A Trip To Woodworking School

I recently returned from my yearly trip to Marc Adams School of Woodworking. I had a great time taking the class " The Simple beauty of Wood, Field Stone, and Concrete Components with Clay Foster. I really want to add some texture to my work and thought this was a good way to start. This class was almost more of an art class than a woodworking class, you really had to dig into your creative side. Clay Foster was a really good teacher and I would recommend his class to anyone interested in this type of thing. We started the week by each presenting a design for a project to the class and then discussing the project for input from the class as a whole . I decided on a small end table with a field stone top captured by to pieces of mahogany.

                                      This is what I started with for inspiration.

                               I laid the wood on the stone to get an idea of were to cut it.

For the base of the table I decided to make concrete legs and inlay the legs with mahogany. I would have liked to add some of the stone to the legs or at least see if it would have worked but this was the only piece of this type of stone and after cutting it I only had a few small pieces.

  This is the form filled with red dyed concrete (small form to the right is for legs to a small box I have yet to complete)

A couple of the legs out of the form. The wood in the concrete is poplar that will be taken out and replaced with mahogany.

This is the table in the rough form. I still have to add the mahogany to the legs, texture the sides of the wood on the top and in the legs, pin the legs to the top, and of course put some sort of finish on the wood.

             This is a form from a second table I have in the works with a cantilevered top.