Last year, in collaboration with Crosstimbers Woodworking, we designed and built a series of coffee tables and end tables for the Big Horn River Lodge in Montana. Most of the walnut was salvaged from the rejected timber from the logging of a farm in Winfield, Kansas. Photographer Steve Hebert traveled to the lodge and captured some beautiful images of the tables for us.
Will it float?
Below are some views of the walnut long-table as well as a colored print of “Go On, Job, Bread and Water” framed in walnut for my friend.
The following are a series of photos of the construction of what I have chosen to call a “walnut long table”, featuring a large center cut black walnut slab about 2″ thick from Fall River, KS. The legs are also black walnut from Boaz, KS.
Butterfly sockets along the seasoning check.
Removing material for a large sliding dovetail and dado for the cross brace.
Sawing the slope inside of the dovetail-dado (dovetail bit in router not deep enough).
Legs.
Fitting the legs. Lower right is a view of the end of the sliding-dovetail on the brace.
Settled on steel bolts over mating the legs to the brace with another sliding dovetail.
View from the “South” end of the table.
From the “North”.
This is a little three leg stool, turned from black walnut on the pole lathe. The seat is sawn, not turned, then I used a little gouge on the edges and where the tenons from the legs come through. The turning is intended to resemble bells and clappers.
Pictured below is a walnut slab bench that is meant to accompany the headboard-chest bed, also of black walnut.
A detail of the joinery – bridle joints join the legs to the aprons and are pegged, and the stretchers are joined to the aprons with sliding dovetails.
The Bed
The chest taken apart and being fitted with a floor and a till.
Detail of the till.
The bed to this point, dry fit and testing out some planks for the sides of the legs.
Carving of a dove-messenger on the crib’s headboard.
Two views of the baby crib in black walnut.
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.
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.
The School of the Transfer of Energy 