Hello LJ’s, I haven’t posted anything new here in a little while, took the day off today so here goes:
This is a pair of night stands I made for a client based on a design by Joseph Jeup. The sizes are custom and they are made of solid walnut and walnut ply with solid maple dovetailed drawer boxes. Fancy blum conceled soft closing slides. The side pieces are architectural bronze with a light patina and a coat of paste wax; the pulls are copper and brass distressed as best as possible to match the sides. The hardest part was getting the miters correct where the legs and top stretchers meet- legs are 2-1/8” wide and top pieces are 1- 1/4” wide so the miter on the top part was way in excess of 45 degrees. I wound up making a jig similar to a tenoning jig for the table saw and cut the miters with the piece upright. I added two splines in each miter for strength, also in walnut so they blend in pretty well. The finish is clear satin lacquer. Overall I’m pretty happy with them. I am finishing up a few other projects right now, three dining tables, a smaller kitchen table and a set of benches, so I’ll have more stuff to post soon.

My friend David (boo-coup.com) and I are collaborating on a line of chunky, simple and reasonably priced furniture in the form of stools, benches, small tables, and pedestals. Most of the wood comes to us free, care of some heavy duty dumpster diving at a reclaimed lumber yard. It’s hard to tell what we wind up with until we get the stuff back to our shop, so far lots of oak, pine, hemlock, fir, poplar, and one nice piece of teak (methinks). Finishes are a mixture of propane torch, boiled linseed oil and danish oil. We are entering this line in the upcoming BKLYN DESIGNS trade show (bklyndesigns.com). Thanks for looking…...

First off, apologies for the poor photos. I snapped these in my finishing room and haven’t yet had a chance to take decent pics. I’ll update when possible. So here we have ten bar chairs/stools in antique hard pine. The seats and backrests are contoured to be nice and comfy, all the joints are pinned mortise and tenons, finish is clear satin poly. The footrests are also hard pine, burned with a torch to blacken them and also with a coat or three of poly. The grain and color of this wood is just beautiful. For that beauty, your tools will pay a price. I would definitely recommend hard pine for your next project if you love sharpening chisels all the time.

Dining table I made for a local couple, modeled after a traditional italian peasant table.
93” long, 40” wide, 30” tall.
The top was made from three 8/4 boards, 8’ by 15” wide.
The legs and aprons all came from 4/4 material.
Aprons are dovetailed, legs are inset flush with aprons.
Lots of great figure in the top.

The inspiration for this thing came from some ancient catalogue I was sifting through while waiting for clothes to dry at the local laundro-plex. It was probably west elm or crate and barrel or something, no cover, well worn. The one in the catalogue was all square and blocky; all the shelves and the back were the same width, and all pieces looked to be 1.5” deep mdf boxes with kd hardware. The vertical supports between the shelves were square, so from a side view it would look like a staircase. The tiered shape seemed cool and I had a boatload of walnut lumber burning a hole in my garage so a couple weeks, a few design changes, a broken foot (table’s, not mine), and a can of watco later, and here she is.

The top and bottom shelf are affixed to the back with irregularly spaced finger/box joints, that is, the spacing is the same for each shelf, but the shelf fingers are smaller than the back fingers. The back is rabbeted slightly to accept them. The middle shelf gets wedged through tenons, same size and layout as the fingers, and sits in a 1/16” dado. From the back it all makes sense- the fingers and tenons all match. The feet are also through tenoned; the wedges in the front feet run from corner to corner of the tenon, the wedges in the back run with the grain. Don’t ask me why. They just do. The vertical spacers are housed in 1/16” grooves in the shelves and back. I rounded and beveled all the edges by hand with planes and sanding. Lots of sanding. The only sharp edges are on the feet.

For all the pieces, I sorted through the wood pile and picked boards with as much sapwood/heartwood transition as possible; I really like the color differentiation in walnut. Between the brown and yellow there are pink and purple and blue shades. Each shelf features live edges, some with bark. For the back, I glued up two pieces sapwood to sapwood to create a yellow racing stripe down the middle. It’s got 4 coats of danish oil, with two more to come, and a coat or two of poly to protect from whatever. Can’t decide between glossy or satin poly, opinions are welcome.

So that’s the story guys, hope you like.