Hard Work and a Little Luck

     I've always liked drafting tables.  Owning one always seemed to say to me that the owner took drafting/drawing seriously.  They took it so seriously, in fact, that they had a special table for it.  I know now that you can (and should) draw wherever you find space and make time.  I still love the tables.
Combine that with an appreciation of old furniture and you'll understand why I was excited to find this table. 
     I have been helping with a project to turn an old school into a community center where I live and while looking through a narrow, low attic space, I caught a glimpse of this table hiding deep in the back.  The top had been removed and it had clearly been put there before some new walls went up. There was no way to get it out without taking it completely apart. 
     It was as if the table was saying "Hey, can you help me out? I'm kind of stuck back here."
     So I spent a couple hours in near darkness trying to finish taking it apart  before my flashlight went out.  I had to make multiple trips to get each piece out of the tight space.  I wasn't even sure if I had all the pieces.  As I loaded the car, it looked like a collection of dusty old wood and rusty metal bits. 
     With a little cleanup, some paint on the metal pieces, and a fresh couple coats of varnish it's ready for many more years of use.  The parts were all there, waiting for someone to care enough to put it all back together.  I did.
     It's already hard to imagine my shop without this piece.

Wood? Well......

I had a chance to meet the editor of American Woodworking magazine last may and we spent some time talking about the role cnc machines of all sizes were playing in both business and consumer applications.  Many people have found that the smaller CNC machines have become an entry point into understanding what's capable. Further more, some of us have done some rather large projects with them.  While some of us will eventually transition to larger CNC machines if it's for business, it is likely that the CNC machine for the casual user is here to stay.  Whether it's woodworking, sign making, model making, art, candy making or a host of other things we haven't even considered using it for- the versatility and ability to express creativity makes them even more attractive as the prices become more affordable.
I was very pleased to find out that some of my work is shown in this month's issue of American Woodworker.  I hesitate to admit that the sign they show has very little wood in it...but I'm thrilled none the less. It's hard to believe how many firsts this year has held for me.  I have lots of things I want to accomplish, and things like this bring home to me that it's real and that my effort is making it happen.  I can't wait to see what 2012 holds. I have some plans...

Trying Something New

As a parent, I've spent plenty of time telling my daughter where she can and cannot draw...and the floor has definitely been on the "no" list.  Recently, however, I had a potential client ask if I could paint a logo on his garage floor.  It was an interesting question...the challenge being that it isn't hard to paint on the floor. The hard part is making it last and not get worn off easily through use.
As it turns out, a friend of mine (Mike Meyer of Meyer Signs) had to paint a large mural scene on one of the floors in a building in Chicago.  I contacted him and he turned me onto an epoxy coating designed for flooring.  I wanted to try it out without saying "yes" to the client.  I considered a number of things to paint, and decided that as I clear out my collection of toys/models/props from various sci-fi and other genres it would be fun to put those things that influence me on my shop floor.  I thought it would be fun to work backwards and start with the more recent...eventually covering the floor with all my old favorites as well.
I have been heavily influenced recently by "steampunk" and in particular by Greg Broadmore of the special effects company WETA. He has a product line known as "Dr. Grordbort's" which is a line of raygun props and other items.  I drew heavily upon that for my robot sign and enjoy looking at his new work.  So, my first painting on my shop floor is a tribute to Greg's character "Lord Cockswain"...he's just crash landed his ship and is ready to destroy any moon-men he finds.
I'll let you know how it holds up to my daily abuse...

Happy Halloween!

I have been in love with Halloween since I was a kid.  I'm not sure why.  I think, though, that it's as simple as this: I liked the color palette better than other holidays. Purple, orange, green and black were fun colors and I liked all the monsters!  I still love the old black and white monster movies to this day.
A number of years ago I had the good fortune to meet a guy named Jeff Carlson who loves all this stuff as much as I do. I think we knew pretty quickly that we were on the same spook page.
Jeff was already on another level when it came to Halloween. He was sculpting his own masks and doing all kinds of cool monster related art.  I picked his brain until it bled and he got me hooked on some of the basics for mask making.  I bought some clay, a head armature, some Ultracal and latex and set about getting my hands dirty.
Sculpture scared me from the start. Not because it was hard, but because I seemed to get lost in it.  I spent hours sculpting and had no idea how much time had passed.
I decided that my first attempt would be something I thought was really cool and not as common as other Halloween masks.  Dracula is well known...but I had decided to try my hand at doing a re-sculpt of a really great Nosferatu mask that I found pictures of on the internet.  It's a blatant copy, but I thought that if I could make a decent replica of it, it would be good practice.  I had a great time, never knowing that it would eventually be a step toward the things I'm doing now.
I sculpted the face, mixed Utracal (a tough dental plaster) and made a 2 piece head mold...embedding some plaster bandage material in the plaster for strength.  The I pulled it apart, removed the clay and poured latex into the cavity of the mold (it's called a slush mold because you slush around the latex to get into all the crevices).
 After letting it cure a bit (the plaster pulls moister from the latex and forms a skin). I emptied the remaining latex and let it cure some more.  I pulled out my first (and what would be my last) latex mask from the mold.  I didn't immediately make more casts, but instead began painting the first.  Eventually, an accident would destroy the mold before I could make more copies.  The only pull, though, has survived and gets hauled out every halloween to decorate our house or my shop.
Many things have changed since then, but my love of Halloween, sculpture and all things that go bump in the night has remained.  The skills I started developing then have also heavily influenced what I'm doing now. 
For that, I thank Jeff and wish him a Happy Halloween!

Custom Pub Table

Projects come in all shapes and sizes....
Having completed a mural, my next project has been a custom pub table, painted with a portion of a famous movie poster.  It still needs the top coats that will protect the table from countless beverages, but it's already looking pretty good, I think...
I began with a base, purchased in an auction for about $6.  I made the top from about 6 pieces of oak, which I joined together and gave a routed edge. A support piece of plywood is attached underneath and to the base.  Then I projected the movie poster onto the top (I layed it on it's side on a bench to do the projecting and painting).  Then I spent a couple hours painting...