After gluing up the four sides, my next step was to rout in the puzzle pieces. I used three combination squares referenced off of each edge to lay out a grid, which represented the size and location of the puzzle pieces. Pencil can be difficult to see on black walnut, but I found that roughing up … Continue reading Routing the Puzzle Pieces for Puzzle Table
After a week making the inside surfaces glossy and blue, I was back to making sawdust. I mitred the ends of the panels with my sliding table saw, using a stop block to ensure that they were all the same length. I appreciated the fact that my carefully-painted surfaces were able to just sit on the … Continue reading Assembling Puzzle Table
At some point in time, every woodworker has cursed the fact that wood expands in humid weather and contracts in dry weather. Because of it, lumber that was once straight became curved, twisted, or both. Parts that once fit snugly became loose, or impossibly tight. Turning green (freshly cut) wood was how I learned firsthand … Continue reading Roots of Flair: Accepting Wood Movement
Recently, I received a commission to build a coffee table with a jigsaw puzzle design on the surface. The idea was to use a dark wood on the outside and paint the inside blue. I wanted straight-grained walnut for the outside so not to distract from the puzzle pieces being routed on the surface. Since I wasn't … Continue reading Puzzle Table
In Part I of this project, I cut mitred returns in the cherry crotch slab and joined the three legs to the table top with Domino floating tenons. I then cut and fit five maple dovetail keys. Due to the way that the wood dried, neither the top nor the legs were particularly flat, so … Continue reading Single-Slab Cherry Coffee Table, Part II
Part of my attraction to wood was the way it felt. In its natural state, wood was covered by bark that covered the undulating live edge. After being sawn into boards at a sawmill, the surface was covered in rough saw marks. Then, as the lumber was processed, the roughness was typically removed by planing or sanding, leaving … Continue reading Roots of Flair: Exploration of Texture and Latch Installation
No matter how much time I have, there never seems to be enough. For that reason, I make many of my decisions based on efficiency. My decision to use a hand tool or a power tool for a given task is dependent on what I feel is more efficient for the task at hand. In my effort to … Continue reading One-Step Joinery
It's not uncommon for we humans to strive for perfection. We can drive ourselves insane and spend our lifetime trying to achieve it. As David Savage would say, "perfection is a terrible taskmaster". The creative people over at The New York Times created a program that reads their articles and scans for haikus. They choose the … Continue reading Perfection May Be a Goal
My style of woodwork has been influenced predominantly by the materials I had, things I saw, and ideas I explored. Naturally, my designs have evolved over the years. While reorganizing my workshop, I found a few unfamiliar cardboard boxes. They contained some of my work from around the start of Flair Woodworks. I will be sharing photographs … Continue reading Roots of Flair
The large majority of the wood that I have is sawn in slabs. While the live edges allow more design possibilities, there are times when I don't need them. Layout To process this slab, I start by aligning my straight edge just inside the bark. This results in the straightest grain with the least amount of waste. … Continue reading Breaking Down Slabs
