06
Nov 16

Small jobs again…

Just not a very productive Sunday really. Checked my squares, found one is so not square that I threw away the crosspiece and I’ll use it as a straightedge from now on.

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Then got on with building the jig. Laid out the geometry (a 10.3″ radius curve gives a 12″ radius curve and 15 degrees of springback).

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Shop cat is somewhat critical of the layout…img_9829a img_9831a

Laminating MDF to make a drying form (which will have the 12″ radius and the walnut gets clamped to this for a week after it’s had a day or so on the bending jig to cool).

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Lots of laminated MDF and 2×4 chunks. This is when you not only have insufficient clamps but also insufficient space to put the drying bits 😀

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I thought it was a bit of a gimmicky thing when I bought it, but those silicone glue brushes work damn well. Worth every cent (especially when buying them from Rutlands in the UK instead of buying the Rockler ones from the US).

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And last job, fixing and reattaching the vice jaws (finally – shop jobs seem to be cobbler’s children really). img_9843a

Simple enough job, just counterboring for nuts and ensuring they were below the surface of the face. Complicated only by not having a drill press or fostner bits, but an auger bit and brace and a little fustering sufficed.

Then went through the stock in the woodpile matching pieces to cutlists and finding that for the largest panel in the crib, I don’t have long enough boards to do lengthwise glue-ups in the panel. Hmmm. Is it okay to run the glue-ups crosswise I wonder….


05
Nov 16

Lost focus…

Problem with knowing you have N slats to get prepped is that that’s a nice countdown type task, just doing the same thing over and over with a nice number ticking away. Then it hits zero and unless you’re prepped, you have no idea what you’re doing next. Which is where last night’s shed time went. I tried out the new arno burnisher I got for the card scraper (Chris Schwartz was right, get one) and put away some new small c-clamps at least temporarily, I played with the new lens for the camera (just a basic kit lens doing 18-55mm because if you’re in a six foot deep shed taking photos of a five foot wide bench, a 40mm prime lens is just not helpful).

But all I did on the crib was prep one board I had set aside for the frame, plane it to smooth (not square) and rip it in half to give me two 2-and-a-bit inch wide rough blanks. 
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The ryoba shot through this stuff like it was on rails. Walnut’s expensive, but it just does everything so cleanly compared to something like pine. And now I have three blanks to make two steambent frame pieces. But after that I ran out of to-do list, which is one of the more irritating and weird annoyances. So I took stock of all the walnut I have left to prep a cutlist, and I played some more with the camera.

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Same lens, varying from 55mm (the close-up) to 18mm (the wideangle shot). That bench still needs a lot more tidying and that wall needs a lot more holders.

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Could stand a box or two for storage of finishes and the like too. Hmmm.

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And the clamps and the grinder need homes. Lots of shed-related tasks that need a little thought and sketching and a bit of work.

I did get an hour or so to play with Sketchup and take my notes from my notebook and put them into that to get a more formal picture of what the design should look like (I find this is handy because it’s sort of like a rehersal build – you spot small things like off-by-an-inch measurements that cause things to get in the way of other things, you can visualise the finer details more easily when you have an accurate structure to put them in and it gives a fast way to see the design from several angles just by right-clicking and dragging the mouse about.

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03
Nov 16

Slats done…

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Amazing how a deadline focuses the mind, eh Sammy?

Got through the last few slats this evening, planed them to thickness and then gauged a line and planed them to width. So now I have 18 30″ long slats and 8 31″ long slats (the extra inch is just how the board came out in the rough cut, I’ll trim them all to length when fitting them). And I spent a little while last night going over cutlist plans for the frame – I want to try using Sketchup to block out the design a bit more formally, it helped quite a bit with the bench. But the next few tasks are to get more frame stock cut and planed and sized. The panels around the drawer and the drawer itself should be relatively fast compared to the slats (I hope) and the drawer base faster still as it’s repurposed T&G stock so it’ll just be cutting the boards to length, planing away the existing T&G, rethicknessing it and then recutting a new T&G (I won’t glue up the base so that the wood can move more readily, the drawer will keep it corralled).

And then this weekend, building the steaming jig and if the 2″ wide strapping arrives, I might even try using the jig (if it doesn’t, I’ll wait till next weekend and spend the time on other jobs).