Idle hands make the devils work, hence...

[Dave Anderson NH]

I spent a bit of the weekend turning parts for some of my marking knives and awls and putting finish on them and doing a bit of buffing with the Beall system. As I've continued to make the same things over and over my times have decreased and my quality level has increased. It's a joy to work with most of the exotic woods though the Snakewood has to be handled carefully. If you look at it cross eyed it wants to check. My dealer told me that as the second densest wood known after Lignum Vitae, it never truly and completely dries. So far my main problems have been in the thicker sections. If anyone decides to work with this wood, a piece of advice-- after cutting to size process it and finish it as quick as you can in order to give it some stability. If you leave it without working it after cutting, use sealcoat, wax, or something else to seal the ends and then plastic bag it. If you don't, you'll come back to check city, and it's not a place in Europe.

[Tyler Howell]

Two Nice Dave. Checks in the mail!

[Glenn Clabo]

I'll take one of those...and one of those...and one of those. As always...nice stuff Dave.

[James Carmichael]

Beautiful, as always, Dave.

What are you turning it on?

[Matt Woodworth]

I don't see any wine. :)

[Matthew Springer]

Ooooo, I'll take them awl...

[Alan Turner]

Dave,
I see a group of leg patterns in the background, and was wondering which of them are for the extra large marking knife I ordered? I think the one, second from the left, would be nice. Just kidding, but very nice work! I tried your website, but it is still not up. Can't wait to see it. And to think, I knew him when . . . .
Alan

[Dave Anderson NH]

I've been concentrating on making product and still trying to get all of the business systems in place. I finally set up and established a Paypal account, business checking, the legal folderoll, and a bit of shop reorganization. I have a logo and will be ordering a stamp for my products and am in the process of developing business cards and all of the other stuff. I'm even legally registered in the state of NH as Chester Toolworks LLC and have a federal ID number. Hopefully this weekend I will start work on developing a website and will link it to my SMC member profile when it's up and running. This will probably be a slow process since I've never done a website before and only have a sketchy idea of what I want it to look like.

Alan- the cabriole leg patterns were tests and the one on the right was the one I eventually used for a Queen Anne drop leaf breakfast table I did for Sue's Christmas present a couple of years ago. All of the shorter ones were attempts to replicate the original piece which is in a private collection. After they were done, a friend pointed out that if I stayed with the original dimensions we wouldn't be able to get our knees under the aprons when using the table. So it was back to the drawing boards for the stretched out version and a slightly scaled up version of the table to maintain the proportions. It wssn't an exact replica, but it came out quite well anyway. Maybe I'll post some of the pix here since it was built using only Neandertahl methods.