Things have been progressing slowly. Sick truck, hunting season, and other things have kept me busy.
I've been working on the mantel. I cut a luan pattern at the shop, brought it home, and scribed it to flush it to the walls. I had my Walnut trunk milled into 5/4" slabs, but had the mill save me one 2.25" full live edge slab from just off the middle. The plan was to have a live-edge mantel, but I changed my mind. First, live-edge wouldn't fit the final motif. Secondly; while the slab contained enough square footage to do my proposed design, it was long and skinny at 16" wide and nearly 10' long. The mantel design is 21" wide and 92" long. The other issue is that my planer only does 12" widths and the biggest one I could find in the area was 18". I decided to strike the piece to 12" so I could get it through the planer.
I was able to laminate three pieces together to make my rough shape. Biscuit joints near the top, pocket jig and screws near the bottom.
I was then able to use the template I made to cut the rough shape. Since I no longer had the ability to put it through the planer, card scrapers, belt sander, and orbital sander would have to do. (and it was so satisfying to surface that huge thing by hand) Edges were easily routed with a classical bead/bedrail bit from the bottom and a round-over bit from the top.
One coat of a light Pecan stain and I decided to "make" my own finish. Equal parts mineral spirits, polyurethane, and tung oil. Here it is with the stain and the first of 6 coats of hand-rubbed finish.
Built myself a coffee table today. I just did some kinda freehand drawing on a piece of lauan for a leg pattern. In keeping with the sorta English Gentlemen's club/cottage theme, I cut them with some compound curves that are reminiscent of deer antlers without being in-your-face-hunting motif. Then I used a dado to siamese them together and did all kinds of routing to make some interesting edges. All solid walnut.
Those look great, nice job.
Beautiful work Curtis!
With the help of some real masons, I finally got the stone veneer on. I learned a TON. I'm glad I farmed out the help because I would have messed up a lot. They took three days and were so meticulous about choosing and cutting stone to fit and look natural.
Here is the finished masonry, and below is a picture of the stained glass doors for the cabinets. I built the walnut frames and then gave them to a stained glass shop around the corner. The pink glass is reclaimed from a church in Lancaster that was built in 1783.
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