Best selling wood projects - In Celebration of My Wood Working Heritage

Best selling wood projects

I am fortunate to have benefited from a significant woodworking heritage. Here is a brief look at it.

My great-grandfather, William Miller was a coachbuilder and wheelwright, and partner in the coachbuilding business Miller and Cleary in Wellington Street, Perth. The picture above shows the Miller and Cleary display in the 1910 Labour Day Parade. He is the one with his hands on his hips.

Williams son, Frederick, was to become an engineer with the Post Master Generals Office. Fred married Lucy Hall and they had 5 children over 22 years: Ray, Doug, Kit, Ken and Lyn.

The 3 boys, Ray, Doug and Ken all became Carpenter/Joiners, with Ray also becoming highly skilled in Boatbuilding. Douglas Graham Miller is my wonderful father.

Doug started his apprenticeship in 1945 at Poveys on Stirling Highway, Nedlands.

Doug around the time that he finished his apprenticeship. Probably around 1949-1950.

Doug and his mate Dennis Greeve started their cabinetmaking & joinery business in Claremont (later known as Swanbourne) in 1950. They and their wives Gwen and Tress, all partners in the business, would operate for 36 years before closing the partnership in 1986.

This advertisement was shown at the Windsor Theatre in Nedlands, around 1952. It shows the latest in modern kitchens at that time!

Over the years, Doug built a number of pipe organ consoles, wind chests, wooden pipes, fascias and other components for several Australian Organ Builders. This picture from 1980 shows Doug building the jarrah facade for the Perth Concert Hall Organ.

Denniss brother Peter worked for the business for most of those 34 years, and over the time they trained around 11 apprentices. An incredible array and variety of high quality joinery, furniture, and cabinetwork was produced by Greeve & Miller over the years.

In 1988, Mum and Dad retired to Augusta WA, where my wife Rosemary and I and our family were living. We were running our business, Marginata Fine Furniture, in Augusta at that time. Doug was not really ready to retire, so he came and worked with me most days.

This picture shows me in 1988 making a reproduction jarrah lounge chair for a customer. This was when I started my "apprenticeship", as Dad worked with me most days over the next 4 years. I was so privileged to be working with him and learning from him over this period.

While a teenager, I was not that interested in being like my father - not an unusual thing during adolescence - however I did learn a lot as a child. I grew up surrounded by the sights, smells, sounds and talk of woodworking. Amazing what we learn by osmosis as children. I was always swinging a hammer and a saw, building tree cubbies and making things in Dads workshop. I still have and use some of the tools I was given by him from age 9 onwards. While I went and did other things as a teenager, I soon found those acquired woodworking skills helpful for income generation in the years after I had left school.

Although we live 200 miles apart, Dad continues to be an incredible source of information for me, a great mentor and living treasure trove of skills, tips, experience, and traditional woodworking knowledge.

Congratulations to Doug, who turned 80 on 14 July 2009.

He continues to make mostly small things, like boxes and small tables.

This picture shows Mum & Dad, Doug and Gwen, at Dads 80th birthday celebration.

In September 2009 they celebrated 55 years of marriage. I am fortunate to have such wonderful parents, and I owe my Mum and Dad so much for who I am...

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Best selling wood projects - A Saw Stool on Steriods!

Best selling wood projects

Those who have worked with me know how much I value traditional Saw Stools. I use them in the workshop and out on the job all the time. In fact I am lost without them! I usually have several sets, some low ones at around 21” high and some taller ones at 30” high.

I am not talking about those crappy folding metal and pine things, which wobble around and carry warning stickers saying you should not stand on then. I am referring to properly made traditional saw stools. Traditionally made from jarrah in Western Australia, these are rigid and can carry considerable loads. I have in use some that are well over 50 years old and which have worked hard all their lives. These type of saw stools were standard equipment for carpenters, joiners and cabinet makers for generations.

I had a big job to do recently, which involved working on site in Kalamunda for 3 weeks solid. I took a portable jarrah work bench with me, as there was a fair bit of bench work to do over those 3 weeks. Of course I also needed to use 2 pairs of low saw stools and 2 pairs of taller saw stools on site for that period as well.
While I worked on the job, I got thinking: How can I create a saw stool X workbench hybrid, which would be more portable than my portable work bench?

So I have played with the idea, and the result is a Saw Stool which looks like it has been on steroids:

View of the beast - a hybrid between a saw stool and a bench.

Here are the specifications:

Height: 880mm. The legs have a 10 degree splay to the ends and to the sides.
Length: 980 (plus tail vice outer cheek equals 1030mm overall.
Width: Pine 220mm, including jarrah front edge equals 260mm.
Tail vice: Maximum bite 240mm
· Minumum bite between dog holes: 240mm
· Maximum bite between dog holes: 1040mm.
Front vice: Maximum bite 140mm
· Minimum bite between dog holes: 110mm
· Maximum bite between dog holes: 390mm.

View with the Tail Vice extended.

A 25mm square Tuart guide rod maintains the orientation of the vice cheek with the single vice screw.

Almost whole thing is made from recycled salvage material :
· Pine top – from a 10” x 3” solid pine beam.
· Legs, rails, and other odds and sods – from some 3”x2” jarrah wall studs.
· “Breadboard ends” - from an old jarrah door sill. · Jaw cheeks of the front and tail vices – from a jarrah 8”x2” ceiling joist.
· Vice handles made from Peppermint (Agonis flexuosa) I milled years ago.
· Tail vice guide rod made from a piece of Tuart (Eucalyptus gomphocephala) leftover from the making of the Endeavour Replica.
· The tail vice screw and front vice are those imported ones from China or Taiwan, bought from my local woodworking shop. The front vice is the smaller of the two models available locally, and is pretty disappointing. Its guide rods and screw are not square to the metal vice front and rear, and are barely parallel. However the tail vice screw is a ripper. These metal components cost less than $100 in total. I put the additional bit of jarrah onto the front side of the pine to beef up the work area a bit and provide a more durable front edge to the work area. The only reason I used pine was to help keep down the weight!

Putting the beast to the test.

I had a job to do on a different site straight after I have made the beast, so had a good chance to road test it. I was not disappointed. It worked brilliantly.

This job involved removing a customers front entry joinery, then installing and modifying a beautiful old piece of art deco joinery obtained from a demolished building and adding two more art deco side light sashes either side. This involved lots of tricky hand work on site, where the beast proved to be invaluable.

The holding capacity of the dogs worked really well, and both vices worked well holding components as I made them.

The only change I will make will be to add a removable shelf underneath, sitting across the spreaders, as there is nowhere to put tools being used.

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