A lady from Minneapolis ordered one. I made two, during the pandemic. The second stool is just sitting around, waiting for a home. The two photographs show the progression of the maple’s color from white to honey, which will continue to deepen over time.
I’ve made three so far, two had additional weight to make them heavier. The club shown is Jatoba, or Brazilian cherry, a very hard, dense wood. After turning it, I drill out the center which I replace with lead shot and epoxy. Approximate weight is 17 lbs. Without the lead shot, a walnut club is about 6 lbs. There is a video that shows one customer swinging it around properly to develop the core and upper arm strength. The price shown is for the basic club. Additional weight is $100 per 7.5 lbs of lead shot. 4″ x 32″ overall.
A doctor close to retiring approached me to build him a box to hold important papers, photos and mementos from his life and long medical career. We went shopping for the wood that he liked, I did the rest. The hardware was difficult to set but worth. Dovetails are always fun to do. Building the box was like walking a tight rope: one little slip would mean disaster. The interior measurements were 9″ x 12″. The woods: wenge, padouk and bogote.
I was browsing in store that caters to woodworkers when I saw this spectacular piece of wood: flawless, flat, wide enough for a table and outrageously, blatantly purple. Its other quality was its figure that shimmered in the light. I brought it home and thought about it for a year. I knew I would give it walking legs, but how, this time? As long as the four feet touched the ground, did it matter? What would happen if the legs pointed out instead of lengthwise? That’s what I did and this is the result. I was warned the purple would morph to brown and it did. It turned into a lovely pinkish brown that pops under a bright overhead light. 30″H x 43″W x 13.5″D, purpleheart top and padouk legs. 1st place in Woodworking at the 2019 California State Fair and Judges’ Choice, 2nd place in Sculpture at the 2020 virtual Beverly Hills Garden Art Show. It’s still available.
This slab was in bad shape. There was dry rot that couldn’t hold the legs. There were cracks and worm holes that told me this tree was on a death spiral when it was cut. But I loved its imperfections. So my wife and I fed the bad sections with application after application of a very thin penetrating epoxy. In a couple of weeks, the wood became strong enough to hold the dowels that fastened the legs to the top. Then we applied twenty coats of oil until the wood purred under our fingertips. It won 3rd place at 2019 Orange County Fair. A woman bought it from an ad we placed in American Crafts Council magazine. 30″H x 43″W x 11″D, spalted lightly figured maple top and sapele legs.
I had a beautiful slab from a western curly maple tree that I had purchased for another job. I wondered how the Walking Table leg would look. It took 1st prize at the Orange County Fair in 2014. 30″H x 43″W x 18″D. I showed it to a customer who promptly bought it and placed it in his entry way.
I chose this view of the table because I love how the legs look like swans’ necks. The top is made of three pieces of curly maple and the legs are padouk. 30″H x 20″W x 20″D. My son and I were headed to San Francisco for a show when we stopped at Frazier Park for a coffee break. While I was procuring same, my son struck up a conversation with a lady from San Clemente who bought the table on the spot. It was a surprise, to say the least. With its raised edges, it makes a good game table.
This is a six-legged version of Walking Table. 30″H x 40″H x 20″D. The top is random sections of curly maple and legs of padouk. It placed 4th at the California State Fair. The customer who bought it placed it under a big mirror in his entry way. We have another Walking Table that we placed under a large painting.
This is the first of an innovative line of tables that have garnered many awards. It started with this table with cantilevered legs that appear to be walking. They are attached to the table top with through tenons and no other reinforcement, unlike most tables. I’ve had a lot of fun building anthropomorphic tables that seem ready to walk away on their own. This table won Honorable Mention at the 2005 Marin County Fair, then first prize in Woodworking at the 2008 California State Fair. It measures 30″H x 20″W x 20″D. The top is curly maple, the legs, padouk. The finish is a mix of hand-rubbed oil and polyurethane.
This is the epitome of my line of stools. It’s the result of months-long discussions and drawings with a client whom I never met. What I hadn’t anticipated was the amount of time it would take to shape the legs into ovals. From the floor to the seat, the base is nothing but ovals and compound curves that defied machine sanding. It took hundreds of hours to make the surface scratch free for the dark walnut stain. The oval shapes required twice the amount of wood as the regular legs and are made in three sections: hence the expense. The measurements are the same as my other barstools. The weight is another matter. The Chevalier stools weigh 23.4 lbs compared to 17.4 lbs. A less expensive version of this stool can be made by eliminating the ovals and building them like my other stools, with flat-sided legs. Contact me for further information.
Art enables us to find ourselves
and lose ourselves at the same time.
~Thomas Merton
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