About

My name is John Ten Eyck. I am a retired ceramic engineer who was lucky enough to work 32 years for the same company as a R&D engineer/manager, working primarily in the area of automotive catalytic converters. In late 2008 my company was suffering with the economic downturn just like many others and offered a nice incentive to leave. I was not really looking to retire, but the offer was just too good to turn down. So now I have more time to devote to my hobbies, and one of those is woodworking.

I began building furniture when my wife and I, after buying our first house, couldn't find furniture that fit our style or couldn't afford what we did like. What is our style? I would say it is European modern; however, I also like Shaker and Craftsman design. Good proportions with clean, simple lines appeal to me. I certainly appreciate the elegance of the classic American and European furniture, and would love to build pieces in those periods, but they aren't compatible with our modern ranch house nor my personal style.

Like many people, I had a lot of enthusiasm but little skill and few tools. So I began to acquire tools and build simple, functional projects for our house. Over the years I acquired more tools and learned new skills, and was able to take on more complex projects. The largest project I have completed was a complete demolition and rebuild of our kitchen. Drywall, wiring and plumbing, tiling, and twenty seven cabinets. While walking through a furniture store in Germany we saw an armoire with two arched crowns. I just had to make something like it, and began to develop methods to bend wood. A few months later I created the cherry armoire you will see in the photo gallery, which remains my personal favorite. A few years later I constructed a vacuum bag system that allowed me to bend large panels, using bending plywood and veneer, and created a large china cabinet to match the style of a table my wife forced me to buy because she was tired of waiting for me to build one. I got a little carried away on this project and even bent the glass panels for the two doors. No, I didn't bend them in a vacuum bag; they were slumped into a mold after being heated to high temperature in a furnace which I had access to in my laboratory at work. You wouldn't classify my wood turning as art, but I can make functional and pleasing bowls, some of which are shown in the photo gallery.

I like technical challenges, having to figure out how to do something, or how someone else did it. A former colleague asked me if I would be interested in building a curved balcony railing system for his new house. He had a design sketch, but I soon found there were several challenges to solve, some structural, some building code related. I enjoyed the research as well as building and installing the project, and think it turned out quite well. You will find a few pictures of this job in the photo gallery as well.

Most recently, I designed and built a set of divided lite, arched French doors to match the style and finish of a home's other millwork. There were many challenges to deal with over the course of the project, but the doors are a very close match to the existing millwork and look like they have always been in the home.

I hope you enjoy viewing my work.