Best selling wood projects - Where Have You Been Watcha Bin Doin

Best selling wood projects

Holy macaroons Batman, doesnt the time fly when you are busy.
A short potted history for between my last post and this one -

• house painting - outside
• grandkids
• renovations and repairs to the main bedroom and walk in robe
• house painting - inside
• travel
• grandkids 
• house painting - outside
• re-building with my son, his garage
• travel
• grandkids
• house painting - outside
• uke
• singing
• travel
• Hastings Woodworkers Guild

Where was I up to with those projects....................
The ukulele hasnt moved from its last known location and condition - still on the "to get finished" list.

I have begun a hall table for our Guild exhibition in a month and will document it here.

Building a Hall Table - Part 1

My good friend Terry gave me a couple of slabs of camphor laurel that he no longer needed, and I decided that one of them would contain enough timber for a hall table.
I laid it out and cut it before I thought to take a picture.
Here is whats left of the slab - not very impressive is it?

Here is a hint of its lovely colour:

Heres what it dresses like to reveal the multi coloured grain

I cut out the legs and the side rails and glued them in using mortice and tenon joints:

Heres a close up of the joint showing the completed side rail tenon in its mortice as well as the mortice for the front rail:

Here are all four legs with both side rails glued in place:

The front and back rails will have a strengthening cross piece let into housings.  Here I am cutting them with a tenon saw before chiseling out the waste.

Here is the completed cross member sitting in its housing as a trial fit:

Finally with all pieces ready here is a trial fit of front and back rails before glue up:

After glue up Ill work on the table-top.
Happy shavings to all
Tom
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Best selling wood projects - A Damaged Plane Blade Bringing It Back to Life

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I received in the mail a much abused Turner handplane blade from Dylans newly acquired number 5 jack.
See the comments from this post
Turner Hand Planes

Here it is as he received it:

The blade is near full and shows signs that it has been sharpened in the past.

Sadly someone has abused the cutting edge over its life, so that it now looks like this:

One corner is missing and there is a chunky chip out of the edge near the other corner.  The bevel has become rounded chipped and jagged.

 It is easier to see the damage up close .........

The back shows that a previous owner tried to flatten as part of the sharpening process, but that is such a while back that rust has started to appear.

First step will be to square off the blade by grinding back the old bevel to remove all the chips and jagged points - leaving the blade straight from one corner to the other.
Bench grinder to the rescue.

Care must be taken to keep the edge cool so that the steel doesnt "burn" and lose its temper.

The edge, ground square from corner to corner.  Grinding a new bevel comes next.  Most handplane blades like this one use a bevel of 30 degrees so thats what I will use.

Once the new bevel is ground, it needs honing to remove the coarse grinding marks and to begin to form the cutting edge.

This bevel is well formed but there is a dag of wired edge on the left corner that will hone off on the oilstones as a secondary bevel appears.
This will be honed at 35 degrees along the front edge of the bevel.

Ill use coarse, then fine oilstones, and then finally a hard white arkansas stone for polishing.
This is so similar to the chisel sharpening that I showed back in April 2012 that I will use an image from there:

Just think of this chisel as the Turner plane blade OK.
Sadly, I packaged the blade up and posted it off before getting a shot of the finished bevelled and sharpened edge - rats!

When it arrives  it will go back in Dylans number 5 Turner plane just like this one:

Happy shavings to all.
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Best selling wood projects - An Elegant Jelly Cabinet Construction Part 9 The End is in Sight

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Lots of Little Bits

The door frame is finished and the bottom rail repair came out very well.  Clamp and glue time - as the door frame is fitted to the front edges of the carcass.

It is time to start adding the various parts to bring the cupboard to completion.  Before this, however, I like to give the straight carcass a complete sanding outside.  It is much easier to do this before the top and the mouldings go on.  Of course there will be final sandings later, but since this wont take long Ill do it now.

The picture on the left shows the difference that this initial sanding makes.  The ripple marks from the power jointer can be seen towards the top left corner.  The sander is an old German Metabo  RAS - still going strong.  Today was a magnificent early autumn day, so out front of the shed was the place to be. Blissful it was!

 
Now is a good time to break those sharp edges with a sanding block.  Here I am using 180 grit. The sun came out onto where I was working - look at that beautiful timber.

 This is the back panel - inside and outside. Note the rebated edges so that it can slide into the back of the cabinet from the bottom.  The sun came and went as I worked - what a joy.

I glued the top to the  sanded carcass and set it aside to dry.  Should be set by tomorrow.  Meanwhile its time to attack the door.


Making the Frame and Panel Door

The frame for this door is quite narrow, so I have decided to use an open slot mortice on the stiles, and tenons on the rails.  This should give me a larger glued area and a stronger joint - even though the end of the tenon will be visible at the corner of the door. The frame pieces already have the groove cut previously, so part of this has to be removed for the joint to work.

I could have chosen to mitre the face edge of the groove, but decided to keep it simple in keeping with the cabinet.  I now wish I had, because I would have given it a little more thought, and avoided the mistake that I went on to make.

The astute reader will see the makings of the "Oh Shit!" moment in the layout of the picture above.  If you dont see it yet, be patient and it will be revealed.

I chose to cut the mortice first, and good old Spear & Jackson sawed the cheeks, and a little jewellers saw cleaned out the waste.  Spotted the blue yet?

Chisels to the rescue to tidy up the saw cuts and square the bottom of the mortice.  I like to undercut the bottom as shown in the last picture - right - as this leaves somewhere for the glue to pool, and guarantees a flush fit.  That middle chisel is a slim tapered Mathieson, the only one I have - wish I had more in different sizes.  It is perfect for getting into the mortice to gently adjust the interior by removing any high spots.

OK - time to cut the tenon.  Measure up against the mortice - (that middle picture is a give-a-way to the clanger that is about to happen).  Cut carefully and fit.
Look at that last picture - right - almost perfect .............................................. almost !!!!!!!!

AAAAAARRRRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

.... and it was looking so good up until then.

Another fix is necessary.  Ill still glue it up and add an appropriate sized plug to fill the hole.  Lucky its on the hinge side of the door, so will rarely be seen.

The mistake was mine from the get-go, and it happened because I was tired when I started this, and didnt think it through.  I was smart enough to stop at this point and do something simple before calling it a day.

I decided to add some dowels to the middle of the tops of the feet, so that they will register easily with the bottom corners when they are glued in position.

It was a daggy old piece of dowel, but wont ever see the light of day - so - good enough!

Rightee-o, one more post and this will be finished.  Cant wait.

LOML is hounding me about starting work on the repairs to the house gables.  Guess that will be next.

May your days be joyous and your mistakes small ....

 ............................ and happy woodworking to all .......
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Best selling wood projects - An Elegant Jelly Cabinet Construction Part 7 Bringing Things Together

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Cleaning Up Dovetails with a Plane

The carcass is glued, and once dry needs the dovetails cleaned up.  They were a little proud, remember.
Low angle block plane to the rescue.  Thank you Stanley 65!

Here I have flush planed the tails, but you can see that the pins still need attention.  Mouldings will hide these on the finished cabinet, but what an excellent joint they make.

 I dont have a low work table in my shed, so I have had to improvise.  One side of the carcass is held in my bench vice and the other side is supported on a roller stand.  This gives me access from above and below.

Time to slide in the shelves.  I left the cutting of these to length until this stage so that I could fine tune them for a snug fit.  I also used my block plane to chamfer the two front edges of the shelves before they went in. Much easier now than later.

I had a little problem with staining of the New Guinea Rosewood when I cleaned up the excess glue with a damp cloth earlier.  It will plane or sand off in visible areas.

Time for a trial fit-up of the back panel.  It is a little over size, and will be cut to length later.

This slides inside two stiles which will be attached to the sides.

You will notice that I have left a small gap on each side of the panel and inside the stiles.  This is to allow for seasonal movement of the panel which will be fixed towards the centre, leaving the timber free to move.

Turning the Feet

While waiting for the glued stiles to dry, I decided to make up the four feet from the laminated scraps that have been glued and  are now dry.

Into the lathe and round them down to a cylinder.  My lathe is a classic and original Teknatool Nova 1000.  This must be almost an antique by now.

The cylinder will be the same diameter as the widest part of the finished foot.

I start by marking out where each of the significant details are - top and bottom of foot,  and bottom of the beady thing that terminates the top curve.  I then use the parting tool to mark both ends, and at the bottom this becomes the width of the finished base of the foot.  This gives me a width to work down to.  Im no woodturner so I hope this makes sense.

OK - need to repeat this process until I have four feet that look close enough to each other to pass muster.  You can see that mine are related but are definitely fraternal quads and not identical.

Like I said, I am not much of a wood turner, and I could be at this all week and not get four identical feet.

Whats that old saying - Perfection is the enemy of good enough!

If you are a perfectionist - then do not look at the next picture, and if you just cant help yourself and caught a glimpse by accident, then take two asprin and a cup of tea and have good lie down.

OK - nuff for now.

Door frame and door to come.

Happy woodworking to all ...........

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