Perfection

Here's an odd looking thing and I bet you're wondering what on earth it is?  To put you out of your angst, this is a mock-up of one side of a new cabinet that I'll be starting soon and it has one or two features that I've not incorporated into anything in the past, namely the corner stiles that are set at 45deg to the main rectangular sections.

It's going to cause all sorts of problems, particularly at door hanging time, but it should make for an interesting piece.  I can also hear you chundering to yourself about what it's for?

That's an interesting question, because the answer is quite lengthy.  Some years ago we had a long weekend trip to Venice and during the course of our long and varied wanderings in the city we happened on a Venetian carnival mask shop called Tragicomica, which was filled with the most fantastical creations in papier mache.  We spent around an hour in there and kept on coming back over the course of the weekend, wondering how we could take a couple of these extremely fragile masks back on the aircraft to the UK.

Of course, the short answer was...we couldn't.  Roll on ten years and Gareth also paid a visit Venice and  the shop just before Christmas and achieved what we hadn't been able to, so as a consequence we had a couple of beautiful, ornate, gold-leaf encrusted Venetian carnival masks which duly went under the tree.

To say that he was wetting himself when he wrapped them up, or indeed when we were opening them on Christmas morning is something of a distinct understatement.

So, the masks are beautiful and perfect and deserving of a cabinet to show them off.  As befits the contents, there's only one timber to make it out of...English Walnut, which is just about as perfect a timber as any woodworker could possibly hope to use.

Fortunately, I now have a few boards in stock, so the material for the frames has been sawn and is now quietly doing it's own thing in a corner of the workshop, ready for later on in the summer.

However, we have three weeks in Japan first of all...

Penance in my Pocket...

Looks fairly innocuous doesn't it?...it's just a lump of sprung steel, almost exactly the right size for a convenient straight edge and it's even got a hanging-up hole in one end.

I thought so too when I picked it up from the last place I worked as everyone else seemed to be using it as well, so I lobbed it into the back of the motor and thought no more about it.

I found a place for it on the 'Tool Wall', hung it on a pin and have been using it as my bench straight edge for around the last ten years, thinking, as you do, that it's bound to be straight...

Stupid boy!

It wasn't until I came to 'check' something I was doing the other day where I was slightly puzzled when the piece of wood appeared convex one minute and concave the next...what the hell was going on! Eventually, being of relatively sound mind I put two and two together and by some miracle managed to arrive at four.

The bloody straight edge, so called, was bent like a banana!














In the pic above, it's positioned on the table saw, leaning against the crown guard. The little yellow disc that you can see around half way down is a 1mm brass spacer which will almost, but not quite, fit underneath! Faced with thoughts of impending doom and wondering how the hell I'd ever managed to make something straight for the last ten years, I reckoned the only way out was to literally pay penance at Axminster last week...




















...and get hold of a couple of really top quality Veritas workshop straight edges. Fortunately, I only had to pay my penance into the coffers at Axminster, rather than submit to other delights...

The Workshop...March 2102

Keeping a Blog going is a strange and surreal experience. Me, and thousands like me, sit in our little rooms at our little keyboards merrily pecking away at the keys...we hit 'publish' and wooooooooosh...off it goes into the ether.
If you use an Apple Mac, as I do now, you'll know the sound when you send an email.

I digress, as I'm apt to do, but bear with me. Last Friday, the MD of Axminster Power Tools, Ian Styles (shown here nattering to yours truly) hosted a fantastic day for UKWorkshop members at the head office, pics of which can be seen here and during the course of our natterings he enquired 'whether I still did the Blog?'

I 'haa'd' and I 'hummed' but eventually got out of the black hole I'd dug for myself by mentioning the thing that was at the back of my mind...'who actually reads it?' To my surprise, when I checked the stats, around 40,000 people, have dipped into this drivel so I guess, now that I'm retired, I'd better continue with it...

Much has happened in the 'shop over the last 12 months and in particular, the whole of the interior has been stripped, refurbished and upgraded. The main culprit was the floor...anyone unfortunate enough to spend a prolonged amount of time will have noticed the distinct 'wibbli-wobbliness' in there due mainly to an extreme attack of parsimoniousness...















...and as you can see from the pic, there's not a lot of support under the joists, the net effect being to induce a slightly queasy feeling of sea-sickness after a short while.

To cut a very long story sideways, that's all been fixed. The floor has been considerably beefed up with some of my early retirement money from the MOD as well as spending a trifling amount on some new gear.

In early November all the gear was delivered from Axminster and Yandles...

with some assistance from a few of the 'lads' (suitably recompensed with coffee and fresh cream sticky buns) so that by the end of the day it was all safely under cover in the 'shop.















If you look very carefully at the saw take-off table, there are one or two little lime green and black trinkets that I decided to invest in.

But I ramble, as usual and as is said in circles far more eminent than miserable offering, a 'picture speaks a thousand words', so herewith the new 'shop...




















The hand tool bench, substantially unchanged, but note the lights over the top of the bench which makes it far easier to take pics.














The new Charwood W650 table saw, complete with router table in the RHS extension table, carbon fibre riving knife, new and vastly improved crown guard and many other modifications too numerous to mention (but they are documented in the next issue of F&C)














Jet 260 p/t and extender bin, all powered by the Camvac 386




















The wood store, complete with several large, prime boards of English Walnut (the big ones, standing up in the corner)














The new lathe and Jet heavy duty disc sander, with the Camvac 386 tucked underneath




















The Startrite 352E bandsaw, complete with a 20mm M42 blade, together with the new racking for the cramps




















...and finally the new Jet pillar drill and metalwork bench. Much of the other stuff in the workshop has remained unchanged, but it does mean now that I'll be able to tackle a larger range of more complex projects.

That's the theory anyway, practice will probably be very different...

Comments awaited with some trepidation.

'Shop Flaw...

The big day finally arrived last Friday, and to mark the occasion, SWIMBO snapped this little pic and put it on my Facebook page so now the complete world and his wife knows that I've finally got there. It's a strange and surreal sort of experience as at the moment it feels like I'm on a weeks leave before we go away for a bit of late summer sun in the Red Sea, so it'll probably hit me when we get back...I won't have to get up at 6.30 when it's pitch black (...is there anything worse?) have some breakfast, make my sarnis and walk down the road to meet my mate Kirk for the ride to work.

Nope...it's all very bizarre at the moment, but I dare say I'll get used to it!

The main activity in the 'shop though, has been to strengthen the existing floor. When I built it a few years ago, I had an extreme attack of parsimoniousness (good word that!) and decided that one central sleeper wall would suffice.

Big mistake...huge time!

I made the joists a measly 3"x 2" and as a consequence the floor had a somewhat better bounce than a circus trampoline...as anyone who's been in it will testify! Now that I'm about to install much heavier equipment, I've rued the day that I made that decision.

The third pic shows the first part of one of the new sleeper walls being laid, with cross noggins to additionally support the joists. I used 50mm thick paving slabs to lay the timber on and I swear that they're just about the heaviest and most awkward bloody things that I've ever had the misfortune to manhandle.


















The final pic shows the new floor going down, which I made out of 18mm ply which was then covered with some hardboard.

Finally, I had a fantastic day yesterday at Axminster, courtesy of Ian Styles who gave me a personal guided tour of their facility, including an in depth look at the way the firm operates. I didn't know that if an order is placed on-line (during the day) their system is so good that 13 minutes later, the goods are being loaded onto the back of a lorry...now that's some sort of efficiency!

Needless to say, a very considerable order was placed on the day, which, if you you care to peruse future blogs, will be elaborated on in much greater detail.

But enough of this nonsense...I'm on me hols tomorrow!

The Return...

You'll no doubt be pleased (or otherwise, as the case may be) that the long sabbatical has come to an end. In around 48 hours I'll be retiring, finishing my employment for good, which is, I hasten to add, a slightly sureal and very strange experience.

Expect then, dear peruser of this Blog, that normal service will indeed resume, with an account of 'shop activity over the summer (not least of which is the acquisition of a LN 51)...very early next week!

Sabbatical

Those of you who dip into these meanderings from time to time will have noticed that I haven't made an entry for quite a while. This is because I've decided to take a long delayed sabbatical though fear not...normal service will be resumed in October when I finish work.

Cunning conversion...

The last technical article has been written for F&C, which was supposed to be a two page piece on ramped shooting boards. Two pages in the mag though, isn't a whole lot of space to describe how to make one, so having one of my frequent latteraly thinking brain waves, I decided to modify my existing one. The advantage of the ramped shoot is that more of the blade is in contact with the timeber, whereas in the ordinary version, it's only one small section that's in constant use.

The first pic shows my old, battered, tatty and coffee stained shoot... a bit worn but still accurate.

The simplest thing to do to modify the shoot was to saw off the plane runway and re-attach a new one, at an angle of round about 10deg or less. The bench hook end has been chiseled away to the right angle and then it's been fixed in place with a hefty couterbored screw...

...and the addition of a couple of wedges on the under side to level the whole thing up was the final little bit to do. The runway has been extended by around 60mm so that wider boards can be shot in without the No9 falling off the end of the shoot.

It's not happened yet, but with my track record, it's going to happen one day!