18 January 2009

Heeeeelp...it's the wrong trousers Grommit!!!





I've finally finished the 'fun' project in American White Oak and I'm not over excited to see the last of it, though I'm grateful to Waka for donating the offcuts to the cause. I reckon this is the first and last job I'll do in this stuff, in future I'll stick to English or Continental air dried oak. It's been quite interesting to do though, mainly 'cos of the curved drawer which was the main purpose of the exercise, but it also provided an amusing home for the Grommit mugs that we'd collected a few years ago.
I went round to see Pete yesterday, Martin was there as well and he let me have on a long loan a rather tasty Record compass plane...just needed a bit of blade honing and I think it'll be quite good. I've told him that I'll buy it when funding permits, which might be a while...or at least 'til some more finances come through from F&C. Pete also loaned me his shooter with the long mitre attachment and as today was a bit slack in the 'shop I thought I'd have a go at making something similar to fit onto my one. I turned out to be a bit trickier than I thought, 'specially to get everything square, though there's a cunning adjustment in it so that the fence can be set at a dead 90deg. Idiot that I am, I used an oddment of 18mm marine ply for the two bits at 45deg and I should have known that this stuff will decimate a plane blade, which it proceeded to do with alarming rapidity on my LN No9 Iron Mitre shoot! Tonight then, it was back out to the 'shop to get the dings ground out on the Tormek. In case anyone hasn't seen it before, the toggle clamp holds the attachments firmly onto the shoot so they don't move when the plane's on the return stroke.
The little unit has been received quite well by those that have seen it...SWIMBO's coffee table with the fossil top is the next thing on the agenda, so that'll be underway some time soon.

1 comment:

Kari Hultman said...

Beautiful job on the cabinet, Rob. Especially the dovetails!