carving a videpoche leg

Making a "vide poche" table takes some hand work. That is part of the reason I like to do them. My work is about having my hand be involved in the process and distinguishing what I do form factory made items.

Here is the process for carving a leg for the vide poche table. Above is the nearly finished leg sanded to 150 grit. It will get a final sanding to 220 and then the "finishing" process starts. I hope to show my finish and metal leaf process next. These photos are in reverse order, because I am not technically proficient enough to figure out how to change them. The whole process takes about 10 - 15 minutes per leg.


These are the tools of the "trade" for my carving the legs. Straight chisels, rasps, riffler rasps, sculpting rasps and sandpaper 80-220 grits.
This stage is after the finish rasping and the shape is almost there.
The legs has been rasped with the sculptural rasps to a very close approxiamtion of final shape. It is important to not take off too much to allow for finish rasping and sanding.
This is what the leg looks like after the chisel work. It still needs alot of refining but the basics are there.
This is as far as a machine can take it. At this stage, it has been turned, band-sawed excess and a bit of machine sanding to get the blank to a stage where it can be worked on by hand.

Shop snap shots Sepetember, 2009

Well here is the virtual shop tour. If you were to come into the shop front door, you would be greeted first by Gus. He loves everyone who comes into the building. It doesn't matter whether you deliver the mail, are a salesman or are a designer. He will jump up on you and I will be telling him not to. He is completely unaware that he was acquired from the "Pound" to add a sense of security to the front office manager's life.
He did have to exhibit an extraordinary level of patience to be photographed and after what must have been at least a hundred photos, this is the one that the photographer apologetically offered as the best of the bunch. Every time she snapped the lens, he would look at me or away. Everytime she was not ready to shoot he would look at her. It was too consistant a pattern to be mere coincidence. He is toying with us - as usual. I am sitting on a first generation Katharine chair.

The vide poche legs are carved at the top and the bottom as they are not a straight cylinder but taper out. The middle section is done on a lathe. But the top has to be carved with a chisel and rasps and finally with sandpaper.


A spoke shave is also useful for roughing out the shape. It is one tricky tool that really depends on your feel. Its kind of like a peeler for cucumbers in the kitchen. You don't want to be pressing into the flesh, just setting the knife at the correct angle and pressure to shave off a skin's worth. The spoke shave works that way but also has to be in accordance "with" the grain.
It might be more dangerous to use a chisel or other hand tools than power tools. You have to be mindful of where your pressure is directed and where you fingers are located. But a good sharp chisel is less dangerous than a dull blade because you don't have to press as hard and therefore are more likely to cut the wood efficiently.
The vide poche bodies are constructed as "shells" and then veneered. The drawer fronts are glued up out of solid poplar that has been resawed and glued into a curve and dovetailed to the sides which also serve as runners. In the foreground are the zebrawood and striped mahogany bodies awaiting the drawer fronts to be veneered. The legs are made separately and attached with fasteners after being finished.
Below you can see a completed custom Mabel ottoman, ready to be shipped and more vide poche bodies. In the back by the chop saw is part of the dust collection system. Every machine has a pipe running to it to collect the dust.

The spray booth has fresh air intakes and an exhaust fan. Even though it "moves" a large volume of air, the flow has to be softened by filters so there is not hard draft against the work which would cause the finish to harden over a skin before the underneath area has dried. We currently use a very low VOC lacquer based product that meets strict European standards for fumes, but are also exploring the new generation of water based lacquers. Above, I am using a gravity fed touch up gun to create a "tone" on the Mabel bench base. The base is finished separately from the metal leaf trim.
Examining and rubbing a Katharine chair ready to be shipped to the Chicago showroom for a floor sample. The chair was designed on paper and then in plywood and underwent several generations of technical changes to the upholstery system to get it just right.
These are "blanks" of walnut ready to be shaped into Mabel legs. They are glued up into 4" thick and square sizes as most lumber is impractical to obtain in that size to start with.

Taking the mystery out of a custom sofa's cost

I know that costs are extremely opaque to most people when it comes to buying furniture and understanding what they are getting. Recently I had a customer approach me about a custom made sofa. Then, this morning I read a blog that I follow, expressing outrage about seeing a $7000 sofa in a store and being "lectured" about why the cheaper ones were not worth it. Obviously it is not a great sales technique to hector your potential clients. I'm not sure if the cheaper ones were "worth it" or not - maybe they were. But if you want a custom made sofa, and you want it to be sustainable and well made, a $7000 retail number is not a scam and not far off where it will cost. (of course deals can be made and are always done off of that number) Here is my response to the blogger:


"I always enjoy your blog posts. However, your latest post got the blood flowing this morning. Here's the deal: If you want a couch made in Vietnam, China or wherever Ikea makes sofas there are lots of options between $500 - $2500. Some of these are more or less well made and some are not. Some use solid wood and some use particle board for the frames. Some use screws and some use traditional jointery and glue. There is such a variety of quality out there that unless you have hard information it is difficult to know how well the sofa is made. I don't believe an Ikea couch will last 30 years. A good sofa - meaning constructed the correct way with solid wood and a high quality suspension will last that long or longer. Its a personal choice about your budget of course and everyone has to make that call. But in regard to your outrageous $7000 sofa, here is why, in very nuts and bolts terms: If I make a sofa custom made and in the USA, it is also going to be a green or sustainable product as well as lasting a life time. There is no way I can produce a sofa for under about $1500 including frame, suspension and upholstery labor. Add materials - about 20 yards for a good size sofa - and at a modest $40 a yard you have another $800. Now the cost of the unit is $2300. That is my manufacturing cost. Add 25- 30% for mark up and you have a wholesale number of at least $2875. You figure retail doubles at least the wholesale cost and has to add in shipping and now you have a retail cost of about $6000. Not too far off your number that you thought was outrageous. I understand that not everyone can afford a $6000 sofa, but if you want one made of the highest quality, you want it made in the US and you want it to be sustainable, that is what it costs. This is not a rip off or a scam. This is what US manufacturers have to charge in order to survive. Otherwise all of our manufacturing will be gone. You will not have a choice of anything to buy that is made in this country. This is the challenge I face every day in educating my clients. This is the challenge I face in trying to sell next to cheap imports. I pay my workers a decent wage and they get health insurance. As a consumer you have all the choices in the world."

John Strauss

Section of an old apple tree. Photographed by by step-daughter Lisa Ohlweiler on a 4"x5" camera. The apple tree was planted over 100 years ago to feed horses that were pulling out timbered hemlocks in the NY valley where I have a home. The bluestone in the porch comes from the hills behind the home. The wood comes from the forest. The shoe comes from Israel.

Click on the picture for incredible detail.

I have seen bears eating the apples from this tree. I have walked in these woods and have seen some of the huge, solitary, ancient hemlocks that once covered these mountains. It is an act of imagination to think about what these woods in the Catskills once looked, smelled and felt like.

On my last walk up into the mountain, I found a wild bees' nest high up in the crotch of a hemlock tree. There was a cloud of bees high above my head going about their business. There is always something to discover in the woods. One evening my wife and I sat quietly as dusk approached and witnessed the deer coming out of the woods. They sounded trumpet like snorts to each other when they were surprised to happen upon us.

The region timbered hemlocks for one reason: to strip the bark of the tree and use it in the tanning process. There was a tannery in our town, the Phoenix. Horsed pulled wagons of logs out of the valley and over mountains to the Delaware river and to the railroad. Today there are old apple trees, mostly abandoned scattered throughout the valley. You are likely to find deer there in the late summer munching on the drops. And as I discovered one day when I walked underneath a tree, occasionally a bear over your head.

The House of Tomorrow

I recently attended the NeoCon World's Furniture Market in Chicago, and on the way back to Ohio my wife Dominica and I stopped at the Dunes along the East side of Lake Michigan. I was reminded of a mystery I had started to investigate a few years back in an attempt to find out more about "The House of Tomorrow", created for the 1933 World's Fair in Chicago as one of several concept homes. The architect for the "The House of Tomorrow" was George Fred Keck. My personal connection to the home is that the interior designer of the home was my Great Aunt Mabel Schamberg. She was the inspiration for the "Mabel" collection in my design line (www.straussfurniture.com)

below: The House of Tomorrow at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair.
Entrance to the airplane hangar is at the bottom right.



I had wondered if there were any pictures of Mabel's interior design work and what had happened to the home after the Fair.

below: How the home looks today. It was moved following the World's Fair to the other side of Lake Michigan in an attempt to develop a luxury retreat area for the residents of Chicago near Michigan City, Indiana.(For an excellent summary of the homes from the Fair and their move to Indiana see the website link within
http://www.waymarking.com/waymarks/WM3QGB_Chicago_Worlds_Fair_Houses_Beverly_Shores_IN
that will bring you to a PDF file:)

Judith Collins and Al Nash; Preserving Yesterday’s View of Tomorrow
- The Chicago World’s Fair Houses
and from their article:

"After the close of the Fair in the fall of 1934, five of the houses were sold to Chicago real estate developer Robert Bartlett. He brought them by barge and truck to the Indiana dunes, hoping that these and 10 other structures relocated from the World’s Fair would entice buyers to his resort community of Beverly Shores, IN. ... In the ethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, he promoted
the resort with its theater, restaurant, and golf course as part of the American dream. Chauffeur-driven Packards picked up dream seekers at the Beverly Shores railroad station.
Bartlett intended to furnish the five World’s Fair houses, open them to the public, and sell them starting in October 1935. However, his dreams were never fulfilled. By 1938, only one house —the House of Tomorrow — had been sold. Seasonal renters occupied two houses, and two were vacant. Prospects for the houses and for the development became even bleaker with the approach and outbreak of World War II. By 1946, Bartlett had sold off his interests in the resort; and in1947 the community incorporated as a municipality . . .

The steel and concrete structural system of the house was originally assembled at the Fair site in only 48 hours. Its most prominent feature is the floor to ceiling “curtain wall” of glass used to enclose the second and third floors. Chicago architect George Fred Keck defied mechanical engineers who said that due to the expansive use of glass the house couldn’t be heated. Just the opposite occurred. The predicted amount of winter heat loss was far surpassed by the actual solar heat gain, resulting in the failure of the home’s revolutionary air-conditioning system in the summer. When Bartlett moved the house to Beverly Shores, he replaced the glass walls with operable windows to allow for proper air circulation. Keck later became a leader in developing passive solar heating through research and residential design. . .

The house offered a kitchen with state-of the- art gas appliances 'calculated to bring joy and satisfaction to the housewife' . . . In addition to a garage, it boasted an airplane hanger since futurists in 1933 assumed that every family would have both an automobile and an airplane."

We investigated this area a bit on foot- beautiful beaches and the dunes are eerily quiet and inviting and by car which led us up to nearby Michigan City. I remember as a child taking a boat ride over to Michigan City and spending the night on board in the harbor. The area has many ingredients that could have made it a wonderful tourist destination, being so close to Chicago and yet feeling worlds away. However, planners have permanently (it would seem) sealed Michigan City's fate for the worst.

The downtown is virtually abandoned and rundown despite many cool looking older buildings. There is a strip mall to the East that has all of the typical stores and restaurants. But there are two larger strikes against M.C. that I don't see in every otherwise potentially great tourist destination. 1) There is a prison right in the middle of the town.

and 2) There is this lovely attraction hovering over the town:

furniture, chickens, architecture and sustainability

What do chickens, architecture, organic gardening and sustainable furniture have in common? We are committed to green or sustainable furniture at work, but we also take those principals home with us. Our ideals are not an 8-hour a day job. This is a little story about what happens after hours at home.

Building furniture takes a certain kind of mental planning and rigor. For one thing, plans have to be made and each cut on the saw or pass on the shaper must be set up to get the precise result. I was trained as a sculptor, and so I occasionally look for the informal process of building with a goal in mind, but in a manner that allows for improvisation along the way. Backyard architecture is one of the activities that I enjoy for this reason. I would not plan a house this way (at least I don't think so) but a chicken coop seemed like a perfect project to tap into that energy. After clearing the legal isssues on keeping chickens in a city, the only hurdle was how to satisfy the requirements of these birds that I had never before kept.


I wanted to create a triangular structure and also be able to reuse playhouse components that were no longer needed when my kids had outgrown their little "house" that I had previously built. The mental plan included a sloped triangle and a post-modern feel. But it also had to be useful. One of the features I thought to build in was that the front wall where the chicken entry door was located would swing open entirely so that my daughter could get access to the interior for cleaning. The free range chickens bed down on wood shavings that come from my shop. We don't have to dump the wood waste in our trash which is an important component to our sustainable pledge. If we were a much larger operation we could sell our wood waste, but we don't create that much.
The coop has an interior room that contains the roosting bar and a nesting box with a lower level where the droppings drop for easy cleaning. My wife "plastered" the interior with a mud plaster over an insulation board so the chickens are safe inside over the Ohio Winters with only a light bulb as a heat source. The floor is raised off the ground to be resistant to rodents and easy to insulate. I wanted to reuse as much material on hand as possible so I utilyzed scraps of wood from a demolished deck, corrugated roofing leftovers from a storage shed project and the before mentioned playhouse parts like a window and siding. It also had to look "decent" and "neat" to fit into our suburban property as much as possible, and cause minimal distraction to the neighbors (not sure if we have achieved this).
(Egg access door is small but visible just under the roof above) The exterior room contains the feeder and waterer with room for the girls to walk around if we want to secure them behind the chicken wire fencing. But there is no grass or plant matter growing "inside"the pen and they love to roam outside in the garden and on the lawn looking for seeds and bugs. They provide fertilzer to our organic garden as well. The eggs are a deep shade of yellow-orange. I understand that the dietarily important omega-3's are naturally high in eggs from chickens who are allowed to range over green plant matter like grass. Not all free range eggs are created equal!



Perhaps the greatest benefit to raising chickens, designing a coop, recycling wood waste and obtaining organic free range eggs rich in Omega-3's is not any of those issues but the fact that my daughters take care of these chickens as pets. They have learned where (some of) their food comes from and have taken a role in contributing to the house hold. Having the "job"of taking care of "livestock" gives them a sense of responsibility beyond the care of a dog or gerbil. They have a pet who performs a useful role in their lives, which they especially appreciate when I serve them Challah French Toast on Saturday mornings.
We started out with three hens; a Rhode Island Red, a Barred Rock (pictured with my daughter) and an Americauna. The Red died over this last winter from some sort of infection at the age of two but the other two have just been joined by four peeps who are still living inside under a heat lamp as they are only about a week old. If you are in the neighborhood, stop by some time for some eggs!

HighPoint Furniture Market

I just returned from Highpoint, N.C. after spending two days visiting the furniture market held semi-annually there. I went there for the first time to check out the market and see if it is right for our Company to show there in the Fall- October market. Unlike Las Vegas, one of the chief benefits of the Highpoint market is there isn't anything else to do there other than attend the market. No gambling and shows. So the buyers who attend are serious about checking out the possibilities. This was a significant lesson in why Highpoint should be a good fit for us. As this was my first market, I had nothing to compare it to but all of the veterans said "it is nothing like it used to be". That may be, but I found the traffic in the "Interhall" area to be significant and interviewed several of the companies that exhibited there. All were reporting solid sales and leads. They were universally encouraging. My interest was piqued. There is a strong possibility that I will be exhibiting there in the Fall and was invited to the Interhall area. There was a nice sense of camaraderie.

The other factor that was hard to miss was the surge of popularity for Sustainable and "Green" products. The Sustainable Furniture Council, which we are members of, planned several cool events and many vendors are now members and are using their logo. (See our environmental policy on our website for more info:http://straussfurniture.com/?page=environment



There was a "green drinks" social networking evening held at Cisco brothers showroom in a renovated mill building and which is a very cool space.see http://www.millvillagehp.com/ Cisco renovated a 100 year old mill into a series of showrooms. Their furniture is all sustainable and has been very successful. I met financial planners with environmentally friendly investment strategies, a major lumber company executive who is encouraging sustainable forestry within their company, a contract furniture company president who talked to me about potential for working towards sustainable projects, and a free spirited veteran of the industry who has been constructing scenarios for the Sustainable Furniture Council to vault into the next level of popular consciousness. And the hors d'oeuvres and drinks were fantastic too.

I also listened to a panel on social networking and sustainability. All the electronic forms are inherently sustainable as they don't necessitate the cutting of trees. I learned from their anecdotes how Twitter especially (which I can attest to as well) can network you with like minded companies and people in your industry. All Twitter is is a conversation, just like you might have at a cocktail party with others, except that it is taking part on the web. Because it is digital and available on the net, messages can spread at a geometric rate. That can be both positive and negative, but it is incumbent on a company to monitor and participate so that they can have some control over their company's reputation. All messages on Twitter are stored and searchable through Google, so they have a life beyond the moment of the "Twit". Companies need to be in control of who is putting out their message and never "trust" it to someone who has no investment (spiritually) in the Company.

Lastly, as a Northerner, it is a lot of fun to travel through the South and listen to accents from Virginia, North Carolina and Alabama. These are sounds I don't normally get to hear and they remind me that our country really still has regional cultural differences despite the national penetration of Target, Wendy's, Pier 1 and ToysRUs among others. On my way back I stopped in a little diner near the Blue RIdge Parkway in Virginia and had a biscuit and great tasting grits. I could barely understand the fishing talk overheard between the chef and the patrons, but the food and atmosphere couldn't be beat.