Every workbench needs a vise—or at least they did, until the advent of vacuum clamping. After seeing Guido Einemann’s homegrown table at Holz-Handwerk, we spotted a multitude of more big-dog versions made by Barth Maschinenbau, a Bavarian engineering company whose goal is “to optimize the work processes in both craft and industrial businesses” for furniture- and cabinet-making.
Swiss manufacturer Peka’s no-nonsense tagline, “Fitting and accessories for the kitchen, bathroom and living area” belies a slick line of well-conceived product designed to use every square centimeter of space. The brand has eschewed the particle-board shelves we’ve become accustomed to on Planet Big Box and opted for laser-cut steel, providing the rigidity and durability required for their designs, which all move through space on various axes; they also allow for magnetic, user-configured dividers and cleanable mats.
Their mechanisms also take your post-usage shoves and turn that into a gentle self-closing motion. Check out their Libell line:
While Peka already has a reputation in Europe, for North American designers looking to spec their stuff, you’d have to go through Richelieu, their Quebec-based distributor.
Spotted at Holz-Handwerk.
The phrase “balloon chair” could mean any number of things, really, so h220430’s take fits the bill as well as any of the possibilities (according to their website, the company takes its name from its birthday). If I understand the description correctly, the chair is mounted to the wall, as is its canopy of airless FRP (i.e. non-deflating) balloons, but this scarcely detracts from its visual effect. According to the Tokyo-based design studio, “if you sit in this chair, you’ll be able to think positive thoughts even if you are feeling down.”
And while the “Balloon Chair” might evoke a certain Disney/Pixar film for many of us, it was actually inspired by Albert Lamorisse’s classic featurette Le Ballon Rouge from over half a century prior. The critically acclaimed 1956 fantasy is viewable in full on YouTube, and if you haven’t seen it (as I had not), I highly recommend it:
The “Balloon Chair” will be on view in Milan next week, at the Ventura Hive group exhibition, where we’ll find out exactly how h220430 achieved the floating effect.
Scoope Design is taking small space design to the next level by providing you with only furniture fixture you’ll ever really need. SUPERBAMBI—a chair-turned-table-turned-footstool—is pretty fantastic, with its stark white base and bold orange seat (er, step stool?) support.
The chair is designed so the orange interlocking piece is the only component doing the real moving. By inserting the orange ends into the different pre-cut holes, you can easily transform the piece in no time.
In 1968, the Winkler family patriarch was a cabinetmaker working in his native Austria. He needed something to help him maximize his shop space, particularly where materials and cabinet parts storage was concerned, but could not find existing products on the market to suit his needs; so he set about developing a series of rolling, adjustable storage carts of his own design.
Winkler soon began selling the carts to other cabinet shops, building up a small, successful business in Austria. But it wasn’t until the ’90s that his son took over the operation and hit up their first German trade show, propelling the company into the global market. Jowi, as the company is called, now does business on three continents.
Operating under the motto “We are found in the best joints!” is Hoffman-Schwalbe, a German manufacturer of woodworking machines and a little doohickey called the Hoffman Dovetail Key. The company has cleverly exploited the humble dovetail joint by producing a small, bowtie-like piece in a variety of sizes, and in materials ranging from plastic to metal to wood to rubber.
They then created a line of machines, ranging from handheld to standalone, that are essentially half-dovetail cutters.
Armed with a bag of these Hoffman Dovetail Keys and one of their machines, customers can use the system to join pieces of wood to create everything from picture frames to furniture to structural beams.
A few years ago, I saw a picture of a desk that captured my eye. I can’t remember exactly where I saw it—perhaps it was this very blog—I just remember not being able to stop thinking about it. I searched the Internet to find out who had created this lovely desk and ended up on the website of Manoteca. Now, when I see something that I like, I have to tell the person who is behind it that I like their creation (or what they are wearing, or what they are singing, or what they are drawing, etc.) Call it what you will, OCD if you wish.
So I found the e-mail address for the person behind the brand, and it turned out to be a young woman called Elisa. Since then, we haven’t written much, but my curiosity for the person and the visions behind the brand is still there. So, here comes the second article about young ambitious entrepreneurs working within the creative field.
Core77: What led you to start Manoteca?
Elisa Cavani: Before creating Manoteca, I was working as a visual merchandiser for fashion companies, for more or less ten years. I traveled a lot and gained a lot of information. In those ten years, I met very respectable people with so much talent. Yet the structure of big companies crushed them—I saw many people forget the things they believed in and give up any kind of talent. I was scared because I could feel that it was happening to me as well, so I decided to “fire” myself and create something that I had had in my head for so long.
This was the beginning. I moved the furniture in my apartment and for a year I worked, lived and slept in the middle of tools and sawdust. To me, the pieces of my first collection represent the freedom of expression. I loved them so much. I spent my evenings watching them, cleaning them one by one, every single hole and crack in the material. I really treated them as if they were the most valuable things I owned. In fact, they still are.
Did your ten years of experience as a merchandiser have any influence on how you started your brand?
I didn’t think so initially, then I thought again and came up with a better answer. The visual merchandisers work with the visual language, they communicate feelings and moods but cannot use words. There is so much of this in Manoteca. There is a maniacal attitude, for which everything have to be perfect, and a meticulous attention to every detail. There is the organization and optimization of the time. There are the administrative and commercial skills, which I unwittingly absorbed and modified in favor of the brand. There is the knowledge of foreign markets that I have followed for a long time, the awareness that every person have different habits and cultural characteristics that you need to know, otherwise it is impossible to communicate. There are errors that I have made in the past, from which I can benefit today. There is a predisposition for solid and professional structure, which hasallowed the project to go around the world.
In retrospect, I should say ‘Thank You’ to my past.
Germany’s Festool makes amazing power tools, so I expected their booth to be as mobbed as it was at Holz-Handwerk. But there was one repeating demo in particular that seemed to draw inordinate crowds, that being for the machine above, the Conturo KA 65. So what the heck is it, and what does it do that caused such a stir? Well, have a brief look at the (admittedly crappy) video I tried to capture by wriggling in and out of bodies:
Yes, it’s a portable edge-banding machine that can do curves (both concave and convex) as well as beveled edges! And unsurprisingly Festool seems to have thought of everything when designing it: For you furniture designer/builders who work with plywood or (shudder) particle board and need to cover those raw edges, you know how frustrating edge banding can be—you can spend $300-plus on a fiddly machine while resigning yourself to only designing pieces that have straight edges. Aligning the two guides can be like performing neurosurgery, and once it’s all done you can still screw the whole operation up by making a sloopy end-trim with a pair of snips. But by designing the Conturo to have one point of contact, curves are no prob, and they’ve designed a handy snipping accessory to snip the waste just right.
The following, professionally-shot video shows the entire process of edge banding using a Conturo from start to finish, including the post-application role of the trim router and a handy little scraper. (By the bye, the UK-based demonstrator refers to edge banding as “lipping.” Discuss.)
From German machine manufacturer Martin comes the Speed 20/10, a rollable spray station for varnishing. The one-meter by two-meter surface is covered with a roll of ordinary, cheap packaging paper, which varnish won’t stick to; so when spraying your piece, there’s no need to mask the underside. And it has a couple of other cool tricks, watch the vid:
What you might not be able to see in the vid is that it’s foot-pedal controlled; tap one pedal to get those two rollers to pop up, so you can lift your piece away from the sides, or you can hit the other foot pedal to either advance to a clean sheet, or roll smaller pieces off of the surface and into your waiting hands. The action requires an air compressor, being all-pneumatic; they don’t want any electricity jumping around, the rep explained, if folks are spraying explosive substances.
Spotted at Holz-Handwerk.
With workbenches like Ron Paulk’s and Guido Einemann‘s around, is there any demand for an old-school workbench? Apparently so: Swedish company Sjöbergs does a brisk business in producing the traditional variety, with only slightly-modernized updates, like steel-cored, rubber-wrapped bench dogs (with half-round tops to accommodate angled workpieces), cork jaw protectors for the vise’s clamping surface, and precision steel hardware for the vise’s guts, ensuring they close perfectly parallel.
Though dated (if the soundtrack doesn’t tip you off), the following company video gives you a pretty good look at the bench:
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
