yes we do repairs

ive always felt that a craftsman should fix stuff.  particularly stuff that is important to people who really like the stuff that is broken.  it might be a family piece, like this one, and have sentimental value, or it could be just a nice piece of furniture with a problem here or there, looking for the good life.  also, as a 

craftsperson, where else are you going to get to work on pieces like this one if you automatically just say

"i dont do repairs"  .. i mean, check this out .. fantastic unrestrained inlay work .. probably 18th century?  definitely english, as its owner is.  anyway, this was an onsite job, particularly enjoyable because we have been discussing fixing it off and on for, literally, years. click the photo to enlarge it.

all done today ... check that one out.  ready for the next hundred years.

weve had a run of repairs lately .. heres a shaker like cabinet that had no pulls, a funky fastener on the latch, a big water streak down the front of it and some shelves inside which we removed and replaced with a rod for hanging clothes.  its got some charm now.

and how often do you see a paper mache tilt top table?  never knew there was such a  thing.
love the scrap abalone oval, what would you call it?,  an applique?

this one had a painting fall on it .. that broke the paper base where the column screwed in. we also added a new catch where before the hinged block was screwed together so it couldnt flip up

technically, this wasnt a repair.  we just made a new base for the top.  the center of the table is a square of reclaimed french parquet floor.  the real thing!  hand hewn from solid wood, with a clever, rustic, mechanism that changes it from a 44 " square to a 62" round

here you can see the mechanism and the hand hewn nature of the original floor

tah dah!  the top is darker, and the base is lighter, in real life ... overhead florescent lights ..

another nostalgic funky family piece .. had a big crack in the side and back, and the two front feet and one of the back feet were loose and had to be removed and reset.

havent seen it yet with all the drawers.  only one drawer needed work

and this piece ... holy moly !  braziliab rosewood danish modern, damaged in shipping.  another onsite repair

cool piece ..

loved the interior bar detail and and way they cut the doors with the angles on them..
only the left one is open enough to see that.

better now, not perfect, but better

and we recently did six of these .. removing worn out brass casters on the front legs,

and turning new balled feet for the front legs

this is the connector from the trestle table below

as you can see in the photo below, the wedge grounded out on the edge of the hole before the table tightened up.  we squared up the inside edge and made new wedges.  its solid as a rock now.

we also added a foot to each end to make it a 12 table

and were working slowly on the doors below ... engineering a frame to hang them .. interesting challenge. they are too short, and too wide for the hole.  i have a plan ...

and weve got a very cool 12 foot walnut table going too .. more on that later

almost forgot this one ... it had a very clever sliding dovetail joint between the back leg and the 1/2" thick top rail.  had to trim off one side and reglue .. should be fine .. its part of a daily use kitchen set ..

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sometimes we copy stuff

occasionally, we are asked to copy existing pieces, often, as in this case, because the original maker is no longer in business, or in the case of antiques, no longer living.  those are basically our two criteria.  we often get inquiries asking "if we can make this" and you can usually google "this" by its title or description and find out if the maker is living and still in business.  no luck on these.  and they looked pretty old.  and they were really comfortable ... the first project was a bench, below, that we made from the original in 2011.

 the original bench came to our shop, and much to our delight, the entire structure was held together with stainless steel threaded rods, clever brass t nuts and elegant hand made brass cyclinder nuts.  so, we had patterns for the legs, with mortises and tenons to copy it.

lots of pieces and some fussy interlocking stuff, but we eventually got it together.  finished nicely with some brush on, soak in, wipe off penofin nantucket mist ... so actually, when the chairs gave up the ghost this year, we still had the original bench disassembled and piled behind the chop saw waiting to be fixed for the employee lounge .. after 4 years we still hadnt gotten around to that.

 

 you can see the original bench patterns in the dark wood in the pile of parts above.

 i thought these would go relatively quickly, but when youve got 88 pieces of wood with intersections and other miscellaneous joinery, and some threaded rods and t nuts to deal with, nothing is ever going to go as quickly as you might think.

but in the end, they are graceful and sturdy, and im sure will be around for a long time. i look forward to seeing them in the clients garden once the snow melts in boston ...

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sometimes we forget live and learn

so, i built this table sometime in 2013 ... the base was from the antiques show at brimfield, mass., and it was pretty cool.  the concept was a round table with a silver dollar inlaid in the center.  it was a busy time, and maybe i wasnt thinking 100% clearly, but anyway, i cut a plank of 1.5" reclaimed oak into four sections and glued them up into a circle without thinking about seasonal movement over time.  it made it through one set of changes, but last summer, it absorbed enough moisture that the weakest joint failed and opened up by about 1/4".  below is an email i sent this morning, and when i finished it i thought, ah, instant blog post  ... cautionary tale here with a happy ending.

click the photos to enlarge them ...



hi nina ...

sorry i didnt get the table fixed for t-day weekend, but it was not a small effort.  ill put the silver dollar back in tomorrow and well be good to go. 

c u soon ..
dan

heres what i did

 we cut the top into four sections and cut veneers off the bottom and top so that it will still look the same.  i wasnt thinking things through the first time.  we made the top in the winter, and when the table absorbed ambient moisture from the air in the summer, the planks got enough wider that the outside circumference was too short, which is what caused the weakest joint to open up.  using veneers will prevent that .. 

should have thought of that, but hey, live and learn.

 

 so we had the 8 pieces of veneer and the cores

 

  and then we cut the edges off the cores and joined them to an mdf top

rejoined the veneers

and glued them back on, one at a time ... then after a little sanding and refinishing,

 once i get the silver $ back in there itll be good to go ...

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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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arts and crafts stools

all finished now

we just finished building three of our arts and crafts, frank lloyd wright inspired bar stools for a client in st. louis.  they will be sprayed with a clear lacquer finish this week, and they will pop a little more once the finish is on them.  they are part of a continuation of a design we first built in 2003 for the client who gave us the inspirational photo of a similar short chair designed originally by frank lloyd wright.

these are in natural cherry.  the ones we just finished are antural finished curly hard maple

, with leather from universal leather in high point, north carolina

stragihtforward lines, with a few curves thrown in to soften mr. wrights rectinlinearality (is that a word?

 we have them in our own kitchen

and we have also done them in other colors and woods

as well as patchwork scrap leather seats

 for more information and pricing, visit our dorset custom furniture website

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