Farm Wagon Planks

April 15, 2020

That’s me with two very old boards in the photo above. They were once the side planks of my great-grandfather’s farm wagon. That’s him in the second photo (below). These planks provided the inspiration and material for a series of personal work that spanned several years and resulted in heirloom pieces for each member of my immediate family.

The two aspects of my career that I love most are craftsmanship and story. The craftsmanship is obvious: it is highly rewarding to make things well. But story is where things get really good. At the end, that’s really all we have, right? Stories define our lives and our selves. They underpin culture, religion, and identity. We read them to children and we (hopefully) listen to those our elders tell. I am beginning to understand that the meaning and value of my work grows exponentially when it is connected to a larger story.

Before I was born those big planks somehow ended up in the eaves of my Great-Uncle Bobby’s barn. One day in the late 1990’s, he called and invited me to come see the old lumber he was sorting through. Uncle Bobby offered me these planks, telling me a story about my great-grandfather bolting them on the sides of his farm wagon for the potato harvest. They were each an inch thick, almost two feet wide, and over 10 feet long. I loaded my truck and drove away wondering what I could ever come up with that would do justice to their age, size, and family connection. I forget the actual number of growth rings, but between their life as a tree and their time as lumber, those boards had been on this earth for well over 200 years!

At that point in my career, I was in a phase of making and rejecting toolboxes. The goal was the perfect toolbox to carry my essential, everyday tools onto job sites. Not too small, not too big, not too complicated. Like a good briefcase is to a lawyer. After 5 attempts I had a version that was pretty good. But I still had some changes in mind. I took a deep breath, and cut a piece of the farm wagon planks to make the toolbox I’d been dreaming up. It was the result of over 6 years of experience, thought, and experimentation. It was made from a physical piece of my family heritage, and joined with hand cut dovetails. For me, it was pretty close to perfect. I loved it, and I’m still using it to this day.

I incorporated a lift-out tray into this toolbox. (I think I used a 2x6 to make the tray.)

Years later a project came up that called out for the long, wide farm wagon planks: my parents had been dreaming about a farmhouse style dining table. It was close to Thanksgiving, and I had down time in my schedule. I kept the design simple and clean to highlight the exceptional width and character of the boards, using breadboard ends to keep the top flat and add some detail.

I made the base from some 3” thick quarter sawn douglas fir that I happened to have, and cut intersecting through-tenons for a little flourish. Everyone loved the new table made from the old boards, and to this day it is the gathering place in my parent’s home.

All was well: I’d made a beautiful table for my folks, and a toolbox for myself that I loved. There were even few cutoffs left from the original boards that I squirreled away in my stash and forgot about.

Years passed.

Last summer, one of my best friends (who is an exceptional furniture maker) sent me photos of a tool chest he was making in an effort to simplify his work process. The design was based on an old Austrian tool chest that Frank Klausz has long championed. It is sized to hold the essential tools a cabinetmaker uses every day, and no more. (Picking the tools is as big a challenge as making the chest!) I’d been in a creative slump for some time and my friend challenged me to build one to get myself out of the doldrums. I dug around and found just enough leftover wood from the farm wagon planks to make the chest. (I even made the handles from an old length of rope that I got from my Uncle Bobby!)

I love how the tool chest turned out, and It’s great to work out of. And I used every last scrap of those old farm wagon planks to finish it. It was a good ending to the story.

All was well, and time passed. (But just a little bit.)

While still working my way out of my creative rut this past winter, I decided to build myself a new workbench. Digging through my lumber stash, I discovered a couple offcuts from the farm wagon planks that I had completely forgotten about! Before I had even finished the workbench, I knew what my first project on it would be: there was just enough wood from the old farm wagon planks to build another shoulder toolbox for my younger brother (who is a carpenter) and a small chest for my older brother (who is an amateur machinist.) I built those two boxes with plenty of dovetails and surprised my two brothers with their own piece of our great-grandfathers farm wagon planks.

The new and the old meet. How’s that for a patina, eh?

And a small treasure chest for my older brother

Lots of lift out trays in this little guy

It’s hard to believe that I’ve created a life where this kind of work happens. I still remember being in awe as an apprentice of what the craftsmen around me could figure out and make. I yearned to be able to do that myself. My career in woodworking has brought me an amazing kind of luxury: I’ve spent my entire adult life seeking quality, and practicing a craft that I love. More than once I’ve been able to build something that is maybe not perfect, but beautiful and useful. It is a humbling realization that through this body of work, I can tell a story that traces a line from my great-grandfather, through my dear great-uncle, and spreads and grows through each member of my immediate family. I never met my great-grandfather, and my Uncle Bobby passed on before all this, but I think they would both approve of what became of those old farm wagon planks.

Walnut Coffee Table

May 08, 2017

I just delivered a walnut coffee table that I'm am really pleased with. The design brief from my customer was the following: "I'm looking for a 4' to 5' diameter round coffee table; I like mid century modern designs; I like walnut." I made one design sketch and he said, "I love it. Build it."

You can do a lot worse than Mid Century Modern design for inspiration. I wanted the tabletop to be solid wood, not veneered, and I located the legs at the edges for stability. And then I lost my mind for a minute and incorporated a slightly complicated form of mortise and tenon joinery to attach the legs to the top. Which meant the legs would have to be hand cut, shaped, and carved from large blocks of solid wood instead of simply turned on a lathe.

Happily, the joinery all worked out nice and crisp.

I'm really pleased with this piece. So is my customer. So is Rachel, but she was hoping the customer might change their mind so we could keep this table.

A simple Club Chair

March 26, 2017

A while back I acquired a rather special plank of Sugar Pine. It was 2" thick, 22" wide, and 11' long. It was also completely clear, meaning it didn't have a single knot. The end grain of the board shows 118 years of growth rings. Some rough calculating estimates the tree this board was cut from would have been at least 4 feet across, and been over 300 years old!

I barely even saw Sugar Pine when I was an apprentice; old timers would lament it's scarcity, telling stories about how beautiful it was, how lovely it was to work, and how much millwork used to be made from it. I've considered using this board a few times, but each time decided it deserved a better idea.

This past December a few things converged into inspiration: I needed a Christmas present for Rachel, she had previously shown me a photo of a chair that she liked, and I realized that I could make her a chair based loosely on the photo using 4 pieces of the plank.

So out came the saw.

Like most rough sawn boards, this one had a pronounced cup. A cup a curve that runs the length of a board, sort of like flexing the two long edges of a playing card toward each other. This happens as lumber is dried. Usually, this cup is planed away, yielding a board that is thinner, but flat with smooth faces. However, here I wanted to keep the rough sawn surfaces because they had such a beautiful patina and would look perfect with the fabric I planed to use for the upholstery. So I oriented the cup in the sides to give a welcoming flair to the char, and in the back and seat to cradle the sitter.

The seat and backrest are scribed and fitted into the sides. Everything is joined together with a line of wooden pegs.

My friend Barbara, who owns a local shop called Patriae made the cushions. She specializes in antique european textiles. We chose old hand woven hemp/linen grain sacks. The monogram is hand dyed to mark a particular farmer's grain sacks, and the patches were hand stitched on to extend the life of each sack.

Barbara's fabrics have such beautiful texture, feel, and color. It is always a wonderful surprise to take a closer look at utilitarian objects and find such beauty.

Inspiration is a fickle thing. I don't often experience it in a flash. I like Chuck Close's explanation: "Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work." At the end of this process sits a chair that I think is beautiful and is already filled with history, stories, and collaboration. That's inspiring enough for me. And yes, Rachel loves her chair!

A Dovetailed Bench

November 21, 2016

Here is a rather unique bench. It's made from White Cedar beams. The legs are joined to the top with massive, hand cut dovetails. It is 46" long x 11" deep x 17" high, so it's the perfect height to pull up to your favorite dining or kitchen table. It would also serve well as a foyer bench. It might even receive a blessing and be put into service as an alter in a special place.

I'm delighted with how this bench turned out. The long radial cracks are infilled with resin blackened with ground charcoal from the wood stove in my shop. These deep, black fissures both contrast and highlight the beautiful grain of the cedar and the precise dovetail joinery. There is an inlay of cedar running around one of the legs. The feet are padded with cork to protect the floor. It has a waterborne finish with a hand polished low satin sheen.

So that's the basics. If you have a moment, allow me to tell you the story of this bench...

Like most woodworkers, I've always got at least a small collection of interesting pieces of wood waiting for the right idea to come along. In the late 90's, a cabinetmaker that I'm friends with built a pergola from beautiful white cedar 6x6 beams. He gave me a few 4' long offcuts with the caveat that I make something cool with them. They were milled as structural posts, so they have boxed hearts, meaning they are cut from the very center of the tree. You see full, concentric circles, not just arcs when looking at the end grain. Also, beams cut this way tend to develop pretty amazing cracks that radiate from the center of the tree and run along the grain as the wood dries out. I promised to make something good and tucked them into my stash.

When the lumber is bigger than the powertools...

Several times I thought of using them for bedposts or table legs. But the ideas were never quite right, and remained in my sketchbook. However, the other day I was looking through my lumber stash for ideas, and I started thinking about cutting some giant dovetails on those big cedar timbers. The idea of a bench quickly followed, and I decided that it was finally time to make something with these old beams.

Dovetails are a pinnacle of craftsmanship in woodworking, and as such I believe they should represent one's finest effort. When I was teaching myself to make them I decided that I would only cut them by hand. Practically speaking, this means that rather than setting up a jig and router or a dedicated dovetailing machine, I lay out my dovetail joinery with a very sharp pencil and marking knife and then cut and chop the shape of each joint with handsaws and chisels. Each cut must be made exactly right, and the surfaces of each pin and tail must then be fitted with the precision of a machinist. When things go well, you work in a zen-like state of focus; when things go poorly it's like making the most frustrating, costly firewood in the world. It's a stressful, tedious and painstaking process, but one of the most rewarding jobs a woodworker can do.

The bench, disassembled. Pins on the left; tails on the right — The bench, disassembled. Pins on the left; tails on the right

Usually, dovetails are used to join drawers and boxes, so they tend to be small. About the size of your little finger, sometimes even smaller if something is to be finely detailed. But the joint can be scaled up to be used on large timbers as well.

These are the largest dovetails I have ever attempted. Making dovetails of any size is rewarding, and I'm pleased to say that dovetails that are almost 6" long are pretty amazing!

A scarf

December 29, 2015

This post is a bit of a departure. It's not about my work for a change. This is about a friend of mine named Kate Wilt and her work.

Kate is a weaver.

Just before the holidays Rachel and I hosted one of Kate's weaving workshops at the cafe. Kate showed us a merino wool scarf that she had made. It was beautiful, and it stopped us in our tracks.

In a rare moment of holiday brilliance, I quickly contacted Kate and commissioned her to weave a scarf for Rachel. We decided that it would be made from linen, which is Rachel's favorite fabric. (Also because linen is magic. Put some linen sheets on your bed and you'll understand.)

I stopped by to see Kate weaving the scarf. I've written here before about my love of process. Watching her weave and listening to her description of the process spun my brain around. It is fascinating: convoluted and orderly and organic and mathematical and zen.

I can't say enough about Kate's weaving.

My words don't do it justice.

My photographs hardly do either.

Check out Kate's work on her website and her Instagram feed.

Workbench Style Dining Set

November 14, 2015

We've gone through a few dining tables at home recently. I'd made a trestle table that we loved out of some reclaimed heart pine leftover from an old project. Then we decided to put that table into our cafe. I made a replacement that stayed with us for a few months before I sold it (along with it's chairs and bench) to a local builder for his conference room. This is our latest. It's made from old joists that came out of a local building from the late 1800's. The design is inspired by old cast iron factory benches and machinery bases. I planed and polished the tops, but left the old rough patinated surface on the edges. The bases are painted with flat black milk paint. Stretchers are steel pipe. I'm not supposed to sell this one, but I don't see a big difference between making a new one for you or for us. ;)

Enjoy a few more views...

Arts and Crafts Dining Set

June 08, 2015

I just had the pleasure of building this dining set:

My clients recently built a beautifully detailed Arts and Crafts house and asked me to make them some furniture that felt right within the period, but wasn't totally constrained by it. The table and benches are pretty straight forward and show the classic Stickley influence, but the armchairs push tradition a bit (in a good way, I think).

Here are some closer details of the table:

Breadboard end. Draw-pegged mortise and tenon joinery holds them in place. — Breadboard end. Draw-pegged mortise and tenon joinery holds them in place.

The table stretcher connects the trestles with a wedged through-tenon.

And here are a few details of the chairs:

I like these chairs upside down almost as much as right side up.

Walnut Slab Coffee Table

February 26, 2015

This old walnut slab came to me unexpectedly a handful of years back. A guy stopped by my shop one day and asked if I wanted to buy a walnut slab that he'd had in his family barn for a few decades. I told him to bring it by and I'd take a look at it. He was back a week later with a 5' long log that had been sawed into four 2 1/2" slabs. I bought them all and squirreled them away.

I ended up making a desk for myself out of this slab by attaching galvanized gas pipe legs to it. We decided recently though that this slab would be a better coffee table though, so I replaced the gas pipe with slab legs, and here you go:

A little Cafe

February 06, 2015

The past few posts have been about the process of renovating the Twisted Tree Cafe, which my girlfriend Rachel and I bought last April. The tools and sawdust are cleaned up, and the cafe is open again. To the point:

We worked hard to design a beautiful, comfortable, and flexible space. Overall, the cafe now feels much more open, yet we have added 7 more seats to the layout. While I've been able to do essentially whatever I want, we had very real constraints. Every idea had to fit within our relatively short time frame, and very small budget. (Granted, I was able to absorb my own labor costs, but raw materials and supplies cost real money.)

The tables, chairs and counters are reclaimed heart pine. The window counter stools are made from old barn siding left over from this project. The built in banquette is made from regular lumber yard 2x4's (Because they're cheap, ya know?). A few coats of waterborne grey lacquer from Target Coatings makes those wall studs look way better than they deserve to. The cabinetry around the service counter was built on site from lumber yard plywood and painted with the same grey lacquer. All the chairs, tables and counters are finished with Target Coatings finishes as well. Check out their stuff, they make the very best waterborne finishes I've ever found. And I've looked. A lot.

The menu chalkboards are plywood painted with chalkboard paint, which works so much better than you'd think. (I love how chalkboard menus look; I gained a new appreciation for how long it takes to draw all of those letters!) We sanded the old worn finish off the floors and left them raw.

Finally, I usually hate before and after photos, mostly because they tend to be unfair. The before shot is often a terrible snapshot, while the after shot is professionally styled, lit and photographed. Here is a before shot with about the same perspective and lighting as the first photo in this post.

The Background Process

November 19, 2014

Much of my design process is a quiet, solitary activity. I do a lot of thinking and sketching to flesh out an idea. If I like how it's shaping up I'll make a presentation sketch to show my client or another designer if I'm collaborating. Those sketches get discussed and red-lined. Sometimes there will be a series of sketches and then a final "proper" drawing. Sometimes I just do my shop layout from a sketch. Here are a couple pages from my sketchbook for the Twisted Tree Cafe project:

Process and Romance

October 28, 2014

I think there's a lot of romance associated with making something like a chair from something like a pile of lumber. But I find it is more process than romance. In the simplest terms, you get a tree, cut it into pieces, dry them out, cut them into smaller pieces, cut them into smaller pieces yet, cut a bunch of joinery or shapes (or both) into those pieces, then assemble them together into something new like a chair or a cabinet or a boat or a house. Most of that lumber from the previous post got cut up into the piles of parts stacked in the photo below.

Here are the tabletops cut, planed and glued back together. There are technical and practical reasons why you go through this, rather than just getting one board as wide as you need. I'll save you the long explanation, but it's part of the process.

Onto the chairs now. It takes a bit of cutting and shaping to get a pile of rectangular lumber into a chair. Here is the aftermath of trimming a chair leg to a pattern. The process is sort of like using a stencil to get the letters on your yard sale sign or ransom note to be identical, except you aren't masking off paint, you're cutting off wood. And it throws a pretty amazing amount of wood chips and dust around. Right here it looks a bit romanticized. In the shop it's primarily a mess. A loud, dusty, sometimes hazardous mess. But it's part of the process, and if you're lucky enough to enjoy it, it's a rather nice way to pass time.

After shaping the legs, the back legs still need some more sculpting so that they twist just so into the curve of the backrest. That's what I'm doing here on the bandsaw. (#selfie alert!)

Stacked chair parts. Seat blanks are piled in back, and from left to right are: backrests, front legs, rear legs.

And here are the parts for one chair. It won't be long now...

Next up for The Cafe: old, reclaimed Heart Pine

October 09, 2014

Rachel and I decided to make the new chairs and tabletops for Twisted Tree Cafe from reclaimed Heart Pine. I've used it in the past and besides being a good environmental choice, the stuff is absolutely breathtaking. The dining set pictured on my homepage is made from it. That photo is a good preview of what we're doing in the cafe: we're using the same wood species, and the chair I designed is a simplified variation of the one in the pictured.

On our day off this week we jumped in the truck and headed to a mill that specializes in reclaimed lumber from old buildings. They've got an amazing amount of space just crammed with stacks and stacks of old beams. I love workspaces of all kinds, and I can't help romanticizing them, so here's a little black and white photography:

So there was this cafe in town...

October 07, 2014

...and the couple who owned it wanted to sell it. It happens that my girlfriend Rachel has always wanted to have her own cafe. So last Spring we became the third owners of the 10-year-old Twisted Tree Cafe in Asbury Park NJ.

And that's why I haven't updated the blog for the last 6 months or so.

Now that the Summer vacation crowds have dissipated, I'm back in the shop at least a few days a week. And what does a guy who's used to building everything in his life do when he has a shop and a cafe? Right: cafe makeover.

The first phase of the project is being built from these babies:

Yes, those are 2x4s. No, I'm not framing walls. We just happen to need a lot of banquette on a little budget. Here's one section set up in the shop:

Check back- we've got a lot planned for our little cafe! And stop in for lunch or a snack if you are ever in the area and say hi! :)

Last piece for a while...

June 05, 2014

Here's a console table done in White Oak with a cerused (aka: limed oak) finish. The lower shelf and hardware are brushed aluminum. It is actually the final piece of a commission for a beautiful apartment in NYC, so it seems fitting that it will be a place holder here.

This will be the last piece I post here for a little bit. I'll explain why very soon in another post. (The reason falls into the "good news" department, don't worry.)

Introducing the Schlep Stool

March 27, 2014

So. Here it is, the solution you've been waiting for. The Schlep Stool! Actually, three Schlep Stools. Pine, Walnut, Black Milk Paint. They're 24" tall, and make a nice kitchen counter stool or plant stand or end table or something to pile stuff on in the corner. And then you flip your lid and things get crazy...

You probably have the idea from the pictures, but when you need to get to that top shelf in the kitchen cabinet just schlep your Schlep on over and climb right up. While some of us don't see anything wrong with leaving a step ladder leaning up somewhere in the house, civilized people often prefer a more elegant solution.

Special thanks to #djhoudini for naming the Schlep

(I feel like I should make a million of these and get Ron Popeil to sell them.)

Round End Table

March 13, 2014

A fun little piece...

28" in diameter by 28" tall with a distressed black milk paint finish

New armoire; old lumber

February 20, 2014

The latest piece to leave the shop:

Those railroad spikes from the last post:

Decorative Hardware

February 16, 2014

The door and drawer pulls for the cabinet that I just finished. They are made from old railroad spikes. I used to walk my dog along the local tracks and find spikes discarded all around. Sometimes I'd fill my pockets.

Barn Cabinet

January 28, 2014

More of that old barn siding (see: here, here, here, and here) is seeing the light of day again.

When you open the door it even makes a "mooooo" sound.

Lattice Subwoofer Cabinets

December 21, 2013

Here's the final result from all that grid work from this previous post:

The finish is milk paint, which is unlike any modern paint, and really quite beautiful. It has a unique look which works well with antique type finishes (probably because it's the finish that's actually on so many antiques.) Here's a detail:

The cabinets are open on the bottom and simply drop over the subwoofer. Each has a section of lattice that opens to reveal a shelf for some other electronics.