Good Bye to Twenty Twenty One

 I said no more pics of the winery table until it came to it's final resting place but that was before recent developments.  For reasons unknown to me, it will probably be 9-12 months before the table is actually situated in the tasting room.

So it needed to be stored somewhere other than my studio.

Some professionals came to take the table away to a storage facility.  

From this morning mere minutes from when the movers came and carted it away.

The professionals came.  I'm using that word because some banter that took place between me and them.

They came a bit understaffed in my estimation so I ordered myself to be drafted into duty.  That's why there aren't any photos of the top being loaded up.

But I took this, when Lulo took off his jacket to show me his professional shirt!

They wheeled everything away into the truck and that was that. 

Bonus pics!!!!

Decided after decades of storing wine in cardboard boxes that a wine rack was needed.

Here seeing how the spacing was before gluing.

Also decided I didn't need one more trivet but decided to make one anyway with left over wine rack plywood strips.  Skylight reflected in the puddle of oil used to finish it.

Goodbye to a very interesting year and a see you later to the table I made during the year.

A walk around the block

 Walking around the kitchen block that is.

Opening the front door and walking into to the kitchen are the three arching horizontals meeting up with the single vertical eye.

Yes, the black outlet upper right will be replaced with something I make.

As you walk into the kitchen the two corner verticals start to appear.

Taking a hard left and you see we're back to horizontals, with a three knot vertical on the right.

Directly right of the oven is the wide world of spices drawer, the grain curves inward to hold the rest of the expanse of doors and drawers.

Bonus Thanksgiving pics!!

Decided since the damn cool winery table is still here, I'd press it into service for a 15 person sit down Thanksgiving dinner.

The table was thoroughly covered with multiple layers of protection from the gluttony to take place on it.

And as usual, the house cocktails for the evening is on the board.

Yaki Imo Old Fashioned with a house infused Japanese Whiskey

And Olo-Peacho....Oloroso Sherry and a Giffard peach liqueur ...damn yummy and perfect for a Fall drink.

 

Let's step it backward

 One of the highly anticipated 3003 house cocktails for Thanksgiving started yesterday.  

Japanese Beni Azuma sweet potatoes were roasted amongst a thick bed of sea salt.  That is being used to infuse a Fuju Small Batch whiskey.  Visually I agree, it's not appealing.  Looks like hearts of artichokes. Infused for awhile then the sweet potatoes get filtered out.

But before that, the liquor cabinet had it's copper polished.  I do this before every event and if not an event, then every few months.  This is before the top is polished, the circles are where glasses have sat shielding the copper from the ever present contaminating dust that is West Oakland.

The new kitchen has been done for a bit but formal photos have not been taken so I'll step you back from the application of the finish to install.

The so called Japanese Pagoda Wood with two coats of finish, just showing you parts of it.

Before the finish, the counter top person came to create an exact template.  He was talking to me as he walked in, telling me he worked in the building maybe twenty years ago.  Told me what was what with the building back then.  And just last week, another measurer guy comes in to measure something else and told the exact story.  It seems quite a few East Bay people have been in this building or worked in the building or in the case of Toothless Paulie, slept on the concrete floor.

The lattice is hot glued strips of Luan.

Before that came the rough install of drawer and door fronts on the cabinets

The cabinets needed to be in place before the rough install of the drawers and doors and before the counter top guy and before the finish was applied.

I was getting bad vibes from my various levels so I went ancient and used the principle that water seeks it's own level.  In this case I used clear tubing and anchored it to the corner (the out of focus one in back) and walked the other end around on the periphery of the cabinets to check.  You can go around corners and check for level, the water doesn't care.

You can see the water right at the top of the black strip.

Ok folks that's it. A journeyman's post for sure. Not even a bonus pic. 

The USA Brand

 Contrary to the marketing these colors do fade.  

And run.

The Reds Whites and Blues are ripped 

and torn.

We need a re-branding ASAP.

Stepping on the floor

 

 

The concrete on the floor of the studio is approaching 100 years old now.  That's a hundred years of oils, greases, paint, solvent and more chip outs than one can imagine.

I went through a lot of steps to stop the soaked in oils and stuff from seeping upward. Filled in the chips and dents with epoxy and then sanded down the entire floor. Scrubbed with detergent, two applications of muriatic acid, more washing and then two applications of a sealer that sits for 8 hours each time under plastic.

That gets scrubbed off and dries for 3-5 days.

Then five coats of high gloss clear but with color finish.  Still wet, wish it could dry like this

My mother as she headed toward the end, lost her memory.  She started to write notes to herself and stuck them up all over the house.  Like this one.

And so as a reminder to me to remember the memories, I put a note on the floor.  Of the places and the sights seen from the travels around the world.  Of all the tiled floors walked upon. Or the tiled walls and around the windows and doors.  I've taken so many photos of tiles I wanted to remember but did not go back looking for them for this, the colors are not matched to any of them, the colors are just representative of all of them.

I need to age this some and put some patina on it before it's done.

LoFi Mix

 

Adding a couple more elements into the mix.  Maybe.  

We'll see if they stay in the final cut.

USA! USA!

 

As we quickly slip from first world nation to second, no scratch that, to third world, this building across the street from me, the one with the large American flag hanging down, is being built.  It's been going up for a year now. Although it may appear to be diminutive here, it's actually fairly imposing for West Oakland.  Four stories with another story underground.  Not one window in the place.  Barry, my across the street neighbor says so far, $12,000,000 has been put into it.  For the longest time I couldn't figure it out.  No windows, looked pretty fortified and then last week an entire roof of huge cooling units were craned on.

The flag, once a symbol of something, is now something else and that threw me off.  In 1970, I drove across the country with a fellow Beavercreeker, Carl Key, to Montana to go to school in a VW bug painted with a US flag on it.  We stopped in Ann Arbor and bought a couple fingers of weed in a city park glancing around in the shadows.

Now that same flag is being waved around in Code Talk by groups of people who I just can't relate with. 

So I didn't quite know what to make of a thirty foot red white and blue flapping around.

 

As I was talking with Barry, who seems to be in the know about the building he says, "Cannabis"

12 million to process weed in a firefight proof building. 

USA!  USA!

 

And MU Saw That It Was Good

 This is the penultimate post on the winery table.  I'll shoot some things after it's situated where it will live.  That will be some time though.  Seems there was some rend in the Fabric of the Universe and the table won't be able to travel to Central California for quite some time.  Unknown how long it's going to lie in dormant storage.

And so that last post and those last photos will have to wait until the fabric is back together.

The table is done.  I wish I could shoot it as I normally would but the studio just can't allow it right now.  I have zero room for everything I need to photo it properly.

I added some 10oz veg tan leather on the bottom of legs.  Mainly to give the center portion of the pedestal some space so it won't rock (hopefully)

Put some finish on the underside of the top and the pedestal legs.  Nothing to see on the underside of the top, something to see on the pedestals though.

The top.  I've done my due diligence at this point on the top. I killed the bugs in the wood with heat.  I killed some more bugs that survived with freezing cold.  But at least one survived because I saw it walking around a hole.  I studied it under a magnifying glass, ran to the internet to compare to photos there.  No denying it must have been a superbug that survived two rounds of extreme malice toward it.

So I soaked the whole damn shooting match in a product called Bora Care.  Poison.  

It's all dried from the Bora Care, sanded, blown off, vacuumed and cleaned off with mineral spirits here.  Right before applying the finish.

 I thought the edge of the top needed something.  Now once you commit to something like a edge detail, you've done tossed your die on the craps table at that point.  No taking it back.

I wanted to do a Lamb's Tongue.  It's an old transitional element that's been used for a long time in woodworking.  Here's an extreme modified one I did on a table ten years ago.

I committed and went around the four sides of the top but something was not right about it.  That night as I thought about it I thought I would instead of ending on a smaller radius, I'd go bigger.

It's kinda my favorite thing on the table in an oddly small way.

Used the Japanese rasps.

And after the first coat of finish.

The Top.  It unfolds from the center vertical, or maybe it's moving toward the center.  Almost like the vertical landed and created the ripples spreading outward.

It is good.

Bonus pic!

The above as shot.