well, here’s a table with a lot of woodworking involved. we made the first, more complex, version of it in the early 90s for a client who photographed, measured, and documented a table they studied while on a trip to england. that table had a more complex edge inlay and brass casters on the pedestals … you can see two photos of that table on my website at this link=. there are several steps in forming the ‘legs’ of the turned column, and i remember struggling with the glue up of the original pedestals, which we solved with a clever jig this time through. not to brag, (it was just dumb luck) that we saved, AND were able to find the original box jig from 1991 for cutting the dovetails in the turned column. i also had a full size drawing of the turnings and the ‘legs’ which saved us some time. you can see many more detailed photos od the setups and steps in this blog post. other projects happening in the shop now too .. i may post another later … i hope you had a relaxing sunday … it is trying, without a lot of success, to be spring in vermont today.

we’re having a run of pool tables lately and so i am trying to organize my pictures and prices so that people can see them all easily … above are six of about 15 of the photos on my most recent blog post within that there are links within that post to information on building them, start to finish. one of the posts that has the most building info is this one check them out there if you are interested … for prices, check our website here. pool tables can be seen as daunting, but it’s really just about creating a level surface to fasten the slate to, and then some careful work with the felt cushions and pockets …

here’s an interesting table that left our shop for california today. it’s 52” x 126”, and is based on a table we made a few years back. my client took the photo of the original table from my blog, (the third image), and photoshopped it to suit his space, and then sent us the resulting image. from that, we made a new cad drawing and sam crafted 10 ‘earthquake handles’ for under the top. the client lives on a fault line and wants his guests to have something to hold onto in the event of a ‘big one’. it will be crowded under there, but i think they’ll be safe. lots more pictures of the build process, template process, cad drawings and other details on my dorset custom furniture blog.

we make furniture, one piece at a time, it’s true, but, we also sometime make spaces, often intimate and personal spaces, that can have a deep meaning both for us, and for the clients we work with. i visited the space in the first photo above yesterday, to discuss some new work in an upstairs office, and was struck by the peacefulness of it. the client was the designer and she has an impeccable eye. we applaud her taste in custom furniture. the two pieces we made in the photo, the large kas tv cabinet in the background, (back when big tvs were still big), and the custom pool table in the foreground, both look great over 10 years later. both were challenges on a lot of levels, but looking at them now i remember the challenges as both fun and considerable. so, we should design a piece of furniture not just as a piece of furniture, but hopefully also as a part of the the larger surroundings where it will end up. for more thoughts on furniture/interior design visit this post on our dorset custom furniture blog

well, we’re on a roll this year with the pool tables. this is our third one in the last four months. at one point in november, we actually had two in the shop at the same time. (fourth photo). our son will, (the banjo maker), pretty much built and installed this one on his own. i helped carry in the slates and the other parts, but in most of this installation, since he had done all the work on it, i was the helper, not the guy in charge. it was a smooth installation, at a new house about two hours from the shop, and the floor was precisely and completely, 100% level. i don’t believe i have ever had that happen before. bolt the frame together, add the slate support frame, put the straightedge and four foot level on it and bingo, perfect in all directions. on a polished concrete floor no less. master concrete folks, or ‘win the lottery’ type coincidence. again, we used the fine woodworking article by paul bowman from 1989 as our guide. i really should call that guy and thank him. for more photos and comments about the table in process, there are two posts on my dorset custom furniture blog. you can get to the first post from a link in the first sentence of that post and links to our other pool table blog posts at the end of the first post. (got that?) also, there is a video of me missing some easy shots on it at this link. after we finished the installation. rack ‘em up.

i’m in the process of digitizing the 4×5 color transparencies of the first 22 years of my furniture making career. they were shot by my friend, cook neilson, before he retired from photography in 2001, and i was forced to take it up as a ‘hobby’ on my own. in the process i’m upgrading the quality of the images and their stories on my blog. a couple weeks ago i posted some images of some sideboards here on lumberjocks and i thought i would do the same thing with some case pieces like the ones shown here. similar to the sideboards, i am collecting the images in a single post on my dorset custom furniture blog. there are about 15 pieces in that post now, and that post will be an ongoing project, to be added to as images and time to write become available. i have updated the sideboard post with new photos a couple times already, and intend to tackle my pre blog dining tables sometime in the near future. looking back on this stuff now, with most of what you see here from the 80s and 90s, is quite a trip. we have had an amazing collection of adventurous clients who were wiling to trust us to tackle an incredible range of styles, and i thank them warmly for the privilege.

recently, will and i were working with a client on designs for a new sideboard project, which made me go back and look more carefully at some of the 20 or so sideboards we have made over the past 25 years . since the pictures on my website are quite small, i decided to post some larger larger images to my dorset custom furniture blog. some of the sideboards shown there have detailed construction notes and photos at their corresponding blog links. one of those links is actually my most popular blog post of all time with over 6500 views. there is also a post with detailed steps to make the greene and greene style drawer pulls that are on it. sideboards are some of our favorite projects and we will be starting a new walnut one with glass doors in a week or two.

well, they might kick me off for this one as, though it has beautiful curly claro wlanut rails, the base and blinds are all made of metal. this was a new concept for us and the interior designer we were working with had us thinking ‘outside the box’. she had ordered a steel and wood pool table from a company that actually went out of buisiness while she was waiting to take delivery. since we were working on a 12' claro walnut dining table for the same room, and she knew we made pool tables, (15 so far), she asked what we could come up with. we made some sketches, and then we made the little scale model you see in the second picture there. 1/8th” to the foot i believe it was. from that model, we created a cad drawing incorporating 4” and 3” square steel tuning with 1/4” angle iron ‘stretchers’, which my son sam fabricated in our metal shop. the steel was roughly polished and we added the bronzy ‘rainbow’ patina using a chemical we got from sur-fin chemical in los angeles. the table leaves thursday for chicago and will be set up there by a local pool table mechanic. there is also a wood and steel custom cue rack in the same palette that goes with it. more photos and process comments on our dorset custom furniture blog post. using the information in that post and an article from fine woodworking (linked in the blog post), and a bit of patience, you too can make your own pool table. this is the second one we’ve made this year, and there is another one in the works in the shop now. more on that one as we finish it up.

we recently finished this custom curly maple kitchen and installed it in a local home from the 1920’s that my client has been renovating for the past two years. it was atypical in that, due to time constraints, we had to make the mdf sample sink and the templates for the slate countertops before we got very far underway on the project. usually, the cabinets are installed and then the templates are made. the countertops were cut in one piece by a local slate fabricator, sheldon slate (more factory photos at that link), of middle granville, new york. in the process we got to visit the factory and actually see the two foot thick block of slate before it was cut, which was an amazing thing. the last picture in the series above shows their 90” diameter diamond saw cutting the 1.25” thick countertop blanks. there are several blog posts with more photos and process descriptions at these links.

getting started
and installing the cabinets and countertops

check em out if you have a minute …

we finished this pool table recently and drove it to virginia to set it up for the client … it was a long way to go, but it was good pay, a fun project, and the ride was a nice break … it was, i believe, our 15th custom pool table … i made (adapted/remodeled) the first couple back in the late 80’s for myself by repairing and updating old tables that i bought from the want ads and sold after. later, in the 90’s, we started to make them for custom clients from scratch. a pool table is a challenging project, particularly fabricating and felting the rails, but with some time, careful planning, and heavy lifting,, not beyond the reach of a careful dedicated woodworker. there are two blog post on my dorset custom furniture blog as well as a link to a fine woodworking article from 1989 that we still use as a guide. you may have to be a member there to access the finewoodworking link, but it’s a good article, and the admission to their website is reasonable. something like $14.00 for the year … it’s a great resource on many woodworking topics. here are links to my blog posts …

link 1 ... getting started.. lots of parts …

and link 2, felting the rails and set up and installation

there are also a couple of older posts here for a 'post and beam' pool table that we built a few years back using hand hewn barn beams ... enjoy …

this piece of claro walnut came from goodhope hardwoods, in pennsylvanie … when it arrived here in dorset, it was too wide to fit in my truck and we had to build a little rack to put it on top of the bed .. after chopping it down some to get it to the dimensions requested by my client, the boys went at with a couple of makita power planers, some sanders and some stanley 81 two handled scrapers. my son sam welded up the 1.5×3” steel tube base and we’ll be shipping it off to aspen this week … there are more photos and process comments on this table a nd several other large tables we have completed recently on my dorset custom furniture blog …
there are three posts …

'a dozen big tables'

early stages with a 2x4 base mockup”

and the final post

we finished this claro walnut slab desk last month. it has a welded steel base by my son sam, and a single drawer with a secret compartment behind it. the wood drawer face is covered with 1/8” steel plate to match the rest of the base structure. the ‘tool’ to ‘open’ the secret compartment is located in a sort of hidden space under the pencil tray. you have to remove the drawer completely to access the compartment. this piece is currently in a major show in housatonic, massachusetts at a new gallery called art et industries that is run by the renowned jewelry designer jordan schlanger. if you are anywhere near great barrington or stockbridge, mass, it’s worth a stop to see the 50 or so pieces by 15 different artists on diisplay there, through september. to see more on the desk, here's a link to my blog post on that. to see more about the furniture show and the other 6 pieces we have on display there, click on this link ... all for now … dan

we delivered this fitted curved bench to a client’s house in northern vermont this pastweek … it was a multi step process that we initiated on a previous delivery … the client had sent a rough paper template with the radius of the stairs cu out … when we went up to deliver the hanging swing, (Lumber Jocks back in april), we took a cardboard template that we had cut on the cnc from that pattern and checked it on the site with the curve of the metal railing .. it looked good. once we had that pattern in our cad program, it was a simple matter to generate the rest of the curves we needed to cut the curved parts and assemble the framework. we built in it three pieces that were assembled on site at the top of the stairs on the third level. it was a cool project in a cool house, and the bench will be complete when the curved cushions arrive … more process photos in two posts on our dorset custom furniture blog .. happy 4th everyone … dan

1st post is here

and the installation photos are in this post

here are some of the other islands i mentioned in the previous ‘custom kitchen island’ post. some have links to their construction photos on our dorset custom furniture blog. the first, dark green one is from our own house.

we finished a custom kitchen island back in the beginning of may. it was made from 16/4 and 4/4 beautiful curly maple from irion lumber. the wood was all from the same log and the figure was incredibly consistent throughout the many boards it took to build this 4’ x 8’ piece. the client did the overall design and gave it to us on graph paper, which we converted to a cad drawing and finally to a full size plan view on a piece of cardboard that showed all the boxes, the kickspaces, the recesses for stools, the plumbing, (tricky), and the layout of the panels. there was still some stuff to work out with the round bases, kickspaces, and octagonal columns, so we made the full size corner mockup (5th photo). it was already a long blog post, so i added a half a dozen or so photos of other kitchen islands we have built over the years. it was a fun project and the granite top was spectacular. to see many more and larger process photos and construction comments, visit our dorset custom furniture blog post.

we finished another in our series of claro walnut slab dining tables last week. this one was kind of a rescue mission as the slab we had purchased at a ‘discount’ (if there is such a thing) was completely cracked into two pieces. will stitched it back together with a whole bunch of butterflies on both the top and the bottom of the crack. by the time he finished, it was actually very rigid and felt like it was back in one piece. the polished rebar and walnut base is also a new thing for us, an effort to find something as interesting, substantial, and popular as our increasingly expensive standard steel shaker bases. the price of steel has skyrocketed in the past two years, almost doubling what we have to pay to have the 1.5” thick steel cut at a local fabricator’s shop. anyway, we like the rebar.

in other news, i have tentatively changed my blog layout which may or may not be better and easier to use. the jury is still out on that. on the one hand, you can see photos from posts that have been long buried in the past, on the other, depending on your browser, closing an enlarged photo will be smooth or will shoot you back to the home page, an annoyance at best. if you feel like it, let me know what you think about the new layout. thanks … hope your weather for the weekend looks better than ours here in vermont. it’s about 50 degrees, windy and pouring right now …

we recently finished this mahogany coffee table ... it is another version of a design by a local architect, ramsay gourd. it’s a cool design and we’ve made 3 or 4 versions of it. also, this weekend is open studio in vermont. it’s the 20th anniversary of the event and over 250 artists accross vermont will be opening their studios to the public. it takes place statewide, saturday and sunday, 10-5. look for the yellow signs. it’s a good opportunity to see how some amazing craft artists work … if you’re in vermont, i encourage you to take advantage of this opportunity. also, i have a new blog format compliments of google where you can see photo links to every post i’ve ever written. the technology is amazing, and free !!! check it out if you have a minute … have a great memorial day weekend … dan

who doesn’t love a good porch swing ?? ... this project was commissioned by one of our designer clients for an outdoor setting at a new home in northern vermont … it was pretty straightforward mortise and tenon work, but required a little special engineering involving stainless steel hanger bolts where the corners intersected. it’s 80 inches wide, so we had to figure it would possibly have to handle a pretty big load at times. vacation house parties and all … we used reclaimed chestnut, which, with a little maintenance, will weather well in the outdoors. we used a penofin finish and sam made the custom hooks in our metal shop. there’s a very short you tube video showing it fully loaded and the hardware we found online to hang it with … sweet project … i think i need one myself somewhere … more process photos on our dorset custom furniture blog.

we’ve made quite a few of these tables with the pull out leaves, 6 or 8, at least. in the past, we used a complex mechanism we copied from a clients table back in 1998. i posted a version of it on this site back in 2010 and that post has had 3900 views. there was a video link there showing it being opened and closed. for this new table, we used a simpler mechanism that we found in a finewoodworking article from the 70's. by tage frid. after we studied his article and made a half size mockup, we determined that this mechanism was simpler to fabricate and easier to use. it works really smoothly and the clients loved it … there is a new you tube video of the new mechanism here more photos and process comments on my dorset custom furniture blog ... you can’t go wrong with an online membership to fine woodworking. when i started back in the 70’s it was my bible, home schooling lesson plan and the source of much of my ‘on the job’ training … all issues are on line and searchable and i think the membership is less than $20. year. it’s an incredibly good deal.

a couple of years ago, a client bought a large claro walnut slab from me, and had us make a console table with a little over half of it. i can’t find a picture of that piece for some reason, but you can see the cad drawing of it and the layout where we cut it to go around a carved piece that was on the wall above a heater. complicated to explain … anyway, we had almost half of the slab left over and since she paid for the whole piece, it was up to me to figure out what else she could have us make with the leftover chunk. i had an idea it would be about the right size for a coffee table if i cut it in half, but i had those funky notches … anyway, i added the ‘box’ as a support and a couple of simple legs and she (finally) went for it (after a couple years of thinking about it) .. it was an interesting process. more process pictures of it on my dorset custom furniture blog ... the last picture above is a complicated island piece that we are working on … in this post, you can see it progress from idea to about half done, as well as 5 or six other kitchen islands we have built over the years … more on the island piece after it is finished …