A Visit to Winterthur

Over the summer the family and I headed out to Winterthur.  WInterthur is the historic home of the Dupont fmaily which has gardens and a museum.  They have a decent amoutn of furniture on exhibit and two nice woodworking exhibits, one of which is the Dominy shop.  The Dominy shop is an intact woodworking shop that was discovered undisturbed since the 1900's.  For woodworking this is a great place to visit.

This display is a full tool chest including the chest and its contents.

These are two furniture examples that were displayed with the tool chest, I cannot recall if they related.

These are two 17th century carved pieces.

The next display we looked at was the Dominy shop.  It is very cool to see a period shop fully setup as it would have been at the time.

These are some patterns used in chair making.

 Here were some really nice pieces that actually came out of the Dominy shop.

This was a very fun trip that had a good bit of woodworking history.  There is much more to see at Winterthur than the woodworking exhibits, but of course being a woodworker I found these the most interesting.

Shaker End Table

This is my most recent project.  It is a shaker style end table based on the one shown in How to Build Shaker Furniture by Tom Moser.  I altered the dimensions so that the top is larger at 22"x22" and the carcass enlarged proportionally.  The height is also shortened to 22".

As you can see I also changed the drawer front to curly maple and I used a satin nickel knob rather than a turned cherry knob.

The primary wood is cherry, the drawer front is curly maple, the drawer sides and back are poplar and the drawer bottom is pine.

For the finish I started with 1 coat of tung oil, followed by two coats of garnet shellac.  Finally, I coated it with 3 coats of General Arm-r-Seal satin.

I am very pleased with the way this has turned out, so much so I am currently working on this tables twin.