The Morris Chairs were a little bit upset they had to share the room with a 10 year old Ikea glass top coffee table so I built this one to make the room a little more harmonious. It is made from solid quartersawn white oak and built entirely with mortise and tenon joinery. The finish consists of several coats of orange shellac to give the wood the amber tone and then I sprayed on several coats of a satin finish waterbased poly. The only metal fasteners in the table are the z-clips that hold the top to the top aprons. The lower table fits into the lower aprons with through tenons. The top has breadboard ends, which are some kind of masochistic exercise in overkill I seem to keep putting myself through, but I think it’s worth it in the end.

Having built a pair of Bow Arm Morris Chairs with my wife, we needed the matching Ottoman for each chair. I built these at home after returning from American Sycamore Woodworkers Retreat with the finished chairs. These are also solid quartersawn white oak made entirely with true mortise and tenon joinery. The cross stretchers protrude through the legs with a true through tenon. Not the easiest thing to get right and make look good, but I’m pleased with the outcome. The finish is wipe on tung oil varnish. The leather upholstery work was done by professionals at Ackermans in the Chicago area.

Here are a pair of Bow Arm Morris Chairs that are finally back from the upholsterer after a 2 year wait. My wife and I took a weeklong “vacation” (The hardest work I’ve ever done in the name of relaxation!) at the American Sycamore Woodworkers Retreat in Indiana. There we worked with Dale Barnard and Mike Van Pelt to create these beautiful chairs from solid quartersawn white oak, even steam bending the arms onsite. There isn’t a single nail or screw in the project except to attach the upholstery. This is entirely true mortise & tenon joinery and these things weigh a ton! The chairs have been safeguarded from our wood chewing puppy and we finally felt safe enough to get them upholstered. The crew at Ackermans did a beautiful job, using butter soft light chocolate colored leather to complete the job. I like the contrast to the natural colored QS white oak, which is finished with a tung oil wiping varnish instead of the traditionally darker finishes of most mission style furniture. If you want some for your home, I highly recommend taking a class at American Sycamore yourself: http://americansycamoreretreat.com

If you are looking for expert upholstery work in the Chicagoland area, we were very happy with Ackermans:
http://www.ackermans.com/

This is a somewhat unusual adaptation of a serving tray. It is basically a table top with a small border all around it (similar to a tray) intended to sit on the middle cushion of a sofa to serve as a stable surface for drinks or the remote controls. It is 18” X 18” and the border around all the sides is 1/2” wide and 1/2” tall. The handles are cherry and were purchased premade from Lee Valley.

This one was made using cherry and curly claro walnut and finished with tung oil and aerosol matte polyurethane.

This is an end grain cutting board made of many different types of wood. I used maple, white oak, walnut, mahogany, purpleheart, and bubinga to glue up a giant wooden cube. I then used the bandsaw to resaw 1” thick slabs off to get 6 cutting boards.

Next I used a Performax 16-32 drum sander to remove the bandsaw marks and get the bottom of each board relatively flat. Then I was insane enough to run these through a planer, although I removed only 0.001 inch per pass, to make them glass smooth.

The only regret in the whole process was the routing of the groove to catch liquids on one side. Routing in end grain is extremely difficult to control with a hand router, especially when transitioning from one wood species to the next. As the wood density changes the router wants to jump. If I ever do this again I’ll skip the groove completely.

They are finished with salad bowl finish.

This is a chessboard I made as a gift for my father who is a golf fanatic. The chessboard is made of quilted maple and claro walnut. The frame is quartersawn white oak. The finish is tung oil with polyurethane topcoat.

The chesspieces are called the “History of Golf” chess pieces from Studio Anne Carlton.

Getting the polyurethane finish on this glossy smooth and free of air bubbles just might have been the most frustrating experience of my life. I am saving my money for an HVLP sprayer so I never have to brush on poly again!

This is a chessboard I made as a gift for a friend who is a volunteer firefighter and EMT.

The board is made of quilted maple and claro walnut. The frame is made of bloodwood. The finish is shellac with a lacquer topcoat.

This is an end table I built as a Christmas present from quartersawn white oak. It is finished with tung oil wiping varnish.

This table was one of the first projects I built so I had a very limited selection of tools. This was done using basically just a table saw and a router table. I had just bought a raised panel router bit set and used it to make the sides of this table. I made a long sliding dovetail slot in each of the 4 corner legs of the table and made the mating dovetail along the length of each raised panel side. After apply glue I slid all the panels into the legs and clamped it up to dry. After it dried I routed a 3/4” rabbet into the bottom and glued in the white oak plywood floor of the cabinet. The top is attached with figure 8 table top fasteners. I used European style cup hinges for the door and slides for the drawer.

I built this sofa table as a Christmas present for my mother. It is made of quartersawn white oak and finished with a tung oil wiping varnish. The overall appearance was originally inspired by a Greene & Greene style park bench I found in a book and simply redesigned into a table.

I had just bought a Powermatic 701 mortiser so this table is done entirely with mortise and tenon joinery. I cut the tenons using a bandsaw and size them to fit with a shoulder plane.

It was also my first ever attempt at doing breadboard ends on a table top.

The glue up used every clamp I had, proving you can never have too many!

I got the cast iron sides and back for this park bench free from my in-laws. They had originally bought it and it was made of red oak, which not surprisingly didn’t fare very well in the elements and fell apart after about 2 seasons. I rebuilt it in Ipe so it would last forever and finished it with teak oil to bring out the figure.