This is a mantel that I designed and built for a client. It is made out of curly cherry that the client furnished so it would match the rest of the interior floor and moldings. The brick work originally just stuck out into the room and didn’t go to the ceiling. They asked me to build the wall out . Building the wall out took 10 hours.

The reeding is curved not flat. I made a scraping tool to produce the reeding with. It took 201 hours to build this mantel.

 One of my clients brought me a 6′ diameter mill wheel that had been sitting the dirt for years and a third of it had rotted away. It was made out of popular which is prone to rot if not keep dry. This wheel was a pulley in the mill. It took 62 hours to rebuild this .

This tall case clock was missing the pediment on top of the bonnet. The client had found a brass cherub that he wanted included into the new pediment. The challenge was to design a pediment to match and flow with the existing moldings and carving of the clock. When I finished and sat the pediment in place the client, a clock repairman , and I stood there in amazement because all three of us saw how well it matched the rest of the clock. This pediment took 57 hours to complete.

This is a recently finished commission in cherry. The clients wanted a worktable in their kitchen. Also they wanted saw marks to show and sapwood left in the boards.  I ask him to come over when I was planing to tell me when to stop so he could have the saw marks left. The cleats on the top or as some call them breadboard ends have four deep tenons into the cleats. The tenons are dead tight in thickness and are only glued on the inside of the center tenons. In width the sides of the tenons are cut loose to allow for expansion and contraction . The dimensions are: Height 36″, Width 72″, Depth 28″. This commission took 90 hours to complete.    

http://www.woodworkingshop.com

There is a great new woodworking store in our area. Klingspor long known for high quality sandpaper  has opened four new woodworking stores in North Carolina. Just about anything for the shop, tools,router bits,exotic lumber,finishing supplies and much more they have in stock. They are friendly and helpful, just good folks to deal with.

The closest store to the Tri-cities is just south of Asheville in Fletcher N.C. . I know you’ll enjoy their store as much as I do.

About this time of year, in July 1974, I started full time work as a cabinetmaker. That was 40 years ago. I’m blessed in that I absolutely love what I do in life and where I live. Wood is a material that is very unique not only in it’s grain, color, and texture but it is an organic material with a soul or spirit to it. To the Daoist everything has Qi which is the life force. Even after the wood is cut there is still Qi in it. When working with the wood my Qi and the wood’s Qi mingle in a dance that that is really extraordinary in the results. The most visible of which is beauty , harmony ,and proportions. These are the basics of classical art and architecture which are derived from nature. My first shop was in Knoxville, Tenn. . It was small 600 sq.ft. you didn’t have room for two cat to dance in that shop. But some pretty amazing pieces of furniture and work came out of that wee shop. As that valley where my house and shop were grew with subdivisions and noise I still had a beautiful view to the Cumberland mountains. I moved to Flag Pond, Tenn., population 850 souls, a little over nine years ago to study Traditional Chinese Medicine which is my second love in life. I’ve used Chinese Medicine for all of my medical needs for the last nineteen years and will continue to use that unless I need surgery for something. When the school closed because of financial trouble I decided to build the shop that I had always wanted.  The new shop is 2,500 sq. ft. and sits by a creek up here in the mountains. All that I can hear in either the house or the shop is the sound of the creek running and the clocks ticking. There have been good times and hard times over the last 40 years but I wouldn’t trade the way I’ve spent it for anything. This art, craft,and trade is a way of life for me. I see my time growing shorter at 64 years now but with any luck here is to the next 20 years. Also a word of thanks to all of my old clients, present clients, and new clients yet to be for making all of this possible.