What a great day it has been.

Well I woke up this morning thinking it was going to be a good weekend. Having had a OK week, trying to get Nalu 2.0 worked out. I made some seats out of plywood that I made myself also. The seats are a lot stronger than the last ones that I made. But squaring them up has proven to be a little bit difficult. This is because I made the plywood out of 1mm thick veneers. I had to edge glue 2 pieces together to give the width that I needed. But because nothing starts off square it's had to get it squared. But I think that I should be able to get them ready.

I have to thank my good friend Gregg Deal @ GSon Studios. He has helped me out to get my website up so that I can test out the waters and get some feedback. So right now it is up and linked through his site and company, here's the link:

www.gsonstudios.com/client/kaleo/Intro.swf

Just copy and paste this link into you browser. I couldn't get it to become a active link.


So please let me know what you all think about it.

Last but defiantly not least, I received a very unexpected phone call this morning. Usually on Saturday morning my Mom calls to say hello and talk. So when the phone rang at about 10:00 am our time I thought nothing about it. So when I picked up the phone and heard is this Kaleo, I thought "I wonder who this is" Telemarketers never get my name right, so this person must know me. Well it was The Design Centre, the gallery that I have my Nalu stools at, informing that they had just sold a set of 4 stools and that they have a deposit and they need to be ready in 4-6 weeks.



So it's official, my first sale and now I am a furniture maker. Needless to say I am just over the moon about this. The people that bought them are from Melbourne. I still can't believe that someone picked my stool over the 5 other types of stools that are in there. I guess what it does is gives me hope for the future, which is coming up way to fast.

Nalu 2.0

Well I spent the day today making a true to life mock up of the new Nalu stool. Which I am calling Nalu 2.0. I thought I would make a few adjustments to it for the competition in Hobart.



I have thinned it out alot. Instead of the whole thing being 30mm thick it is now 25mm thick. The sides are now 45mm wide instead of 55mm. The top rails and the feet also now taper from back to front, and then they are rounded into the front legs. So there is a real gentle curve in the inside corners. I think that this gives the stool a really light feel. I made it so that I could test the strength to make sure it holds up. So far so good. Tomorrow I am going to stand on it to see what happens. I made this mock up out of Tasmanian Blackwood. I think it looks really good, and plan to make the next set for the show out of Blackwood. From start to finish on this mock up took a total of 1.5 hours. I hope to be able to make the next three in about 15 total hours with seats and everything. The seats for these new stools with be attached with a stainless steel spacer between the stool and the seat. I think this will give a really nice touch. We shall see.

The Chair is finally done-

Well today marked the end of our chair project. Needless to say that I wasn't really into this project. I spent the first 2 weeks designing a chair that I really didn't like, but thought that I had to build. I worked on it and built a prototype. Still I didn't like it. Then I spent a week attempting to build it. But I was moving really slow with it.

Last weekend I decided to redesign and make a chair that I thought would be cool. So this is the result.




It is made with Tasmania Blackwood and Brazilan Walnut. It's a real simple design, just a couple of frames with rails in which the seat sits on. I had a real fun time shaping the seat. I don't have a good picture of it, but I shaped the seat and the back by hand. It's real subtle but nice. The back is also on a pivot, so when you sit into the chair the back form to your angle of sit.



Well I have about 3 weeks to get a new set of stools together with a few design changes. I am going to make a new set for the exhibition in Hobart. So this should be fun. I'll keep you up to date with how it goes.

Until then...

Great News.. (for me)

Well today I found out about the juried exhibition in Hobart, Tasmania, and I got in. I received an email from the event organizers telling my that I had made the cut. There were 24 entries and they narrowed it down to 12 to participate in the show. Needless to say I am extremely excited to just be in the show. There are some really big names in Australian Furniture Designers in this show. Leon Saduben who was a guest instructor at our school last year. Along with a few designers from Tassie here, Kevin Perkins and Brenon Sharpe. So I am just happy to be in such company. But the 1 in 12 chance to win 7000.00 dollars isn't bad either.

I was told that the judges are interested in me displaying my Nalu Stools. So I will either make a few new ones, all from different timbers, or hope to possibly display my chair. ( when it's done ).



On the chair front, I spent the weekend redesigning it, because I just wasn't feeling the last one. And I should have it done here by the end of the week. I will take a few pictures of the progress. I actually hope to make a short video on the design and making process of this piece. So we'll see if that happens. Anyways, until next time.

Kaleo

Craft in America

I found this the other day. There is what looks to be a great documentry coming to PBS in America on May 30. It's a 3 part series, but they are showing the whole thing that night starting at 8pm. It's called Craft in America. It focuses on all sorts of crafts, but with my interests it willhave interviews with Sam Maloof and George Nakasihma. Here is a great preview for the show. It's a bit long so bare with it, it's worth it.

Shop Tour

I told you that finding out how to upload video was going to change things. Thanks to our friends at Lumberjocks.com, they are sponsoring another contest. They have asked that we give a video tour of our shop. So I thought take the challenge and make a short movie to enter. I also thought this is a good way to let you all see a little part of my daily life. So I hope you enjoy and please let me know what you think, and any ideas you might have for other videos.

kalafinefurniture@gmail.com

Click To Play

Just a quick overview of a typical day in my life. At least a typical day when school is involved. This doesn't include my daily family life at all.

Kaleo

Testing a new idea..

This has nothing to do with woodworking or furniture making, but it could lead to some cool things here. First I have to thank Marc Spagnola at The Woodwhisperer Video Blog. Here had a short video on how to upload your videos. So Marc if you read this thanks alot.

The video is a few shorts take with our digital camera, so the quality is not that good. But they can only get better. If you have any ideas of things you might want to see, let me know and I will see what I can do to help out. Please to be enjoying.

Click To Play

A few short movies and picture from our digital camera. The quailty isn't very good, but this is an experiment.

Website

I thought I would post a screenshot of the homepage of my upcoming website. I hope to have it all worked out here in the next 4 weeks or so. I have noticed that I love learning how to create and design websites. I really like the idea that I can design and create the furniture and also design and control how one looks at it on the web. I hope to be able to get better at web design to maybe be able to do a little design on the side.

Anyways let me know what you think of the look and feel of the homepage. Thanks

A weekly thing

I've noticed this has become a weekly thing. I think that I might have burned myself out. Lately I haven't had a lot of energy for this project. I figured out that for every project that I have had so far, I was flat out for weeks getting it done. Last week was really hard, but this week has been better. I finalized design for my lounge chair, and did what always cheers me up. I started to cut wood.

I rough dimensioned all the wood I need for the chair. Rough because I'm using 38 mm stock or 1.5 inch stock. So I just cleaned all the surfaces and squared up the timber. This is so that I can let the timber sit for a couple of days and do all the moving that it wants, and them I can mill it down to final dimension after.

I've decided to use Tasmania Blackwood for the chair. I have a really nice bit of Brazil an Walnut that I wanted to use. Because I really want a nice dark timber. But I just don't have enough to do the chair. And Blackwood is the darkest timber that they have here in Tasmania. It's a beautiful wood, but I might have to stain it to the color that I want.

Sorry about the lack of pictures, but I haven't had anything really to photograph yet. I am only suppose to have the next 2 weeks to built this chair. But at the rate that I am going right now I'll have to use the extra couple of weeks before the exhibition to finish the chair and the ottoman that I plan to build.

So wish me luck!!