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Baby Chair Repair – Part 2

Following on from part one of this series some of the cleaned up parts required repairing. The baby chairs is constructed from what I think is Tasmanian oak. There wasn't much damage one tenon had broken off a rail. The other parts that are have worn are near the cast iron wheels. I was able to turn a custom dowel to replace the missing tenon. I had thought the tenon was integral to the stretcher so it required drilling to get the bits and pieces out. I even used carving chisels to clean up the stretcher. In the end the repair was successful. The pieces close to the cast iron wheels had splinters missing making the area for the axle holes  weakened. I uses a straight cutting router bit and a router table. I was able to carefully remove the damaged parts. I had some old pieces of Tasmanian Oak on hand that allowed me to make small pieces to replace the damaged parts. The new wood was a good match for the original timber on the baby chair. The other major damage to the baby chair was the tray. The original was a piece of plywood which had become delaminated overtime. I did entertain gluing the original plywood back together. In the end I  made  a new tray from some old plywood I had kept from dismantling old furniture. As with the previous part of this baby chair repair I have a compilation from Animoto.  

Baby Chair Repair – Part 1

We inherited this baby chair when our children were small. It has been sitting around the shed for many years being moved everytime we had a cleanup.Like many older pieces of wooden furniture it has been renovated many times. The baby chair was covered in several layers of paint besides the original varnish finish. I don't know much about its provenance other than it being in one family for  a long time. I did find a manufacturer's label on it from T.H.Brown and Sons. A quick search on Google revealed that  T.H. Brownand sons were a well know Adelaide (South Australia) furniture maker founded in about 1910. They were important enough to be included in the SA Design Museum. Their products were available Australia wide through department stores.I think the baby chair dates from the 1940s or 50s. I haven't made a video of the process however I took a series of photographs and assembled them in Animoto. This is part one of the process stripping the paint pulling it apart and stripping the years of paint of the frame.  

Hand Drill Restoration

In e recent post I mentioned that I received a hand drill as a gift. There are no identifying marks on the drill so I don't know where it comes from or how old it is. Most likely it is an Australian hand drill although there are a lot of English tools in Australia. What I really enjoyed was taking it apart. Every piece was screwed together which meant that I could completely disassemble it. This is unusual now as most products are made in a way that makes disassembly difficult. A nice feature of the drill is a compartment inside the handle. This would be great to small drill bits. After a thorough clean and oil I put it all back together. The only real damage was the crank handle which had become bent over time. This was easily fixed at the vice. I decided not to paint the drill. The action of the crank and crown wheel is really smooth. The chuck tightens very  nicely and can hold drill smaller than my modern cordless drill. This is useful for drilling small pilot holes. Particularly in the case of small brass screws which break easily without a pilot hole I was too impatient to make a video so I put together this collage on Animoto. The following looks pretty good and gives a great look at all the parts that make up this hand drill.

Woodworking from Sweden in 1923!

The attached video from YouTube features woodworking from 1923. Filmed in Sweden it captures clog and spoon making in addition to the construction of a chair. All the men shown are old in this video so they all would have been born in the mid to late nineteenth century. Whilst I don't read Swedish it looks as though the film was made to capture fading trades. It really is a fantastic glimpse into the recent past. I don't know the origin of the video I have embedded the YouTube for interest.

A Gift

Two things in this post. A gift from a colleague a handheld drill that was destined for the bin. These are really useful for small drill bits. I have found that the newer cordless drills with keyless Chuck can't manage very small drill bits. The other thing is this is a test post from an android phone using the WordPress app. The first post to this blog from a phone.

By |October 20th, 2015|Categories: Tools and Jigs|Tags: |0 Comments

A pointer on the bowl gouge

I have recently joined a wood turning club called the northern turners. This group is affiliated to Woodgroup SA  which has under its umbrella about 13 woodturning clubs in South Australia. There are 3 meetings a month which covers beginners , ongoing projects and a more formal meeting day which includes a demonstration. This months demonstration was by a well known Australian turner called Tim Skilton  who besides turning is known for his passive sander.  Tim doesn't have a website but if you google him you will see the sanders and pictures of this work. He entertained and informed about 50 club members for the better part of three hours on all aspects of the bowl gouge. This included a potted history of the gouge , metal used to make gouges and the vexed topic of sharpening tools. All of this while keeping up a witty dialogue with the audience and demonstrating on a bowl blank. There were lots of practical tips on how to use a gouge. I like many have experienced the gouge digging and taking a chunk  of the prized piece being worked on. Never thought about it but the gouge does jump from the smaller to larger diameter. This will inevitably wreck the the fine edge that you have just finished prior to hollowing out. The solution other than a a dedicated tool rest is to support the gouge with the thumb of your left hand firmly planted on the tool rest. Well worth the trip to attend the meeting.

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