Portfolio

I clearly haven't been writing much for a while. Despite all that, this blog still gets regular traffic, so I figured it's time to clean things up a bit.
The most neglected item here is the full set of photos of the Auto-regulator, which was intended to be the first atomic clock for home or office. The prototype was featured in the pages of Fine Woodworking Magazine, which was a pretty big achievement for me.

-----The Auto-Regulator-----

This first shot is the one that was featured in Fine Woodworking. As promo shots go, it's pretty good. There were a lot of three way miters in the case, both on the bottom section, (which housed the power supplies, etc) as well as the top. The top miters were all more involved, because they had to be perfect: The inside surfaces of all structural members were all chamfered, but where they met, (at the miters) there was a lot of sculpting and fairing to be done, which wouldn't work if the miters had gaps.

To further complicate matters, the top front corners had even more going on. The front miter lines were designed to both come out perpendicular to the radius, but also to point to the center of the clock face. The side miters were cut at a 45, and the top miters, too... but the top "face" was a curve, meaning those faces were at an angle themselves. It took a while and a few test pieces before I figured out how the hell I was going to pull that off.

This second shot is similar, but at enough of an angle that it's s little more clear that the side lights were offset forward... and that there was a curved light in the roof of the case. The rear part of the roof, to add to all of the mitering mayhem, was a bent lamination, with a solid piece of maple then glued into what would be the visible inside of the case. So, the three way miter here was sort-of inside out. The outer side, the roof, and the inside, where that arch met the side pillars behind the clock face.

One subtle detail worth pointing out is the book-matching on either side of the front of the case. No, it's not veneer. The whole thing started out as rough sawn 12/4 walnut, and when I sliced it open, the curve of the grain threw me for a loop. I ended up making 3/4" slices and mitering them around the outer edges of both front vertical pillars, as well as mirroring them as best I could on either side. Oh, and the vertical pieces for the top, as well as the bottom, were all cut from one continuous piece of walnut, for color and grain matching. Yes, it's an anal detail that most people wouldn't notice. I did it anyway.
Oh, and yes, those are 4-way matches of walnut burl on the base, including sapwood. When you're marketing the first atomic clock with a few other bells and whistles, I guess nothing succeeds like excess.

To the right is a detail shot of the upper three way miter. It looks weird from this angle... especially as a photo. It made a lot more sense in person.

I wish I had an easy way to explain the mechanisms at work when you start to twist the miter lines. Geometrically, two planes intersect in a straight line. In the case of a three way miter, it's three planes intersecting in one straight line, and it HAS to be a straight line. Each plane is defined by the miter cut that joins two of the pieces... and that straight line touches the point edges of each of the three pieces coming together to make the joint. If those three point edges don't touch each other, you get a gap in the joint. And, in my case, a hole in what would otherwise be a nice, sculpted, faired out surface. It's one thing when all three pieces are at 90 degrees to each other, everything balances nicely.  it's something else entirely when you start twisting angles around.

Again, I wish I had the ability to adequately dissect it, but I'll leave it to you, the reader, to try to bend your head around the visualization.

The next two shots below are of frontal views of the face, and the lower complications inside the clock. Unfortunately, they're a little darker than I'd like, and they don't show off the miter lines as well as I'd have liked. Some of that is lighting, and some of that is the inevitable result of sculpting a curve into the wood: There was a lot of end grain showing around those miters, and that always darkens up more. But, you should still be able to see enough to get a good sense of what was going on.

Look closely enough, you'll be able to see two separate miter lines on each side of the clock face: The upper lines connect the upper arch to the horizontal pieces, and the lower lines connected the horizontals to the rear pillars. The three way miters come together a little more clearly and cleanly on the lower rear corners.

Last detail worth calling attention to is the bent laminated, sculpted strips that were also carefully mitered, to hold the glass into the case. If the miters look a little wonky, it's because they were... we had to remove the glass to make the photo shoot look cleaner, and without the glass to press against, the miters didn't work as well. One of those last minute details that wasn't quite as good as it could have been... but it was a pretty minor detail.
I'll wrap this up with two last detail shots: One shot of some "regular" three-way miters, (give or take some hidden rabbeting, etc) and one of the guts of the clock, from the side of the case.

This was a truly epic project, and while I hope it's not the best thing I'll ever do, it's something I'm damn proud of.

-----The clock that got me the auto-regulator job-----

This clock was something I designed and built to show off what I could do for the guy who subsequently commissioned me to help him build the Auto-Regulator. The case is about two feet tall, made of mahogany, and includes my versions of design elements from John and Thomas Seymour. The doors and pedestal are inlaid with banding that I made in the shop. The glass has gold leaf and paint on the back, to frame the elements of the clock display. The design for the door was inspired by a secretary desk that's on display at the Peabody Essex museum in Salem, MA. Just from the photos, the scale can be deceiving: The door that covers the display is only 6" wide, so the overall design had to be... modified... somewhat.

Interestingly enough, the display is made up of Soviet-era Numitron vacuum tubes. The tubes contain a series of lightbulb filaments that light up to display numbers.

The clock made a very good impression on the client, and he hired me to help design and build a case for a much larger clock. (That project is still in process, and when the necessary patents and trademarks etc on the design have been taken care of, I'll write more about it on the blog.)

-----The Swivel-Top Chess Table-----

The Chess Table was my final piece at North Bennet Street School. It's one of the highlights of my existing portfolio.

When the top is closed, the surface displays a 4-way match in walnut burl. I chose to incorporate the sapwood, because I like the color contrast.

When opened, it becomes a chess table. The surface is veneered in a marquetry chess board. It took me roughly 3 weeks to assemble the surface. Afterwards, I decided to inlay a thin purfling around the perimeter of the board, to help highlight it, and separate it from the rest of the surface.

There are a lot of other mirrored surfaces on the table. The surfaces around the column are veneered with walnut crotch, and they mirror around each edge. The base has a 4-way match. And the frame supporting the surface has 2-way book matching on the front and back.

-----Slab Tables-----

The English Oak slab table is one of my most popular pieces. Unfortunately, it's also not for sale. I built the table from a slab of oak that I bought at Hearne Hardwoods in PA, while I was on vacation with my girlfriend. Since then, the slab has become a table, and the girlfriend has become my wife.

The board was the pith board from the tree as it was cut. In layman's terms, it's the board taken from the exact center of the tree. The pith is the center of the trunk. It's also the least stable part of the lumber once it's been cut. When I bought the slab, it was split from one end to the other, and the two halves were barely connected to each other. A few years later, once I had a vision in my head of how I wanted the table to look, I separated the two halves completely, cleaned out all the fuzz and gunk that had grown in the split while the board was drying, and then rejoined the two halves with 3 butterfly joints. The gap in the middle is a focal point, but it's irregularity leads the eye back and forth to each end, around the bevels, and down each edge.

Because it's the center board of the tree, the grain has a lot going on. Towards the center, it looks rift-sawn... simple straight grain. On the way towards the edge, it looks more quartersawn, and the ray fleck that quarter sawn oak is prized for is on proud display. There are color variations from the pith to the heartwood, to the sapwood on the edge.

The way the base is joined together took a lot of head-scratching. The legs, top supports, and the stretcher are all joined together in a 3-direction lap joint that has more to do with a wooden knot-style puzzle than with traditional table joinery. But the base is dyed black, because I wanted to let the top hog all the attention.  I think it was the right decision.

I love this table. When it's cleared off, I can let my eyes run over it for half an hour, and not notice the time go by.

It's inspired several other tables, and I continue to make variations of this design today. 

North Bennet Chippendale Chair

This chippendale style chair is a standard North Bennet project. Curly maple can be a challenge to work with in simple, flat planes. Working it into curves isn't much better. There's a little more room for improvisation, but that's about it.

The most enjoyable part of this chair happened when I had a brain flash that led me to develop the finishing process. I took my time with sample pieces, and figured out what I wanted to do ahead of time. But the process started with dying the whole chair purple, and then scraping it down to highlight the grain. The purple dye was garish... it looked like a photoshop job on a real live object, the white maple looked crayons purple. And it got noticed by EVERYONE... from students, to faculty, even to the provost of this very traditional school, who came up to make sure that I was ok, and that I hadn't completely lost my mind.

-----Two Blanket Chests-----

I made this first chest for my then-girlfriend Ariel in 2007 for her birthday. It's a variant on a design that I used for a class that I developed and taught in 2007. The chest for the class was smaller, with three panels across the front. This one is a bit wider, because I wanted it to sit at the foot of the bed.

The carving started out as a way to cover a goof. I'd laid out the mortises for the lid cleats incorrectly, and as a result, they were evenly spaced, but all slightly to the left. That left a larger field on the right hand side. To make it look deliberate, I decided I should use the larger space for something, and went for extra credit with the heart and initials.

Then I went to mount the lid, and realized I'd carved them upside down.

 Rather than flip the lid and run the heavy bead profile again, I just made another lid. I measured everything correctly this time, but I decided to keep the carving. I also kept the girl... we got married on 10/10/10.

This is a 6-board cherry blanket chest that I built at school. I bought the wood as live edge slabs from a big-wood specialty place in western Massachusetts. The chest itself is four feet long, about 2 feet tall, and 18 inches from front to back.

The floor of the chest is aromatic cedar, and the lid is lined with cedar panels as well. There's a small till to one side, with a lid that doubles as a lid support.

The lid is inlaid with a medallion made of sand-shaded, bleached bird's eye maple.

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Thanks for reading this far, for being interested in my work... or just for stopping by and paying attention. My woodworking career took up the better part of a full decade, and to say it had an enormous impact on me would be an understatement, and a disservice to the experience.

For those of you who are working with wood full time, or part time, I'm happy for you, and I hope you continue to enjoy every minute. As for me, recent events have given me the flexibility to start doing some of this type of work again on the side, and I look forward to taking advantage of that opportunity.

All my best to all of you,

James