Wegner JH-501 Repair & Reweave
Repairing and re-caning one of my favorite chairs ever.
Carl Hansen & Søn / Hans Wegner CH24 Authenticity and Restoration
Late one night I was reading the wikipedia page of Hans Wegner and realized that we both attended the same school in Copenhagen. I like that.
Bertoia Ottoman Stripping and Powdercoating
Harry Bertoia would be 100 years old in 2015. Knoll has a really nice video of how the Bertoia chairs are manufactured at the first link below and embedded above, and the second link has some nice stories about him. I love seeing the jig that each individual wire is fitted into before it’s spot […]
Turntable Stand / Record Storage
Adam needed a stand for his turntables with some storage for records and other stuff like that. It needed to fit in this nook next to the fireplace in the living room of his apartment.
Serving Carts for Cotogna
The restaurant Cotogna needed two serving carts that roll up to the tables. One for sweets and one for savory. I built a quick prototype to help them get a feel for the overall size of the cart.
Super Ellipse Concrete Tabletop Finishing
After a day or two the form can be stripped and finishing begins. This piece was stuck pretty securely to the base board, so the whole thing was flipped over in one piece and laid on some scraps of foam. After the silicone seal was broken, the base board was easy to lift off, but […]
Super Ellipse Concrete Tabletop Casting
“Husk at elske mens du tør det Husk at leve mens du gør det” “Remember to love while you dare to Remember to live while you do” – Piet Hein (1905 – 1996) After finishing the outdoor tabletop and using it for a few weeks, I started thinking about what kind of top to make […]
Casting Levelers for Contract Table Base
Levelers screw into the legs of a table base, which can be adjusted so the table doesn’t wobble. I have two of the herman miller contract bases, but one was without levelers. I thought the levelers from the one would swap over to the other, but the thread size and pitch is different between the […]
Gluing Shock Mounts to Concrete Tabletop
The final step in securing the concrete tabletop to the contract base is to glue the shock mounts in place. Here I’m using smooth-on metalset A4 epoxy, and tinting it black with dry pigment. First the base is centered on the tabletop by measuring from each leg to the outside edge. The base isn’t perfect, […]
Round Tabletop Finishing
I waited an extra day to demold the tabletop because it’s so thin and I wanted to minimize the chance of it breaking. It was covered in plastic to keep the moisture inside and demolding was pretty simple actually. First the form walls and base board are unscrewed, and then the walls and liners can […]
Round Tabletop Casting
This tabletop is made for an Eames contract table base and will be outdoors on the patio. The tabletop that came with this base is 36″ in diameter and is made out of MDF or something with a laminate surface that is an ugly marbled white / yellow (and weighs 24 lbs.). This top isn’t […]
Eames Rocker Base Restoration
I picked up this reproduction rocker base for pretty cheap because the woman’s dog had chewed on the runners. I sanded off the varnish and then sanded down the bite marks without removing too much wood. The runners are maple, but they are really poor quality – one spot is filled with glue where a […]
Rocker Restore and Re-Glue
A few months ago I saw a rocking chair for sale on craigslist that I liked, but it was 325 bucks. After searching around, it was usually attributed to a finnish designer, Ilmari Tapiovaara. I had to pass on that one because that’s a lot of money for an old chair. Then a few weeks […]
Failed Concrete Shell Casting
The plaster mold had some imperfections, so I painted it with filler primer and wet sanded until it was very smooth. I packed the concrete into the form, same as before, but I made sure it was thicker all around. I decided not to put the rubber drain plug on the form this time, mainly […]
Concrete Eames Finally Cracked
I put casters on the base and took this chair to work where I would use it more often. The cracks slowly grew bigger, and one day I leaned back and it sounded like crunching into a giant potato chip, and the chair broke in half. At the seat it was only about 1/4″ thick, […]
Making Shock Mounts for Concrete Shell Chair
After waiting 2 weeks for reproduction shock mounts to arrive, it became clear that the company didn’t have any in stock, and there would be more waiting, so I made my own. The best resource is the eames patent from 1953, “FURNITURE SHOCK MOUNT CONSTRUCTION” (2,649,136). The patent goes into detail about shock mounts for […]