Tall-back chair

Here's a current drawing I threw together in Adobe Illustrator CS5. Like many others, I know Photoshop reasonably well, but never had the chance to dabble with Illustrator. This past week, I kind of threw myself into this drawing as a little crash-course.

This drawing is a takeoff of an Arts & Crafts chair featured in Judith Miller's exhaustive tome, Furniture. In keeping with period correctness, it's my intention to use as much quarter sawn white oak as possible. The legs may seem a bit chunky at 3" x 3" each, but with the back ones at nearly 5' tall, the height should put them into an appropriate proportion to the eye.

Construction will be pinned, mortise and tenon, though the pinning is not pictured in the drawing. I just need to finish up some paying jobs before I can get to this fun one. If you're interested in a set of four, I'd be willing to wheel and deal. Hit me up:

info at factoriifab dot com

"Book" book-ended shelf

I finished fabrication on this barn wood shelf on Friday. The books were inlaid about two inches deep to a snug fit without requiring any adhesive or fasteners. All that's left to do is construct an apparatus to hang the shelf on to give it a floating appearance. This particular piece is for my folks to replace my mother's outdated P. Buckley Moss ('80s anybody?!) prints. I can't wait to hang it for the two of them.

Coffee talk...

Coffee table above is 20" x 36" and about 18" tall. The lower section of the table will accommodate a shelf that I glued up earlier in the day. Entirely constructed of reclaimed barn wood with pinned, mortise and tenon joinery.


Both tables that will be for sale at Jazz In July art show on Tuesday.


Here's a bent wood, laminated coat rack constructed of maple, walnut and faced with zebrawood. Two gussets will be mounted right behind the face of the rack, just right and left of center. They will then meet on a lower mounting plate that attaches to the wall approximately 36" below the coat rack. The mounting holes are spaced 48" on center making installation into two studs easy...as long as you find them.

Some candies...

Not really any candies...but if you knew a Bosnian production manager that worked at Sticks named Ned, you'd get the joke. And I couldn't think of another title for this post.

Really, who IS the Squiggy though?


Above is a mock-up of one of two end tables for our house. Bethany and I picked out a piece of zebrawood last night at Woodsmith Store. The grain orientation can be really wild at times and makes power-planing difficult as the wood develops checking and chatter marks quite easily. I'll have my buddy, Toby, run these through his wide-belt sander to surface the tops. The frames are 1" square tubing that's been rusted and sprayed with polyurethane.



This is one of two reclaimed barn wood tables. The 1 1/2" thick table tops measure 20" x 36", with the one pictured above standing 34 1/2". Both are constructed with pinned mortise and tenon joinery, as shown below. The other table will be coffee table height.



It seems like I'm building everything in pairs these days, and this shelf is no exception. The books are actually going to be recessed into the wood and act as "book" bookends. The spines will be set back (as shown) so the recessed couple of inches won't be seen. These were inspired by Juxtaposed:Power from Blankblank. I can assure you mine won't be $3K...no kidding, follow the link.



Looking in my rearview mirror while leaving the shop, I had to pull over and take some pictures. This was around dusk, 8:56 p.m., as a nasty cell was rolling in...

Lots o' pieces this week...

Above are some drawings of some shelves I'm fabricating for ISU Dining in the newly renovated Oak-Elm dining hall. 1 1/2" square tubing with lots of vineyard bar and hand-forged oak and elm leaves.

One of three windows the shelves will be mounted within.


An upside-down mock-up of an occasional table made of reclaimed barn wood.


Above is a drawing of one of two signs being fabricated for the Memorial Union at ISU. The oak lumber below will be planed and glued up to 2' x 3'. This lumber was harvested on the grounds that used to exist just south of the Sun Room on the south side of the Union. The text on the sign will be cut from 3/16" mild steel and adhered to the wood with construction adhesive.

Zart! Gallery custom doors - installation

Well, a slight hiccup yesterday delayed the final installation of these doors. I'll own up to the oversight - it was mine.
When designing, planning or fabricating, I like to have small reveals. This means I wanted an ever so slight gap between the bottom of the door frames and the tiled floor in front of them. Well, I failed to account for the bowing in the tile. On Friday, the doors would only open a foot or so before becoming bound up. To remedy this, I had to cut out a 1" section on each of the vertical uprights, weld them back together and grind 'em smooth.

With that done late Friday night, I left them outside overnight to rust the bare metal areas I had just ground. DB helped with the install again today and everything went off without a hitch...like it was supposed to on Friday.

Above is the view from the gallery looking into the back area. Below is a shot looking out into the gallery. Zart 1312 owner, Maribeth Trevillyan, adorned the backsides of the doors with fabric in order to completely block off view into the back room. We'll get some pics of that in the near future...

Thanks to Maribeth, DB, Kevy and as always, Bob Wagaman(!) for their help/input/support in one form or the other...It's always appreciated...

Murturm observation tower

I saw this in a recent issue of Interior Design magazine. Apparently, the recently completed double-helix Murturm was built on the "no man's land" border between Austria and Yugoslavia that existed during the Cold War.

As a fabricator, I'm quite impressed with the sheer magnitude and geometry of this venture. At the top, you're standing 89' off the ground. Next trip to Europe will include a visit here...

Zart! Gallery custom doors - fabrication complete...

I was going to post some other pictures for the completed doors, but decided not to because 1.) the photos I took looked crappy and 2.) I'd hate to spoil the surprise of the actual installation going down tomorrow with D.B. Tune in tomorrow - same Ratt time, same Ratt channel!

"Maybe we can dance, dance, dance!"

Zart! Gallery custom doors III

Here was the progression of forging at the shop today. Needless to say, I'm beat. After forging the vineyard bar tomorrow, I'll begin assembly and then start oxidizing.

Cheers, all...

Zart! Gallery custom doors - II

Here are the trees I cut with a plasma torch (thanks, Kevy!) last week for the Zart! Gallery in downtown Des Moines. Some vineyard bar and a few hand-forged leaves will adorn the trees. Some forging of the trees is tomorrow's MO. The last pics have arrows pointing to the branches that will come out off of the door frame acting as the door handles. Should be pretty cool. Installation will be at the end of the week with D.B.

Zart! Gallery custom doors

This week's focus is on an installation of twin doors based on the above staircase by Stephen Bondi. The rough opening is 96" wide by 89 1/2" tall - shown below in the frame I fabricated today out of 1 1/2" 14 ga. sq. tubing. Each door will have a tree cut from 14 ga. hot-rolled steel and then forged to give the tree some texture and dimensional relief. Additionally, 5/16" and 1/2" diameter vineyard bar will be forged and wrapped around the tree branches with handmade, forged leaves. The door frame, trees and all adornments will be finished with a forced oxidation and sealed with a satin, oil-based polyurethane.

Carpentry this weekend...

Simple things...

Some days, it's just looking at a board that has so much inner beauty you can't see until it's been planed that puts a smile on your face. Here's a piece of reclaimed pine that did just that today after one pass under the knives.

"...it's the small things in life"

Palanjian finished desk

Ms. Palanjian's finished desk. Photo by my brother, "Snyder."

Reclaimed barn wood. Pinned mortise and tenon joinery throughout.

Palanjian desk mock-up

A lot of headway was made on Amy Palanjian's barn wood desk today. All the mortises were drilled and tenons cut this afternoon. A new "old" acquaintance, Toby Larsen, graciously lent a hand in the evening with his wide belt sander making quick work of evening out the table top. (Toby and I both went to United Community years ago...small world)

The contrast in texture on the legs is intentional. The outside surfaces of each leg will remain the weathered, brown "patina" that mother nature so kindly sculpted over many, many decades. It conveys the fact that the lumber used in construction is actually barn wood. Fabrication will be finished up tomorrow with delivery on Wednesday.

I might have to build another one of these pretty soon...Thanks, Amy.

Nightmares...

Someday, if any of my children want this bed, I'll happily build it for them. Maybe you have a twisted, macabre mind too and think this might suit your kids. Hit me up...we can make it happen.

*UPDATE*

If somebody is REALLY interested in this bed, I'll build it for them at cost just so I can see it come alive...Seriously...It has to be a child's bed or single mattress...I doubt it would be more than $200...

Palanjian desk glue-up - "step by step"

Sometimes, I feel like I don't explain what I do enough...at least visually. So, as Amy wanted to see the wood "before and after," I thought I'd take the time to be really meticulous with this project's posting.



The board on the left has been run through the planer, now showing its true inner self. The stack on the right is the "patina" they've acquired over God knows how many decades of hay, manure (maybe) and general weathering. Kinda fuzzy on the outside, but definitely solid throughout the board.


After all of the boards have been planed, this is when I'll scan each side with a critical eye looking for odd characteristics, blemishes and differences in color compared to the others. Sometimes, mineral stains, knots and unique figuring make the piece and I'll intentionally include a "blemish." The third board from the left didn't make the cut due to it being just a little darker than the others. I don't mind some difference, but after a coat of poly, you'll really be able to tell what matches and what doesn't.



Here are the four boards that made the cut. The pieces of maple that are laying perpendicular to the board mark the overall length the desktop will be once it's assembled.



I don't know whether or not to be surprised that there's very little cupping, warping or movement in these pieces. Each piece was a breeze to rip for glue-ups on the saw, as shown here.



To help strengthen a simple butt joint glue-up, each interior edge that mates up with another is further secured with biscuit joinery. The biscuits also help to keep all the boards on the same plane, thus, making sanding simplified as the surface is not hampered with varying heights relative to each other....trust me.



Here's all of the edges after they've been jointed with the plate jointer. Joint is 3/4" on center since the overall thickness is 1 1/2".



After the joints have been glued and biscuited, this is (roughly) what the desktop will look like upon completion.



With any luck, tomorrow we'll be cutting mortise and tenon joints for the legs...and start sanding that top.

Thanks again, Amy! Cheers...