Carving of a dove-messenger on the crib’s headboard.
Two views of the baby crib in black walnut.
Turning a Black Walnut Bowl
Below are a series of pictures of turning a black walnut bowl on the pole lathe.
Shaping the sides with a roughing gouge.
Starting to hollow it out.
Walnut Headboard-Chest
The walnut headboard-chest will have a “free-edge” on the top. The lid will be “floating” within the top of the chest. So the top edges need to be balanced out and given a certain quality of surface to fit this application.
Below, I am cutting along the top edges with a medium sized gouge.
Below, a detail of the edge. More adjustments will be needed as the bed progresses.
Shadow Puppet Workshop
I had the opportunity to do a afternoon shadow puppetry workshop with Sara Murphy in Kansas City for some high school kids. Below are images of some of the interesting puppets they designed for an adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin.
Workshop
Milled Ash
A section of one of the many Ash logs in my yard waiting to be milled.
Walnut Headboard-Chest
Below are some pictures of the main carcass for the headboard-chest of a black walnut bed underway in the shop right now. It was dry fit for the first time yesterday. It was quite a challenge to get the nearly eighty hand-cut dovetails to mate properly.
The tops of the boards are still rough- they will be shaped a little- softened- but mainly left as is. The lid will “float” inside the top of the chest.
A foreshortened side view. Here one can see all the dovetails- yet to be trimmed- th chest will be taken apart and re-assembled a few times before final assembly, where after the pins and tails will be trimmed flush.
A detail of a Q.S. white oak butterfly- decoratively and hopefully functionally placed in a knot with a small split. There are quite a few butterflies throughout the piece for the task of securing splits and abnormalities- the joys of screwball Kansas walnut.
Painting Update
Recent work on the painting of Asher Lev and the Messenger, based from Chiam Potok’s novels. Re-working the light scheme a little bit, and developing some of the details.
Dovetails
The set-up for chopping the dovetails for a large walnut chest, which will be incorporated into a bed I am building.
Here a joined walnut board is clamped upright in the vice and to the stretchers for sawing the dovetails.
Finally, in the act of chopping.
Bosch Portrait Update
Below are three images of the most recent work on the portrait of Heironymos Bosch -now four years in the making. The first is a shot of the entire painting, followed by a detail of the painter’s profile and the painter’s palette and colors. The images may be selected in order to view a larger format.
The School of the Transfer of Energy 