Hyakutake by A. Drauglis Furnituremaker (sold)
An inevitable by-product of making tables with tapered legs is a collection of long, thin wedges. The first taper cut on a leg blank typically yields a piece of wood just under two inches wide, thirty inches long, and a half to three-quarters of an inch thick at one end tapering to nothing. They make great shims, wedges, stir-sticks, garden stakes, and door-stops. I had a batch of them lined up on the workbench one day and noticed something else.
I was looking at some walnut tapers which were a mix of light sapwood and darker heartwood. I rearranged them in an alternating pattern and was immediately struck by how they resembled rays emanating from the sun; sort of like wartime Japan’s “Rising Sun” flag.
I cut a circle from a piece of paper and placed it over the point where the wedges converged. At that point it was no longer a sun, but a comet. I chose a piece of curly maple for the coma (head); I thought that the shimmer in the material’s figure would give it a bit of a comet-like glow. The wedges needed to be cleaned up and evened out, but once again I found useable wood in what I had previously deemed to be scrap.
Each of the Comet Cutting Boards has been named after a comet which I have either seen or hunted. Araki and Alcock were named after Comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock (C/1983 H1) which I can remember trying to find with my dad using our four-inch reflecting telescope and his 400mm telephoto lens. We may have seen it, we may have not; I have a vague recollection of seeing something which looked like a small cloud against the night sky.
Comet Alcock by Art Drauglis (available on Etsy)
Hale-Bopp (C/1995 O1, The Great Comet of 1997) and Hyakutake (C/1996 B2, The Great Comet of 1996) were much more impressive. Even living in the light-polluted city of Washington I could see them with my naked eye. Lacking a tripod at the time I welded up a special mount which would hold my camera as well as clamp to a 4×4 post, providing a steady place for photography. It would have been great if my then bed-ridden father could have been there with me, but I was at least able to show him a few blurry photos and tell him about it.
Comet Hale-Bopp by A. Drauglis Furnituremaker (available on Etsy)
Holmes (17P) reappeared in 2007 in the northeast sky, which was important because that meant that I could see it from my yard by looking in the least light-polluted direction. I just had to be very still so that I did not trigger the neighbor’s motion-sensitive light.
Comet Holmes by A. Drauglis Furnituremaker (sold)
My next Comet Board will be Lulin (C/2007 N3). It was another of the fuzzy-blob category of comets (not an official astronomical designation) which I tried to find hanging in the haze over the city last winter. I’m not sure what I will do after that. I do not wish to start naming them after comets which I have not seen or looked for; this seems a good way to limit the series and to ensure that each piece has a personal connection to the artist.
Comet Hale-Bopp in Action, Available on Etsy
This is also a good way to avoid naming a piece after the most famous comet in history (which I was unable to see) and thus prevent the inevitable arguments (is it pronounced “HAY-lee” or “Hal-e”?).
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