So I figured it is a good thing to capture in this walnut it is just so, I do not know, it is just like food, some kind a cake or something. A delicious hostess cake, maybe Entemin’s, I do not know. The other thing to remember with a piece of furniture like this, I can probably bet and I really have not shown the final decision for the top I really have not shown that too many people yet.
I would just about guarantee like any decent piece of furniture that goes out in the limb, half of you are going to hate it, half of you are going to love it. And that is just kind of the way these things go and that is what happens when you go beyond the norm. It is a little hard to accept at first but then you kind of start expect it. The key to anything with these designs as far as I am concerned mission style and arts in craft style. Those are things that are almost universally acceptable. Everybody likes them. To some degree and I do not think anybody would be ashamed to have a nice mission style, chested drawers in their house or coffee table and table. There is a must appeal to it. That is right.
Stuff like this, definitely not a massive hill. Not everybody will like it. In fact some people will hate it. That is just the way things go but the key is of any of your furniture if you going to do this sort of different designs and really play it round with the concept of designed. Be prepared for that but understand that means you have done something right.
I think your work or any art for that matter should elicit an emotion. Whether it is “Oh! I hate that”, or “Oh, that is fantastic.” You are making people think. If they look at your furniture and have no emotion, and just go with it and that is alright. Then, that is not a victory for you. So, obviously we want more people to look at it and say that they love it, than hated. But for me I would rather have emotion than no emotion.
So, and that is the way it is. We do not know like the same colors, we do not wear the same clothes. We do not drive the same cars. Why should we all have the same taste in furniture and design? So it is not offensive to me if you do not like my furniture. It is just mean you do not like my furniture. We have different taste. It is not a big deal.
And I will let this set over night before I touch it again. Well it seems that we have been working on this guy forever but here it is. Probably have one or two more coats to put in the top and that are why you will see us still have the blue tape on the steel dowels. Basically couple coats to seal a cell, sanding in between coats lightly with 320 then when I start playing the armor seal, semi gloss I put maybe 400 grit sanding in between the first one and a 600 after that and then the final coat.
So, look at the little fin. I may want a little more protections because it is going to be in my living room and I know how my wife is with coffee cups and things like that. Maybe I should not say that. Anyway, so overall the impression of the piece—it is very interesting to see the evolution because it is not at all what I had envisioned in the beginning. I mean the legs are the weight of the piece is but I had no idea what I wanted to do with the top.
I said in the last episode, I said “glass” because it is kind a default solution. I did not know what else to do. And then once I was inspired to do the top this way then all of the sudden became enough of the feature that I liked it so much but I did not feel compelled to worry about this inner meeting of the four dovetails. It was not important to me because the top really speaks for itself, okay. That is why I sort of abandoned the idea of glass and also I like all the suggestion people were giving me for ways that I can put a little, maybe a circular piece of glass or something that allows people to kind of look through and see the dovetails. Cool idea, but I really just did not think it was necessary at this stage. I was not hung up on those dovetails as I was previously.
So the top of it self is able to expand and contract because of over size dowel holes and everything is nice and secure. I got the little filler pieces in for that groove that we created at the top of the legs and I got to say I am really happy with the way it come out. It has got a silky, smooth finish and, you know, it is what it is!
Let us talk a little bit specifically about some of the problems that I confronted and how I solved them and how they actually became part of the final design. Now the top as we saw goes in to the sides and has those inlay pieces. Now that is another good example. A lot of times with this type of process, if you are not exactly a really creative person or atleast you do not think you are a creative person and I fall into that category. I challenge myself on purpose, because I do not necessarily look at the final piece or draw it at the piece of paper and know every little detail that is going to be in that final piece.
But if I start when I still have a lot of questions left to answer, even if I paint my self into a corner the way I get my self out of that situation then becomes my creative opportunity. So, I do not know maybe it is just me, but I get most creative when I have to solve the problem. Not when there is no problem, I am just trying to come out with the creative adornment to the piece.
So, you know, I do not know, maybe that is just me but it is worked for me in the past on probably, you know, eight or ten different projects that I have done like this. So the biggest example of that in this piece is the inlay pieces here were the dowels go in. Clearly when I routed that groove, I had to fix that, I had to put a repair there but instead of just filling it with walnut and trying to pretend that it is not there, I did that double sandwich of two pieces of maple and a strip walnut in the center.
You know, now let us just become part of the design feature even from the outside it just looks really cool.
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