arguement of nordis vs. alpine was settled for that day, but I'll admit it, this has been one long cold Winter and the economy had something to do with it! But today, the promise of Spring feels real and I hope that the thaw is evident in many ways; that the ground warms and the freeze in the economic faucet breaks loose, as well. I applaud our President's efforts and direction and [unlike some personalities who I do not care to mention] hope he is very successful to the benefit of all, worldwide. I am all for real investment into this country's future and direction. A novel thought that I think is not too late!

Oh yes, in between all the marketing, planning and design work we did this Winter, we did manage to build a few things. This current project I call a Barrel Stave Pedestal Table, to be a focal point in a central hall. It is figured European pear, solids and veneer, with contrasting inlays, complete with some sand burnt shading . The parts are almost complete; I am sorry that it is not quite assembled . The final touch will be a high style varnish finish to show off the very nice curly figure.

Please see more of our work @ www.johnscongdon.com

Mud Season blues

2009-03-24T10:56:00.009-04:00

At this time of the year I am just trying to get through mud season, living through an occasional tease of warmth, (time to dust off the golf clubs), and a reality check snow burst, (make it stop!) I am emerging from hibernation though and as I shed my layers I look forward to spring and all of the promise of rebirth that comes with it.

The project I am working on feels like it has taken longer than giving birth. I am in the middle of a Greene & Greene style bookcase unit. I posted a note on this blog last month about making the desk. The final hand-caved drawer pulls and ebony inlay are shown below.

After finishing the desk and the printer stand we are now finishing up the bookcases and file cabinet and stereo section of the wrap-around unit. I have included a picture of the piece without drawers and shelves.

The desk will sit to the right of the file cabinet drawers. A few final touches and we will install next week. I often have people say it must be hard to have these pieces leave the shop after putting yourself into them. Generally by this time I am happy to see them leave so we can move on to the next. Once this piece leaves the shop I think we will give it a good spring cleaning in anticipation….

Happy spring!

Bill Laberge

You can see the rest of my custom furniture at WilliamLaberge.com

Another Use for Maple

2009-03-21T23:14:00.005-04:00

In my earlier posting, I promised to give regular progress reports about building my new shop. Well, not much has happened. I did fill out the permit application, but other activities have stalled further progress.

Late Winter/early Spring around here is known as "sugaring season," as that is when the sugar maples drop sap from any fresh wound; sap which if boiled down 40 times yields maple syrup. It's hard to believe that this is a productive, even lucrative, enterprise, but it is surely a cure for cabin fever. Besides, all the back roads are rutted two feet deep in mud of the type that eats small imported cars and SUV's driven by people who don't know how to use them. Best to just stay at home and get out in the sun and gather sap. Then sit by the fire and wait for the sap to boil down to a brown sticky sweetness and when it is just right, pour off a gallon at a time to be filtered and canned for sale or home use. This has cured my lingering teenage desire to sit around a fire and copper kettle making moonshine whiskey!

So that's what I've been up to for the past two weeks. We would gather with our horse pulling a scoot or large sled with a 65 gallon tank on it, then boil all evening, often until midnight and beyond, so that we are ready to do it all over again the next day. We gathered from about 200 taps and made 26 gallons of syrup before we ran out of wood, including all the scraps I could bear to burn from the shop.

The wood ran out a couple days ago, so I've been catching up on sleep and starting to saw lumber at the mill. I cut a maple log from our woods into 1" thick boards for flooring in the new shop. I found three holes and green bacteria stains about halfway through the milling. These are, of course, tap holes from some long ago sugarmaker. When I found the first two holes, I was still able to count the rings from there out to the bark on another side of the log. The holes were made about 50 years ago when the tree was about 10" in diameter. There is an old fallen down sugar house and arch out in the woods about 1/4 mile from where this tree once stood. An old farmer in the area remembers that same sugar house in use back in the 50's, but thinks that it was abandoned before the end of the decade. That might explain why the tree was only tapped for three years.

I am curious to find out who that sugarmaker was, what else he did for a livelihood, and if he lived on the land he sugared. It is often easy to see the marks of man left on the landscape: stone walls, old roads, cellar holes and the like, but to come into contact with those that have been before me in the middle of a tree is a rather unique experience. There are surely similarities between us, yet the differences are equally notable. I am reminded to be thankful for my new Lithium ion battery powered cordless drill. It is a little noisier, but a lot easier to use than the cordless drill he used 50 years ago.

I don't offer Maple syrup on my website, but I do offer other maple products.

www.JasonEBreen.com

More on Scraps

2009-03-18T15:24:00.005-04:00

Ah scraps. Being both a pack-rat and frugal, I too have trouble tossing those cut-offs into the wood stove. "But, I can use that someday..." To make matters worse, I often find myself pulling an interesting piece of fire wood out of the cordwood stack to bring downstairs to the workshop. Like a kid with a geode, I get all excited to crack it open for the treasure within. These are added to the pile surrounding me making a small shop even smaller. The "space" around my table saw resembles a crater with the saw at it's bottom. Around birthdays or holidays, I'll go into those scraps, to make small gifts but it really doesn't do much to put a dent in the pile.

I was thinking about the previous blog posts on scraps as I sat at a stoplight a few days ago. The business beside me shows rotating artists work on it's walls each month, and it hit me-- why not approach the owner about a show of my small, wall-hung work. I can work on pieces that can fit into my existing schedule while there's down time, during glue-up, etc... They won't occupy too much space in the shop. I can have a lower price point than what most of my pieces would cost, hopefully making them more appealing to the budget conscious. AND I might not need to be an acrobat to get around my shop.

It's a Brave New World

2009-03-14T10:16:00.005-04:00

It may be my age -- I'm 53 -- or that I've been on crutches the past two months, but I'd begun to wonder if I was getting too set in my ways to keep up with the march of technology. I don't have a cell phone; I don't have an iPod; I believe that portable devices that take photographs and play games should not be called telephones. I do, however, have a clock radio. Maybe it's time, I thought, to learn something really new and different. As soon as I master walking to the bathroom under my own power, I'm going to do something really out there.

So while most self-respecting men my age are buying red convertibles, I decided to learn a CAD program.

My friend Luis is a little Mexican guy who's a very stylish tennis player. He's also spent most of his professional life using a CAD program called Vectorworks, and after he showed me what it can do, I knew I had to have it; no matter that it costs as much as a decent table saw or that my computer skills have been unfavorably compared to our cat's.

There were a few problems right away: my operating system was too old, and I needed more memory. My computer had the same problems. My issues can't be fixed, sadly, but I can update the computer: just needed to throw a few hundred more bucks at it. Of course, all the other software I'd been running on my ancient system had to be updated, or purchased anew. My real beef with technology is that anything purchased in 2002, which seems like yesterday to me, is now laughably out of date, a relic. We live in a time when the elders no longer have currency -- kind of like furniture makers.

But now I have Vectorworks up and running. Yesterday I spent four hours drafting a section of a molding that might have taken me a minute-a-half -- tops -- at the drafting table. I think with another month of practice I can get it down to three hours. But I'm determined to learn this, if for no other reason than to prove I'm not to old to learn and to change.

Next time I'm going to buy the convertible.

There's money in that scrap box

2009-03-11T17:06:00.000-04:00

In his post last week, Dan put out a call to other members to see what we do with our scraps. I generate enough scraps each year for kindling for my house and my neighbor's, but before anything makes it into the kindling box, it has to be really small and useless. I like to squeeze as much additional money as I can out of my scraps. With the price of lumber these days, a 1 foot chunk of 8/4 kiln dried cherry scrap is like a $10 bill lying around. I'd rather save that and make something out of it, and heat my house with a piece of split firewood that costs under a dollar instead.

Reminds me of a story: Do you know a true Vermonter can stay warm all winter on one piece of firewood? Go outside, get a piece of firewood, bring it into the house, take it upstairs, open the window, and throw it outside. Then go downstairs, go outside, pick up the piece of firewood, bring it in the house, take it upstairs, open the window, and throw it outside again. Then go downstairs, back outside, and repeat until you are warm. Keep doing that to stay warm...

But I digress. Back to scraps...

What to do with all those leftover end cuts from boards that just pile up around the shop? In '94, I started carving spoons from cherry scraps. Sometimes the shape of the handles were dictated by the piece of scrap, and whatever flaws - knots, cracks - had to be worked around. Then I started taking all the really short pieces of scraps and gluing them together to make spatulas for cooking. I use the woods that are safe for contact with food (cherry, maple, ash) for the blade portion, and all kinds of other woods for the handles, including unusual tree prunings like lilac, mulberry, dogwood, rhododendron, etc. Making them has served as a nice way to take a break from the more intensive large pieces I build, and has also been like a quick study in sculptural form. You can see some other examples of them here.

And then there are those really unusual shaped scraps, like Dan talked about that I just can't seem to get rid of. I have a few that are almost 20 years old, that I still have, and stare at once in a while. I always think about making something with them at some point, but then get too busy, and there they sit, waiting to be contemplated some more.

I also keep a box in the shop to save the best offcuts for kids blocks. At this point, all of my friends with little kids have received a set of hardwood scrap blocks. My nephews were the first kids to get a set of my blocks. Then last year, for my youngest nephew's 7th birthday, I took these large 4" thick scrap poplar chunks from a dining table I had just finished, and made a set of all kinds of ramps and bridges for his cars. Fun with the bandsaw! The portions that were cut out from under the bridges were then cut out again to make garages. I got on a roll, and ended up filling a pretty big box for him. Below is a photo - click to enlarge.

Custom toy bridge orders gladly accepted.

davidhurwitzoriginals.com

Powder-Milk Biscuits

2009-03-10T18:39:00.018-04:00

Building furniture, despite its obvious attractions, is not the most social of livelihoods. I work alone, and often feel like a pea in a coffee can rattling around by myself in my shop. I like it that way--don’t get me wrong-- but too much of it can make you a hermit, and it's addictive. It becomes hard to keep a perspective on what you offer the world, and the validity of what you do.

I was feeling particularly lackluster just before last Christmas as I delivered a couple of small butternut book cases ordered by my friend Kitty in Hartland. She asked me why the glum face, so I laid out a rather pathetic and self pitying portrait of my current mood and business condition, and commented that with times being what they were, I didn’t see much prospect of improvement.

Unlike me, she’s a woman of action, and would hear none of it. “What you need is a retrospective show of your work, and I’m going to host it, right here in my living room,” Kitty said as she gestured to her ample space, an elegant sun-filled room of 24’ x 36’ with commanding views of Mt. Ascutney. “But we’d have to do it right, really fill up the space with lots of pieces and photographs, and invite everyone we can think of that could possibly afford an order. I’ll take care of the party, and you take care of what you put in it.” I had to admit that one could hardly ask for a better showplace, and I told her I’d think about it.

On the drive home I went through all the reasons I could think of for why it was not worth doing: I couldn’t spare the time, I didn’t have any pieces to show, it would cost too much for invitations and photographs, I wouldn’t make any money while I was working on it, etc. etc. There were a million excuses I could think of to wave her off, but the real reason for my reluctance was that I was a chicken; I preferred to fester in my shop feeling pathetic rather than put myself out in the public eye where I could be judged. That cinched it for me-- if I’d gotten to be that much of a hermit, then I just had to throw my hat over the wall to where I’d have to follow it. I got home, discussed it briefly with my wife Jane, and called Kitty back to say I’d do it. We agreed on February 28.

For a month or so I pretended to myself I hadn’t accepted. There was too much to do in my shop, and anyway how could I fill up such a space? The end of January arrived, and I’d done nothing except toy with an invitation layout. I alternated between thoughts of fleeing to Mexico and visions of years of orders stacking up. But there was no way around it-- I had to get moving. My daughter and I whipped up an invitation in Photoshop and took it to a printer. Jane addressed 150+ invitations. I borrowed furniture from almost every person within 30 miles that had a piece I’d made that I wouldn’t be embarrassed to show. I bought a big format (13”x 19”) printer from Amazon so I could print photographs of things that had headed off to parts south.

I endured a lot of restless nights, but eventually it all pulled together. After countless trips I had collected a shop full of furniture to polish up. My office was littered with empty ink cartridges and discarded photos, but there were enough good ones to fill the walls (I hoped). We mounted them all on black foam-core, and made labels for everything. One by one the collected furniture was waxed and polished, and finally 3 days before the show we were ready to deliver.

Out went all of Kitty’s furniture and paintings to her barn, up went the rugs, and in came the accumulated effort of 35 years of my life, over 40 different pieces large and small. Over the next two days we arranged the whole thing. On Kitty’s suggestion, we put a big mahogany dining table I’d just finished in the very center of the room, where it gave a feeling of real substance. The smaller pieces radiated out around it, and we put smaller incidental bits like trays and boxes on those surfaces to give a feeling of lightness and domesticity. On the walls we used adhesive foam to stick the photographs in arrangements that told a story, and then we tagged the whole lot with our labels. The room felt balanced and complete, but not crowded.

The day of the opening came, sunny and spring-like, and we arrived just before the first guests. Kitty had put out a big spread, with many bottles of champagne and lots to eat, and flowers all round. Now all we needed were people to come! And come they did, probably about 60-70. The transformation was complete; I’d gone from Cinderella in rags, to a princess in a fancy ball gown. For me the effect was magical and quite overwhelming. I felt like a mid-wife seeing all her unnamed deliveries gathered together as adults for the first time in one place. For a while I could hardly put two words together, but my relief at the evident success of it all eventually broke through, and I was floating on air. People right and left said the kindest things, and I suddenly felt for the first time in ages that I was doing what I was meant to do.

I can’t say that I now have years of orders stacked up, and the whole project did take an inordinate amount of time--probably a good month-- but it was so worth it. As furniture makers we spend so much time alone wondering if what we do matters in the greater scheme of things. But by putting myself out in public view I'd partaken of Garrison Keillor's metaphorical powder-milk biscuits and done what needed to be done, and for at least a while I can answer that question for myself in the affirmative. I’d chased my hat over the wall, and found a much more beguiling climate on the other side.

It never gets dull

2009-03-08T21:33:00.009-04:00

One reason I decided to take up making furniture professionally was that I figured that I would never get bored with it. After 22 years I find that this is still true. I used to always want to be making something different but I find that I do enjoy routine such as making sets of chairs. During the more routine work, I listen to Public Radio, books on tape or even put on a DVD as long as it is high on dialogue and not subtitled. That being said, it is good to be challenged once in a while. A few times a year I get custom orders that keep me thinking. The radio is off and the calculator is out figuring and refiguring dimensions to make sure that everything fits. This latest job is a Hunt Table or Irish Wake Table and will be headed to Ireland when I finish it up. This table has a few challenges. The oval shape, matching the wood across the wide table surface, keeping it flat and true, the rule joint for the large leaves, and designing the double gate-leg hinge mechanism that will support the leaves and close cleanly to the under-structure of the table. I love the graceful shape of the table top. So far that is as far as I have gotten.

The last time I did a rule joint was in 1986, when I first started building furniture with Thomas Kiley who no longer makes furniture but he taught me a great deal over two years back then. For me, the reason why this never gets boring is that there is so much to learn. We learn something one day and squirrel it away and pull it out twenty some years later to use that information on a current project. Now that I think of it, the wooden hinge design that I will use for the gate-legs was inspired by photo copies of furniture joints that I made back in 1985 when I was thinking about making furniture as a profession. Reading the blog entries of other Guild members has opened, and I am sure will continue to open, doors to countless new ideas.

For me, it is comforting to know that I will never have time to make everything with wood that I can imagine. It never gets dull.

To see more of my work, go to www.TimothyClark.com

The Furniture Maker and The Princess

2009-03-08T08:55:00.004-04:00

Once upon a time there was a furniture maker who worked long hours building simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture in his workshop in Putney, Vermont. At the end of every day he would go home and check his email (this was a very tech savvy furniture maker) and delete all the emails he got from Nigerian Princes whose fathers had just died in a car crashes leaving them millions of dollars that they had to get out of their country with the furniture maker's help.

One day the furniture maker received an email from someone claiming to be a decorator that the furniture maker thought might be from a Nigerian but he wasn't sure. The grammar wasn't great and the email was from a foreign country but the email's author did seem to have a legitimate question: "Could you make your mission bed for a european size mattress?" The furniture maker decided that there could be no harm in answering this question so he replied that he could make the bed in whatever size the customer desired. A week after replying the furniture maker received another email explaining that the decorator was waiting to hear back from his client but that he thought he would certainly be ordering the bed within a week. The furniture maker was still very suspicious that this "decorator" was really just someone trying to somehow steal his hard earned money.

Another week passed and by now the furniture maker had forgotten all about the foreign "decorator". Then one day when checking his email the furniture maker saw a reply from the decorator saying that he would like to order the mission bed and two mission night tables for his client and that the furniture maker should send the bill for this to:

HRH The Princess of (name withheld for privacy)
The Princess's Palace
The Princess's Country

Now the furniture maker was sure he was dealing with someone who was trying to steal his money. After all, why would a princess want his simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture? Surely a real princess could have whatever she wanted for her palace and surely she wouldn't want his simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture. Knowing now that he was dealing with someone who was trying to steal his money the furniture maker decided that he would see how the "decorator" would try to go about doing this. The furniture maker replied to the "decorator" that for all foreign orders full payment was required when the furniture was ordered. Once the furniture was completed full payment for shipping charges would be required before the furniture would be shipped.

The reply to the furniture maker's email came quickly: "That is fine and the Princess needs your bank account number."

"Just as I suspected" thought the furniture maker. They want my bank account number so that they can steal my money. The furniture maker's reply was short and to the point "NOBODY GETS MY BANK ACCOUNT NUMBER!" And with that the furniture maker decided to ignore any future emails from the "decorator".

But then the furniture maker received an email from someone claiming to be the Princess's secretary. She wanted to know how much the shipping costs would be. The furniture maker ignored the email. She email again a week later: "Did you get my first email? We need to know what the shipping costs will be on the Princess's order."

"Boy", thought the furniture maker, "these Nigerians really want my money." He ignore the secretary's second email too.

Several weeks passes and the furniture maker forgot all about the decorator and the secretary. One morning, while the furniture maker was working in his shop building simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture, the phone rang. It was a woman claiming to be the Princess of (name witheld for Privacy)'s secretary. She spoke with a foreign accent but in excellent english and was very polite. She wanted to know if the furniture maker had received her emails. She needed to know what the shipping costs would be for the Princess's furniture. The furniture maker answered that he had not replied because he knew the shipping costs would be expensive and he thought perhaps the "Princess" wouldn't think it was worth paying that much to ship his simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture. The secretary (who was translating the conversation to another person on her end) replied that she still would like to find out how much it would cost so the furniture maker agreed to get a shipping quote and reply to her email with it.

At this point the furniture maker started to wonder if perhaps the "decorator" was a real decorator and the "secretary" was a real secretary and the "Princess" was a real princess. But how could he know for sure? He decided to contact the consulate in the U.S. for the Princess's country and ask them if they could help to confirm whether it was the real Princess who had contacted him. The consulated agreed to do this and in a couple of days the furniture maker had the answer: It was, indeed, the Princess of (name withheld for privacy) who wanted to buy his simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture for her palace!

The furniture maker got paid and his simple (but well made and beautiful) furniture is currently on its way to the Princess. Hopefully everyone will live happily ever after.

Moral #1: Not every email from a foreign Prince or Princess is a scam.

Moral #2: Princesses are just like you and me. Sometime they just want a simple (but well made and beautiful) piece of furniture.

Moral #3: I recently received a resume and photos via email from a man in Nigeria who is looking for work as a cabinetmaker. He appeared to be legitimate. It leads me to believe that not everyone from Nigeria is running a scam. I hope he finds a job.

Richard Bissell builds Shaker and Mission Furniture in Putney, Vermont
To learn more about his simple (but well made and beautiful furniture) visit Bissellwoodworking.com

Art is Nice

2009-03-07T12:14:00.002-05:00

But in Vermont warmth is better.

This is how I use my Scraps.

McGuire Family's Boiler Building.

http://www.mcguirefamilyfurnituremakers.com

While I Was Working

2009-03-07T05:00:00.001-05:00

Below is something I posted to my Dorset Custom Furniture blog on Thursday. Here on the Guild blog, I thought it would be interesting if other Guild members added their images to this post ... It's always interesting to me to see what other artists do with their (and sometimes my) scraps ... Click the photos to enlarge them ...

A James Montague Sculpture made from stuff in my scrap box

From my blog ... 'I have always wanted to do a little show of stuff that happens while I'm working ... Not of the stuff I make intentionally, but of the scraps, side effects and by-products of the stuff that I'm making. The unexpected interesting little visual bonuses . Will was planing some edge inlay last Friday and handed me a little piece of the shavings that came off the hand plane and it made me think of that show concept again. Somewhere, I have a cardboard box of stuff I've saved, waiting for the show to happen, but today I couldn't find it .... In the meantime, I looked around the shop a bit and there were plenty of items there in plain sight, accumulated over the years ... decorations with a story .... '

Metal drill chip and cherry/walnut edge curl .... Click to the photos to enlarge them

Offcuts of tapered table legs and a bowl on the sawdust shed

The shape over the door of the finishing room is the plywood left after we cut two 32 x 64 1/2 circle mockup parts for a table we were building

The table mockup mentioned above

The bird on the porch ... more scraps from tapered bench legs ...

ALSO .... Be sure not to miss THE AMAZING HAMMER JUGGLER

Don't try this at home

I leave you with the shape over the red arow to the left of the door ... I plucked it out of the scrap pile to the left ....

Turning Bowls

2009-03-06T22:12:00.007-05:00

OK, I'm going officially crazy. For two nights now I have been trying to manipulate these photos into a different order. Anyway I give up.But I did have two glasses of wine tonight and things are looking up, last night I accidentally deleted the whole lot and gave up in disgust.(Any Clues?)

I guess I'm more of an impresario than a furniture maker, but I can't tell you the pleasure I have got over the last 22 years creating a place where things get made by our own hands out of natural raw wood,mostly simple functional things which have a story to tell about what their makers love in life. Of all the things we have done in our workshop, and we don't specialize in very fancy or clever things, these bowls are my complete and absolute favorite.

Very simple organic shapes made from raw green maple logs out of the local woods dumped in the parking lot. Then carved up with a chainsaw, screwed onto a lathe, and reams of freshly made pasta comes streaming away from the bowl. Within two or three hours a beautiful simple turned bowl, which when turned very thinly, over the next few days, as it dries,transforms itself into the most wonderful ovaloid natural uneven shapes. There's something about the transformation from the raw log to the refined but distorted natural shape and the wonderful smell of green wood being sawn and turned.

What most inspired me to write this was to watch Chris, our youngest furniture maker, get totally hooked on doing this, and seeing his passion and enthusiasm for learning to create these "things" over the last month.It reminded me of when I was 23 starting out and to remind myself(at the age of 50) to keep doing those things that most inspire me.

I wish I was a better writer and could write as short as I pronounced to be the ideal...oops..sorry Randy...but you won't read this anyway right?? Hellloooooooooo...any body out there???????

"Desire Under The Elms"

2009-03-06T20:01:00.004-05:00

As we previously reported in an earlier post, our Salem chairs were chosen to be used in the stage production, "Desire Under the Elms", at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. The production ran from January 17-March 1, and during the run of the play our chairs have had the ultimate test. They have been thrown across the stage, kicked, jumped on, caught in the lift bringing the props up from the lower level, and managed to survive. The production has had excellent reviews and it as well as our chairs are on their way to Broadway. We have been asked to produce an additional six chairs for the Broadway production.

McGuire Family Furniture Makers

Isle La Motte, Vermont

http://www.mcguirefamilyfurnituremakers.com/

artisan collaborative

2009-03-03T11:36:00.003-05:00

We just completed a complex reception desk for a company off of Route 128 in Waltham, MA. It was an unusual project full of elliptical shapes and acid-etched glass but more importantly, it was the Guild of Vermont Furnituremakers at their best. The tight schedule and complexity brought three shops together. Hawk Ridge Furniture, Mario Messina Designer Craftsman and Wilson Woodworking all worked in concert to complete the project. It felt like a NASA spaceship with different elements being constructed in different places, with the expectation of all the pieces effortlessly sliding together. Everything did slide together but it required a lot of effort and careful coordination. Hawk Ridge and Mario Messina worked on the mahogany base panels that hinged together. They ordered the acid-etched glass and designed a system to hold the corian transaction counters that cantileever. Wilson Woodworking created the desk top that resembles an aircraft wing, the difficlult part being the cutting of the curved maple nosing to fit the curved veneered panels. WW also did all of the finishing. We sprayed the desktop on Wednesday, loaded the van on Thursday and installed on Friday. This involved an early start Friday morning. The northern boys got up at 2:30 a.m. and rendezvoused with WW in order to beat the Boston morning rush hour. Surprisingly, everything went as planned. We finished by noon and quickly made our exit, glad to be out of the craziness of the Boston traffic and back to our quiet Vermont towns.

Michael Wilson

Wilson Woodworking

28 River St.

Windsor, VT 05089

http://www.wilsonwoodwork.com/

New Venues

2009-02-26T12:37:00.005-05:00

There is a silver lining to an economic crisis, here at Johns Congdon Furniture Design, 'exposure' seems to rally as the sounding cry of defiance. Vermonters tend to lead insular lives and we certainly have been among that population for the past 20 years. While a furniture craftsman may bemoan the isolation of his studio from time to time - there is the added bonus that few jobs hold - meeting so many people, getting a glimpse of their lives and interests, often eccentric at that. One of our larger collections, is held by a lovely family, whose generosity to the arts reaches in all directions. Baseball has some of the sport worlds most passionate adherents, and the library pictured below attests to that. For this project Johns had some rather unusual materials added to his list; a baseball mitt, a regulation ball and a Louisville Slugger. When unbridled sports memorabilia collecting and a master craftsman meet, expect the unexpected!

In this case a man's library is his castle.

Solid sustain yield mahogany, with knooks and crannies for a lifetime of favorites,

life-size replicas of balls , bats and glove, and when the game gets really going - this Red Sox fan can stand up and pick up both ball and bat from his fireplace surround, to make that grand slam a little easier for his home team.

As our clients have been sending in jpegs for us to share from their favorite projects, with new clients....we thought we would share it with you. Eccentricity is in many ways synonomous with

the life of an artist. A life spent expressing individuality, and crowning everyday living with something arrived at by collaboration just for you, and in this case, also, the Red Sox nation.

Giovanna and Johns Congdon

JOHNS CONGDON FURNITURE DESIGN

Charlotte VT

802-425-2522

www.johnscongdon.com

2009-02-25T19:23:00.004-05:00

Yesterday Tim Clark emailed and called to tell me Design Within Reach is marketing a knock-off of my Bowback Bench (See:http://www.jasbecker.com/bench.html to view the original.) Tim indicated thatDesign Within Reach presents itself as dealing with designers in an effort to present their product to a wider audience at a better price. In this case they succeeded in all but the first criteria. I called around to a lawyer friend and David Moser (Thos. Moser Cabinetmakers) to see what if anything I can do about it. Initial impressions are that I cannot do much legally, because I don,t have a patent. I was wondering if anyone has any ideas as what I might do to either persuade the company to stop or to pay me a commission on sales?

On a lighter note I would like to present the latest and largest addition to my Ming Shaker line of furniture, the office hutch pictured here to the left. The hutch pictured is 6 feet wide by 7 feet high by 21 inches deep. It is made of cherry with birdseye maple accents. It was a custom order but I would be happy to duplicate or modify the design and make another. Call for pricing: 802-295-7004. The photo has not yet. been posted to my website.

New work

2009-02-19T17:15:00.004-05:00

I recent finished this George Nakashima inspired walnut dining table, as I look back it is evident that I am still learning and truly enjoyed all aspects of the process, from working on the design with the client tweaking the design to fit his home and families requirements, finding walnut slabs that were close to 3” in thickness x 30” wide to build the table with a finished size of 50” x 108” x 30”. Some of the challenges of working on a table of this size include just moving the slabs around. I found that my shop while it’s very well equipped still lacked a planner to handle stock of this size. This was not a setback, but it was a chance to network and to meet a resourceful Vermont fellow who owned a small mill with a planer of sufficient size.
In joining the top book matched slabs great care was taken to insure a mirror image, just a fraction of an inch would produce poor results. Only veneers will produce a true book match, because no wood is lost between the two pieces of wood. This is because they are sliced with a knife. With solid wood the saw cuts a kerf of a 3/16”+/-, next the flatting or “face jointing” removes more of the stock, as the stock is removed the characteristic of the two slabs change loosing this book match effect. If you have a chance look at a board flip it over is it the same? Chances are it is not. So with this in mind it is very important not to remove any more wood than needed. With one side flat I run the slabs to be planed, planning produces a parallel surface to the jointed side.
Next is the placement of the butterfly keys. The keys join the two slabs together and insure integrity of the wood where the wood has checked. Their use should be sparse as not to overcome the walnut’s beauty or busy the design. Paper keys were used to position the sugar maple keys cut out and placed on the top moving them as needed. Locations were found sizes set larger keys were used to join the two slabs leaving a 3/32” gap between the two. This small gap proved to be another challenge any fluctuation in this dimension over its 108” of length and it would stand out like the parable “sore thumb”
As with the rest of this table nothing is small. The typical wood screw and fastener were dwarfed, this top is attached to the base using 3/8 machine bolts in slots allowing seasonal movement. With a 50” wide top this movement can be as much as 1 full inch with a 6 percent moisture change.
This table or one like it could be adapted for used as a desk with the addition of a drawer and keyboard tray, or used as a conference table. Feel free to contact me at www.finewoodenfurniture.com
Well back to work on a walnut dining table and chairs, or next month’s blog.
Thank you for taking the time to read about Joe Breznick ’s work.

Wide, live edge, figured birch boards

2009-02-19T15:39:00.001-05:00

I finally made the trip to Tom Lathrop's in Bristol this week to find some birdseye maple boards for a table top I need to make. I found exactly what I needed for the job. He said he is still busy with work, which is encouraging these days. He mentioned that he was just about to put into the kiln the nicest and widest figured birch flitch he has ever cut. I told him I would pass the info on to the Guild member, so if you can use it, give him a call. He says thanks to all the members for their business.
nejat linsclo
Janet Collins

www.jacwoodworking.com

Using limitations as inspiration

2009-02-18T19:18:00.007-05:00

A couple of years ago I watched the movie "The Five Obstructions" in

which a director is challenged to remake five versions of a twelve

minute short he'd made many years earlier. For each version he has

specific limitations placed on him. These limitations cause him to

step out of his comfort zone and work more creatively.

I found this idea intriguing and wanted to play with it in my

woodworking. I started thinking of ways to implement this for future

gallery pieces. One thought was to build a piece using only a

circular saw and a couple of hand tools. As a diversion from my

normal work, I started exploring the limits of a circular saw. I used

it to carve, burn, shape…This was accomplished by removing teeth from

blades, using masonry blades to burn rather than cut wood, etc. A lot

of the scraps of wood I experimented on ended up in the woodstove, but

some grabbed me and I set them aside for future use.

I've also found this a very nice way to come at a project when

collaborating with a new client. I tend towards the "yeah, I can do

that. I'm not sure how, but…" Treating limitations like a puzzle can

make potential roadblocks fun.

I have yet to build an entire piece that way, but some of those

experiments have found a way to my furniture. This first materialized

in a bed I made this summer.

On the panels I "dinged" the circular

saw sideways (don't try this at home) to create a bamboo leaf motif

(shown). My current project is a shoji (folding) screen being made

for an acupuncturist's office that also uses this motif. (See photos).

I will post a picture of this finished piece soon.

5,000 Board Feet of Pine

2009-02-17T22:20:00.006-05:00

There it is, my new shop! I took delivery of about 5,000 board feet of pine yesterday. There is a little locust for the sills, a cherry half log (the loggers threw in) and a maple log for some flooring. My band saw mill is just out of the picture to the left. I am taking the photo from the middle of where the workshop will go. My bench will be ten feet closer to the logs. When am I going to do this? Its hard to imagine where the time will come from. However, I am desperate to get out of the rented space I'm in, off of a concrete (tool eating) floor and have some real insulation. I am most looking forward to windows that look out upon an inspiring landscape and let in the sunlight.

Why so much pine you ask? Its cheap and easy to work. It makes good timber frames, wainscoting and roof sheathing. I have mostly used hemlock for frames in the past, but have noticed a lot of pine in old frames, especially from the mid 1800's. The pine seems to hold up well, better than hemlock in some cases. Mostly, though, pine is what my friends a few miles away were cutting out of their sugar bush.

The plan is to mill all these logs into 8x8 timbers and 1" boards before it warms up too much, then cut the timber frame in early summer and invite folks for the raising ASAP. The building itself will be 24 x 32 with a 12 x 14 wing for office/studio. Unlike traditional New England frames, this will not have "bents" reaching across the middle of the building. Instead, I will build a side-wall frame, which will eliminate the "post-in-the-middle-of-the-room" dilemma. The ceiling will be suspended from the collar-ties two feet above the plates. I hope to be in by Christmas.

There it is. I've put it up for all the world to see. We'll see if I can get this done by Christmas. It's a tall order for just one person working on the building, starting with logs. Luckily I'm quicker with a chisel than I am with a blog! Maybe I can afford to hire out the sheetrock. I will devote this year's postings to updates on the building, so all can keep up. Hopefully I'll do something else interesting, like build some furniture. If so I'll put that up, too.

To see what I build in the shop, you can visit my website:
JasonEBreen.com

Pasadena in Vermont

2009-02-15T11:16:00.013-05:00

It is always interesting to bring together creative individuals and ask them to make things happen as a group. We are all generally working away in our shops handling the twenty-seven different hats that are needed to run a successful small business. Getting us together has never been easy but somehow over the years we have managed to keep doing just that. I do not envy the curator of a show who has to contact 29 furniture makers to schedule delivery. I have a hard enough time doing it with one! Having said that, I have always enjoyed the quarterly meetings of the guild held in different shops. It is always great to get out of my cocoon and see how someone else does their thing. I have picked up several safety tips and some great ideas from seeing how other professionals set up their shops. And yes there is occasional machinery envy. (Nice compressor, Bob!) Mostly we encourage each other professionally and it has turned into a source of information and help for all members who choose to join in.

As a guild members who is new to the blogosphere I am looking forward to watching this page develop. In quarterly meetings and shows we don’t necessarily get a view of the process that we each go through. It should be fun to see what is going on in these small corners of Vermont.

So what have I been up to lately? For years I have been greatly inspired by the works of Greene & Greene, two architects in Pasadena at the turn of the century. ( The Gamble house is one of their masterpieces that you can visit. ) Their work had an Arts & Crafts feel with an Asian flare and a real keen eye on details and craftsmanship. I have been enjoying creating my own works in a similar vein. I like to use their sensibility but bring my own vision to the piece while continuing to keep an eye on the details and craftsmanship. I have recently been experimenting with silver inlay and stones and will see where that goes.

This sideboard was fashioned after the Blacker house sideboard which is currently on tour in a special exhibit called "A New And Native Beauty; The Art and Craft of Greene & Greene". The exhibit just left the Huntington library and will be traveling to Washington, DC and Boston. This piece was the first time I used silver inlay. The door panels are carved by Matthew Strong, a very talented friend of mine in Stowe, VT. I gave him the door blanks and the basic design and he took it from there, right down to the trees carved into the panels and flowing into the stile and rails.

My current project is a desk I am making for a great client of mine. It is made out of Vermont cherry and embellished with ebony accents and inlay. I have finished the case and the top and I am about to make the drawers. You will be able to see that the drawer fronts have been routed to accept the ebony inlay. I then carve the drawer pulls out of cherry and ebonize them (basically impregnating them with a black aniline dye.) This desk is part of an office that will include a bookcase wall unit with file cabinets and shelves for stereo equipment. I will post more pics as I proceed.

You can see the rest of my custom furniture at WilliamLaberge.com

Being Screwed: Reflections on Professional Work

2009-02-13T16:28:00.002-05:00

One of the perils of being an independent craftsman is that you're a slave to the vagaries of your own aging body. When your body works, you work. When your body doesn't -- well, you can spend a lot more time blogging.

This x-ray shows my new, improved left foot (as Guild wit Bill Laberge said in a woodworking double entendre: he's heard of toe nails, but never toe screws). Two weeks ago, as I lay on the operating table in a very pleasant narcotic-induced fog, far away I heard someone drilling. I wasn't entirely sure, because I was singing to myself at the time; I think it was Knights in White Satin. But then I heard the unmistakable squeal of a screw snugging up in something hard. Though the neurons weren't firing at peak efficiency, slowly the realization formed in my consciousness exactly what was being drilled and screwed. "Hey, that's my foot!" I giddily announced. Everyone in the green outfits seemed surprised by this information, I assumed because they'd been wondering where the noise was coming from. Then I noticed some movement behind my right shoulder where Mr. Anesthesiologist was standing, and I woke up with a cast on my foot

OK, let's bring this back to furniture. The last thing I'd have wanted while I was on the table is to have Tim Clark banging his damn little wedges into my toe (see 2/9/09), especially the way he yanks that Japanese saw around. For my feet, screws were a good choice. As a professional woodworker I often make the mistake of trying to build everything more perfectly than the integrity of the work demands. It costs money and the work's no better for it. Wedged tenons are the ideal (and absolutely necessary) joint for Tim's chairs, but a waste of time on my feet and sometimes on a piece of furniture when a simpler, faster joint is better. Anyone with a little patience and unlimited time can eventually master the craft; the real challenge of being professional is knowing where to spend time, and where not. In my own professional life I constantly evaluate what makes work good, and what will make it valuable in the long run.

Half An Antique

2009-02-12T20:22:00.009-05:00

This little cabinet is something I sent off to my mother a couple of weeks ago. My mom is a quilter and she had saved the four drawers from her own mother's sewing cabinet and wanted a way to use them. My grandma was from Naples. She never got much beyond pidgin English, but she was an amazing seamstress, and an amazing woman. So, even though this was a small project, it was nice to work on something with a little family history.

Though it's not a very complicated little thing, I was really happy with how well the finish on the carcase ended up matching the original drawers. The box is made of rift-sawn red oak plywood. To match the underlying tones on the original, I first applied a water based yellow dye. Whenever I use dye, it is at this point that I usually despair, and convince myself that I have just ruined whatever I am working on. But, the dull, chalky, technicolor phase is a necessary shock that one just needs to pass through. Following the dye, I applied a walnut stain, and then grainfilled the whole thing to mimic the years of grime on the originals.

A sentimental project that I'll probably end up inheriting myself someday. Who knows, maybe I'll even take up sewing...

My own website is still in progress, but to see some of my "real" furniture, look at my page of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers site @ http://www.vermontfurnituremakers.com/Hanley

Collaboration

2009-02-11T20:13:00.001-05:00

Greetings fellow inhabitants of the blogoshpere! While I have read many a blog, this is the first time I have posted anything on one. This is an exciting new step for our guild, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves, what our members post, and who we connect with through comments along the way.

So what to post, where to go with this. Do I show you a recently completed piece? A new design on the drawing board? Scenes from inside my shop?... Well my website is almost three years out of date (yikes!). I have a lot of new work made since then that I need to get onto my site. Some of those more recent pieces are posted on my section of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers' site. As I type this, my site is undergoing a complete redesign, that will be setup so I can easily add and update all sections of it. Stay tuned, I will post an announcement when it's ready to launch.

So since my site is so out of date, I'd like to share some work I have been doing in a new direction over the past couple years. I have been collaborating with a sculptor here in Vermont named Kerry O. Furlani. These have been occasional furniture pieces in between our own individual work. Kerry's specialty is stone. She was trained in England in traditional stone carving techniques, and while she has carved all types of stone, lately she has been exploring Vermont slate. She does all of her carving entirely by hand, with a mallet and small stone chisels. No grinders, sanders or pneumatic tools. She has a real sensitivity to line and form, and her entirely by-hand approach allows that to really show in the details.

Collaboration is an interesting process. It is a give and take, and requires a certain openness by everyone involved. It's kind of like stepping into the unknown. Venturing into uncharted waters. Letting go of the safety and predictability of my own work and techniques, and the familiarity of my medium, and allowing this other completely different medium, and another artist into the process. Collaboration works best if you leave your expectations at the door, and just dive in and be open to seeing where it will take you. From a creative standpoint, it can be liberating, enlightening, incredibly inspiring, and push you to think about and explore concepts you might not otherwise have ever tried. But the one thing that really makes it work is when the other person is also very open to the process, is on a similar wavelength, and shares a somewhat similar aesthetic. In our collaboration, Kerry has brought all of that and more to the process. We share a similar sense of form - organic, contemporary, sensual, and contrasting textures with smooth, refined areas. It has been a really fun process, and we have made designs together that we never would have come up with on our own. So far, we have made five speculative pieces together, plus one commissioned piece for a corporate client.

So far, the fruits of our collaboration work have been well received. Our first piece was published in five major periodicals around the country, and purchased for a beach house right on the ocean in NJ. That piece (an end table), and our most recent piece (a hall table) will also be featured in a new book called 500 Tables, by Lark Books, due out this summer. We also just sold a piece through a gallery in the Boston area... My new website will have a section featuring all of our collaborative work, so for now, I'll post our most recent piece here. Thanks for reading and please check out my website: http://www.davidhurwitzoriginals.com

Tree of Life Hall Table, hand carved Vermont green slate, curly cherry top, cherry sides and base, 36” H x 48” W x 11” D.

Timing Is Everything

2009-02-10T22:18:00.003-05:00

Ever since I hung out my furniture-maker shingle, I’ve been frustrated by my pathetic habits when it comes to record keeping. It’s bad enough that my office is a jumble of unfiled drawings and stacks of bills (yes, Jim, I will pay dues soon), but what really sinks my boat is that I seem incapable of tracking my time accurately. It’s important, both so I can fairly bill for jobs I’m paid for by-the-hour, but also so that if I repeat a design, I have a reasonable idea of what I need to charge to cover the labor (next time; always next time). All pretty obvious, but somehow it still escapes me.

I’ve tried a million tricks. For a long time (pre-digital) I had a weekly log set up that broke down each day into 15 minute increments so I could accurately track the various little jobs that come through the shop. All well and good, but only if I remembered to stop each time I switched jobs to make a mark on the log; I mostly would not, and then would have to invent at the end of each day (or worse, the next day).

That frustration led me to get a series of stopwatches from RadioShack so I could just click a button to stop timing one job, and click another to start timing a second. It was a plan that seemed so promising as I went off to shop for the necessary toys, but in fact within days of my RadioShack solution I could sense that this was another snare and delusion. I kept forgetting to click both buttons, so at the end of the day it looked like I’d worked 16 hours, or even 24! Great for billing, but bad for my conscience.

Now I’ve just given up trying to be accurate. My computer is set to remind me every day at 6:00 PM to enter my hours into a QuickBook timesheet. I pretty much just invent; no way can I remember how long I took for lunch, or how long that website conference call lasted, let alone when I stopped working on the dining table I’m currently making to repair the Sheraton chair that came in unexpectedly yesterday, or how long I spent driving to get the hide glue to do it with.

But I think I have the answer. I want to build a super timeclock that can cure me of my incurable bad habits. Here’s the idea: Take a series of stop clocks that have simple on/off switches and arrange them in a line. Above them-- how you construct this device is up to you-- put as many horizontal rods as you have clocks, with each rod having little feet that press the on switch of one clock, and the offs of all the others. For good measure, add another rod that only hits the off switches.

At the beginning of the day’s work, hit button #1 to actuate your first clock. When you switch to your second job of the day, hit button #2 and it will turn off clock #1 and start clock # 2. Ditto for job #3. Lunch time, or the phone rings? Hit the button that turns everything off, and when you’re done, start up the clock again with the appropriate job button. And et cetera. At the end of the day, you should have a series of numbers that not only accurately reflect the time to assign to each job, but when you add them together they should give you your actual working hours, of which there are never enough. Go enter them into QuickBooks and have a beer.

I think it will work! Now I just need a week to build it, and a RadioShack beeper to remind me to push the buttons.

Timothy Clark, Cabinetmaker/Chairwright

2009-02-09T09:38:00.007-05:00

Another freezing cold (but sunny) morning here in Waltham, Vermont. I rode in with my wife and son when she drove him to school this morning so that I could walk the two miles back home. Making furniture is a fairly physical occupation but I still do not get enough exercise. The 100 foot walk to the shop is just not enough even though I do sometimes run the distance.

My signature work is building Windsor chairs and benches of my design. Chair-making is hard work but I find it to be low stress and always satisfying. It is very sculptural. Soft lines and curves are sprung together to form a whole that is a combination of flexibility and stiffness. Beauty, comfort and a long, strong life is the goal for each chair design. Hand-tools are a big part of why making chairs is satisfying. Shaping parts with a hand-plane or spoke-shave so that they look right to the eye is what I am doing most days.

One reason for the strength of a well built Windsor chair is the wedged tenon joint. When done correctly this joint will remain tight through years and years of seasonal changes and daily sitting. The video below shows the wedge being hammered into the tenon at the top rail of my 6' settee.
(Click the high quality setting (while it is playing) in the right corner of the video to get a clearer view of things.)

The video below shows the cleaning up of the top rail after the joints are wedged.

To see all of my work, take a look at my website. TimothyClark.com

Have a good one,

Tim

Herding Cats

2009-02-08T10:43:00.001-05:00

Members of the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers are all fiercely independent having achieved an extremely high level of skill in the art of furniture making and figured out a way to make a living at this. Both of these accomplishments takes years (perhaps decades) of hard work and every Guild member has spent most, if not all, of this time working on their own - making all of their own design, construction and business decisions without having to answer to anyone. Bringing a group of individuals like this together to work for a common cause is no easy task but the results of this effort are substantial.

The Guild currently has a membership of 29 master furniture makers from throughout the state of Vermont who have been invited to join the Guild only after passing a rigourous jury process. Each member works independently in their own shop on their own designs and sets their own business practices. The Guild as a whole promotes the work of members through our website, vermontfurnituremakers.com, where visitors can easily browse a sampling each member's work. The Guild also puts on member shows from time to time, prints a brochure and works with various suppliers of Guild members to negotiate discounts and benefits that would not otherwise be available to members individually.

All decisions about Guild activities are made jointly by all members at quarterly meetings and through email and phone calls. As you can well imagine there are 29 opinions on each subject so coming to decision often requires a lot of back and forth. The creation of this blog was no different. The idea is that through this blog members of the public will be able to get an excellent insight into who the 29 individual furniture makers are and how they each approach their work and go about creating the incredible pieces of furniture that come from their workshop.

The current plan for this blog is that each furniture maker will be assigned a day of the month when they are to post to the blog. Posting more often is permitted but the assigned schedule will ensure that there is at least one new post every day. Of course, given the independent nature of Guild members, this may be subject to discussion and change.

Richard Bissell - Current Guild President and chief cat herder.

Learn more about my Shaker furniture at BissellWoodworking.com.

Ahhh ... What to write ?

2009-02-07T21:21:00.000-05:00

Click the photo to enlarge it ... keep the pics about 1000 pixels wide and around 100kb or less and they'll be good This one's about 750 x 800

I'd like to extend a warm welcome to the 20 or so woodworkers in the Guild of Vermont Furniture Makers who are new to the blogosphere and encourage them to get started. I have been posting to my blog since November of 2007 and it has been really interesting ... It has provided me with insight into my craft and it's methods, created a visual and verbal record of our processes and production techniques way deeper than any protfolio or website can ever do, linked me to people, literally, all over the world, and introduced me to a new hobby, writing. Like any hobby, you've got to give it some time before you get comfortable with it. You also have to get the hang of putting stuff up here and moving it around, creating links, etc., which will take you a minute. But, like anything, it's nothing a ten year old can't do with 10 years of practice, so, have at it. I write about a lot of stuff, but mostly, my blog is to communicate with my customers the progress we're making on their projects so that they're willing to send me more money and correct me where I've gone astray. (This happens). If you follow the link above to my blog, you will see other links to some of my favorite posts and from there you can just scroll around and see what's up in my world. Or if you want, just ramble on like Charley, but it's probably best to do it before the champagne.

Here are some other examples:
techniques: Turning Brass on a Woodturning Lathe
off topic: John Updike Has Left The Building
styles: A Greene and Greene Style Sideboard
interesting comments from readers (scroll to the bottom): 'lurch' ... he's actually sent me the pictures ... and from Steve Balmer .. scroll down and click on Steve Ballmer Said he hasn't bought any furniture yet, but ....

I haven't had a huge ton of success getting people to leave comments, but if we set an example by leaving some under people's posts like Steve did for Charley, eventually, people will, as they say "chime in" .... carpe diem ... dan

For more information about Dan Mosheim and Dorset Custom Furniture check out our website at http://www.dorsetcustomfurniture.com/

McGuire Family Furniture Makers/Goodman Theatre Chairs

2009-02-07T09:12:00.000-05:00

A request from a potential customer came in for our Salem Chairs. It was an unusual request, as they needed chairs that could literally "take a beating". Questions pursued were: If a chair is thrown across the stage will it survive? Will they break if a stage actor jumps or stands on the chair? Would they loosen up and fall apart with the abuse that they would take? They also noticed that our chairs have adequately proportioned seats, which was important, as several of the actors had large frames. Our reply to all questions was that our chairs are individually made, each component of every chair is produced in our workshop, and will stand up under any abuse. The Goodman Theatre of Chicago proceeded to order 4 chairs for their stage production of, "Desire Under the Elms", starring Brian Dennehy.

The Art of Making Furniture

2009-02-06T01:27:00.000-05:00

Well, its 1.25am in the morning and My wifes 50th birthday began about 1 and 1/2 hours ago and we just got home having celebrated with a bottle of champagne and I have just signed on to this blog which is the first time in my life on such a thing. I am desperately trying to think of something very deep and important to say about furniture making. I am very proud and grateful to Josh for starting to do this. If this comment is going to be published in the New York Times(the only place I have ever read a blog) I would like to mention, and I think you will glean from the aforementioned facts, that we are the remnants of a culktural revolution started in the late 1960's That believes in returning to the land of making, and the making of beautiful, functional and artistic artifacts out of natural and organic materials. I think I better go to bed. Lets hope this does not evict me from the
esteemed art of blogging. I promise to write something more important and much more serious at a later date.