The name "Sissy Hammer"-

In my line of work, I rarely use a hammer. The only hammer I have in my tool bags is not usually up to peoples expectations of a normal hammer-in fact, it is more like a toy hammer.
I have had people at job sites ask to borrow a hammer and when I hand them mine, they usually laugh. One guy actually said when he returned it, "That's kind of a sissy hammer."

Gluing up a solid cherry counter top. 1 1/4"x 23"x 11'10". My friend Yann Buchanan selected and milled the lumber for this. It came out very elegant. We did have a hard time finding nice, clear long pieces of cherry for this slab. We suspect a lot of the really prime lumber stays back East.

Backless shelving installed.

The following day (after the epo0xy had cured)we drove fasteners through the shelving and the aluminum (1 1/4" #10's) every 10" or so. This gave a significant mechanical attachment to the angled metal.
Then I went ahead and took the supports out-
It was solid! It did not even move a 64th. Awesome.

Backless shelving-engineering feat

Installing shelving without a back presents many challenges. Squareness, for one needs to be paid much attention to.
Structural integrity is the hardest challenge though. How does one engineer a sturdy backless shelf? By having a sound design and then P creating precisely machined parts and attention to precision upon install...thats how.
This shelf spanned 11' 7" and was 36" high.

We first set the bottom piece- it need to be scribed to some existing cabinetry on one side and the wall on the other.

The top and bottom pieces had a groove milled to accept the 1 1/2" leg of a piece of angle aluminum that was attached to the wall very securely (perhaps more on that later as it was a key element of the engineering).
Everything was fit and attached together, then we took it apart, glued all the joints, filled the grooves with epoxy (Proset), and let it sit overnight to cure.

The whole thing was supported from below by some simple telescoping support devices we devised on an earlier project. They allow sturdy support but the ability to shorten and remove them when the time comes.
The small pieces you see place on the top run are off cuts from the actual top shelf and allowed us to place our aluminum angle in the right place. We had used the same technique on the bottom run.

Here's another. Fancy shmancy stuff.

Here they are installed. We did all the interior furniture , paneling and overhead work for this boat.
It turned out beautifully.

I'll post some more stuff from my current project, but I thought I'd share some older work. Here are some photos of some cool doors my friend Art and I made a year ago for a 150' yacht in New Orleans. There were 18 doors in total.

Door parts.

These are parts of the peninsula for the Foster kitchen. They came out well.The trick was to not have any plain sawn grain showing, yet have a durable edge. In other words, not just a 1/32nd veneer edge exposed.Those are cute little light switch plates that house light controls for the kitchen and dining room. My title page has a close up photo of them and a clue as to how I constructed them. Fun detail.