Angle Madness! - Designing the Column, Rabeting the Tiers

After way Way WAY to long of a hiatus on this project, I got a hall-pass to go into the shop this long weekend.  That, folks, is partly why it was called Thanksgiving weekend! :)

The back is to get a column in Etimone, a beautiful Mahogany with a lot of color (board on the right in the photo).  While I've talked about it and waved my hands a lot while doing it, we never committed to any dimensions.  I go through the design process I used to originally come up with the numbers for the column.

The drawer tiers need the panels installed as well as the webbing.  To install the panels into the drawer tiers, we need to rabbet the edge, but the edge is on an incline.  The fact that each tier has 5 unique inclines means we can't use some normal techniques for doing the rabbet.  I'll talk about some options and why I didn't chose them then show you how I did these.

The section on rabbeting is longer than I expected, but it shows you some tricks to do the operation safely, even if you don't have a hotdog-phobic saw :)  I think the techniques are useful in a lot of other operations.

You have no idea the amount of time between the recording of the first clip to the last... whoa, need to reel in that day-job :)

As always, thanks for reading!  Okay, bucket of hot apple cider ready? Cue it up...



(the slow-cooker in the last scene was loaded with hot apple cider in case my neighbors showed up; sure enough, they did and I got nothing done, but that's okay because there may or may not have been some rum involved...)

For my email subscribers, here's a link to the video page.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Personal Tour with Paul Schürch

The week spent in Pasadena for WIA'12 included several side trips besides WIA itself.  When I think of the highlights of the week, WIA is actually pretty low on the list!  The number one highlight of the week was going to Paul Schürch's shop for a tour of his projects and shop in beautiful Santa Barbara.  As I eluded to before, I brought along two friends thinking we'd be there for maybe a couple hours.  Eight hours later, Paul and my friend Roger were both getting close to the doghouse with their wives otherwise it might have lasted even longer!

For me it was special to hang out with two creative minds I greatly admire; Paul being one, Roger being the other.  I got to know Paul earlier this year when I took a fantastic 5-day class in marquetry from him (read this post on the Paul Schürch class for more details!)

We started out just in the shop with general introductions and looking around.  Roger spotted some interesting work up on a back cabinet and the banter started.  "What was this for?" "Really? For what project?" "How do you know her?!" "When was that?"  After several minutes of this going back and forth, they realized they had bid against each other on a project.  Roger was a primary bidder while Paul was subbed by a bidding designer.

But that's when it got even more interesting as they exchanged details, difficulties, and solutions for their respective submissions.  Hopefully this introduction will get them collaborating in some way in the future (and I want to be the fly on the wall for those design sessions!)

For part of the afternoon, Paul took us up into a storage area above the shop where many of the projects you see on his site's gallery page are stored.  We got a personal tour of each item and all our questions answered.  I liked these projects before, but like them even more now that I got to see them up-close, see how smooth they operate, and the caliber of marquetry (which can be assumed with Paul).


We also got to see some of his projects in process.  No video of those, but they'll be impressive once you see them in his photo gallery.  I'm looking forward to seeing the ones using stone.  I'm hoping he'll someday do classes in pietra dura, or stone inlay.  There are lessons learned on dealing with stone in the dialog of the video; getting those in a class would be fantastic.

The video below was taken of that tour.  I'll apologize up front that we were very close quarters literally swapping places with each other to move around.  That said, there's camera motion I don't like.  I'm super sensitive to that and it doesn't bug me so hopefully it's okay with you.  Just focus on something far away whenever you hear me 'ooh' or 'ahh'.



Here's a link to the video for my email subscribers.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Decorative Arts at LACMA

The last entry showed you the Metropolis II exhibit at LACMA.  We actually went there to see woodworking and decorative arts, but Hot Wheels are hard to resist.

Today's clip is a compilation of many short clips taken in LACMA's decorative arts wing.  The place is huge!  While there is a lot of art that is nice to see, I didn't film it all.  Though I wish I took a clip of the big billiard balls... next trip!

The photos in this posting are actually frames from the video so they aren't as crisp as a camera shot; watch the video, though, to get swung around into places that are difficult to see unless you're a camera on the end of a long arm :)

Because the museum is so dimly lit, I had to digitally process each clip to get some light into the shadows then color correct because of the processing.  Because of that, you'll see more, but some colors may not be as true to reality as I'd like.

The last clip of the video is actually from the Getty museum; it is a table top in pietra dura, otherwise called stone inlay. Gorgeous colors.

If you are in the area, LACMA is a great place to spend a day.


Hopefully the captured frames from the clip have tempted you... click play below for the real deal :)



There'll be at least one more video from the trip; it'll be the private tour of Paul Schürch's shop and previous projects.  I'm leaving it to last because it's driving Andrew nuts to wait :)

For email subscribers, here's the video page.

WIA'12-Pasadena: Metropolis II at LACMA

After the Woodworking in America conference in Pasadena this year, I stayed awhile longer to take in some woodworking sights and meet with some fantastic woodworkers.

Chris Wong and I went to the LA County Museum of Art to see their decorative arts and also Metropolis II, an interesting piece of kinetic art made mostly of household items like Lincoln Logs, tile, blocks, along with a custom-made track and motor mechanism to drive the Matchbox cars around the display.  There are also several electric trains in the exhibit that make stops along the way to their destination.

The whole thing was Chris Burden's second piece to represent the busy busy city life complete with lots of traffic.  It has 18 roadways including a 6-lane highway.  Metropolis I only had 88 cars while Metropolis II picks up the pace with 1,800.

The exhibit opened January 2012 and will run for 10 years.

This video has no commentary; the first 3 minutes are a visual tour of the piece.  The last 5 are as the piece comes to life with cars whipping around all over.

Even while editing this clip, I noticed more and more things in the piece.  Might need to pause the video a few times to catch everything.

While not truly "woodworking", it's a fun exhibit.  There were a number of great items in the decorative arts section that I'll be posting next.