Welcome to Medullary Ray

Welcome to my blog about my life as a woodworker. I make gorgeous furniture and other useful things out of wood. Its not a lofty job, but I love merging creativity, skill and furniture. Please share this post in some way to help me spread the word about my work. I also provide many helpful links and ideas about marketing your own work. I have been in business most of my life. I began making cabinets, then building and renovating homes and now I am happily designing and crafting furniture.  Being a furniture maker is a perfect fit for me and business is starting to flow after a long grueling start up.  Businesses change all the time. We adapt to our current situation in order to grow or maintain or reduce, depending on what is needed for the best profit margin or other gain. In today's market I am constantly promoting my work in order to find clients rather than compromise the integrity of my work. Showing online is one way that woodworkers are trying to sell their...

Recently I was reminded of one of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s most famous lines "I have a dream" . "So even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream" Can you hear it? "It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream, I have a dream" . I hear it in my head just the way he said it, don't you? Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. speaking into one of those old fashioned microphones with passion and conviction and  eloquence. He kept repeating that phrase " I have a dream ". What would he say today? I was almost 2 when he gave that speech in August of 1963. No, I don't remember hearing the speech live. But all my life I have heard it in movies and documentaries and radio. Do you remember how you felt hearing his words, listening to his speech? He dared to challenge a long held institution to free a group of oppressed people. Do you recall feeling like your own dreams were within reach? If only it were possible...

Auto mechanics are fairly accustomed to people wandering into their shops with broken down cars or maybe the number one visitor is trying to find directions somewhere. I've done it, have you? In my wood shop I am pretty tucked away and if I have my doors shut it often means I'm concentrating! But occasionally I'll get a visitor. Woodworking is one of those things that many people are curious about. They like to look. Changing out a fuel filter is a bit less romanticized in our culture, wouldn't you say? One day I was busy working on the finish of my Mondrian Inspiration (the post right before this post) and in walks a computer engineer. She immediately was drawn to it, said how beautiful it was, loved touching it, and told me about how it reminded her of circuit boards. I could understand that even with minimal information about circuits. The next time she saw it we closed a deal on making a dining room table specifically with her circuit board designs. She has be...

Buy now  seats 8 comfortably, 41" wide, 85 3/4" long 29" high. Made from re-purposed fir floor beams, Jatoba, American Cherry, Walnut and Quarter-sawn fir. A good friend recently told me that when she worked in an Art Museum she met a collector who said that he really wanted to collect art so he created one by NEVER GOING OUT TO EAT. Never. All that money he saved and spent on ART. Well, this table is perfect for someone like him. And I would think he would be very happy to use a part of his collection! This is not just any dining room table! This is a piece of art waiting to inspire you each day. I'm not sure how the idea began but I was starting to mill some fir beams that I had removed from my house thinking I would make a workbench. I assumed they would be similar to the 4 x 4's that we buy today with wide grain. As I began milling and inspecting each one I soon realized that I had enough fine wood to make an interesting table. Then somehow, perhaps...

Documenting what we produce as Makers is as important as creating! Sometimes that is a great challenge. Equipment and space are crucial to getting the results we desire. I often am so exhausted after a job that I forget to take photos altogether. I have forgotten so many times that I now give myself a reward when I remember! Then there are those times when I take a thousand shots and not one of them are truly representing what I see before me. No matter what, taking the photos has it's own ups and downs. If you can afford to hire a photographer  then by all means do! Give them plenty of notice when you think you will be ready for them. Good communication goes a long way! If you find a good photographer you can afford, their work can give your work a power boost! Sending a project off into the world requires letting go. Taking the photos myself helps me golf this transition. I get to look over every aspect of the work and glorify the best view, that place where you h...

check out my post titled "Documenting Our Work" to read more about this furniture Made from American Cherry this is a Dresser which incorporates a headboard and more. The clients who commissioned me to build this have a bed in the middle of their room with a four sided vaulted ceiling reaching its peak in the center. As you can see this is much more than any old headboard. It is also a dresser, two bedside tables, reading lights, bed cubby holes (at the top of the pillow area), and it is a wire chase for any electronics you may want to store in the cubbies. I might as well add that the headboard on top is a sculpture.  Stay tuned! Today was photo day so I have many photos to filter through and work on. I will doctor up the background on the pic here and remove the wheels from the dollies! :-) This measures about 8' 4 1/2" in length, aprox 28" deep and under 5' in total height. Commission me to build your next furniture!

Creativity is like riding a bike. Y ou might be a little rusty at first, you may even fear falling off, but then you feel the wind through your hair, you find your balance and wonder why you haven’t ridden in years! More and more people are embracing creativity in some way because they feel the need for connection, expression and the acknowledgement of who we are. The act of being creative requires us to take risks. Most of us learn by the time we are in middle school that we had better stay comfortable and safe and not take any more creative risks. Somehow, transitioning from stick figures to realism is a daunting task. Go figure! We Americans want successful results right away. Do you know some people spend their lives drawing the figure? Somehow, as our brains develop, we never make it back to the drawing table and we continue playing it safe. Making furniture is already a bunch of hard work, why make it even more difficult by changing the design? I could be mak...