What a busy week! Above is a shot of everything made in shop over the last four days. Look for studio photos later this weekend. Also, I hope to see you at the Cemetery Gate opening at the Clay Place tonight at six! I know it is going to be a good show.

Wondering why it has been so long since the last update? I have been spending more time than usual working at Berner Industries in the past few weeks. However, this week it is back to the grind stone, literally. I have been sharpening and honing my small palm gouge chisel often over the weekend, as I have been working exclusively on this piece of a live edge coffee table.

As you can see, I am putting a chisel texture over the whole piece as I shape. This is a pretty time consuming task, but it is looking great. After I level and add a few more details, this table will be ready to go to The Clay Place for a show that opens at the end of this month. The artists who participated in Unearthed at the Ice House in October are invited to show the original or newly created work. Of course, my piece of wood was found at Allegheny Cemetery and hopefully will do as well as my last live edge coffee table, which sold in the first few minutes of the show.

While there might not be very much demand for this kind of work, these wood bracelets are a nice side project for the end of the day. Shown above are steam bent cherry, walnut and rosewood. The Bottlebrush Gallery was nice enough to put them in a display case where they might find an appreciative owner.

Well, now that my hands have had a rest, it is back to work! I will post more details of the show later this week and I hope that you can stop by. It should be a wonderful show.

BernerWorks studio had a good week. First off, our on again/off again tech guy Chris Brack spent a few hours in shop building a project in exchange for advice for the relaunch of BernerWorks.com. He is working on a bed frame with built in shelving. I was able to recycle some shipping crates from Berner Industries, so over all, it is a good deal. Also, the production of the Barlow is in full swing. The inner tube jigs work great.


Here we have a MDF curve that is wrapped with inner tube and secured by pegs on either side. This has a couple of advantages. First off, I am using half the material of the previous versions. Also, old inner tubes are plentiful and free. With a six hour cure time, I get a strong laminate with no gaps. The glue excess makes them a tad trying to clean up, but that can be the next step to speed up.

This is the final product. This example is cherry with Brazillian cherry. This weekend, I should be taking a few up to the Bottlebrush Gallery. With a little luck, I should be able to find a few other venues or some word of mouth sales.

I also started on a great new live edge coffee table. I will get pictures up as soon I work it into something recognisable.

Even though I have not been in shop much this past week, I have been getting some good work done. John Metzler at the Urban Tree Forge set me up with the task of generating some ideation sketches and CAD renderings of a table he is working on.

Pictured above is one of the ideas I modeled in clay, photographed and then sketched over. Neat huh?

Also this week, I have been totally revamping the jigs for the Barlow guitar holder. By the end of the week, I will be able to make multiple copies at once in variable sizes. Long story short, I found myself walking out of BikeTek with a dozen free bicycle inner tubes which I am going to use to clamp the slats. I will post pictures of the new jigs and the final products before the end of the week, but they should look something like the original, pictured below.

Happy New Year! I hope your 2009 is off to a great start. I am back in shop this week with a whole slew of new ideas and new materials.


Over the weekend, I slabbed this piece of elm with the intention of doing a series of benches. However, fumigation will take a few weeks and then another month of letting them stabilize before I begin to shape. I can already see some really beautiful grain and opportunities for more butterfly keys. I can see these turning into wonderful projects, but the time frame will be a long one.

The next few days I am going to start experimenting with perforated steel I picked up last week and I will be posting shots of material studies and ideation sketches for my next project. Be sure to check back soon for all the new happenings!

With the holiday season in full swing, I have been taking some time off to spend with family and friends. I spent last week working at Berner Industries where I came across some really neat material.

Pictured above is perforated stainless steel belt. It is really flexible, has neat surface quality and should made a great detail to my next project. As of now, I have three sections that will be going into a coffee table and two matching chairs.

Also over the weekend, almost all of my current furniture and sculpture pieces were put on display at the Bottlebrush Gallery and Shop in Harmony, PA. Be sure to check back soon for upcoming projects and new ideas. Also, BernerWorks.com has been updated with photos of completed projects.

Another busy week here at BernerWorks! Be sure to check out BernerWorks.com for the final photos and pricing of projects completed last week.

This week will see the production of a few Barlow guitar holders. This design was a custom order a few months back, but demand has been good enough to do some jig making to speed up production.

The building block set is coming to a close. This project got out of control and ended up being an 80 piece set. Even though it was more time consuming than I predicted, the final product was worth it. It will be sad to see the set leave shop. Carefree building and demolition is such a great stress reliever.

Finally, the cherry shelf just needs to be properly photographed. Most of the production time went into the finish, which was a good call because it has wonderful grain patterns. Over the weekend I took the time to put up a faux wall, on which I will be shooting this piece and a few other shelves I have in shop.

Also this week, I will be hunting for more local materials. Dimensional and live edge wood, granite slab and more steel hardware are all on the shopping list.