Archives

Shed / Woodcarving / Woodworking — No Comments
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…

Desk Shelf / Woodworking — No Comments
27
Oct 19

Done

So during the week I had to work from home for a day, so while doing that I took my lunch break to pull the shelves out of the shed and put a second coat of Polyx on them. They didn’t look too bad.

 

And after they’d cured for a few days in the shed, I went out again and glued on some leather pads on the contact points between the shelves and the wall so that they wouldn’t rub against the wall and destroy the paint. Awkward to clamp though.

And then today while Calum was out at a birthday party, I snuck out to the shed, took off the tape and trimmed the leather pads, drilled the first inch or so of the wiring channel out so the barrel socket would fit and then brought the shelves indoors.

It looks very very empty now 😀

Some manhandling of the shelves later and I got them into the lab and soldered the socket to the LEDs and then finished fitting the LED lights; then more manhandling of the shelves to get them into Calum’s room and a quick coat of beeswax which looked about a shiny as sand. Guess I need to rub harder.

And that’s it. Done.

Yikes, that only took a year and four months. To the day.

Okay, granted some other stuff happened in the middle of all that, like making a carved oak box, getting a promotion at work and embedding a mug in resin, but still. Yikes. And I can’t help but think it’d have gone faster with a larger shed…

Still though, end result is nice.

At least he hasn’t grown enough to not fit it anymore. According to the growth charts and the various furniture design books, it’ll last him about two more years before his knees won’t fit under the desk; at that point, I’ll make a pair of feet to go under the uprights and raise the whole thing up by a few inches and we’ll get another few years out of it. 

Stocking the shelves.

And of course, there’s the LED lighting. Need to tidy that cable away a bit yet. 

Didn’t even need glue, the slot was just the right size and the aluminium extrusion had small ridges to act as barbs to hold it in place.

And finally all the books have a place to live.

(Nobody tell him, but this is going to be covered in homework in a few years 😀 )

Yes, that’s the model of the titanic that Calum made. Why do you think he had me build a sea in the middle of the racetrack on the desk? 😀

I even remembered to sign it. Though my blowtorch ran out of propane at the worst possible moment so it could be darker. Oh well. 

So, what’s next?

Tidying up, that’s what’s next! The shed is a serious mess and there are a dozen five-minute jobs that have piled up. So, that should only take six months to sort out…

Desk Shelf / Finishing / Woodworking — No Comments
16
Oct 19

Lights, corners, more oil…

Got the LED strip during the week, cut a length off, soldered on the wire, tested it in the lab and it all lit up well, so I pulled off the paper on the back (the strip is self-adhesive) and stuck it in place inside the aluminium extrusion with some heatshrink around the cable end for strain relief and put the diffuser and endcaps in place…

The cable fits in the hole that I drilled for it, so that’s grand, but the connector for the 12V power supply on the other hand, is just a little too big so I’ll have to expand that hole, then cut the wire to length, solder the connector on and then install it. That’s going to be a bit fiddly and I might even wait till it’s indoors before doing that. 

So with that checked, I went round the joints with a chisel and a plastic razor and cleaned up the excess glue. The joints under the desk I couldn’t reach, so that might be for the weekend when I can take it out of the shed in the daylight.

Next job was to shape the dovetail joints at the top, which is a damn sight easier when the workpiece is small enough to be able to walk around it. When it’s taking up the entire floor space of the shed and you’re literally climbing on stuff to reach the tools on the wall behind it, not so much. Still, an hour of cursing and swearing and the #04 and two chisels and some 120 grit sandpaper later, and another application of danish oil…

I don’t think I’m completely done with sanding for that shelf and those joints though. But I can’t reach them to work on them properly so I may need to take the desk out of the shed to work on it with the sander, give it another dose of danish oil, let that cure up then do another coat or two of polyx until it looks done. Then I’ll take it indoors, fit the light and that’ll be it done. I hope.

← Older Entries