Thursday, August 21, 2008

I love Serendipity!


















I found this piece of furniture at a thrift shop and immediately saw it as a carving station extraordinaire.  It already had the slanted top and I put on some wheels and drilled holes for the pegs so the block can be held steady in different positions and glued on some non-slip material.  I don't know if I'll stand or sit as I haven't tried it out yet.  I love the fact that it has drawers down both sides for tools, etc.   I wonder how I can customize it some more--maybe a corkboard above the desktop to hold references for carving?  Maybe some small pegboard to hold stuff?   The brakes on the wheels need some adjusting so they work better...

Sunday, August 17, 2008


It's taken some time, but I'm moved into my new 1/2 size studio space where I've moved all my letterpress stuff.  Once I had the presses and type and so on moved over, I realized I needed a work table.   Using a plan found online, my husband and I built this awesome and quite massive table.  The plans had a few mistakes in the measurements but we managed to work around them.  My enhancement was to put on wheels.  I collect them off of discarded metal things at our town's recycling center.  I look for the ball bearing kind and fortunately I had four nice ones.  They aren't the kind that have brakes which we were worried about.  The table moves easily but I think it's stable enough without the brakes.   The stain I first put on  emphasized the plywood aspect too much, so I painted over it with a nice neutral greenish gray.   The etching press in the background is not mine--it's in the other half of the studio which belongs to another artist.
Now, it's time to get some work done!