Galootish friends:

I am mentally toying with a project that will be third or fourth on the
list, hence maybe late winter if at all.  The overall concept is of a sort
of nouvelle Greek revival coffee table meant to look nothing like Georgian
or Victorian furniture; in other words more like and antiquity than like an
antique:

1) Top is made of two pieces of walnut crotch more or less 1.5 ft wide and
elongated (roughly half-elliptical each) which are butt-joined by means of
hidden butterfly joints on the underside and then cut to form a true ellipse
and highly polished;
2) This is supported by support four arms, two long and two short which in
turn arise out of the neck of;
3) An urn with an elliptical horizontal cross-section (echo the shape of the
top);
4) The urn is fluted; 
5) Four curving  legs come out of the bottom of the urn at a flattened angle
and terminate in delicate claw feet.

Honestly, this is a very big challenge as I have never before done most of
what I propose to do. However, the flatwork including the top,  legs, and
supports are not too worrisome.  My cradles are far more complicated.  What
worries me is the construction of the urn and then the fluting of it.

Initial thought for construction is to start with a set of hollow
cross-sectional templates like we used to do for the hulls of wooden ship
models.  A rough shape would be built up of pieces of walnut glued up to
look something like an old-fashioned contour model of a mountain or a hill.
That would be rasped and chiseled to close to fair, and then finished with
spoke shaves.  PROBLEM  what about the foot and the neck?  They would
ideally be turned, but how does one turn an elliptical shape?

 Anyway, once the thing is faired and smoothed and is true to the templates
it would be time to flute.  I really don't know where to start.  The flutes
would run from the foot to the neck, so they would have to get wider and
narrower as they rose and fell.  I guess one would carefully mark off the
tops and bottoms of the lines where they hit the neck and foot an let the
swell take care of itself.  But how does one cut straight, true lines across
something like that?

Advice from anyone with ideas about how to attack any of the technical
issues in this project is urgent requested and most welcome.  Anyone who
thinks what I have already proposed should be done differently is doubly
welcome.

Joe



Joseph Sullivan