"wild cherry sideboard"

cowboy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 14:28:04 GMT

Several people have asked a few questions so I thought I’s tell a little about this piece.This was a spec piece that I wanted to take to a show.The cherry came from a board I selected from a pile of 1,000 bd ft of curly cherry and was obviously one of the wowie,zowie boards.It’s obviously a version of a very old design tha’s been around for years.Truthfully I don’t do that anymore as I only use my own designs and have gotten into a different type of thing,yet similiar.Basically I do fairly simple designs that involve curves,I hate straight hard edges(at least now that could easily change)almost always solid wood,if veneers are used I make them myself,and dramatic figure is very important.I also use different woods on almost everything,I can’t remember the last time I made a piece and only used one wood type.
The handles on this piece were created by a nationally known jewery artist Don McCoy,made out of Petersite,a semi-precious stone,carved and set in 14 cart gold with a back set of quartersawn sycamore and ebony.
The finish is a 2 part finish from General Finish which I absolutely love my results. The first coat is Seal A Cell clear,remaining coats are Arm R Seal,semi-gloss.If there is interest I will go into great detail how I do each step another time.The piece is mortised and tenoned together,dovetailed drawers,hand cut,mine always are.I should explain that I don’t really believe that handcut are superior to machine cut as far as strength and no it probalby dosn’t pay financially to do them by hand.But I thnk hand cut look better and I want to be known for it,a personal quirk.If I equated everything I do to money in my furniture I would be in another field.I still love doing this as much as when I first started,really more so ,the results are far better.
I want to thank people for their kind words about this piece.
I am sorry about the picture thing though as I had a fire,not in the shop that burned almost every picture I had,along with everythng else in the home so . I am reduced to pic’s I can get from others of my work.My sister who is now the keeper of the picture files on the computer busy trying to get things back in order again.I will add as it becomes available.

Cowboy
“enjoy the journey”

Zuni Bench

cowboy — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 13:50:47 GMT

First of all I want to thank people for the kind words concernign this piece.Since there has been several questions about it I thought I’d take this time to talk about it.
This piece has an interesting story about how it came to be.I had just finished a really large piece,very involved,very over the top(I’m lookin for a picture now),and wanted a break from the large project and gave myself a self imposed design project,build and design something with this small amount of wood that could be built in 3 days.Why a bench?Why not,absolutely no reasoning taking place here at all,no drawing board just fun in my shop with no real path just the freedom to explore and see where I wander.So I had some pretty nice figured maple,not startling but nice for a seat,some mahogany for the legs and walnut for the back.Great until after I”d already cut out the pieces,motised and tennoned parts,done a major part of the shaping I realized that I had mis-measured the amount of walnut I had which presented a real problem(remember only to use the wood set aside).So That’s how the center piece came into being it was the only way all the walnut was long enough,and I started liking it more and more as I looked at it in the rough.
Now to the questions,the legs on the front and the back are shaped with curves,the front legs towards the front of the piece and the back legs towards the back,both legs are cut out of a 8/4 piece of wood,planed down to about 1 3/4 from a board about 8” wide with a grain pattern sweeping in the direction of the curves.
Yes the seat is shaped,hopefully to something that is comfortable to most people which also gives the seat a lot more visual interest and catches the light’s rays to create more interest.
The finish is unfortunately not anything I can take any great pride in as a mystery formula of mine tucked away in a secret recess of my brain,it’s a 2 part finish from General Finishes.The 1st part is Seal A Cell clear,the rest of the coats are Arm R Seal semi gloss,with a final coat of Howard’s Feed Wax.I’ve used finish almost totally for about 15 years and the reason is very simple for me,since I ‘ve started using this people love it,the touch it,stroke it,marvel at it and there has never been a single problem,not one in an awfully lot of pieces.
This piece was a real delight as it put me back into a space I hadn’t been in mentally for a long time and was almost magical for me,even solving the one walnut board being too short was fun for me.I was fortunate and this piece has been in more magazines,newspapers and won more awards than any piece I have ever built.
The best part about it for me was it was not a plan,it was truly just one of those wonderful journey’s that many of us experience in our shop’s, when money is not an issue but to just start down a trail of wonder and discovery that for me was really a delightful experience.So when I think about how it came about it’s no surprise that something special came about.

Cowboy
“enjoy the Journey”

cowboy's Blog at LumberJocks.com

"wild cherry sideboard"

Zuni Bench