a railing for a tansu stair cabinet

chris and i installed the railings today. all in, all done, as they say.  

i am happy to cross that one off the to do list.  we made some other stuff

 in the room there, like the mantle with burl and abalone detials, and the coffee table.  you can even see some of jims (aka mr. lucky) carved glass work from the 80s on the coffee table.  nice room.

back in 1989, when we had been at our craft full time for 9 years, we built this sweet tansu stair cabinet, based on a postcard my clients had picked up in a hotel in japan or china, i forget which.  anyway, id already made them a bunch of stuff, and in this spot, they had one of those slightly treacherous 60s era welded steel spiral stairways, and a desire for a place to hide the stereo.  the stereo went behind the double doors, and originally, i think, the speakers went behind the single doors.  that was fine for, oh, 24 years, until grandchildren came on the scene .. time for a railing ... click the photos to enlarge them.

we did a little photoshop work, talked about different combinations of wood and metal ..

and finally made a plan.

chris and i made some poplar temporary posts and took some cardboard to the house and made some rough templates and notes on fitting the posts to the treads and figured out how to attach them.  luckily, there were all those drawers we could remove and we just screwed into the half lapped posts from inside the casework .. a true no brainer.

we were able to translate that information into cad drawings from which we made the real cherry posts and rough templates on the cnc.  we took those back to the site and installed the cherry posts, took some more notes, and turned those notes into cad drawings and the templates below that sam could weld the actual railings together on.

we hand shaped the top caps to mimic the original handraill and fitted them to the railings in the shop.  today, it all fit and we bolted them in place to make a surprisingly rigid assembly up to code and ready for kids.

it all fit like a glove, and in the background you can see the end volute of the original hand carved handrail.  this was a satisfying project, and a nice visit with an old friend.  good job sam and chris !!!

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so it finaly feels like spring

the employee lounge opened yesterday, overlooking the pond below ... no banjo music, but the wood frogs were pretty good .. below is my first blogger video i wont know how it works until i post this so well see if adding videos is something we can work on in the future.

wood frogs croaking video link here

wood frogs are pretty interesting little creatures. they live only in vernal, or fishless ponds,

and can tolerate being frozen solid in the winter ... me too, but just barely anymore.

and the pheobes are back,  flitting around their usual nesting spots

very entertaining little birds

raked up in front of the shop yesterday .. still a little snow from the plow, 

but it should be gone after this weekend

kit is working on the wood pile.  fortunately for me, she calls it her workout, 

and i have participated only sporadically so far. 

and the laundry is on the line.  i even thought briefly about an outdoor shower ..

and after a long cold winter, well be heading out for the mail with the top down shortly.
its gonna be 70 here today.

fish are out in the pond

the raised beds and the asparagus patch are bare ...

and the fog was lovely this morning, and
it was the first day there was no snow visible from the upstairs windows

what a difference a week makes

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