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| A custom order patio set. I constructed this from black locust and white oak, 2 naturally decay resistant woods. This set will last for decades | | I made this segmented vessel as an experiment. I was curious to see how much patience it took to cut and arrange all those little pieces. Then how much nerve it takes to put it on the lathe and touch it with tools while it is spinning very fast, hoping it doesn't blow up all over the shop. The answer is alot of both, but it turned out. | | A custom order bench. Built with white oak and stained a cedar color to match the arbor it will be under. |
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| Here is the only (bad) picture of a custom solid cedar chess set I made before I shipped it to New York. The board is a lid to a box the hand carved pieces fit in. I also made checkers for the set. All the pieces are made from different parts of the tree so you can tell the "teams". I used red heart wood for one side and white/pink sapwood for the other. Each of the 64 squares of the top are hand cut and arranged to make the board. | | An interesting contrast of heartwood and sapwood in this little walnut stool. | | A closer look at the dove tail spline joinery. |
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| One of many solid cedar chests that I make. The guy who bought this one came back and ordered 2 more for Mother's Day. | | A few pens I turned from "scrap" left over from other projects. | | I also make handcrafted figured hardwood lures for myself and custom order. |
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| An example of my free form work. A good way to utilize even the oddest pieces of wood. | | Honeylocust crotch and walnut. | | Not everyone's cup of tea, but I like it. It seemed to work for George Nakashima. |
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| An oak chair my way, out of the ordinary. Made from wood most mills would find as defective. I think it adds character. | | Figured and spalted oak back and seat with a 1/4 sawn oak frame. | | A closer look at the frame lumber and one of the walnut butterflies that hold the split pieces together. |
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| A walnut table I made from short pieces of limb wood. The tree came down in a terrible storm. | | I enjoy pieces like this, basically reject wood, they make for a challenge to figure out a good use for them. Some see the white sapwood on walnut as a defect, I find it interesting. | | I jointed this live edge book match. It it very attractive in person...I stopped a couple guys who were splitting these limbs for firewood. I traded them a trailer load of hardwood mill scrap for an equal trailer of this "nasty" walnut. |
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| Another small project from logs other mills would reject. A crooked little 4 foot long walnut log with a fork in it. | | It and a few other walnut scraps made a decent looking bench in my opinion. Poor photography aside. | | What could have been considered firewood turned out to have some really nice figure. I love being able to take a piece of tree from a burn pile like in this case and mill my own lumber. Then use my imagination to build a finished product from it from start to finish to grace my home or someone elses. |
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| A couple small crotch tables in the making in my shop, maple and walnut. | | The crotch feather on this walnut is very pretty. | | It was another storm damaged tree, the wood was split. Not a problem, but an oportunity. A close up of more hand cut dutchmen repairs. |
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| The crotch had a rotten/hollow spot in it...another opportunity. I filled the void with epoxy and a slice of walnut shell. The picture was taken before the final sanding/finish it smoothed out | | | | |
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