Michael Flood Woodworker

09/07/2020

Super laborious restoration of a 150 year old butcher block with half of the original legs and a new, but antiqued mobile base added.

01/17/2020

Are your joints aching? Creaking? Falling apart?
Usually not too complicated to repair, with or without refinishing.
Estimates can be made with a few photos.

01/05/2020

Build it and they will come?
A project commissioned by the Audubon Society and the DCNR Bureau of Forestry: create a 16ft high stand for an Osprey nest on an island in the Delaware River atop a 30ft high abandoned concrete abutment south of Raubsville Pa.
The year was 1992.
Several floods, and a couple of hurricanes later, my stand still waits...

10/03/2019

Edward Willis Redfield (1865 - 1965) was an American Impressionist landscape painter and member of the art colony at New Hope, Pennsylvania. The heavy cast iron adjustable base for this table was from his studio and long saved by the well known New Hope abstract expressionist painter Pat Martin.
I was commissioned to design and create a top for the handsomely rusting base.
The wooden top and apron were fashioned from salvaged mahogany poach boards, themselves barged from Cuba or the Honduras around 1800. (Cuba being one of the main sources of mahogany for extravagant homes in the early nineteenth century.)
The central slate insert was formed from a piece of thick, mid 20th century school chalk board. (I wonder what great eruditions were once scribed across it before I stored it and polished it for its unlikely fate.)
The cast iron cross brace on the underside was also saved with the original hardware- but broken. Credit for the expert welding goes to Wil DeGroot, of the incomparable Auto Body Exoticars USA.

08/12/2019

07/28/2019

I immensely enjoy bringing renewed life to antiques or artifacts of different sorts. Here’s the final phase of a lamp which is soon to have a lovely shade.
Most of the components, battered, split and crusty had been saved for many years by its current owner with the hope it could be one day restored. The parts had come from a very famous former owner- William Langston Lathrop, (1859 - 1938), the American Impressionist landscape painter and founder of the art colony at New Hope Pennsylvania.
In addition to extensive cleaning and the careful preservation of splits from aging, restaining and finishing, two sections were recreated on my lathe as “best guess”. Can you guess which parts they are?

06/12/2019

I’ve recently completed this armoire constructed in true Stickley style with accents on all joinery- through tenons and pegged joints. White Oak with Sapele interior floor and ceiling. The large drawer rides on polished maple runners and boasts hand cut half blind and through dovetails. This armoire is also unique in that it is sectional. The upper wardrobe section rests on pegs formed on the top of each lower leg and is secured with a removable square peg.

05/15/2019

https://earthsky.org/earth/north-america-oldest-trees-bald-cypress?utm_source=EarthSky+News&utm_campaign=dea2ed58ca-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2018_02_02_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_c643945d79-dea2ed58ca-393642861

Scientists say a bald cypress tree in the North Carolina wetlands is at least 2,624 years old.

11/13/2018

From my archives:
a book-matched cherry counter top with a unique granite vessel sink.

10/29/2018

This is a simple but elegant side table which was commissioned in memoriam of my clients husband.
She described the tree as from their own property and that he had planned a project similar.
Walnut, lacquer finish.