Wooden Teaspoons

Wooden teaspoons in hardwoods are available at our Etsy shop:
  flyingcircusstudios.etsy.com

Opening of Etsy Shop

The landscape of memory always contains several prominent peaks, images or instances that especially stand out and can typically be counted on your fingers.  One of mine is watching a Hopi Kachina carver at work on his porch, working outside under broken sunlight and shade with a set of simple tools at a small workbench.  The image is particularly appealing because it combines both leisure and work.  Pure leisure so rapidly become cloying.  I can’t take too much of it.  Yet all work, of course, becomes exhausting.  This carver to me had found exactly the right synthesis of both.

Anyhow, the point of this: after just short of forty years of woodworking larger commissions I have slowed down and am thinking smaller, moving into the field of wooden crafts, which to this point I have pretty much abjured, nose in the air.  Thus the opening of an Etsy shop: FlyingCircusStudios

In time more items will follow.  Thank you to the individuals in both Flagstaff and Tucson who have already purchased some of my pocas cosas.

Car Camping Chuck Box

Seemingly simple and wonderfully convenient for car camping, this chuck box required the labor equivalent of several kitchen cabinets and meticulous fitting.  The idea of producing these commercially was eventually rejected due to the resultant high price.  Still it seems to me that the niche for such a chuck box remains unexploited.  All one sees in campgrounds is folks rummaging through giant Tupperware unable to find anything.

Singular wooden ware + hand carved teaspoons at:   FlyingCircusStudios.etsy.com

Backpackers and campers find our wooden teaspoons a more rustic and lighter alternative to plastic or metal.  Our mini cutting boards are ideal for picnicking and for camping.


See also other hiking and camping tips:

Hiking Stick Compass

Viking Express (Tent Trailer) Bed Extension

Viking Express Camper/Cargo Trailer Conversion
 

Hungarian Sideboard with Razor-Thin Lightbox

 

 

 



The "lightbox" consists of 72 ultra-thin LED lights set in strips and placed in a rabbet just beneath the rabbet for the obscure plate glass, thus making the whole assembly only 3/4" thick.  The bottom is not closed since the lights cast nicely both up and down.  The 6 watts of LED lighting are sufficient to illuminate a room.  As far as the mounting goes, I thought why not use the Hungarian Shelves system just for a single shelf, aka sideboard.  The beautiful wine glasses are by George Averbeck, Fire on the Mountain.

 

 



 

Meyers Collaboration I

The needlepoint sampler by Sara Meyers was facilitated by materials and studies at the West in Tucson.  The piece is stretched over 1/4" masonite.  The frame is made with cutoffs from the upcoming "Hungarian Sideboard with Razor-Thin Light Box."  The matting was expertly crafted by Mia Schneider at Photographic Works in Tucson.  The glass does not touch the thread and was salvaged from discarded storm windows, though remarkably scratch-free.  Mia managed somehow to fit the entire assembly into the 3/4" thickness of the cherry.

See also our shop at:  FlyingCircusStudios.etsy.com

Cheese Paddles

In Flagstaff our woodstove had an endless appetite for table saw cutoffs, but in Tucson these are reduced to 28" lengths, becoming cheese paddles.  They have not, however, been tested for actual paddle ball.

Floating Headboard

Custom Door

2-Drawer File Cabinet Revisited

Hungarian Shelves Slot Height Revisited

Two recent sets of Hungarian Shelves ran thick and thin, i.e. in one case I made the slot height taller than my recommendation Slot Height for Hungarian Shelves and in the second case (the set above) shorter.  At first I thought the tighter the fit of the shelf in its slot, the better, but I have changed that thinking for several reasons.  First, wedges that taper to a knife edge are more likely to break upon insertion or removal.  Second, they offer too little wood for compression when driven into the slot.  Third, the thinner wedges lack rigidity and tend to fall away from the bottom of the shelf.  My revision is to make the slot height always a little more than 1/16" rather than less.  I found that even a 1/8" space works but that tends to be a little too much.

The uprights are African mahogany stained to match the accelerated darkened cherry, accomplished by some careful time in the sun.  As always the natural face of cherry is so lovely.  She requires no makeup.

Commercial furniture makers still think that cherry is black.

See also our shop at:  FlyingCircusStudios.etsy.com

Three Easy Pieces

One of my shopmates asked if I had reverted to high school shop, and that may well be true here.  Nonetheless, the beauty of a three-legged table, like its companion the three-legged stool, is that no matter how uneven the surface the table is stable.  This, of course, is canceled somewhat by its tendency to tip over when pressed between legs.  I thought the rock would enhance its stability, which would be the case if it were ten times heavier.

More Copper Collage Sculpture Slabs

"Theo Helii"

"Theo Helii'' - Detail

 

"Delphinus"

"Delphinus" - Detail

Copper Collage Sculpture Slabs

"Casement Vision"

The “Copper Collage Sculpture Slab” series of works represented one of my few forays into the world of art furniture.  Mostly tables and trivets they were shown at galleries in Sedona and Flagstaff as well as my favorite venue the Coconino Center for the Arts.  Thin 1/4" slabs of float copper, often containing large flecks of native copper, were arranged on a bed of actual mining tailings in collages, sometimes suggestive of particular forms.  Durable bisphenol epoxy resin was then poured over the entire system to lock it in place.  The slabs were provided to me by prospector extraordinaire, the late John Sikorsky, who also provided the inspiration for this line of work.

The epoxy pours were nightmarish affairs, first requiring a day’s cleaning to render a woodworking shop dust-free, no mean feat.  Then the mixing ratio needed to be near perfect, a quart or more of epoxy having to be stirred in very short order.  The thousands of bubbles thus induced had to be popped before the epoxy hardened, using the rather dangerous technique of blowtorch heat which could ignite the whole affair.  Special covers had to be designed that did not attract dust like a capacitor while the casting hardened over the course of many hours. 

One of the pieces entitled “Ore, Timber and Rail” actually won first prize for sculpture at “Vision Southwest,” a show for artists residing in the states of the Four Corners.  This particular coffee table contained elements suggestive of an ore car riding on tracks.  Remarkably it not only provided a cash prize to the maker but also sold from the show.  That was an exception as most of the pieces were eventually purchased by existing customers.

2-Drawer File Cabinet

Kitchen "Spacer" Wine Rack

When this kitchen installation required a 3" spacer it seemed a waste of space to place it at the face frame. Always looking for a new tunnel for the wine cellar, it occurred to me that the width was perfect for a bottle of wine though insufficient for a wine rack with sides and shelves.

The idea of supporting wine bottles with just a bored hole was provided by my cooperative shop partner Tony Furhrman (Summit Woodworking).  Thus the spacer was moved back, thickened, set slightly away from the back wall, screwed to the side of the adjacent cabinet and now provides storage for 8 bottles of wine.  The lip of each bottle locks it in place so it can't slip out.  Tony points out that though the bottles slant down from the neck, corks are still fully submerged.  A similar "spacer wine rack" provides storage for 8 more bottles at the base cabinet level.  A little clever rotation of the bottles  allows the labels to be read without removal.  I like the fact the bottles share the same cantilever support mechanics as Hungarian shelves, less the wedges.  Though very secure they are easily inserted or removed.

Yet More Hungarian Shelves

Finally realized upon installing this set of shelves that knocking in the wedges with an oversized block that extends beyond the front edge of the shelf not only allows placement of the wedge perfectly square to the shelf but also prevents marring of the bottom of the shelf with the hammer.

King Bed Platform

King Bed Platform Side View

Full Extension Drawer Detail