AZ road trip

[Jay Knoll]

Hi everyone

My wife and I were out in Prescott AZ visiting my Mom.

Went to a gallery called Van Gogh's Ear and saw some very intersting wood working. The gallery owner was kind enough to let me take some pictures here are two examples of some interesting work by David Delphony who lives in Utah.


In addtion to these chairs, there were some wonderful turned pieces and some sculpture - like pieces done out of branches. Think of a bundle of sticks, only they form a sphere -- at the surface of the sphere the end of the stick is smooth and rounded. The same artist/woodworker also had some larger rectangular bundles with the same idea, one was a column formed from the branches, but where they intersected the surface of the column it looked like the branch had been run through a jointer. Sorry I couldn't take pics of everything, but if you go to their web site you'll see one of the spheres I was trying to describe

http://www.whiskeyrow.us/vangogh/vangogh.html

There were some wonderful boxes on display as well.

If you've got time and are in the area, this is certainly a great place to visit.

Jay

[Nick Mitchell]

No offense to you Jay or to David Delphony (the skill is obvious) but maaaaaan do I hate that stuff:eek:

[Alan Tolchinsky]

Thanks for sharing; that shows some amazing artistic ability. Any info. on his technique for doing his pieces? I can't imagine where I'd even start to make something like that. Alan in Md.

[Jim Becker]

I hope you also stopped by the local craftsman co-op (http://www.artsprescott.com/) just off the square. I was introduced to it by Phil Brennion who is currently the president of the AAW. (Phil lives in Chino Valley just north of there) Prescott is a wonderful area. Creeker Rob Littleton recently moved there, too.

[Jay Knoll]

Thanks for sharing; that shows some amazing artistic ability. Any info. on his technique for doing his pieces? I can't imagine where I'd even start to make something like that. Alan in Md.


Alan, sorry I should have mentioned that the chairs are laminated up from plywood. The rocker has the wood oriended in a vertical plane, and the "easy chair" has them in a horizontal plane. No other specifics available form the gallery owner or in the artist's statement. I imagine that he roughs out the pieces in their general shape when he cuts the plywood, then glues up a series of lamination (at least that is the way I would do it) then glues up the sub assemblies to make the whole general shape. Then I imagine that there is a lot of sanding involved, if I were going to try it I think my Festool Rotex 150 with 80 grit paper would see a lot of use while I was in "shaping mode".

Anyway it was fun to see something besides period reproductions and/or Shaker or Mission furniture. Certainly does open up one's eyes.

Actually, I think that this technique echos some work that Wendell Castle did in the early 80s, he was on the faculty at the American School of Craftsman at Rochester Institute of Technology. Only his "laminations were 3/4" walnut!

[Rob Littleton]

Hey thanks Jay,

I drive by that place almost every day and never knew what i had in it.

Ill go check it out

Amazing what you live on top and dont know it til someone out of state tells yu :-)

Drop me a line in advance, we can have a spot of afternoon tea :-)

[Lee DeRaud]

Alan, sorry I should have mentioned that the chairs are laminated up from plywood. The rocker has the wood oriended in a vertical plane, and the "easy chair" has them in a horizontal plane. No other specifics available form the gallery owner or in the artist's statement. I imagine that he roughs out the pieces in their general shape when he cuts the plywood, then glues up a series of lamination (at least that is the way I would do it) then glues up the sub assemblies to make the whole general shape. Then I imagine that there is a lot of sanding involved, if I were going to try it I think my Festool Rotex 150 with 80 grit paper would see a lot of use while I was in "shaping mode".Laminated, yes...but plywood? I'm seeing different types of wood in there, in laminations thicker than the layers in plywood. What it reminds me of more than anything else is the kinds of patterns you get in laminated rifle stocks: those are from solid wood, in 1/8-3/16" plies. This looks like the same thing on a larger scale, maybe 3/8-1/2".

One (very high-tech) way to do these would be to carve a model of the chair, maybe 1/10 scale, do a 3D scan of the model, and let a CAD program run off the cut patterns for the laminations. Then, as you say, it's a question of smoothing down to a surface: maybe one of those carving wheels made for electric grinders for the initial pass, then belt sander, then ROS...