Bandsaw Boxes / Finishing / New Toys! / Shed / Tools / Woodworking — 3 comments
18
Feb 18

Mucking about

So no major new projects taken on yet, I’ve been tidying away some new toys and getting the shed back to a working state instead. For example…

I now have two pairs of hollows and rounds (4’s and 6’s) as well as a 7 hollow, the reeding plane and a spare 6 hollow. According to Mouldings in Practice that’s all I need to start off with for the scale of stuff I build. A pair of 2s and 8s would be the next on the list if this works out. I don’t like this storage solution though; you don’t really want to have a moulding plane tip over and fall on your head from two feet up. I’ll build a rack for them seperately later .

I also wanted to increase the final grit of my sharpening setup (before the strop), and while waterstones seemed the obvious choice, they’re messy as all get-out. Also, the way I work I don’t have a huge amount of time in the shed so waterstones that you don’t have to soak for 15 minutes before sharpening would be mandatory (whether that be solved by storing them in water or having the shapton type that you can just squirt water onto and get going), and those are not that cheap. But if you want 20,000 grit, they’re you’re only real choice.

Thing is, okay, I do have a japanese chisel or two but most of my work isn’t done with A2 or PM-V11 steel or anything that esoteric, so waterstones aren’t really mandatory; and diamond plates will go up to 8000 grit if you buy from DMT. Okay, the 8000 grit one isn’t cheap, it’s nearly ninety quid, but the things last for a decade and they’re very low fuss, so I cried once and bought one.

Swapped out the 1200 grit Ultex and in went the 8000 grit DMT. The Ultex went into just-in-case storage. I’ve only sharpened the new japanese chisel on the DMT so far (it’s been a quiet week) but for such a fine grit, it visibly cuts quite surprisingly well.

Speaking of sharpening, I needed something for the inside of the gouges, so some black arkansas slipstones got bought along with the DMT. Seem nice enough, and not too expensive. Not used yet though….

And I got some 1-2-3 blocks. I’ve been meaning to get some for a year or so now. For woodworking they’re not as useful as they would be to a machinist, but not having to measure off 1, 2 or 3 inches, being able to set up the bandsaw or fences with right angles, clamping odd things, they’ll be bloody handy for that I suspect. Need to put a mount on the wall for them (I suspect a pair of dowels in the nonthreaded holes will suffice). Pain in the fundament cleaning all the storage grease off them though, but when you do, they’re nice and shiny…

This radius cutter isn’t new, I’ve had it for 18 months or so but I haven’t used it (look, life gets complicated sometimes, okay? 😀 ). I finally got to watch the line-and-berry video this week and dug this out, I have an idea for a project I want to use it on. More to come but I need to make a tool or two first…

One tool down, another to go yet. I also need to find a source for 1/32nd holly veneer, which in Ireland seems more difficult than expected.

Wanted to finish this up as it was sitting around (it’s planned to be a salt box). It’s a bit… drab as is though. If only I had something to jazz it up a bit…

*hehehe*

Well, that was… intense. Left it overnight, sanded lightly to knock back grain and re-stained it today and gave it a coat of spray laquer.

It’s not terrible, but it’s a bit more blotchy than I was hoping for. Hmmm….

Also, I had another bandsaw box waiting to get a hinge and get finished so I wrapped that up as well but with just a coat of BLO…

I have no idea what it’s for by the way, I just wanted to use up a scrap and play with making a brass hinge (learned I can’t really do it in my shed unfortunately, I’d need a proper anvil I think. Oh well).

I’m almost done with the last of the tidying up at this point. Just need to sort out this guy and that’s the last big task I think. There are other things, magnetic rails and move some tools about and other small stuff, but this one’s the awkward one I think…

Shed / Woodworking — Leave a comment
28
Jan 18

Cleaning down

So it’s the usual post-project loss of traction time; I do still have a few half-finished projects to be getting on with, but I thought I’d take a little time first to clean down after the chest, given that it’s left things a tad messy (especially given the pace of work on stuff leading up to xmas). The shed’s a mess, to be honest:

 

Buying a small bunch of things over the weekend didn’t help, but I was out of Osmo 1101 after the baby blanket chest and having corner mending braces is always useful for shop jigs and the like.

It’ll take a while to get this done; partly the problem is down to putting a litre of stuff in a pint pot sized shed. There just isn’t room for everything *and* all the wood 😀 I also want to replace that blue drum on the dust collector to get some space back, and some more tools need to go up on the walls and all my paintbrushes need to be cleaned (and some may need to be thrown away as too far gone). But at least I made a small start today.

 

Baby blanket chest / Finishing / Woodcarving / Woodworking — 8 comments
25
Jan 18

Done

Last stretch now. Start off by cleaning up from the glue-up last night. Trim the pegs with a flush-cut saw and run a chisel over the surface until it passes the fingerprint test. Use the plastic razor blades to get any glue squeeze-out I missed last night.

Those things are remarkably useful for this by the way, particularly in hard-to-get-at spots.

Gets right in there, doesn’t mar the surface at all.

Then saw off the horns so I can see what I’m working with.

Right. Test fit that on top of the chest and centralise it, make sure I have enough room for dust seals on either side plus the width of the dust seal again, and then mark off that point as being the final width of the lid. And then, very careful sawing. I got lucky and didn’t hit any of the mortices or crack anything from the stress of sawing (clamping cauls helped enormously here). Then I paused before putting away the chest again to decide on the hinges.

I went with the black in the end. I’m not sure why, but it just seemed to match the wood more.

Then on to the lid again, and shaping the front (where it’ll be grabbed most often) to be comfortable to hold.

First time that gooseneck has come in useful for me, but it more than earned its keep tonight. I broke all the other arisses as well, and then I sawed one of my pieces of material for the dust seals in half to give me some dust seal blanks, planed them to be matching – or close to it – and shaped a curve at the front.

When I was happy they looked okay and matched, I drilled for two screws, countersunk, painted the mating surface with hide glue and screwed them into place on the lid. Then I turned to the last job, fitting the hinges.

I don’t like this job much, I’m not terribly good at it. First I attached to the chest, and then using wedges and cauls to hold the lid in the right position, attached to the lid.

And then I spent the next twenty minutes refitting and fiddling with them to get the damn lid to sit flat.
Hinges.
They’re enough to make you tear your hair out.

I suppose it could be worse, these hinges are definitely not 17th century pieces (or even replicas of it). Period correct hinges would be these things:

Depending on who you talk to, these are snipe hinges, gimmel hinges or something even odder-sounding. But they’re not terribly pretty on the inside of a chest when fitted:

And even Peter Follansbee can’t make them look good on the outside:

Oh well. Count your blessings I guess.

 

And with that last job done, that was it. Build complete.

Well. The lid needed a coat of osmo, so I did that. But that was it then, nothing to do but wait for the osmo to cure (which it’ll do in the house tonight so the panels can start drying – if they’re going to do something weird on me I’d rather they did it now instead of after I deliver the piece).

You know, it didn’t come out too bad in the end.

 

Even the dust seals look good.

Oh, and for those who were wondering what it was for…

A friend at work and his wife are expecting their first in the next few days. In the 17th century, chests like this were four feet wide and three feet deep (or even larger) and they held a household’s linen or blankets. Today they’re called blanket chests. But this one is a baby blanket chest; the name is a bit of a pun in both construction and intended usage. It’s sized so that you can take four to six cellular blankets from mothercare, fold them the way you’d normally fold a blanket when you’re tired and in a hurry, and they’ll drop right in here. It’s also a baby version of the full-blown blanket chest, which would never fit in my shed 😀 (There are examples of miniature chests like this from back then, so they’re not unheard of – just uncommon).

Plus, I had wanted to make a chest for a while. They’re a fun build. Might do another one during the year.

Next up however is: tidying up the shed after building this. There are shavings everywhere…

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