I just realized that I hadn’t exactly explained how things were going to go from now on. You see, I’ve now got this other website, barningerandcouch.com, and a whole ‘nother blog here. I thought about keeping this one here for some personal stuff, but that’s just not in the cards right now. Maybe some day. Anyway, me and Jeff (he’s the barninger part) are making some cool stuff, so you should come by. That is, if anyone is still out there.

go.

hooray! i did it! so this is me playing around with some 1/4 scale models of the modular system. you can see that we made some tweaks since the ‘pink david’ pictures. we shrunk down the height a little bit to make them feel slimmer. we also extended the drawer and door fronts full length. these are in walnut. the extended drawer fronts definitely give a different feel. i keep going back and forth on whether i like the white lines or not. i do like that in this version you could make things look very monolithic without seeing that it’s made of lots of little pieces. or you could show gaps in between them to show that part off. i don’t know. thoughts? opinions?

Then Jeff started exploring bending plastic. Heating up a standard plastic sheet makes it pliable, and then on cooling it holds its shape. Much like the records I did a while back. As long as it’s a thermoplastic, it will do this. So we played around with draping and got this.

Then we started thinking about functionality and wondering if this plastic top thing could have some use. Immediately a tray table came to mind.

So we had a tray table, but we had lost the feel of the original tables. So we started working with the idea that the original tables looked like the middle part should come out. It looks as though you should be able to lift it up and find some magic underneath. So I quickly bandsawed up one of our original side tables and got this.

The functionality was there and now we just needed to finalize a form. So this is what our production piece is going to look like. The legs and base will be lacquered white, and the apron and top will be matching hardwood.

this is a flash file, so you’ll need the plugin if you don’t have it. also, i couldn’t make the script work perfectly so you have to wait one minute before the actual time updates, so watch the pretty lights move and then it should actually get the time right.

and once again, i am unable to embed the file so click on the picture to see it. man, this internet stuff can be annoying.

here’s the post. everyone should leave nice comments about how cool i am.

here’s a link in case it doesn’t work.Update: well, i don’t know about you guys, but i’d say that’s not exactly success. the formatting on my computer in firefox just went all to shit. it works in safari. the shop computers with ie are formatted correctly, but the embedding didn’t work. how is it on your computer?

Update 2: i just can’t handle how it looks on my computer. so i’ve taken the embedding out. just follow the link.

the dining table.

both tables together.

some details.

here i am with my baby with my name conveniently on the wall behind me. just in case you were wondering who made them.

and here’s what my corner of the show looked like. we rehung the threshold piece and had it wrap the corner and it looked really good. thanks to my family for helping me hang it while i was sick as a dog!

here’s a detail of the top of the coffee table after some edge routing.

lots of clamps.

the clamping of the big table. i had to do this one all at once. talk about a nightmare! i was sure that it would come out terrible.

here’s the veneer work in progress. the glued the veneer down in one big rectangle and then cut away all of the excess. because the veneer is so thin and so fragile i couldn’t use a router so all of this was cut with an xacto knife. sounds fun right?