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Work continues on the Rhode Island hall end tables

Here are the reclaimed Douglas fir beams from the building after being resawn, but before milling. We think they're from an addition to the building from 1870, about 30 years after the building was erected in 1838.
Our project is to build several different pieces of furniture for the building, which is being renovated, using the salvaged lumber from the building.


Amazingly, there are still pockets of wet sap in the wood that was probably cut about 140 years ago.

We'll all become accustomed to Douglas fir's distinctive smell, which we'll be smelling for the next 7 weeks.





Because of massive checking in the beams, we've had to mill down a fairly large amount of wood for our three small end tables. We're slowly learning the tricks of working with Douglas fir, which is more often used in construction and framing rather than fine woodworking.
















At the end of the day, we've got our 3 table tops clamped and glued up, and the legs are tapered and ready to be mortised and tenoned in tomorrow morning.
We're trying to get the tables completely assembled by Thursday, so we've got a lot of work ahead of us in the next couple of days.

Summer school TAs

Miles and Peter just finished helping with a Brown University summer school class for high school students. The class was an introduction to design course and the students' final project was to design and construct an MDF table. We were really impressed with the creativity of the designs and the quality of the builds, considering the fact that many of the students had no previous experience in a wood shop.

first Bilt project

Our first project is completed! The built-in bathroom shelving system, mentioned in our previous post, was recently installed by Pete and Alex. The asymmetrical profile was designed to fit the oddly shaped corner of the apartment, providing a unique and efficient storage solution.

Bilt is currently working on two projects:


The first is a bathroom cabinet for a local client. The piece has been built for a few weeks now but we've been holding off on finishing the project as we waited for the correct paint. After getting a few coats of primer on the cabinet, we'll paint most of the piece the color of the bathroom trim but accent the linear face of the piece with a darker color.



The other pieces we're currently working on are the occasional tables for Rhode Island Hall. We've been milling the Douglas Fir beams into workable pieces, trying to maintain the original character of the wood while avoiding the checks and other irregularities that are either too distracting or will compromise the structure of the furniture. Peter has been hard at work handplaning the 3" blocks that will become the table tops.

Bio: Pete Fallon

Intersection Lamp

Untitled (table)

Scenic Design and construction for Hamletmachine

Bio: Miles Fujiki

Untitled (Chair)




Untitled (architectural model)

Topographical Table