The Beginning - With help from Darrell Peart
I've been an admirer of Greene and Greene style of furniture for a long time. I love the soft edges and exposed joinery and I think Greene and Greene were masters at proportions which is where I feel I am the weakest when it comes to design. I've been wanting to take my woodworking up a notch and try something a little more challenging than the stuff I've been doing and improve my design skills so I'd been looking for an appropriate project. When I read Darrell Peart's articles in Woodworking magazine a couple of months ago which included detailed instructions on building his Arched Aurora Night Stand I decided that it's time to try my hand at a Greene and Greene style project and that this would be the perfect project. It is an especially beautiful design using Greene and Greene elements and includes some components that would stretch by building skills, namely, the arched rail. I've done a lot of curved work but combining a cloud lift with an arch would be a bit more difficult than other curves I've done.
Not long after reading those articles I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Darrell is a fellow lumber jock. From the link on his page I discovered his book "Greene and Greene Design Elements for the Workshop" which has very detailed instructions on making various Greene and Greene components plus an interesting history about the brothers. That book combined with his articles will make this project much easier than it otherwise would be.
I actually started this project a few weeks ago. First step was to make the jigs for the arches. In Darrell's article he said "It may take more than one try to get usable results". He wasn't kidding. I didn't have the exact tools he called for in his instructions so I had to improvise on the techniques a little but I managed to get a fit that I was happy with after about 6 attempts. Here's the final jigs plus the first rail:
Second step is to mill the lumber for table. Since this project is requiring a large amount of time making jigs and doing setups I decided I may as well build two tables and I didn't buy enough lumber initially so I've got about half of the parts milled and a new stack of lumber for the rest.
Here's a shot of the legs ready to be mortised (with my new Mortiser), all the rails (ready to be cut with the patterns), and 2 halves of the first top:
And here's a shot that normal people would find pretty boring but I know most lumber jocks get as excited as I do over a stack of lumber so here's what I'll be using for the rest of the parts:
And to cut the tenons I needed to buy a couple of new accessories for my Saw Stop so that I could use the dadoe blade:
I've been an admirer of Greene and Greene style of furniture for a long time. I love the soft edges and exposed joinery and I think Greene and Greene were masters at proportions which is where I feel I am the weakest when it comes to design. I've been wanting to take my woodworking up a notch and try something a little more challenging than the stuff I've been doing and improve my design skills so I'd been looking for an appropriate project. When I read Darrell Peart's articles in Woodworking magazine a couple of months ago which included detailed instructions on building his Arched Aurora Night Stand I decided that it's time to try my hand at a Greene and Greene style project and that this would be the perfect project. It is an especially beautiful design using Greene and Greene elements and includes some components that would stretch by building skills, namely, the arched rail. I've done a lot of curved work but combining a cloud lift with an arch would be a bit more difficult than other curves I've done.
Not long after reading those articles I was pleasantly surprised to discover that Darrell is a fellow lumber jock. From the link on his page I discovered his book "Greene and Greene Design Elements for the Workshop" which has very detailed instructions on making various Greene and Greene components plus an interesting history about the brothers. That book combined with his articles will make this project much easier than it otherwise would be.
I actually started this project a few weeks ago. First step was to make the jigs for the arches. In Darrell's article he said "It may take more than one try to get usable results". He wasn't kidding. I didn't have the exact tools he called for in his instructions so I had to improvise on the techniques a little but I managed to get a fit that I was happy with after about 6 attempts. Here's the final jigs plus the first rail:
Second step is to mill the lumber for table. Since this project is requiring a large amount of time making jigs and doing setups I decided I may as well build two tables and I didn't buy enough lumber initially so I've got about half of the parts milled and a new stack of lumber for the rest.
Here's a shot of the legs ready to be mortised (with my new Mortiser), all the rails (ready to be cut with the patterns), and 2 halves of the first top:
And here's a shot that normal people would find pretty boring but I know most lumber jocks get as excited as I do over a stack of lumber so here's what I'll be using for the rest of the parts:
And to cut the tenons I needed to buy a couple of new accessories for my Saw Stop so that I could use the dadoe blade: