Here are a few pics of what Ive worked on over the last 2 years. I used to work at a cabinet shop and got sick of building boxes all day so I started making some of my own stuff to distribute to family members. Hope you guys like it. Its pretty intimidating put this up against some of the stuff Ive been looking at for the last couple hours.

Remember what you paid for this comment but...

I see no reason for you to be intimidated. Very cool stuff. Some of us are still years away from stuff half that nice. Thanks for posting.

very nice work!

what caught my eye was putting your own personal sense of design style, on functional furniture. Your table looked and acted like a table, but is you added your own style to it.


How did you hang the wall unit?

Thanks. I am very modest. I know I can put out quality pieces but when I look around this forum and see some of the more traditional pieces and all of the work that goes into that, I feel like I still have a lot more to learn when it comes to this stuff. But, I also think you can never know all there is to know so I will always be learning.

The thing that seems to bother me the most about the table with the flowers is that it just appears to be bow-legged. I dont know if I left too much material up top or the legs got too thin toward the middle or what, it just looks off to me.

The wall units are hung with wall cleats that I screwed to the wall and left a recess in each one to accept it, then screwed into from the bottom so the screws arent as noticeable.

I also wanted to add that that Marine Corps table consists of about 400 individual pieces of veneer.

Here is something else I have been working on for a while. I still need to figure out how to get the drawer to pull out smoothly. Right now it just seems I have to force it open. I did it with sliding dovetails. I dont know if wax would help or hurt. You can also see the front where the drawer meets the frame sags just slightly. I think I need to add in some kind of hidden reinforcement. I need to put something between the braces to cover the drawer when it is closed anyways so I am hoping that this will take care of all of the above problems. I only just now thought that the sagging could be a reason for the drawer being hard to pull out.

Anyway, enjoy, and as always, please, any tips, pointers, suggestions, comments and remarks are welcome.

Nicely done Mr. Hatfield.

that fish is spectacular!

regarding the legs. ifr you can post some other pic of them looking straight on. (as if you drew them on paper) maybe we can talk about them inthe design forum.

you used sliding dovetails for draw runners?

Thank you both.

I will get some other pics of the table in question.

Yes, I did use sliding dovetails for the drawer runners. Is that a bad idea?

Nice pieces. I like the block mottle makore marine table.

Aside from what I assume appears to be abalone, what did you use for the body of the coy fish?

Youre right, the "water" is blue paua abalone. The rest is made of different colors of mother-of-pearl. The back fin is black m.o.p., the small parts around the mouth are gold m.o.p. and the rest is white m.o.p. that is dyed.

where did you get the mother of pearl?

I got it from Andy DePaule, her is a link to his webpage http://www.luthiersupply.com/ It is a luthier supply site, I also build guitars from time to time. Andy is really nice though, if you order from them you will have to call in your order and if you talk over your idea with him hes pretty good at picking out the right size pieces for you and pieces with the right color or effect for your project. Also notice that he is in the Pacific Time Zone if you do call, he can be hard to get ahold of but usually calls you back the same day.

Beautiful work! All of the pieces shown in the pictures are top notch! We Hatfield's do have talent. I would like to see some pics of your guitars also, I bet they are beautiful also. More pics please.

Ballard Pops