12
Nov 19

More small stuff

More tidying up. It’s starting to get a bit neater…

Next job, tidy up the panel and grasshopper gauges and put up one of the five(!) magnetic bars I got for the shed walls (if you buy two and bury them in shavings, you’ll forget you bought them and buy them again when they show up in Lidl again).

Little better. Want to tape up the f-clamp handles as well.

It’s just hockey stick grip tape, but it makes it a lot easier to crank on those handles when tightening up the clamp.

Now, onto tonights little experiment.

Take one offcut of walnut, mark it up for some carved arcading and hack away at it as fast and as carelessly as you like.

Told you so, but that isn’t the point of the experiment. Now I resaw this board in half (I cheated here because this is just an experiment and used the bandsaw but you could do it by hand if you want. Me, the shed was at 4C so I was suffering enough).

And now out with the #05 and plane off the saw marks and get the backs all nice and clean.

So now I have thin stock with “carving” on one side. The idea being to see if you could do this and make a lightweight thin-walled box with this kind of carving in it. I mean, it didn’t shatter or snap on this try, so maybe this might work.

The acid test though, is whether or not these warp or twist or cup in the next few days as they air-dry. Have to check back in a few days…

Stay straight and parallel, ye little gits…


06
May 19

Finished!

Adding the hinges actually worked this time. I have no idea why. I morticed them the same way I usually do, though I did take more time with the fitting to the lid and setting up for workholding with shims and such. I still think I have particularly cheap hardware to work with though – one set of Brusso hinges probably costs more than my entire little stock of hinges and hardware. And I think they’re all too shiny as well; a 17thC style oak box should have black or at most bronze hardware; and really a forged or cast iron set would be ideal. But this is faux-17thC so I can get away with blue murder 😀

Honestly, they’re garish. But they’re all I have and the deadline for delivery was over a week ago – the baby this is intended to hold blankets for was born ten days ago now. One of these days I’ll get these projects done on time or convince someone to delay a deadline for once 😀

They’re not as jarring from the front, happily. But they still clash with the other ironware.

I really need to use a stay on these I think, but I don’t have one to hand. I foresee a small spending spree in the near future…

But for now, this project is done. Faux-17thC carved oak box with oak lid and ash base, finished with a simple coat of boiled linseed oil. Sized to hold mothercare cellular blankets that have been folded while you’re half-dead from exhaustion dealing with a newborn and two older siblings.

Even herself was impressed, so it must look okay 😀

Next up, cleaning down the last few bits remaining from this build, and then back to the inlay and decoration work for Calum’s desk/shelf unit. Primary school starts this autumn, so I only have a few months and at the rate I’m getting to the shed these days, that’s a tight deadline 😀

original plans

05
May 19

Getting closer…

Slightly busy day so not as much time in the shed as you’d like (which is, obviously, all of the time). But I did get the glued-up panel for the base cleaned up, marked out with the base so I could scribe the inside and outside of the walls to let the nail pilot holes be marked. Trimmed the base to size, drilled the pilot holes, shaped the edges with a simple roundover using a #05 to hog out most of the waste and a #04 to smooth a bit (and then some sandpaper and a block plane to break edges).

The hinges still have to be done, but I did get some BLO on there…

Tomorrow, hinges…