Cheese Press / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking — Leave a comment
11
Oct 16

Done

So first off, a small message to Draper. Don, you’re a very sad individual. And now a message to Draper, the tool company. This sucks:img_9503a

Yeah, it’s a junior hacksaw, but the operative word here is saw and I think you could almost be sued for false advertising for calling this piece of worthless dross a working saw. It’s for the bin, and I’ve now got to go find a decent hacksaw to work on saw sharpening. Ugh.

Anyway. That pain in the toolbox aside, the cheese press is now done. It came out too tall yesterday so I trimmed it down a bit last night and then did the finishing. Four coats of shellac, cured overnight and then some briwax and buffing the next day. Then I assembled everything, epoxied on the pusher plate on the main screw and added some feet to the base and that was that.

I’m not saying this is fine furniture, you understand – in fact, to manage expectations, this is what this started out like last thursday:

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And in the meantime I’ve painted the shed (twice) and finished off the resawing of the slats for the cot. And today the cheese press looks like this:

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I mean, it’s not horrible for a pair of 2×4 offcuts and a short length of threaded rod.

Anyway, wee man was a bit ill today so no real shed time; I did get to go out for a half-hour or so, and clean up after the press and set up for planing the slats.

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Someone asked – the thicknessing jig is the width of my #5½ plus a quarter-inch between the walls (and I really need to cut a 45° angle on the near walls to stop myself barking my knuckles on them) so it rides happily on the rails without being slewed. It’s butted up against the planing stop on one side and against a batten&holdfast at the back:

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In operation it’s quite simple – put the slat blank into the center, put the jack plane on top of it, shove jack plane to the far end, repeat until the jack’s not cutting anymore (flip the board at some point to be sure you have two reasonably smooth sides). You can optionally hit it with the smoother towards the end if you want.

Twenty slats (well, nineteen since I did #1 already at the start) to thickness, and then plane to get their edges square. This is going to be my planes’ eye view for a while I think…

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Cheese Press / Finishing / Shed / Woodworking — Leave a comment
09
Oct 16

Magic trick

That point where the first coat of paint or finish goes on is such a dramatic change in the thing being finished, it really does seem like a magic trick of some sort. Even if it’s a cack-handed sort of affair. Today was two of those moments. First off, with the shed, which took quite a bit longer than your average david copperfield affair, eating two hours to get it done. Mostly because all of the funny things people tell you about painting while you’re stuck in a bush are pretty close to the truth. Still, it doesn’t look horrible:

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Okay, the tarp on the bush to the left looks horrible, but that’s how I’m keeping it from being a pine needle finish. Plus, it makes painting from within the bush a bit easier. Second coat in the next day or two, and then off comes the masking tape and the spiders can move back in to cover the whole thing in webs again…

Second up was the cheese press. I’m not hugely happy with the main nut on the crossbar for this, I think there will be more epoxy and a few small wedges employed, but at least it’s in an out-of-sight area; but I wanted to get the shellac on first today as all that’s left is bitwork after that really. I removed the metalwork and took the #4½ with its new 40° angle bevel and the cap iron crowded right up on the cutting edge, and smoothed the planks off. There’s something terribly gratifying about getting wispy-thin shavings after trying a slightly new way of setting up a plane. I think this one counts as a success. I did some last bits of whittling as well on the handle just taking off the absolute worst bits. I’m not happy with it at all really, but at least I learned how not to use a spokeshave.

Then on to the shellac. I’ve had some button shellac sitting in isopropyl alcohol for a few weeks now as another experiment, so I used that. One coat, wait 30 minutes, sand back with old beat-up 120 grit sandpaper (I didn’t have any 400 grit sandpaper. Something to sort out for when I finish the crib). Four coats in total.

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Clockwise from top left for each of those for each successive coat.

Tomorrow once it’s fully cured, I’ll hit the surface with 000 steel wool, then use the same wool to apply some briwax and then I’ll buff that out and that’ll be the finish done. I’ll drive the wedges to secure the center nut at the same time, add the metal hardware back in and assemble it and that’ll be that.

No work on the crib today, but the planing begins in earnest after the last bits of the cheese press are completed…

Cheese Press / Shed / Sidecar Cot / Woodworking / Workbench — Leave a comment
08
Oct 16

Twenty

So the early start plan kinda went to pot because of other duties, but I did manage to get to woodies and get another tin of the willow colour of paint to do the second coat on the shed. And then, annoyingly, got the second coat out of the remainder of the first tin. Gah. Oh well, I’ll find something for it. Meanwhile the shed’s looking okay, but I didn’t manage to get the first coat of the cream colour on it, so that might make getting everything finished tomorrow a bit of fun.

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Can’t say that it looks like a massive difference with the second coat, especially as the colour darkens very noticeably on drying, but this stuff really does need the second coat when you look at it close up.

Then on to getting the cheese press done. I picked up the needed bits of threaded rod and such at woodies while getting the paint.

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The threaded rod will get cut into 1′ long sections to form the two side supports and the main screw and the various washers and nuts will secure it (the hooks are for my bench brush which is in need of a better home than hanging on the quick-release of the vice).

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The more difficult part of this has been getting a 2×2 chunk of wood down to something that vaguely looks like a handle if you squint and are blind. I was able to saw out a big chunk of the waste, and carve the basic shape very roughly with the gouges, but trying to get it even close to smooth was being a pain so out came the spokeshave, which promptly tore the crap out of the surface no matter how I twiddled with it. So I took a tip from Richard Maguire’s spoon rack series, took off the adjustment knobs completely, and set it by keeping the base flat on the bench and letting gravity put the blade in contact with the bench, then tightening the clamping screw. And it worked like a charm. It went from biting and skipping and destroying the face of the wood to looking like an actual woodworking tool being used by someone who was competent. Not sure how it managed that last bit, but I wasn’t complaining much. Before long I had an ugly lump-shaped chunk of tree branch and figured I should stop before I broke it too badly.

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Some butterfly nuts on the two side supports to cinch the crossbar on to the top of the cheese vessel, and a chunk of wood on the bottom of the screw to push against a plate in the cheese vessel and that’s your cheese press, more or less. First, some nuts needed epoxying and there was a small void to fill on the face of the board.

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Tomorrow I’ll clean up the boards and get them flat and shellac them, add the block on the end of the screw and I think that’ll be it finished. It’s not a very fancy thing after all. I’d like to put some springs on the side bits of threaded rod, but I couldn’t find any. Oh well, easy retrofit.

Of course, that last spokeshave session had a casualty…

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I know I said I’d make a hardwood vice face later on, but I think it might be sooner than I thought. I re-screwed it on, but I don’t want to glue it and I’m not sure those two screws are going to last. I’ll have to think about this one.

First though, on to resawing ash for slats. One or two of the resawing boards tonight were pains in the fundament with the blade wandering out of nowhere, but I was able to use the disston to get the line back on track and finish the cut without losing a board. Which let me write a very nice number indeed…

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20 slats out of three boards, with another three definitely unusable and another one as a very marginal call (ie. use it if we really need just one). That’s all the original plan called for. I don’t doubt I might find I need another two or four more, but I’ll try not to 😀

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In case anyone was wondering, yes, you can resaw 1″ thick 8″ wide ash boards by hand, and it’s not actually the most strenuous job in the world… but it’s not a lot of fun either really, and it can be finicky keeping the blade from wandering. As soon as I’m able to house it, I’m going to get a bandsaw.

Now, for the coming week, it’s planing in the thicknessing jig to get those 20 slats all down to size…

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