Sunday, March 29, 2020

I've said it before

I don't like finishing.
Don't know anybody who does.  I'm sure they are out there, but I haven't met one yet.
And I knew some in the business of the finishing business.  They both drank a lot.

This piece became so unwieldy I had to dismantle the living room to work on it, you can see the rolled up rug next to the CD earthquake moment frame.
Anyway, this one is in the books.






Bonus pics of life crawling up a newly made trellis and four leftover triangles from the above project made into one square.  The square hole in the middle turned out to be the perfect size to tap and screw onto the earthquake bolts on the outside.



Just a note for the young(er) type readers and for those who may read this in the distant future.  There used to be a time in the not distant past that having big knots with holes and sapwood show was a definite no-no.  Especially with walnut and the other domestic furniture woods.  But not only have tastes and acceptability change but the availability of clear and wide wood is getting more difficult.  Yes, slabs are in current vogue but come with their own defects.  Now we or maybe I welcome the defects, the sapwood, the knots and the holes.  They are of the tree and are to be accepted.

Saturday, March 21, 2020

Sawdust Everywhere

One consequence of living inside of where you work, is what you're working on is everywhere where you live.
Like sawdust if you're working on wood.  And that is what I'm working on at the moment and for another month at least.  And the next job, a large wine job involves me working on wood too.
It's real hard to contain and confine the wood shavings and wood dust.  It just gets everywhere.
They, they being the winery, loved what I did before with rich wood surfaces and backgrounds so I thought I would up my game and make another trip out to Arborica to pick up some more interesting pieces.

There's a section in the sawmill/lumberyard they call "Chunk World."  Anything in Chunk World is $5 if you can pick it up.  If you need the forklift to come over, it's $150.  I brought back some large sections of Cypress and some Eucalyptus from the Chunk area.
I bandsawed one chunk into smaller sections that I'll use somehow or somewhere.

Before sanding

From the Wall of Anomalies I picked up four strange things.  $40 each.
Two of them on the right, planed and sanded so far.
Two I couldn't tell the species they were so covered in stuff that obscured the surface.
One turned out to be Chestnut.


This one turned out to be Walnut and this is what it looked like at the beginning.
Warped and cracked, just the way I like.
Before sanding.
Partially breaking through the outside.
And then the WoW! when some denatured alcohol is splashed over the sanded surface.  Both sides are spectacular.
And popped the big money for this what Evan called an experiment of waxing the face  and letting it dry and bubble.  Crazy cool, not really sure how or where I end up using this but I had to have it.
The black horizontal bands can be scrapped off somewhat so the surface will be more visually homogeneous.  You can see some of the chunks of things left of the liquor cabinet.



Evan calls it GatorWood.  It's on my bench now sitting and waiting for me to do something to it.

At the same time, things are progressing on the furniture type work for the lobby of a new apartment building going up in SF.

Starting to figure out which boards go where in this 25' long bar top.
Gluing.  This was a multiple glue up because there are three spokes that come out at right angles which complicated everything.  And I made a new pushblock and of course I needed to sign it.


Mortises in the spokes and with tenons.
 The piece of Chestnut can be seen in the background.


The second part of the glue up, fitting the spokes as well
It's real nice to be able to crosscut a 13' on the tablesaw and have the cut to be like silk.
Gluing on the spokes tomorrow on this.
And this is just the beginning of having dust everywhere.