Two views of another type of carving I do. This is a figure I carved as a gift for a very dear friend. My previous post got me thinking about my wood carvings. Now I really need to get back to work in the shop.
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In going through my images I also came across this carving I did for a name plate for the boat China Swan. Some of you that sail in the Milwaukee area may recognize the name. The name plates were carved in Honduran mahogany, the owner applied the finish and installed them.
Going through my pictures for uploading to my new web site I’ve found several that I thought I’d post here every so often. This is a set of drawers I was fitting for the interior of a computer armoire commissioned for a home office. The joints are hand cut dovetails, the wood solid cherry.
I mix a custom blend for my wipe on, oil finish. After the oil mix is applied I allow it to soak into the wood then wipe it dry. I’ll apply at least three coats, buffing with very fine steel wool in between coats. Each coat takes a day to dry.
After the second coat of dye dries on the base I’ll apply the oil mix over the dye.
I’ve attached the cross pieces onto the base structure and after a little final sanding it is ready to be dyed black.
I use a water based aniline dye. It will take two applications with some light sanding in between to give a nice even color. The water based dye will not fade when exposed to uv light as will alcohol based dye. Water based dye does raise the grain a little, hence the extra sanding step.
While the base dries I work on sanding the edges of the top.
It’s important to not overlook any detail at this stage. Soon I’ll be applying the finish and any touch-ups or adjustments will be very hard to do after that.
The edges are staring to look nice and wood grain is starting to show it’s beauty. The top needs a final sanding and I will be ready to apply the finish.
As I work through ever finer grades of sandpaper, to bring out the true beauty of the wood, various small scratches begin to appear. They were always there, but were so fine that they weren’t visible until the wood around them is sanded with a very fine grit. The scraper takes very fine shavings off these areas, which will then be further sanded so that the top has a uniform, very fine, surface.
Yesterday.
The sky cleared after sifting 7 more inches of snow down on us all day Saturday and into the Saturday night. Cold Canadian air was sucked around the back side of the stormy low as it swung up the Ohio Valley, the wind backing a little northwest as we shoveled out. The phone tree lit up as friends checked to see who had actually seen the waves, who was going out today and when.
The air was 24 degrees.
It took me a good hour and a half to shovel out our porches, sidewalks and two vehicles. I grabbed the snow shovel after a breakfast of waffles, raspberries, walnuts, yogurt and plenty of coffee. Shoveling was a good way to get warmed up for the paddle out.
To paddle out into water that’s around 36 degrees Fahrenheit you have to be a little crazy. A good wet suit helps too. I packed an extra pair of long johns, my 6mm wet suit with 7mm booties and 7mm mittens, a extra pair of wool socks and a cooler 2/3 filled with very hot water. It was a little difficult navigating around the snow hills between my house and to the street where my truck was parked with my 9′6″ surf board under my arm but I managed to slide the board into the back of the truck.
Yesterday the surf was likely to be the best at a spot about 20 minutes north of where I live. It’s now a park but was once a fancy resort where large ships would bring folks from big cities around the lake to vacation along the shore or for day trips to cool off in the summer. The ruins of some of the docks and concrete footings along the beach are all that are left. It is a very wide and open bay with a point 4 miles to the north and another point a mile south of where we surf. A NW wind will bring in clean, long lines that peel over the outer and inner sand bars and rocky reefs.
I saw the vehicles of a couple of friends parked along the road above the bluff that leads to the beach as I pulled up. John and Bill were out on an outer break catching shoulder high peelers, Dave was just paddling out.
I started up my truck so that I could run the truck’s heater as I stripped off my clothes and changed into my surfing gear in the truck cab. Over my surfing booties I wore my Sorel boots outer shells and over my wet suit I put on an XXXL down jacket I picked up at an army surplus store last year. I grabbed my board out of the back of the truck and waded down the trail in snow that was almost 2 feet deep. At the bottom of the trail I saw a pair of snowshoes I left my outer boots and jacket there and carried my board down to the beach.
The sand was starting to freeze with large, irregular panes of ice and sand jumbled about just above the wave wash. Above that was deep snow drifting up to the wood line and the concrete remnants of the old resort. Bill and John had been surfing the reefs to the south but it looked as if only Bill was left. Dave and John had been joined by Ryan and Max on the sand bar way out to the north. I strapped my surfboard leash to my calf and watched the waves to make sure my familiar channel was still the best spot to wade out towards and have the best chance of an easy paddle through the bigger waves.
The nice thing about yesterday was that there were quite a few friends out surfing, people I know and have surfed with many times before. And, one other thing, the sun was shining. I can’t tell you how important it is to feel the sun shining in a gorgeous blue sky just at this moment when I’m the most uneasy, this moment of sliding into the very cold water going from an upright, walking, bipedal primate with some easy access to dryness and warmth to a prone, paddling, surfer with expectations of only cold, cold water and wind.
As I started out Bill rode a wave in and started wading in to the beach. He was ready to try the sand bar to the north so I decided to paddle out with him. He said that he had snow-shooed down the bluff. Great idea.
The session was spectacular. Beautiful waves, breaking over the bar and peeling, almost tubing, along clean big faces. There was lots of room and time to trim and cutback, slide up and down the face. We were lining up a good 250 yards out for most of the time. Every once in a while I’d wipe out and go under. Did I mention that this was cold water. Ice cream headache time big time.
Here’s the thing that I find really hard to get across and am always amazed at when it happens. A huge storm comes, cold and snow, ice and wind and you know in your bones that you should be inside by a warm fire. But there is something that drives you to go out, to go out into the snow and even crazier to lay on a thin fiberglass surfboard and paddle out into the winter of Lake Michigan. You are essentially, even when others are out, out there by yourself, in the water. Apprehension is all to natural and it really starts to work on you as you are getting ready, as you wade through deep snow and then water and start to paddle through the icy waves. Soon there will be floating ice in the line up where we surf. But then, there is this amazing change. You see another surfer, several, all friends, in the water with you, catching waves and you start whooping and cheering as they glide by you riding up and up the face of a swelling wave. And soon there’s a wave aiming right down the line for you and everyone starts shouting,”ooooo Todd, that one has YOUR name on it”, “go, go, go”.
And…………. off you go.
And nothing could be better.
That’s an amazing transformation.
Ahhh eventually the cold begins to start taking it’s due. My feet feel it first. It’s not long before they feel like blocks of ice and are about as useful to stand on as blocks of ice. Coordination ebbs. The shadows get very long as the sun drops ever lower. The days are very short this time of year and I am a long way out in the lake and a long way from a warm truck.
Soon I take whatever wave I can in to where I know there’s an underwater gravel bar running out from shore. As waves break over it they push water either north or south of the bar. If you get just to the south side there’s a pretty strong current to carry you south to where you can walk out on a sand beach. I catch some whitewater in to that bar and glide in to the beach.
It’s a long trudge up the bluff. Bill’s got his snow shoes on and heads out ahead of me. I lag behind as the cold really starts to seep into my wet wet suit. Once I get to my truck my hands are like clubs and I have a hard time sliding the cooler full of hot water out of the truck and down to the street, but soon I’m standing with my feet immersed in lovely hot water, my mittens off and I’m pouring pitcher fulls of that wonderful stuff over my head and down inside my suit.
What a lovely day.
There are things that are worth some effort, worth a risk, worth some pain. Amazingly deep joy and bliss are really not available online, or over the cable or at slide of your credit card through Megacorp’s one of a gazillion terminals.
Go. Do something real. And have fun.
I opened my latest issue of The Surfer’s Journal last night. I always have to wait until I can sit down for at least an hour to open that magazine, because it takes me at least that long before I can tear myself away from it, at least. Even if you are not a surfer I highly recommend opening at least one issue sometime. I love the paper they print on, the images are magnificent and the writing stands head and shoulders above most “surf writing”.
This December- January 2007-2008 issue has a story about Tom Killion’s woodblock prints. He uses what he refers to as a “faux ukiyo-ë” method of printing. The Surfer’s Journal prints full page images of his work. Really, go find this.
Although I don’t really have the time I went on a web search for more information on Japanese style woodblock printing as it rekindled my interest in it. I use to do some woodblock printing, even printed our wedding invitations on a press I made from a wringer washer roller-wringer. Here’s a good website on Japanese woodblock printing how-to.
Another highly recommended item is again Bob Reitman’s radio show- see my links.
I’ve got to run now, I need to buy some wine before Holly and I go for our run.
The table base is glued up. While the glue sets I’ll start sanding the boards I’ve glued up for the top. First I set up some cross pieces on a work bench.
By using shims I can get the three cross pieces aligned in a single plane. This helps as I need to now sand the top as flat as I can. Having the work piece rest on a flat plane helps a lot. And now I begin sanding the top. Table tops take a lot of sanding.
I start with a belt sander.
To make sure that I am sanding the work piece flat I check it often with a pair of winding sticks.
And then I go back to sanding. Eventually I get one face flat, then I turn it over and work on the other face. After an hour or so of using the belt sander I turn to a jig I developed some years ago to further flatten the work and to take out the machine marks left by the power belt sander.
It’s good exercise!
When the top is flat and smoothed I lay the pattern back on it, trace the outline one more time and then cut it out with a jig saw.
Sorry about the dust on the camera lens. Things are pretty dusty at this point.
The sawn edge is smoothed by using a sharp block plane.
The edge is then rounded over with a router.
And the top is starting to look like a surfboard.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel ran a story in this morning’s paper about the continuing salvage of the Falcon, the Chinook 34 aground on the north side of Milwaukee. The online version has a link to a cool time lapse sequence of the boat being cut up. It would appear that Jerry Guyer waited until there was enough ice and the boat was driven close enough in to have reasonably safe access to the boat. If you look at this earlier photo from the Journal Sentinel you can see why.
Other blogs have been carrying some gorgeous photos of the Falcon as it lay wrecked. Mike Fisk, in particular, has been shooting beautiful shots at dawn. His creative viewpoint is definitely different than mine on this . Not to criticize his work at all, which I admire. To me the wreck of this boat is a tragedy. This shot of his most closely reflects my sense of tragic loss.
As I spoke of in my first post about the Falcon I see the hopes and hard work, the dreams and excitement that go into the hard effort of wresting order out of chaos. It was a dream to do something as “impossible” as slip across the water using only the wind to move you, a dream to cross an ocean, a dream to reunite with a lover. The tragedy here, luckily, isn’t due to a loss of a person’s life. The tragedy may be that with just a little more information, a few more skills, a little more understanding of the realities involved in sailing and navigation that the life of those dreams could have been fulfilled.
We all wonder at some point if our efforts are enough, if there isn’t just one or two more things we should do or know or understand. Are we making a colossal, yet easily avoidable mistake? Life must move on and we cannot obsess about every detail so we trust our experience and our skills, we listen to others and in so doing we contribute to creating a social net on which we rely. When we succeed, when we’ve breathed new life into our dreams we know we’ve done so with the unimaginable help and support of many people. When we run aground and our dreams become wrecked on a rocky ledge we are alone and left bereft.
Then, often, something amazing happens. Someone like Jerry Guyer appears. Someone who has seen wrecks before, someone who can figure a way to, if not save the dream, clean up the mess. That mess must not be left to haunt us with the melancholy reminder of loss and failure. This is part of our social compact. The dreamer who has failed is not alone after all. Without the inherent chance of failure the dreamer could not achieve the “impossible”, our dreams would not have a chance to flourish. And so we must all touch the dreamer, lend a hand in cleaning up the mess created when the chance of failure takes its toll. And we do, even if it is to simply witness a salvage with respect and empathy and to learn from that experience and to share that gained knowledge freely. In so doing we knot together that ephemeral, yet critical net which will be used to support new dreams. Dreams that may someday slip safely pass the rocky ledges too close to shore.
Today we are being hit with an ice storm. The forecast is for up to 1/2″ of ice this afternoon. No way was I about to drive my old pick up truck into work this morning. I live on one side of the Milwaukee River and my shop is on the other side. You have to travel down into the river valley and then back up going in either direction and the roads can get pretty treacherous with an ice covering. Luckily I only live about 2-1/2 miles from my studio so when I need to I can walk. There have been times when I’ve cross country skied in. Today I chose to walk it.
As I walked. more like trudged in I was thinking about some of the images of my shop I posted yesterday. They sure make the shop look messy. I know that part of it has to do with the nature of photography, collapsing the foreground and background onto a single plane, and I didn’t monkey with adjusting the depth field on any of the shots. But, to be honest, my shop is pretty messy. When I look at some of the woodworking magazines I subscribe to I am always impressed with how clean and organized the shops they show in them look. Although, I must say, there is definitely a trend toward showing ever cleaner, ever more well organized shops in some of those magazines over the last 20 years.
I think that messes are very personal, neat and organized is very impersonal. Of course every one can be neat in their own way, but there are some obvious rules about neatness and organization that everyone must follow if they want a space to look organized and neat to others. As far as the magazines go it maybe that neat, organized shop spaces appeal to more people than more individualistic spaces. More appeal, more copies sold.
There is also the issue of safety. An organized, clean and neat shop is without doubt safer if there are several people working in that shop. Actually, there is an imperative to organization and neatness when working with several people in one shop. Each person will likely need to know where all the various shared tools are to be kept so that they can find them. When I’ve had apprentices and employees my shop has been much neater, if for no other reason than there are more people available to put things away and sweep up.
Yesterday, as I was working on the surfboard table base I reached for my cabinet scraper and it wasn’t in its little cubby hole where I keep it. I spent about 15 minutes searching for it. That is actually a pretty rare experience for me. My shop looks messy, but it is really very personalized and I can usually put my hands on any of the 100’s of tools in the 2,500 square feet of the shop within a minute or less. I really hated to loose that scraper. I’ve had it for at least 15 years. Eventually I grabbed another, even older one for the task but kept my mind exploring for that thing.
Pop, of course, I used it when I had gone out to help a friend with a finishing problem, and there it was packed away in my touch-up tool kit.
Here it is, in its plastic case. It is a small tool but immensely useful.
Part of the reason I hated loosing it so much is that I’ve worked that scraper so many times, both in sharpening and scraping wood. The sharpening process is particularly a matter of feel and interaction with your skin and hands. It’s almost like your hands have to know how to sharpen it more than your brain. You start by using a file to square the long edges with the faces as the scraper is held in a vice. You have to hold the file as square to the faces as you can, using your knuckles to brace and guide it, then you lean your whole body forward to push the file along the edge. You repeat this with a sharpening stone to remove the file marks.
At this point you should be able to run your finger across the face, over the edge and feel a smooth path. You then hold the scraper down on the bench with one hand and take a tool called a burr, a piece of very hard steel that is either a rod or a rounded in an oval and draw it down the edge of the scraper at just the right angle to push up the corner edge made between the scraper edge and face to create a very small curl of metal. This hook is very sharp and can make the finest shavings if scraped against a piece of wood.
There are other tools that I am quite connected to. Here are a couple of hand planes.
The larger plane is a jack plane that once was my dad’s. When he gave it to me I had to tune it up and have, over the years, slightly modified it to suit me. The smaller plane is a block plane which I have also tuned and modified. Both I keep within easy reach, sometimes just needing to take a few strokes to get the final dimension of a work piece just right. Sometimes I’ve spent an entire afternoon planing wood by hand with one of these.
One more tool for now, as I really need to get back into the shop. Something about a snowy day that seems to say everything is different today. Anyway, I made this mallet many years ago while working in the shop of a great freind of mine.
As a matter fact, the friend is Dan Cramer and you can see his link in my blog roll. He was teaching about the wood lathe and I made this as an exercise. Somehow I got it just right the first time and although I’ve made several other mallets over the years this one fits my hand the best. The little knob at the end of the handle keeps the mallet from slipping out of my grip without me having to hold it really tightly and it can be used to give a very gentle tap by reversing the mallet.
I was thinking about saying something about the various wood shapes I stash in my shop.
And the lathe in the northeast corner of the shop.
The lathe which I just recently used to complete a small turning project and haven’t yet cleaned up, but I really need to get back to work now. Maybe more on neatness later.
The legs are cut to fit up against the center arc at a 30 degree angle and mortises or slots are cut on that beveled face to receive the tenons that fit through the arc. I use the arc pattern to locate the slots in the arc.
After cutting those I do the final shaping on the arc. The convex curve is shaped on the belt sander table.
And the concave curve is shaped by hand using a spoke shave.
A test assembly of two of the legs to the arc reveals an interesting form.
I often take a little time to consider the forms created by accident when assembling furniture elements. To some degree there is not that much “accident” involved as I intentionally created the parts with the goal of creating an interesting or compelling shape.
I use to whip out an old Polaroid camera and take a few shots. Then I’d pin them to my office wall. I still study them for ideas.
Now I use one of digital cameras and my hard drive has become the studio wall. I actually like the studio wall better.
Adding the second set of legs makes it easier to see how this could turn into a coffee table.
Next I’ll shape the top, add some cross pieces and I can glue up the base.
Part 2 in the making of the surf board coffee table.
One more check of the pattern with the boards test clamped then I trace the pattern onto the boards to help me align them during glue up.
I gather up my supplies- wood glue, shop made applicator, extra clamps, wax paper and a rag -and bring them to the glue up frame area of the shop. You can see the boards set on the glue up frame in preparation of a test clamp. Once you start spreading the glue you have to work fast to get the boards set up on the frame, aligned and clamped so it pays to have everything you may need at hand.
Here’s the glue up frame with the work pieces all clamped in the test clamp. This is the time to decide if you need more clamps, cross palls or other supplies.
The cross palls are, in this case 2 x 4s, clamped across the direction of the glue joints to hold the boards in alignment and in a single plane. They also keep the whole glue-up assembly from popping off the frame when I crank down on the bar clamps.
Now I take everything down and spread the wood glue on the edges to be glued.
Did I mention that you have to work fast to do this?
While the top is in the clamps as the glue sets I work on cutting out the legs. 
Once the legs are cut out on the band saw they go to the drum sander to sand out the saw blade marks and get the legs to their final shape. 
to be continued….
Hmm, maybe it should be “surfboard table” instead of “surf board table”. I better check it out.
I got another order for one and have taken a few shots of the some of the steps in making one. This is a very general description of the process and is not intended as instructional.
The first step was to check my lumber supply to see if I had some nice pieces on hand that would work for this table. I generally make these out of maple and ash, with a nice strip of walnut as the stringer, the center strip of wood on the top. I didn’t have enough maple and needed a little more ash so I drove down to my favorite lumber yard last Friday and sorted through their stacks. I found some nice maple and just enough ash.
I like to let the wood sit in my shop for a few days before I start working with it, especially in the winter when the heat is on and my shop may be warmer and drier than the lumber yard. Wood is a fickle material and to work it you need to understand and respect it. Moisture moves in and out of wood through hollow cells that are arrayed in unique ways for each piece of wood. As the moisture enters the wood the cell expands, as it leaves the cell shrinks. When you get thousands of these cells expanding and contracting the piece of wood changes shape. My job is to work with the wood to shape it into the shapes that I want. Sometimes that means just letting the piece sit for awhile and acclimate to a new environment.
I planed flat and glued up the ash for the long arc under the top and laid a pattern for the arc over the wood, traced the outline and cut it out on the band saw.
I then selected the wood for the top. I start by eyeing the boards to check for warp and twist and carefully noting the grain pattern. I use the half pattern for the top to determine the best way to cut the boards to length.
Here is the half pattern on the boards that I’ve cut to roughly the length I need.
A half pattern is a great way to make sure that a shape is symmetrical. You just trace the shape out on one side and flip the pattern over, line it up and trace the other side.
The next step is to flatten the boards to eliminate as much twist and cupping as you can before glue up. The narrower pieces can be run over a jointer, face down. This tool has cutters on a drum that rotate so that the top edge of the cutters is exactly even with the outfeed table. Several passes and you have a flat face, for now.
The wider pieces have to be run through my planer with a carriage. A planer has the cutters above the board and will trace the same twist and warp that a board already has as the board passes through it. By shimming the work piece so that it doesn’t rock, onto a flat carriage that can then pass through the planer you can cut off the high points and after many passes arrive at a relatively flat board.
Eventually I can get the boards relatively flat at least on one face.
I then pass each of these boards through the planer again, but with out the carriage. I place the flat face down and the planer will trace this flat surface onto the opposite face, hopefully ending with a very flat board.
I qualify the above because I also have to take into account the way a piece of wood reacts when you remove part of it. Some of those cells that take on and give off moisture were held in tension by others. By removing some of the cells the others can relax into a different shape. As this happens I try different strategies while running the boards through the planer to compensate. I may flip and reverse a board, I may press on it as it comes out, it is surprising how physical an activity this really is.
After the boards are flat on their faces I lay them out again as they will be glued up and lay the pattern on them once more. I now determine how wide each board has to be to be able to create the pattern of grain movement and color that I want for the table top. This also allows me to see which edges I need to straighten by running the edge over the jointer.
After I get one of the edges straight and square with the two faces I then saw the board to its final width by passing it through the table saw.
This process of truing the edges is time consuming as it is critical to getting good glue joints.
I recheck with the pattern to make sure the pieces are lining up with true edges the way I want and I’m ready to glue the pieces together into one large blank ready to be cut out, sanded and finished.
I’ll blog more on this process soon.
I just got word that the “Falcon” is being Salvaged as I write this. “Falcon” is that Chinook 34 that ran aground here on the north side of Milwaukee. Word is that they’ve got the mast down and have a trailer hauled out to the water’s edge. I’ve got too much happening here in the studio to get down there to take any pictures but it seems others are also keeping an eye on it so we should be seeing some pics soon.
The dialog with my clients generated an interest in two of the sketched designs I had created, sketch #3 and sketch #4.
Sketch #4 was derived from an earlier table I had made and shown in my portfolio. Jackie had wanted to be sure and have the table legs as far out towards the edge of the table top as possible to maximize leg room under the table. Both of these designs accomplish that as part of the design motif.
Since these designs were quick ideas drawn to look for a direction to move in to accomplish a final design I felt that they needed some refining. I discussed this with Jackie and Peter and got their impressions. From those discussions I created two designs, one of each table.
At this point I’ve started looking at the joinery as well as other technical considerations so that I don’t present a design that would be too expensive to accomplish. Here is design #3.
I had also modeled the site, the clients kitchen, in my 3D cad program and was able to place the table within that model to give my clients an idea of the scale of the table and how it would look in their space.
I did the same process for design #4.
I’ll show another view of the rendered model here. I provided Jackie and Peter with several views of each but am not posting them all here to save some of my bit space.
For both designs I also created line drawings with dimensions. Here is the line drawing for table #4. Click to get a larger view. 
Now it was up to Peter and Jackie to decide which of the two they liked the best or whether they would like to think about another approach. Their house had several elements that were of the Prairie/ Arts and Crafts genre. One of the elements of Arts and Crafts style is the use of exposed joinery and table #4 has more explicit exposed joinery. They eventually decided on #4.
After they made their decision I worked out a bid price for them and we signed a Commission Agreement detailing the design, materials, price, completion date and delivery details. I then created shop drawings, selected the lumber and built the table.
Here is a detail of the completed table showing the exposed joinery.
The cherry will darken with age and exposure to light. The kitchen it went into had plenty of light exposure and that is why I rendered the models in dark cherry as the finished table would soon darken.
Jackie and Peter were quite happy with the table. As a matter of fact they wrote this testimonial for me:
Todd Fillingham is the best kept secret of a craftsperson in Milwaukee. He has a beautiful portfolio of lovely, creative and usable furniture. I have known Todd for 25 years but it was only when I heard his name sponsoring an NPR show did I think- “he is the one to design a perfect table for our newly remodeled kitchen.” And I was right. He looked at the site, he listened to my ideas, he did an array of drawings, he made a few alterations after discussions and he used both his sense of design and what I wanted with his skill and computer savvy to do a picture of a table that is exactly what he then produced in beautiful cherry wood. We thought the price was reasonable for this utilitarian piece of art.
Jackie Boynton
This mornings New York Times’ Science section has great article : “The Dance of Evolution, or How Art Got Its Start” by Natalie Angier. She takes up Ellen Dissanayake’s thesis that art “did not arise to spotlight the few, but rather to summon the many”. Dissanayake goes on to say: “Through singing, dancing, painting, telling fables of neurotic mobsters who visit psychiatrists, and otherwise engaging in what Ms. Dissanayake calls ‘artifying,’ people can be quickly and ebulliently drawn together, and even strangers persuaded to treat one another as kin.”
I say- Yes! And I say that this idea goes a long way to explain the friction and dissonance between art’s core and the exclusivity that many have and are trying to extract from art. It is such a shame that artists are forced to hang on to the hierarchical stratifications imposed on them by galleries and dealers just to be able to survive when art is so conducive to healing so much of the social fragmentation resulting from late 20th century materialism. Art grows from the roots of the mother-infant bond according to Dissanayake and others. Traditional and early cultures benefited from nurturing this primal power. Should we not as well?
My mother painting
Me
As I lay in her womb.
I’ve been meaning put up a post that describes the process I go through in designing a simple project such as dining table. This project was completed this fall.
The client contacted me about a dining table for a new kitchen they had recently added. The client, Jackie Boynton, and I discussed the general requirements and set an appointment or me to visit her house so that I could get a sense of the space and other furniture they had.
The table would need to regularly seat 3 and occasionally seat 4. Once I got to the site it appeared that an oval shape top would be appropriate. The new kitchen was contemporary enough, with large windows and clean woodwork for an oval to work, the space was somewhat small for a rectangle and we did not want to constrict the traffic flow of a busy kitchen, used for cooking, homework, family gathering and many other activities.
I eventually established a comfortable table size by taking measurements of the site, modeling the site in my 3D cad program and by using my “ergo man” model. This is a model I’ve created to allow me to assure enough room for table settings as well as many other ergonomic design concerns in many projects. Here’s a screen shot of this model:
Here’s an image I took while on site of the area the table would eventually occupy.
You can see the old table, obviously too small.
I manipulated this image in my photo editing application and added a rendering of an early sketch idea for a table to get a sense of the style direction I should be going towards.
This process of manipulating the image in a photo editing program is awkward and doesn’t allow me to measure the clearance around the table and to get a good idea of how the table will look so I modeled the space in the 3D cad program and was able to drop in various rough ideas for table designs.
To get a dialog going betwenn Jackie and myself about the table design I created a series of 3D sketches and quickly rendered them and was able to email them to her and her husband, Peter. They were able to discuss them and get back to me. Here’s a link to my Flickr set showing several of these sketches:
I think that these designs have a lot of potential and look forward to interesting another client into having me finish one or more of them.
In part 2 I’ll show the two finalists that Jackie and Peter chose, the eventual final choice and the completed table.
Yesterday my son Joe and I went down to the lake front to check on the Chinook 34 wreck, the Falcon. It is working ever closer to shore. Joe took some evocative pictures here’s one.
It should be interesting once the ice starts to build around her. The ice could lift her further ashore or it may send her back out into the lake to be pounded even more on the rocks.
Joe also got a close up of some of the damage to the hull. The orange circle shows where we are guessing the rudder post was torn out. The rudder is missing. You can just see the prop in this image.
She has an inboard engine and will likely be leaking fuel soon.
There seems to be some interest in the surf board table I posted about a little while ago so I thought I’d post this image of the completed table. If you are interested in having me make one for you I would be very happy to just get in touch.
-Todd
Wednesday afternoon my son and I decided to take a drive south of town with our surf gear. The wind had been building from a steady 20 knots to 30 knots during the day. It was coming out of the northeast with gusts to 40. The surf spots near our house were insane washing machines of huge peaks crashing into each other sending waves in all directions. We had to hustle as it was almost 3 PM and the sun was to be below the horizon before 4:30.
We crossed the high bridge over the Milwaukee harbor in my old ‘89 Ford pick-up and could feel the gusts shaking us. The air was getting cold with temps dropping into the low 30’s. Clouds covered the sky. Spray flew high over the sea walls.
The spot we were headed to is about 30 minutes south of our house in a small city with a tiny harbor that only recreational power boaters use. To the east and south of the harbor entrance is a wide expanse of wild beach and woods stretching down to a large power plant way to the south. Sand fills in from around the point just to the north and creates a gentle under water slope up to the beach where waves arc in and peel forever.
We pulled up to the small trail that leads down a steep bluff to the woods and eventually to the beach and parked the truck up against the curb. We took turns changing from our street clothes into heavy winter wet suits. My son changed first and headed down the trail as I changed. Grabbing my board out of the back of the truck I was hit with a gust that sent me towards the edge of the bluff that the trail cuts down. I squatted down and went over the edge, down the trail barely able to keep my board from smashing into the trees lining the trail. Once I was below the lip I was in the lee of the wind and was able to navigate past the crumbling concrete and re-bar, broken glass and tree roots to the trail at the bottom.
A small storage area for the power boats is fenced off just to the north of the trail. The boats are covered in plastic tarps that were flapping with an insane thunderous cackle as gusts of wind tried to tear them off. Tall reeds over seven feet swayed and beat against each other in the wind. Every once in a while you could feel the low shudder of the ground as waves drummed on the channel sea wall.
I found my son sheltering against one of the large, steel barges grounded on either side of the makeshift channel into the small harbor. He looked at me like I was nuts to even think of paddling out into this maelstrom. Maybe I was, but what I saw were clean waist high waves peeling off down into the bay, spray flying off the peaks and night gathering.
The best place to catch these waves was up close to the outer wall or grounded barge, right where the big waves from deep water pitch up over the lake side sand bar just outside the channel. Part of the wave slams against the wall shuddering the ground beneath on impact but part of the wave rolls over the deeper channel water rounding off a little allowing a surfer a chance to paddle into the wave just as it is about to peak up again over the sand bar on the inside of the channel. Then you can drop down into the wave, gaining speed to trim to the wave. Then you trim your rail into it angling across the water rushing up the face to create thrust against your fin gaining even more speed. You paddle out into an angry set of waves past rusting hulks, spray every where, wind screeching and the next thing you know you are skimming lightly across the face of a gorgeous, arcing wave, gracefully dipping and turning in the most beautiful dance with water and gravity.
My son took a few then headed back through the woods and up to the truck as I went for a couple more. A good friend joined me but that’s a stretch of the the word “join” as we each were in our own world of wind and spray and coming darkness. There was no way to shout so you could be heard.
After several more long rides with hard, long walks against the wind back up the beach to the channel I decided to find my way through the woods back to the trail and up the bluff. As I approached the top of the bluff, up the muddy trail with my toes barely holding me from sliding back I had to time my approach between wind gusts as I did not want to be blown over backwards just as I emerged over the top. It was like waiting for the set waves to die down enough to paddle out into the line up. I was able to make it with out damaging my board.
The next day, Thursday, Thanksgiving day, was sunny and cold. The wind had backed some to the northwest and had died down considerably. There were a few hours between baking a pumpkin pie and starting the candied yams for our Thanksgiving Day feast that allowed me to grab my wet, wet suit and board and check a spot just north of town.
What a difference the sun makes. Even though the air is colder a sunny day is so promising compared to the foreboding dark of late fall afternoons. Cheer was to be had, glory at the beautiful lake sending in huge waves breaking with frosty white peaks sending spray in gorgeous veils curving back from swelling lines. Time to forget about the cold, the damp wet suit the long paddle out, the very cold water. Time to rise up with the waves, riding high and paddling hard. Down into the trough, off across the face. These guys were holding their size way in. Shouts and cheers could be heard as friends witnessed glorious rides of friends.
This was an altogether different surf spot, altogether different day but the waves were from the same deep weather system. Today you had to paddle straight out, long and hard. You had to time your paddle so you were heading out between the big sets and you had to watch your drift from currents and wind, know where you were and where you were headed. But that was all fine as the sky was clear the sun was bright and friends were around.
An hour of glorious waves and it was time to head back to the kitchen and finish up making a huge dinner. Family, good food, good wine and a warm home were just enough to draw me away.
