Sep 09

Sydney & Sylas, Daniel D. Brown, Ph.D., 2019

I can finally share this wedding gift that @tamarynart and I made for my niece Sydney @spudknee and her new hubby Sylas @schnazzysylas! They spent their honeymoon in Ireland and just got back. We spent almost two months slowly pulling this together. The oil painting shows the Cliffs of Moher – painted on curly maple. It’s the first painting I’ve done in years and it shows. Haha. But I’m happy with it, all things considered. I scroll-sawed Ireland into a walnut board, and framed it in cherry with maple splines. I also hand carved the Celtic love knot. @tamarynart designed and burned the frame details. She also included a couple of burned kitchen utensils. Hopefully this will remind you both of fun times and great stories for decades to come! We love you both!

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I can finally share this wedding gift that @tamarynart and I made for my niece Sydney @spudknee and her new hubby Sylas @schnazzysylas! They spent their honeymoon in Ireland and just got back. We spent almost two months slowly pulling this together. The oil painting shows the Cliffs of Moher – painted on curly maple. It’s the first painting I’ve done in years and it shows. Haha. But I’m happy with it, all things considered. I scroll-sawed Ireland into a walnut board, and framed it in cherry with maple splines. I also hand carved the Celtic love knot. @tamarynart designed and burned the frame details. She also included a couple of burned kitchen utensils. Hopefully this will remind you both of fun times and great stories for decades to come! We love you both! … #scrollsawart #oilpainting #irelandart #pittsburghwoodworking #madeinpittsburgh #pyrography #weddinggift

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Aug 02

Snail carved from black locust

Snail hand-carved from black locust

After I finished @tamarynart’s table this week, I wanted a little project I could do while sitting on the porch and enjoying the weather with Bandit. So I walked in the shop, grabbed a log, and looked in my notes where I have random project ideas written. Apparently at some point I just wrote “Snails!” I power carved the rough shape and then whittled outside. The disgusting looking jar is my two year old homemade batch of vinegar and steel wool. It still works really well as a home brew stain and darkened the shell nicely. The branch is a piece of black locust I picked up a few years ago from someone’s firewood pile. I knew I’d get around to using it.
The video was just sort of a “Meh. Why not?” Thing.

See the video below for a timelapse of the entire process!

Jul 28

African wood-themed bedside table

African wood-themed bedside table

Bedside table is done!!

@tamarynart told me a couple weeks ago that she wanted a little table to replace the tiny stool that had been next to her side of the bed. It had to fit between the closet door and bed. She picked the padauk for the top (which roughly matches her ginger hair). Since she grew up partially in South Africa (her whole mom’s side is there), and the padauk is African, I decided to do something a little special for the drawer face. The wood is African stinkwood, which I talked about at length in the Jasper Family intarsia post. It’s from a chair my South African mom-in-law @sledv_life_rocks bought in the 70s. The pieces I have are small, so I glued up a couple with a walnut strip in the middle. The pull was hand-carved – intentionally rough and faceted. The base is walnut I got on clearance. The drawer was made from a really old 2×4” I found in our basement when we moved in (probably from the 50s). It will soon be graced with a small Qi-charging/USB lamp

Jul 08

The Jaspers, Daniel D. Brown, 2019

I can finally reveal my “family portrait” of the Jasper family, consisting of the Copper Pig himself (Paul @copper_pig_fine_woodworking), his wife Vicky (@jasperfarms – the fact that she raises chickens and teaches yoga is all I knew about her), their daughter the talented Copper Piglet, and of course Henry, their furry son.

This whole project came about because we had a trip to Boston planned for a family reunion. I had mentioned it to Paul a while back and he essentially said “stop on by!!”. Paul has been a huge inspiration to me and has helped a number of times in my woodworking. Our message history is just rife with advice, tool recommendations, and general encouragement. He once video chatted with me on how to make my “Three Rivers Table” so that it didn’t destroy itself with seasonal wood movement, drawing out floating tenons on a napkin. Everyone in the community knows what a positive force he is, constantly supporting other makers with shout outs, collaborations, encouragement, trades, and purchases. It doesn’t hurt that he’s part of our brotherhood of PhD scientists moonlighting as artists/craftspeople. Basically he’s my #mancrushmonday.
My idea was to just make a quick little pig or something for when we visited him in Boston. As soon as I started designing it, this “family portrait” idea hit me. Once it did, I really had no choice but to make it. The design snowballed and I ended up spending a couple weeks on it. The idea demanded I finish it as envisioned. That’s just usually how it goes when I get excited about something.

Made from 14 species: African stinkwood (from an antique chair my mother-in-law @sledv_life_rocks bought in South Africa in the 1970s. This is a species that is no longer commercially available due to overharvesting and subsequent protection. It was exterminated on Table mountain, in the shadows of which my wife @tamarynart was partially raised), walnut, bocote, yew, spalted maple, bubinga, ash, cherry, ebony, bloodwood, sumac, aspen, and two unknown species from an exotic hardwood pallet. Designed in Adobe Illustrator and cut it via scrollsaw.

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I can finally reveal my “family portrait” of the Jasper family, consisting of the Copper Pig himself (Paul @copper_pig_fine_woodworking), his wife Vicky (@jasperfarms – the fact that she raises chickens and teaches yoga is all I knew about her), their daughter the talented Copper Piglet, and of course Henry, their furry son. This whole project came about because we had a trip to Boston planned for a family reunion. I had mentioned it to Paul a while back and he essentially said “stop on by!!”. Paul has been a huge inspiration to me and has helped a number of times in my woodworking. Our message history is just rife with advice, tool recommendations, and general encouragement. He once video chatted with me on how to make my “Three Rivers Table” so that it didn’t destroy itself with seasonal wood movement, drawing out floating tenons on a napkin. Everyone in the community knows what a positive force he is, constantly supporting other makers with shout outs, collaborations, encouragement, trades, and purchases. It doesn’t hurt that he’s part of our brotherhood of PhD scientists moonlighting as artists/craftspeople. Basically he’s my #mancrushmonday. My idea was to just make a quick little pig or something for when we visited him in Boston. As soon as I started designing it, this “family portrait” idea hit me. Once it did, I really had no choice but to make it. The design snowballed and I ended up spending a couple weeks on it. The idea demanded I finish it as envisioned. That’s just usually how it goes when I get excited about something. Made from 14 species: African stinkwood (from an antique chair my mother-in-law @sledv_life_rocks bought in South Africa in the 1970s. This is a species that is no longer commercially available due to overharvesting and subsequent protection. It was exterminated on Table mountain, in the shadows of which my wife @tamarynart was partially raised), walnut, bocote, yew, spalted maple, bubinga, ash, cherry, ebony, bloodwood, sumac, aspen, and two unknown species from an exotic hardwood pallet. Designed in Adobe Illustrator and cut it via scrollsaw. #pittsburghwoodworking#scrollsawart#intarsia#woodworking#woodart

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Jun 04

Flower jewelry bowl from walnut

Flower jewelry bowl from walnut

I carved this little jewelry bowl from a walnut cookie I cut from a piece of firewood (found on the side of the road in my neighborhood). I made this on a whim just to have a little something to carve on while enjoying the weather. It’s intended as a temporary bowl for when @tamarynart takes off her earrings in the living room. Which is often.
Carved with a handful of chisels, gouges, and at least 6 different @saburrtooth burrs. I also did a fair bit of pyrography on it, but you can really only see it when you look closely. Finished with @odiesoil.