Thread: Sheoak hall/entrance table

Wow! That is a gorgeous piece!!!

Hi Driftit,

What they all said. Very impressive. I likes it.

Cheers
Pops

Yes, that's awesome looking piece.

Driftit.......congratulations on the design, the workmanship and the execution. Inspiring to say the least.

thanks! but i wouldnt say inspiring. has a long way to go with ALOT of improvement

Very nice work.

That is stunning Driftit!

Regards
Anthony

Umm - maybe invest in a straight edge next?

Seriously that's some lovely work.

I have seen straight furniture look like that after I came home really drunk one night and couldn't see straight!

The workmanship is great - the timber really beautiful - too me the design is Godawful - and I couldn't live with it, but that's just me - others will love it and that's the thing about furniture design, we all have different tastes, and some who likes that will likely pay a small fortune for it.

The whole design thing is i think where many good wood workers fall down in the design department as a generalization -(and not referring too this piece).

Some of the wizzkid designers with degrees from uni and a computer can design anything but it might not be practical to construct if they don't have experience with the wood properties and don't understand that short grained timbers wont take a certain radius bend etc.

The people who do know that usually don't do design and the people who design don't know wood.

Furniture design is an area where many great projects fail - before the first piece of wood is cut - to ME (for my own individual tastes) this project falls into that category - a terrible design, built beautifully, from the best timbers, is at the end of the day, a terrible piece of furniture.

I couldn't "live" with that in my home because it is unbalanced IMHO.

Like I said - others would love it and fight to the death over it to own it and to their eye it would be the most elegant and beautiful piece.

Design is a area of woodworking that's sadly lacking these days in my experience.

I guess I'll get criticized for saying what I think - but you get that, 20 years making solid timber furniture from scratch at least gives me the right to express an opinion - heck I even made pieces on commission that hated but the customer loved and specifically wanted too their design - I can't help it if their taste is in their boots.

I've made stuff I loved that others hated.

I well remember one piece that I've kept for many years because no one would buy it.

With our showroom and the numbers of tourists who would come thru and visit - they all wanted to see large slab jarrah tables usually - and we kept a couple in stock all the time - because it drew the punters.

The reality was none of them (less than 1%) could afford one or had a house that it would look good in, but that didn't stop them kicking the tires and dreaming(read wasting my time when I could have been designing or building furniture).

Often they would console themselves - and buy something small to take home - as a consolation prize that they weren't well enough heeled to buy such a table even if they did love how they look.

Sprat too catch a mackerel.

We made a LOT of coffee tables and sold a lot of them too - BUT its amazing how often the excuse was that "ohh we WOULD buy it but we don't have room in the vehicle etc - we are on holidays and the boots full"

We'd offer to deliver it for free and suddenly then there was a new excuse.

I got so tired of this that one day I decided to make a sheoke coffee table that folded down into a suitcase size - something that would fit on a rear parcel shelf of even a fully loaded vehicle.

Took me weeks part time to design a folding mechanism out of sheoke that when extended held 8 bottles of wine in a wine rack - the other 4 bottles making up the legs of the collapsible coffee table.

So the idea was they could go to the southwest for the long weekend / Easter etc - collect a dozen botts of wine from all the various winery's, buy a folding coffee table and when they got home set it up in the lounge or wherever and have a lovely sheoke table with a winerack in it that held 12 bottles from the region.

As you drunk a bottle you swapped the empty with one of the 4 that made up the legs of the table, and kept working your way thru the rest of the dozen.

When they were all empty you throw out the dozen empties and fold the table and put it away until your next trip south into the wine country and you come home with a dozen bottles.

Ahh - the number of people who toured the showroom and made comments about "if only we had roomn in the car we'd take a coffee table home with us - I'd whip out the foldiong sheoke table and their jaws would drop and their lie would be exposed for just what it was - all lies.

I guess I built it really because I got tired of people pissing down my leg and telling me it was raining! You do get tired of it eventually and after 20 years of the same crap over and over - it wears thin.

But the whole concept in itself was sound, but just another one of my "head in the clouds - ass in the gutter R us enterprises", great ideas consigned too the scap bin of life, along with ball bras, and semen flavoring chewing gum!

Yup yup yup - design is where it is all at - and some get it and some don't.

That's what makes the world go round at the end of the day!

We are all individuals - yeah, all 6 billion of us on this planet!

so...

Timber selection = 10
Manufacture & finish = 10
Design = 8

That's my rating but I'm sure others would see it differently.

Had you incorporated the golden mean ratio into those free flowing curves etc - I'd have seen it as more balanced and given the design a 10 as well, your trying too emulate nature in your free flowing design without studying nature and incorporating her dimensional ratio into the design IMHO.

Every thing in nature demonstrates this ratio from the placement of leaves along a stem too the shape of flowers too the spiral of a shell.

The design in the table would look more natural (less contrived?) IMHO (albeit it does look lovely in its free flowing lines) if it incorporated this ratio in its proportions and again in it's curves.

It looks a little more Fibonacci sequence too me, than Golden mean ratio in its proportions and lines.

A very close, but "no cigar" result from me.

Sorry - if we were all the same it would be a dull old world now wouldn't it?

Cheers!

Ahhhhhhhhhhh..TT......seeing as you have painted the biggest target imaginable on your back I think it only fair you put up some pics of your own work for critique.

Originally Posted by Timeless Timber

It looks a little more Fibonacci sequence too me, than Golden mean ratio in its proportions and lines.

This is where amateur designers and also many professional woodworkers with no design background fail miserably. The rely too heavily on the Golden Mean and Fib thinking they have cracked it and produced something wonderful. I hope you don’t fall into this category TT.

I love driftits designs and he has an excellent future in the industry. You have to remember, students are encouraged to be a bit “out there” and explore and push their limits as far as possible. Whilst not to everyone’s taste, I think he has done a terrific job, and to me created a nice balanced hall table of contemporary art nouveau style.

I just call it as i see it.

I couldn't "live" with that in my home because it is unbalanced IMHO.

It seems its just me then - but to ME - the right hand end of that table looks heavy compared too the left hand end!

It has "more wood" in that support skirt at the right hand end and its separated further apart - thus the RH end looks heavy while the left hand end looks light - less wood closer together equals less strength - to me the left hand end looks weak in comparison to the right hand end.

I couldn't live with that imbalance in my house, it would drive me nutso.

I learned my trade under my ol man for 20 years and he was a master builder - he could spot a door jamb out of wind from a mile away and would in fact push down a new layed block wall with his foot, and make his bricklayers re lay it at their time and expense if they installed the door jamb into the wall out of wind - meaning that the fixing carpenters would have to waste hours hanging the door by throwing the hing to make it close.

His motto, if your going to do it, do it right - because the mistake you leave the next guy has too fix!.

I guess I inherited his like for plumb and square and true - the mark of any good tradesman.

The only time I could imagine a piece of furniture "deliberately out of balance like that" is if I were either drunk or under the influence of hallucinogenic psychotropic drugs.

I did say at the outset, that my tastes won't be the same as everyone else's.

If you don't like that then better get used too it, I don't tailor my opinions to conform with the crowd, I am sorry. I know what I like and dislike.

I like the timber and the workmanship seems first class - the design to me, sucks because I perceive it too be "out of balance' (at the right hand end) - and that bugs me! I could not live with that in my house, it would irk me beyond tolerance if i had to view it every day.

Maybe people with less regimented tastes would love it as many seem too do.

Just not this little black duck.

I also happen too think the painting Blue Poles that our Govt paid some dweeb a million bucks for and hung in the national gallery is crap and aint afraid to say so.

I just call em as I see em - and that's not intended as a personal attack on anyone - its how I view the photos shown here is all.

I've had my own business showroom gallery and viewed many others over the years - and i know what i like and dislike in furniture.

That one came close to getting the 100%, 30/30, marks from me - it had a LOT of potential that was lost at the design stage IMHO accounting for the 93.3% score i allotted it!.

So I'm to be pilloried for expressing a counter opinion to the mob, for dissenting by a mere 6.7% to the herd?

Looks like I picked the wrong forum full of sheep then doesn't it?

I guess not one of you ever had an original opinion of your own then?

Didn't think so.

Cheers!

Great work Driftit

i'm a little curious now, do you have a website timeless timber or can you post some photo's of your work by any chance? would like to see your works.

That is very beautiful! Well done.