a round cherry expanding pedestal table

well, here we go again ... always one of my favorite designs, and were happy to do it again and again.  the one above is from 2003, and it had three 18" leaves.  the one we are making now will be the same, only with just one leaf.  click the photos to enlarge them ...

we started with a cad drawing testing the water for 52 vs 54".  in the end, i sent them a cardboard template via ups and after putting it in the room, they decided on the 54".  ive blogged about a similar table before in this post back in 2013, and a smaller version in mahogany, way back in 2008.  

but here it is again anyway ..

get yourself a nice matched set of curly cherry boards and glue them up ..

and then cut and stack your plywood propeller pieces and veneer the edges and top.  glue up your column pieces with the angles on the top and bottom then too.  

i have a taper jig photo somewhere ... 

and get yourself some equalized table slides from moin hardware

then, if youve got one, cut the half round sections on the cnc, and cut the inlay pockets at the same time .. let me say here that we did not have a cnc in 2003, and we made many, many tables with central inlays without it.  faster now with it though.

start with the borders;  in this case end grain walnut, burl and end grain vertical grain fir, glued up in a log and sliced like baloney ... put some glue on it, drive a headed brad in next to it 

and bend it to press it tightly against the edge of the pocket.

check your fits with some mdf templates

and cut your burl pieces  ... still need to add the edge inlay and do the finishing.  more photos to
follow

home stretch ... in the finishing room now

all in, all done .. couple views below

with the 20" leaf in

 other sizes and variations on the form ... "take an object; do something to it"

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big piece of claro walnut

well i think youd have to agree that this is a pretty big piece of walnut ...  17.5 x 66" ..

its certainly the biggest piece i have ever had anywhere near my shop ... 

somewhat unfortunately, its actually too big for the clients room and we have to cut it to 

136" x 53", which we did when it arrived last week at my friend noel dydos shop.  

he had to get it out of the truck with a lull and a forklift ... 622 pounds.

on our end, we had to do some thinking about how we would manage it once it arrived here.

after working on this table last spring, i realized that it was going to be difficult to work on it in the actual shop and that we would have to move to my garage, where we built the 26 x 9 and the 20 x 8 tables a few years back. 

here it is last thursday at my friends shop

first step, cut one end ... blow this one up and note the D9 in the background ... 

serious earth moving equipment at noels shop .

here were preparing to add the rotating feature to this slab ... at about 450-500 pounds, we had to rethink how we were going to flip it .. sam made two 24" pieces of 5" channel with a 1 and 3/8ths" pin going through it.  we drilled and tapped the ends for 3/8th" bolts to clamp the metal pieces to the slab with wood shims. in this photo, i am wearing my special matching stihl sneakers while i cut a little off the width of the slab so it is the right size for the room.  way down at the other end, its still 66" wide and about 40" too long.  well get to that in a minute ... 

well, here we are, ready for the local lumber company to send their sheetrock truck to move it to my garage .. too big for the shop with the other stuff thats going on in there now. you can see a little piece of pipe in the top of the tarpezoid, which the greased pin fits into.  we let sam have the honor of the first flip today, which he was able to do by himself almost with one hand.  should of had this rig about 7 or 8 years ago.

flipping videos to follow soon.
videos of flipping the slab at this link     

heres another video .. you remove one of the side ties and flip it halfway, and then you have to replace it and remove the opposite tie piece and replace that once the slab is horizontal ... we could remove both tie pieces, but hey, the ends are on wheels and we wouldnt want to drop it, would we?

 

 crazy figured !!

did a little rough smoothing and alcohol splashing on what will most likely be the bottom of the slab.

 

all in all done and in miami .. hard to photograph, but with a little photoshopping ...

you can get the idea ... big piece of wood!

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A tinkling piece of pottery and a tinkling ring

 

A tinkling piece of pottery

A reader suggested that the rings on the curious piece of pottery described in a previous post was meant to attract the personnel at the bar to refill your cup. We tested this out and our cup made a nice tinkling sound. So nice that we decided to make a (half a) minute movie of it.

A tinkling medieval finger ring

The style of the ring on the hand holding the beaker very well suits the tinkling cup. It is a replica of a medieval ring, of which we also posses the original. We bought this ring through internet, but unfortunately we did not record the accompanying information. The only thing we remembered is that it dates (according to the seller) to the 13th-14th century. The original ring is made of bronze, the replica of silver. The bead of the replica ring is turquoise, the bead of the medieval ring is either a blueish turquoise or coloured glass. Turquoise is a gem that was known during the middle ages. It originated from the orient and travelled trough Turkey to Europe, hence its name Turq-uoise.The rings have a decorative spiral groove on the outside. Spiral grooves are more often found on finger rings of the 14th century, for instance on the golden ring from the Fishpool hoard (Nottingham, United Kingdom) which has a beaded spiral groove.

A gold finger ring from the Fishpool hoard dated 1400-1464. The ring has a beaded spiral groove on the outside. On the inside is an inscription in English Uphaf ye entier with a heart between the last two words. (lift-up your whole heart). 23 by 6.1 mm. Image and object from  British Museum, London, United Kingdom. Hinton (1982) in the book Medieval Jewellery suggests that the ring has a religious context, however the text and the heart seem more reminiscent of  medieval love rings that show similar texts.

Our replica ring was constructed by taking a 0.8 mm thick strip of silver of 60.6 x 4.2 mm. While still flat, the strip was decorated with parallel diagonal grooves: first with a triangular small sweet file, later with a 0.8 mm joint file. After this the ring was roughly rounded on a triblet and the ends were soldered together. Next, the ring was rounded on the same triblet till it was completely round-shaped and had an inner diameter of 18.5 mm - the right size for my ring finger. A small ringlet made of 1 mm round silver wire with an inner diameter of 3 mm (and thus an outer diameter of 5 mm) was first soldered close, an then slightly flattened on one side with a file to create a larger contact zone. Next, it was soldered perpendicular onto the ring with the flattened side. The turquoise bead has a diameter of 5.3 mm with a drilled hole of only 0.9 mm. Like the original medieval ring, the wire for the eyelet to fasten the bead is slightly thinner than the ringlet connected to the ring. In this case, I used a piece of 0.9 mm silver wire to fix the bead neatly to the rest of the ring. Both wire ends are stuck inside the bead, so no soldering - with chances of cracking the bead - was necessary.

The silver replica and the bronze original side by side. 

The original measures 16.3 mm diameter inside, the bead is 5.3 mm.

The tinkling ring. Actually, the ring does not tinkle that loud and nice as the beaker.

The spiral groove can be seen nicely in both rings standing on their side..

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the cherry bedroom piece

so how did we get from the sketch above ..

 to the piece we installed last tuesday ?  well, ill tell you, it didnt happen overnight.  click the photos to enlarge them ..

we started with this photo that was actually taken, i am surprised to note, on the 5th of february, 2013.

from that photo i made the collage above in photoshop, and though i cant find them now, i sketched four different concepts, from which i made the four slightly different cad drawings below.

and the winner is ...

  this one .. that was all fine and good to go and we had a deposit and we ordered the wood, and then ... another more time sensitive opportunity presented itself to us

at that time, my bedroom clients were in the process of raising their coastal connecticutt house that had been flooded by hurricane sandy 7 feet and doing a total remodel of that property, so they allowed to do a quick painted kitchen at another local house, and before we knew it that quick painted kitchen became about 5 months work.  so, in late october, we finally got around to using the cherry we bought back in march and got this project underway.  the original intent was a kind of shaker piece with minimalist details, but as we went on we had some consultations and added some detailing based loosely on this sideboard and a some of the other pieces we had created for the clients in the past.

 so on we went, adding details to the verticals of the face frames, an edge inlay on the main counter, borders on the drawer faces, custom cast drawer pulls, and paneled case ends.  that all took a minute.

ready for finish below

 until we finally arrived at last monday, the photo below, and the day before the installation when all the finished parts had to be finally glued and applied to the cases, final assembled and then 

disassembled yet again, and loaded into the van and the truck and carried up a flight of steps 

to be installed at the clients home.

 we had done a preinstallation level check and the room was remarkably level plumb square and true and we were able to move through the installation and clean up in a remarkably short amount of time.  all in, all done ... great project ... incredibly patient clients ... glad to have our shop back ...

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A curious piece of pottery

The book Fêtes gourmandes au moyen age is a delicious book. Not only for its recipes, but also for the eye (e.g. a gilded boars head!). All the dishes are visually presented in the correct medieval pots, plates and glasses, together with the correct table utensils. Not the replicas, but the real stuff, dug up by archaeologists and glued together. This makes the book not only a good reference book for recipes (well, if you read French), but also for what kind of tableware you should have as a re-enactor. The book contains many sidesteps discussing particular pieces of tableware.

One of the photos in the book (see above) shows a curious beaker with rings four sides. What was this type of beaker used for? Why the rings? The note in the book, alas, gives no clue; only that it is gres de Beauvais (the place of manufacture in northern France and the clay type) of the 15th century. The beaker did inspire Anne, who is doing a pottery course at the moment, to make her own ringbeaker.

A re-enactors still life. The ring beaker is in the middle. From left to right: a pewter jug, a glass maigelein, a wooden plate (teljoor), a dripping pan (also by Anne) and a pewter spoon.

 Two views of the ringbeaker made by Anne.

Saulse Cameline

 

The recipe that goes with the photo is that of the Sauce Cameline, a very popular sauce during the 14th century:

Pour faire une saulse cameline, prenez pain blancq harlé sur le greil, sy le mettez temprer en vin rouge et vinaigre. Passé parmy lestamine canelle assez, et gingembre, clou, graine, macis, poivre long, et saffren un poy, et sel. Faictez bouillir ou non bouillir, comme vouldrez. Aucun y mettent du chucquere.

Vivendier, ms. Kassel,  gesamthochschulbibliotek, 4e med. 1. fol. 154 verso.

 

20 cl red wine

5 cl verjuice

20 g bread

2 teaspoonfuls  ground cinnamon

1 teaspoonful rasped ginger

3 cloves

half teaspoonful grain of paradise (Guinea pepper), a popular substitute for black pepper in the 14th and 15th century)

half teaspoonful ground mace

1 long pepper spike

4 treads of saffron

one pinch of salt

1 or 2 teaspoons of sugar

Rasp the ginger. Mix and grind the other spices in a mortar. Add them to the wine and verjuice and let them macerate. After one hour, filter through a cheesecloth or a fine sieve. Toast the bread, cut it into small dice and add them to the sauce. Mix until smooth. You may cook for better smoothing. Add salt and sugar to taste. (Contrary to the Italians the medieval French did not add sugar to the sauce.) The cameline sauce can be given with fish, meat and game dishes.

Book: Fêtes gourmandes au moyen age by Jean-Louis Flandrin and Carole Lambert. Imprrimerie nationale Editions, Paris 1998. ISBN 2-7433-0268-2. The book has much to offer, even if you do not read French.

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a walnut table with leaves

 with aits rich walnut stain and finish .. shoot! i forgot to dust it before the photos.

3/25  .. on its way to vegas now

click the photos to enlarge them ...

 this table started with an inquiry from a client about a mid-century modern style table.

she sent us the photo above from an antique dealers website and asked us to 

size it to suit the needs of her and her family and stain it a rich chocolaty brown.

which led to the cad drawing above and the stack of nice wide walnut from irion lumber below.

we didnt think we wanted our base frames so close to the edge of the table as

in the original photo, so we made a couple sample panels from mdf ..

looking for that goldilocks moment .. just right, above

too small on the left, too big on the right ..

and because, in the end, we decided on three leaves, we had to add the frame you see

above to support the moin runners and stabilize the base.  if you look closely (click

the photo to enlarge it), you can also see we added some arced rails that are not visible

when the top is on but stiffen the base elements considerably when the table is opened.  

not a lot of structure to this design, but its going to be fine.  no dancing out on the ends ...

all good in this photo, except for the apron. trevor has got it in the finish room now with all the stain

and the first coat of finish on it today .. wont be long now ...

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