This table is another result of my experimenting with concrete & field stone. Its totally different from the last one and the first time in a while that I stuck to working with straight lines. This is one heavy end table weighing about 80 lbs. Thanks for looking.

This is my last finished project. This is one of the results from taking a class on mixing these three elements in furniture and sculptor. I would like to start to add some texture to my work when its possible plus its just plain fun playing in mud! The wood is butternut and it really was a nice looking piece of wood but it just seemed to work better ebonized with the black concrete. You can’t see it from the pictures but there is a 36” X 1/2” steel rod running through the concrete used to support the top.This little table is about 46’’ long X 18” high. Thanks for looking.

This is a table I just finished. The top is olive ash burl, black dyed maple banding with a mahogany border. The legs are oak tapered bent laminated and then ebonized using tree bark tea and vinegar with iron. http://www.popularwoodworking.com/techniques/ebonizing_wood I did the top with a shellac french polish and the base is lacquer. I made the top first because I had the veneer and wanted to play with curves on this piece. I made a full scale drawing of the base by drawing different curves until I found what I thought looked pleasing to the eye, from this I could make the forms to do the bent lamination’s. The stretchers are oak with olive ash burl veneer, I thought it needed a little color with all that black on the base. I actually made another base for this table with straight tapered mahogany legs splayed out to a rectangular stretcher but I hated it so I scraped it. I learned two important things while doing this project 1) The importance of a good model and 2) I’ve come to the point in my woodworking were I will scrap hours of work and valuable material if its not done right or I don’t like it, which we all know is a painful experience. Don’t get me wrong there are plenty of flaws in my work but I am always striving to get better and I not going to settle on something just because of the hours or money I have invested in it. Now I need to invest some of that time setting up a place to take some decent pictures! Thanks for looking.

I’m trying to get a handle on the dust in my shop so after viewing a number of shop made air filters on this site I decided to build one myself. I’ve had the fan and motor just siting in the basement for years so that was free, I think the only thing I bought for this project was a couple sheets of OSB and a box for the on/off switch. It started as just an air filter that was going to be mounted in the air but because the fan & motor were so big it would just be to big to mount in the ceiling ( I found this out after building the box to fit). Well I used it as a floor air filter for a few months and realized with a little addition to the top I could turn it into a downdraft table. I enclosed the top and intake sides and put some pegboard on the top. I also made a sliding door for the intake side in case I want to use it as just a plain old air filter, just pull up the door. I made it the same height as my table saw so I just parked it behind the saw and use it as an out feed table. If I have to I’ll change the table saw height and screw a removable sheet of hardboard on the top if it needs it for the out feed. Now I can justify having this big thing taking up a large amount of precious real estate in my shop. So far it seems to be working great. Thanks for looking.

I made these boxes for the annual Lily art show at the local pottery gallery. It seems like I’ve done a lot of these lily projects and some might think I really like doing lilies but the truth is I like the show and wanted to make sure I had something to enter. These boxes are my first attempt at using the packet cutting method in my marquetry. I normally use the double bevel method because that was the way I first learned. There was originally three but I scraped one after trying to add some veins to the leafs but it just didn’t work. Next time I will use a wood with less grain for the leafs, I thought the curly grain would give it depth. I definitely learned a few things doing this and really like this method of marquetry. the biggest problem is keeping track of all those little pieces
and separating the good from the waste, this pic is only about half of them!These little boxes are at about a 7” radius and 4” tall. One is walnut &walnut burl and the other is mahogany. I made the lift out shelf’s because it just seemed to deep for a box of this size. I don’t have much experience in box making but I do have a whole new respect for the folks that do ,these things kicked my but LOL!

I saw a birdhouse with the same concept years ago and have always wanted to make one similarly. I made this from pine scraps and had some black metal lying around so I put on a metal roof. My wife says I have a sick sense of humor, oh well. Thanks for looking.

I have some 18” wide butternut and decided to make another sculptural table in the Dinovi style. It’s 36”x18×30”, the mirror frame is 20”x 30”. I made the mirror frame from a pattern given to me from Victor at a class he taught. I’m still looking for a local place to cut a custom mirror but posted this anyway as the mirror would probably be a distraction in the photos.The finish is a Maloof oil finish. Thanks for looking

I made this little mahogany table as an experiment trying to mix some sculptural work with a regular round table top. I have some mixed feelings about the results but as it is just staying in my house I can let it grow on me a little. The top is sapele veneer banded with black dyed veneer and cerejeira. Thanks for looking.

This is another table I just finished in the style of Victor Dinovi. The table is hung from a bracket that is mounted to the wall. This is one of the tables he made as a demo for the class he taught at MASW and he was kind enough to let me copy his patterns including the mirror that hangs above it but that isn’t finished just yet. If you haven’t ever seen his work you should google him, he’s a fantastic sculptural woodworker. Its not as easy as it looks getting those lines to flow just right, I have some learning to do to come even close to his caliber!!Thanks for looking.

I have a few sculptural pieces in the works and this is the first one I finished. This black walnut table was inspired by a table I saw in the portfolio of Victor Dinovi he had at the class I attended last summer. I had a little guidance in the design from Victor but he left the basic form up to me. This is my second attempt at this style of table, the first was almost completed at the class. I can honestly say is that it is a lot harder when you don’t have someone to turn to when your not sure of a decision your about to make, you know the old saying ” you can remove more wood but you can’t add any”. After it was completed I could still see small facets that should have been removed but I’m still learning the process. There was some sapwood in the legs I wish wasn’t there but it was what I had at the time, I tried using homemade walnut husk dye to blend it and had some blotching for some reason, I think it had to do with some sanding I missed, well I had to do some repair but it turned out reasonably decent. The table was shaped using a 7” Milwaukee polisher starting with 24 grit sand paper and working up to 80, then I switched to a 4” random orbital for the rest of the sanding. The finish is the oil/urethane Maloof finish fallowed by two coats of wax.

A few months back I posted a lily table that I did for an art show with a lily theme at the local pottery shop. From that show I got my first commission and this is the results from that work. She liked the calla lilies from the first table but wanted a table made from oak or ash to match the furniture they already have. I made an initial sketch and met with her and after some changes this is the design I came up with. The eight leg design I must admit was not my idea but came from showing her a picture of a table made by California woodworker John Lavine. The top and bottom shelf are made with curly ash veneer banded with cherry, all the rest is oak.The three butterflies represent the three sisters in the family and the caterpillar is the brother ,a little family humor. I was a little unsure about the drawers because of the deep reach under the top but she wanted them and they really are not as bad as I thought. It was a great learning experience both in the table construction and working with someone else in designing a project but if all my future clients are as easy going I will be really happy! Thanks for looking.

This is a display table I recently made at a class with sculptural furniture maker Victor Dinovi at Marc Adams School of Woodworking. After making a Maloof Rocker I was hooked on the process of building this type of furniture. I had to wait a couple years until this class came back to the school but it was well worth the wait. The table was made out of poplar. I used a water base dye on it then put on 4 coats of the Maloof finish; 1/3 raw tung oil,1/3 linseed oil,1/3 satin poly followed by 2 coats 1/2 linseed 1/2 tung oil and shredded beeswax. Its a great finish but if you missed anything in your sandining it sticks right out.The table is rather high at about 41” but all in all I was happy with the results.I didn’t know you could get poplar to so good.

Ok, why the 20 minute table, well with so many projects going around the house firewood, new roof, and building my daughters new bed I had no time for what I wanted to do. I found that I could find a few spare min. before or after work but it never seemed worth getting started when you would have to quit when things just got going, but what was worse for me was sitting around doing nothing when I knew I could be woodworking. I told my sister I would build her a little bed side table and had been putting it off, so I put myself to a challenge to start a project and spend no more than 20 min. on it at time on any given day even if I had more time just to prove a point to myself that I could still get something done if I just spent a little time on it every day. It kind of helped with the fact that I was under the gun to get my to get my daughters bed done before the room was painted and would be in the shop almost ever day anyway. It really is amazing how fast 20 min goes or is it just how slow I work, anyway after 24 sessions of 20 minutes or 8 hours I had the bulk of it done except for some of the inlay work on the legs, by now the bed was done and I cracked so truth be told I just spent a good weekend finishing up the inlay and putting a finish on it and this is the end result. It was a true test of patience to stop after 20 min even when I really didn’t need to, but I did prove a point to myself that I can get something done when I think I don’t have any time to work. The legs were made from leftover flooring and the aprons from scrap Mahogany that a friend gave me, there was maple and mahogany veneer used on the top and just maple veneer for the feet. I used triangles on the legs instead of bell flowers because of the triangle weave pattern on the top and the triangles on the banding.

This is a little table I just finished for a local art show held at a pottery shop. They hold this show every year in July with a Lily theme, any kind of art with any kind of lily’s will do. This is the first time I tried to enter this show or any show for that matter, it is a juried show and you have to be accepted so I’ll see how it goes. I chose to use Calla Lily’s on the top with a couple of butterfly’s. I had to stretch myself a little on a few aspects of this project but it was fun to make. I was planning on putting it up for sale at the show if anyone wanted it but after seeing it my wife wants to keep it. It does solve one problem as I’ve never sold anything and didn’t have the slightest clue as to what to ask. Paul

This is a tool cabinet I just finished made from cherry with a few parts made from plywood with cherry veneer. I did the marquetry a few years back and it sat under a bed until I decided to use it on this project, it was one of the first marquetry pictures I ever did. The carving was my very first attempt at relief carving, I had an idea in my head and just went for it. My tools were always getting cluttered on my bench and I needed a solution so out of necessity I made this cabinet. I had a few bumps along the road that were a disappointment ( the whole thing took a fall during the finishing) but I know have a place to put some of my hand tools with room for some of the other planes I plan to acquire sometime down the road. I did a short blog on the construction for anyone interested.

I just finished this little cherry cabinet and thought I would post it. It started out as straight line project in my head, sort of like a Krenov type cabinet but it evolved into what you see once I started to put it on paper. Don’t ask me how I got from there to hear but I did. The Blue Jay is from a photo from a book & the other bird is a Blue Faced Honey Eater taken from a George Raper drawing c1788. I have this fascination with birds so I’m sure this won’t be the last thing I do with birds on it. This was a learning experience in that I did some of the construction on the fly, I won’t try that again. A good plan set down in advance always works better, not to say that sometimes a change in direction during a process isn’t needed.

I made this table (55”x24”) from a 10’x2’X3” slab of walnut I’ve had for some time. Having never done any live edge work before I was not sure what kind of results I would get. I wanted to inlay something on the top but I also wanted it to be subtle. I went outside grabbed a handful of leaves and wa-la I had model to work off of. I laid them on the table in different places until I was happy with the look and used the exact leaves to make the veneer copies actually using one to cover a knot with a hole in it. I filled the holes with epoxy before doing the inlay. The leaves are made of cherry veneer, maybe a little dark but I didn’t want them to pop to much. The little burl on the top left had a cut going through it from the saw mill, it must have broke there and was left sticking up about 1.5”. I left the knot hole & filled the slice with epoxy because I didn’t have the heart to just plane it flat. Its finished with a few cotes of lacquer.

I made this rocker a couple years ago, it was my introduction to sculpture wood working (and endless sanding). I almost didn’t post it after seeing some of the other Maloof chairs on LJ’s but that’s what I love about this place, it gives me a lot of inspiration and motivation. It’s just plain old walnut with the Maloof hand rub finish of one third raw tung oil, one third linseed oil,and one third semigloss urethane varnish. If you fallow his advise your finish will be like glass.

This is my first project listing on LumberJocks. I started this stool in a class at MASW and finished it at home. It was my first attempt at carving so it gave me an excuse to buy more tools.