danish cord.

We had the fortune of having an interesting lecture last week, in the technique of danish cord. This is a brilliant application for chairs, with an outstanding appereance. One of our classmates is making a rocking chair, and it has been interesting watching this process, Dave is doing a great job with his proyect, I will show it later on. 

This technique consists on the wrapping of  our different rails with the danish cord, giving ample support to the seat, and complementing the wood as you will see in this pieces. 

This is Dave's backer of his chair, it will support your back, he chose to implement the technique in here, which gives an interesting look. 

Danish Cord Detail

Cording Progress

Our school's Master Craftsman Robert Van Norman, has included this technique in some of his proyects, you will see the quality of work shown in his pieces, impecable work with craftsmanship all over this beautiful pieces. I feel fortunate of being under the teachings of this great teacher. 

This double-rocker was Robert's proyect when he attended the College of the Redwoods. 

Double Rocker waiting to be seated. Incredible piece. 

This wenge chair shown below, was executed a few years ago, it is a beautiful piece, with incredible stories behind it. 

 Design of Swedish furnituremaker Vidar Malmsten

Pictures taken for Inside Passage School of Fine Woodworking 

It is always a learning experience to go through different proyects that have come out from this great school, I would highly reccomend to visit their website. 

www.insidepassage.ca

I am planning to do a chair proyect for next year. I applied for a second year here at the school, the Resident Craftsman Program, and got accepted, I'm really excited to do this second year. A chair will be a great piece for this year, and the danish cord will be complementing my wood for sure!

let's get some wood!

As we advance in our proyects, we keep on learning different things and practicing some others. It was time for our third chainsaw milling of this year. This time we had a local maple tree available just a few minutes from the school. I think there is no better way of obtaining wood, making it local and totally sustainable process. 

Maple tree ready for process. 

This maple tree needed to come down for some reasons, it was having some problems growing, and they decided to bring it down. The owners offered this wood to the school, and we got the opportunity to do the chainsaw milling.


It is amazing how simple this is, and how much you can get. What we do is basically slice the tree into thick planks of wood, which will become fine pieces of furniture on the future. 

Slicing some planks.

It will take around two years before this wood is ready to work with. It will have to go through a process of air drying, followed by other processes of humidity reduction, until you end up with wood ready to use. Here at the school we have this sweet room, just beside my bench, in which different species are stored and are available for us to use in our proyects. 

Inspiration levels increase as you enter this room. 

This is some of the things we do around here, I hope you enjoyed! 

Project Time

Time for a new project finally came. This process is totally different from what we have been used to. It is time to think and rethink every decision taken, from the design process to the execution of it. I am planning on making a jewlery display cabinet for Monica's jewelry, which will be placed on a store in Mexico. It is an exciting project to make. 

I started making some sketches for the project, waking up that stage in design, which I was not much used in the past, I enjoyed making sketches and at the same time thinking about wood, I guess that's one of the things permanately on my mind. 

When I was first deciding for a project I wanted to make a jewelry desk for Monica, a working station. Then in the process of analyzing it I came up with the decision that it would not be the appropiate project for this time; we are now in the last months of the program, and time will be a factor for now, so I decided to scale down this project and made some modifications and came up with the design for the jewelry display cabinet. 

Jewelry Desk Design. I really like this design, I'm glad I could scale it down for this project. 

This cabinet will be a veneered project, which means that I will slice my wood into a certain thickness (3/32", 3 mm) and then apply it to a substraight. This method gives the opportunity of extending out wood into larger surfaces keeping some pattern in our projects. Here you can see how we had a plank of wood and then sliced the center part of it to meke some veneers. The rest will be used for drawer fronts and frame members. 

The woods for this project will be boxwood for the outside of the box, drawer fronts, frames, etc. Boxwood is a southamerican wood, really closed grain, very dense and is just incredible to work with. You can plane it in both directions and you will not experience any tear out. 

Boxwood veneers extended to certain patterns. 

The inside of the box will be out of English Sycamore, which brings more light to the inside of the box complements the boxwood nicely. 

Sycamore veneers 

The stand will be out of White Oak, a strong wood with character, using some nice joinery was used  up on the 1950's by Danish cabinetmakers. Lord Godfrey, a teacher and exalumni  from Inside Passage brought this sample. 

Some of the inspiration on this project came out from Danish Chairs, they had so many simple and practical solutions for joinery, like this chair for example, by Borge Mogensen back in 1957. Your can see the joinery used for this chair, and what I like the most those "wings" on the armrests used by the Danish back on those days. I think it adds something else to design. 

Borge Mogensen Chair.

(Pictures by Timeless Modern Furniture)

I will be gluing up some panels today, big glueups,  I could then show you the final look of those boxwood and sycamore veneers, they came out really sweet. 

See you later!