woodworking

The Shed Saga

The ongoing saga of getting the shed set up. I'm just a month short of 2 years since we moved into our new house. During this time I put in a concrete floor in the shed and built a new rear wall. I've been slowly adding benches and storage. I think now the end is in sight. I'm gradually unpacking all my tools  and I can now find things. I managed to get a steel frame to put my drill press on. It is an open frame and I've been able to make a set of drawers to fit underneath. I have used melamine covered chipboard as It's a relatively cheap material and strong and easy to cut up on the table saw. I have connected it all with confirmat screws which hold the drawer and cupboard together much more strongly than chipboard screws. I had also built a 600 mm wide cupboard to fill a space in the shed but much to my horror the drawers would never run properly. I just assembled the drawers and discovered that I'd cut the base out of square. I have a Bosch GTS contractor saw which for the most part works well. But when you go beyond 33 cm width in cutting you have to rely on a secondary fence. I seem to be in the habit of forgetting to lock that secondary fence which means that the fence drifts while I'm cutting. This explained why I hadn't cut the basis of the two drawers very accurately. I was able to reuse the material from these two drawers in making the above mentioned cover to fit under the drill press stand. Along with remaking the out of [...]

By |February 15th, 2024|Categories: Renovating, Woodworking|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Wood for Turning

Spent the afternoon annoying the neighbours with the sound of my chainsaw.  Five wheelbarrows of wood that I will be using for woodturning.  Two species  were salvaged. Lots  of apple wood that came from a friend's renovation project. The apple tree made way for a timber deck. Lucky me! The olive wood was quite dirty as it included the root stump. I had to pressure clean that part in the vain hope that it would keep my chainsaw in good shape for a while longer.  The other wood came from an olive farm. The farmer is downsizing his farm from 700 trees to 500. He generously offered the trees with stumps attached to our turning club. He even had a tractor on standby to help load my trailer. I intend to carve some spoons with the apple wood. I actually harvested the wood in November 2017 and this post got lost in my draft folder. I have already carved several spoons form the apple wood. I hope some bowls will emerge from the olive stumps.    Olive StumpsApple and Olive Apple Wood

By |August 21st, 2018|Categories: Woodturning|Tags: , , |0 Comments
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Kickback on the Tablesaw and the Riving Knife

Well after years it finally happened I got to feel the full force of kickback on my table saw. The reason is my riving knife. Rather the absence of a riving knife I took it off while preparing turning blanks.  The result was a lump of red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) about 300mm long and 75mm square. It hit me straight in the sternum and it hurt! Luckily I didnt break anything and only had a small reddened area with a minor cut to show for the indignation. I have never given riving knives much thought. I took it off as the cuts were less than the height of the blade. In order to make a full cut the timber had to be flipped over. I had this idea fixed in my head that the riving knife should sit higher than the top of the blade which makes bling cuts impossible. What I mean by a blind cut is that the timber is thicker than the full height of the blade. I have watched many YouTube (and I have forgotten who made the video) videos where a blind cut has been made and not thought about how this was achieved. This was until I watched a video where someone was talking about setting up a table saw, I nearly didn't watch this as it seemed too basic. There is was set the height of the riving knife just below the height of the blade. Now I can blind cut to my heart's content and reduce the risk of another piece of timber flying off the table.

By |June 6th, 2017|Categories: Woodturning, Woodworking|Tags: , |0 Comments
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Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830 — Pegs and ‘Tails

For my North American reader: Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830 – an exhibition, August 19, 2016–January 8, 2017. Mahogany ‘desk and bookcase’ by Christopher Townsend, circa 1745–50. (Yale University) This groundbreaking exhibition presents a comprehensive survey of Rhode Island furniture from the colonial and early Federal periods, including elaborately carved chairs, […] via Art and Industry in Early America: Rhode Island Furniture, 1650–1830 — Pegs and 'Tails

By |July 27th, 2016|Categories: Furniture, News|Tags: |0 Comments
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Baby Chair Repair – Part 3

This is the final part of the baby chair repair. Part 1 focussed on dismantling and stripping the paint off the baby chair. Part 2  was concerned with repairing the dismantled parts. This last part is about sanding finishing and assembly. Sanding is a boring but necessary part of any project. Many YouTube woodworking videos skip over sanding in fear of boring their audience. The baby chair had lots of sanding. I completed the finishing process using cabinet scrapers which always yields great results. I brushed on a water based varnish allowing a day between coats. A light sand between coats knocked the bumps off. I waited for a week to before final assembly so that the finish would harden. I recall reading about this in a Woodsmith magazine a long time ago. The metal parts including the wheels were also caked with years of paint. Paint stripper and a wire brush cleaned up these parts. I finished the metal parts with a two part rust inhibiting paint. A black satin finish sets the metal work off nicely. As with the previous parts there is a compilation courtesy of Animoto.

By |December 1st, 2015|Categories: Furniture, Woodworking|Tags: , |0 Comments
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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.  

By |November 30th, 2015|Categories: Furniture, Renovating, Woodworking|Tags: , |0 Comments
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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.  

By |November 30th, 2015|Categories: Furniture, Renovating|Tags: , |2 Comments
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