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Making furniture usually means to build a desk or a set of drawers. But I like to design my own style and want to make it fit the place and intended purpose. I like to think I have an appreciation of what can be done with certain woods. I like oak, but there are several other species such as maple and birch that make wonderful units. |
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Below is my desk where lots of time is spent
dreaming and drawing. It has a 6 x 60 inch deep space in the back for large drawings and also
includes a secret hiding place with . . . .? |
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It started with a simple end-table (below).
Then my daughter wanted a matching coffee table. She told me, "The open end tables are
great for displaying magazines and special items. But the coffee table should be
enclosed with
lots of storage space below." So, here is one-of-a-kind, with doors in the center and two drawers at each end. I like to use Finnish birch plywood
(seven ply
or about 3/8 inch thickness) to make the dovetailed drawers. |
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Many moons ago (with a friend and three
young boys) I hiked to the top of Mount Whitney. Somehow a piece of granite
ended up in my pack while we were on top and I carried it back home. Since then, we collect a rock (any rock and
always legally, I think) from all the places we visit. One time a security guard
at a European airport took a rock I had in my pocket. I guess he thought
I might use it as a weapon, a thought that had never occurred to me. The
rest are displayed in my office on
special boards I made. They are not all nice to look at, just a way to remember each place we visited. There is a piece from Copenhagen that is just a section of asphalt, a last minute thing I picked up at the pier before we boarded our cruise ship. The frames were made with oak, of course. |
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While we
were in Bali, Indonesia, we bought
two wood
carvings. One is a cock-fighter that was hand carved out of one piece of ebony. The
basket is completely hollow. The fine details must have taken many hours to do.
The second piece represents Krishna, a Hindu god. To see more of Bali, click here |
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This thirty inch high statue needed a base, so Sharon could
display it on our living-room wall. The result, shown below, has about thirty-six
pieces of mahogany cut at compound angles to make the contoured bottom. |
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One day I tore out the closet that was in my office and built in another desk for my computer, printer and some filing cabinets below. But the desk top had to be a bit different. So I decided to try to make a wood inlay. Here is how I did it. |
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I started with a design on paper and a CAD program on my computer. The top was going to be made out of a sheet of 3/4 inch birch plywood 21 x 69 inches. I divided this into three square sections 21 x 21 inches. That left two strips 3 inches wide to separate the squares. Above you can see the pattern I came up with for the three squares. |
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I made templates for each shape to help me cut the wood veneer. The pattern was copied onto the plywood sheet in pencil and the pieces were fitted and glued down using wood glue. Sections of glass and lead weights (left over from my scuba diving days) were used to apply pressure until the adhesive was set (about twenty minutes). It was time consuming work. |
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Here are some details and the finished layout before I applied several coats of polyurethane finish. Notice that I had to use some filler to take care of 'sloppy' joints. |
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As the years go by, so does technology. The entertainment center in our family room (the first picture on this page) was made for the 'large' analog TV. When it was time to replace it with the newer digital 'flat screen', high definition model I tore it apart and rebuilt. The same happened with the small TV in our kitchen. As much as I hate to remodel and repair, here are the 'before' and 'after'. |
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