Making a Walnut slab bench table with Bow Tie inlay

On a recent trip thru the Pocono Mountains I decided to stop at lewis lumber in Picture Rocks, PA. Turns out they had just received a delivery that included a wonderful selection of rough cut American Walnut slabs. I decided the time had come to try my hand at a bench or table in the style of George Nakashima.

I look care selecting the slab from about 20 beautiful pieces. I selected a 6 feet 4" long slab and tied it to roof of the jeep. In the studio I spent some time sketching my design based on the feel and look of the slab I selected. I decided to have it stand at 18".

I wanted to try to produce 4 compound angle tenon legs out of Hickory. Before drilling holes into this beautiful piece of wood I recalled a joinery method used by Paul McCobb in the

1950's to secure a similar bench leg. Employing this method I made 4 mounting bases for my tenon legs. This allowed me to adjust the angle and placement of the legs prior to fastening and reduced the possibility of a misplaced hole or bad angle.

I marked the depth on each leg, cut the shoulder on the band saw and used a chisel to trim them round to the depth of my cut. In preparing the slab, I stripped the bark with steel wool and sanded the surface with 3 courses of paper 80, 120, 220. then mounted the legs and made some small length adjustments until it stood firm and level.

One quintessential detail and ultimate challenge for me was to include a hand carved butterfly inlay over a split at one end of the plank. I considered purchasing a router jig to do this but decided at the last minute that the look achieved using a router was to mechanical, also I don't care for the template shapes provided in the kits, moreover I want this bench to show off my abilities not my router's.

The trick to making a clean and flush butterfly inlays is to first design and shape your hardwood inlay piece, I made a couple of sketches and produced one out of

soft wood just to get a feel for the size and look of my pattern.

I chose Ebony to make my butterfly because its very hard and will provide elegant contrast against the deep brown Walnut. I cut it out of a piece of Ebony stock on my band saw. position your stock so the butterfly's grain will intersect the repair. I'm careful to cut slightly outside the lines so can use a file to chase it up and create perfectly straight clean edges. I used a metal file to angle the sides inward slightly so that the footprint of the piece will be slightly smaller

than the top. Position the piece and trace its outline with a marking blade or scribe. Obviously this is a critical step - it cant move and the angle of your marking blade must be maintained all the way around the perimeter.

Cut out with a flat sharp chisel making sure to produce a flat bottom and straight vertical walls that are the same depth as your inlay material.

Apply some glue to the center of your piece and carefully

hammer it in using a board to protect the surface of your wood, clamp it and

let it dry for 12 hrs.

The next day I sand it flush and its done.

I used a 50/50 mix of Boiled Linseed oil and applied this liberally with a rag fully saturating the surface for 24 hrs. then applied liberal coats once a day for a week. The color of the wood became dark and even and the grain filled in beautifully. To produce a super smooth finish I wet sanded the surface with my last coat of oil and 400 grit sand paper. I finished the whole bench with oil based poly urethane and gave it a couple more passes with 400g and fin.

Scenic work for movie set - Law Abiding Citizen

I got my introduction to the world of movie set production this week. I was brought on to the set of "Law Abiding Citizen" staring Jamie Fox and Gerard Butler. The scenic department needed assistance faux painting two action sets on the last two days before filming. The set was constructed in a huge warehouse in south west Philadelphia.

both "subterranean" sets were actually entirely free standing wood fabricated structures.

All the stone, brick and mortar is made of vacuum formed sheets and stapled into place, our job was to faux it all to look like the real thing.

The gates and cell doors are all brand new iron work and custom made on site, then faux painted to look ancient and rusted. Due to filming requirements, every thing had to be fire proof, so we were strictly limited to water based materials. I worked from sketches on site ...

The schedule was crazy. We started each 15 hour day at 7:00 am with two coffee breaks and a 45 minute lunch break in between

It was the most intensive two days of faux painting I've ever done and I'm hooked! I hope very much to be doing more movie painting in the future.

To see more of my work please visit Smartworkstudio.com

Portrait painting at studio Incamminati

I started a Monday night portrait painting class with Kerri Dunn, My goal is to learn some new approaches to handling color and value, and reestablish some existing skills that have weakened since I started to work exclusively in Acrylic. I haven’t done much in oil since the Academy.  I know that simply doing the work is the only way to achieve my goals.  My busy schedule has made it far to easy to put the brush down when I’m done the clients work, and for that my fine art skills have suffered. 

So each Monday night at 5:30 tired or not I’m finding my way to Studio Incamminati for three hours of pretty intense study from a live model, This is the final model pose for this class, it will be a four night study.

This is what I achieved on the first night, I’m using Ultra marine and Burnt Sienna on a medium ground linen canvase with clear gesso. The Belgian linen is a bit rough. The goal here is to develop the drawing and establish values. I’d forgotten how nice the oil is to work with, great for removing and adjusting the tone.

I'll continue to post my progress each Tuesday for the next three weeks.

To see more of my work please visit Smartworkstudio.com

Upholstering an Eames style Plycraft Lounge

I've wanted to own an original Eames lounge chair and ottoman for years and since they cost 3,500 new and even more used, I'll probably wish I had one for the rest of my life. 

A beat to hell knock off found on the side of the road is right up my alley. I began by taking the entire chair apart and removing all the old leather, buttons and piping (about 10,00 staples hold it all in place). It makes sense to save all the parts and pieces as they will be used for templates and provide a road map to put it all together again. I bought New high density foam at Katz in Philadelphia 857 N 5th street (much cheaper than in the fabric district).

I decided to use black vinyl because its cheap and won't be a problem if my cats decide to work on the chair when I'm done. A lounge chair takes about 6 yards. You need a zipper foot on the sewing machine to remake the piping and can find directions on You tube. 

I got a button dye at the fabric store for half inch buttons. you just cut one inch squares of vinyl and pop new buttons with a hammer. Shape the foam with a sharp serrated bread knife, put it in place and apply a layer of new batting. cover foam with your new vinyl shapes and use a staple gut to attach. Carefully locate the button placement and punch new holes threw the foam and attach to the backing board with heavy cord, staple on back.

 The arm pads are the tricky part and because I wanted to add a second bead of piping to the arm rests, I subbed the sewing out to my assistant Lila who makes hand made shoes. When they were finished they are fitted over new foam and stapled to the wood forms. I sourced the caped round based T nuts from a place in Chicago called EFC International (exact match to the originals) 

I sanded down the edges of the molded plywood chair backs and finished them with Antique gel stain to provide a visual contrast like on the new Herman miller chairs. New Plycraft chair parts such as; Swivel rockers and base can be found at swivel-chair-parts .com

Because I prefer a vintage look and I don't want the chair to look new, I simply oiled the wood forms to freshen it up and remove any dusty looking abrasions. Basically then I just screwed it all back together and I was done!

To see more visit Smartworkstudio.com

War Bird - Restoring the battalion Insignia on a vintage WW2 RAF Spitfire

On Jan 28 I got a call from my client to come down to his Aircraft hanger and help with something he needed fixed on one of his planes.  I walked into a hanger filled with beautiful vintage aircraft. I was told that the RAF spitfire had been recently restored and shipped from England and had one final flaw that needed fixing before she could be flown. "The 28th Squadron's  insignia thats painted on the side of my plane looks like the donkey from Shrek!"

Honored and more than a little nervous, I began by carefully removing Shrek. It was extremely important not to damage the original field of white as it was painted with a specialized epoxy that had been sprayed directly to the plane's aluminum fuselage. Repainting the white square would require masking out the entire aircraft and spraying it out again.

Historically these planes were embellished by "fly boys" who used whatever paint might have been laying around the air field. I decided to use "OneShot" sign painters enamel because its durable and slow drying enough to manipulate the image as I work. When painting with enamel you need to be careful not to brush the surface to much because it does start to skin over. Because the white field of paint is completely cured, I can "edit" my freshly painted lines to perfection using a clean brush loaded with pure mineral spirits and a rag. 

Utilizing this removal technique requires that you let each layer cure overnight so that the solvent does not eat into the previous layers of paint. Its time consuming but the finished work has super clean lines and smooth flat color fields. 

to see more visit www.smartworkstudio.com