The 'Owl' Cabinet; Progress

 As mentioned in a previous post, another Jim Krenov cabinet, or interpretation thereof is under way.  Thus far, by some miracle, there don't seem to be any horrendous gaffs that have been committed and it's pretty much gone together as planned...and it does take a lot work with the little grey cells!

JK's doors are always the hardest thing to make, so I started with them and as I'd never made a set of 'sail' doors, I made a prototype in pine, shown in the second pic.  This is one of the Ash panels being planed:

 ...using my little convex sole maple plane and couple of ancient 'rounds' to get into the tighter part of the curve. Jointing is by Dominos (quick and easy) but here I've used some mock green 6mm mdf doms:

Both doors are shown, with the mock pine door on the rhs. Dominos are also used for the main construction, with the horizontal ones being machined wider so adding a degree of 'slideability' 

when all four sections are assembled:

At this stage, you'll be able to see the verticals, the doors and one of the veneered horizontal panels, yet to be machined:

Shaping on the vertical panels is done in much the same way as the doors:

...but this time I used a straight edge to guide the planes, which made life a lot easier. Then it was simply a question of refining and finishing the curves at each end:

If you look at the following pic, you'll see that the doors sit into a stopped rebate at the front of each vertical side and the veneered top and bottom are 'wrapped around' which took a bit of sorting out to machine:

...but I got there in the end leaving a few mm all round for the eventual fitting of the doors. As mentioned earlier in another enthralling post, I hate fitting brassware but strangely, the Brusso hinges shown dropped into their recesses absolutely spot on:

It's all come together quite nicely, so I'm moderately chuffed with the progress to date.  However, over the last couple of days I've pondered at length just how the hell JK made and fitted the drawer assembly:

It looks very simple, but it's fiendishly difficult to make, fit and assemble into the cabinet.  Having worn out a load of brain cells over the weekend I think I've worked out how he did it and moreover the sequence of events to construct it and fit it into the cabinet. My version won't be exactly as shown above but in essence, fingers crossed, it will look very similar. 

Treasure Box; Deux

 Sometimes, deep down, you get a feeling that something's not right or won't work and such an insight happened the other day about the current little box, details of which were outlined in the last enthralling episode; I knew that faffing around cutting another hinge slot simply wasn't going to work!

As a result, all the holly banding was drum sanded off and I decided to try and use a wooden hinge aka Rob Cosman as I'd made a few of his boxes fairly recently...

As I'd never done any veneering using end grain 'oysters' this was a new departure for me and as a consequence there was a bit of a 'learning curve' accompanied the many and varied cock ups which which were too numerous to detail, even by 'The Blokeblog' standards. I was determined that this job wasn't going to end up as bandsaw fodder, so I simply soldiered on and sorted out the mistakes, errors and general goofs as they occurred. 

It was finally done today and despite all my reservations, it hasn't turned out too badly.  Fortunately SWIMO likes it and has accosted it for her watches.

...and once the lid's been opened:

The overall effect is acceptable, though the holly, although excellent to work with is fairly unforgiving of any discrepancies in the jointing and is also very difficult to keep anywhere near clean.

At the end of the jour, I'm glad this little box has been dun n'dusted and 'er indoors has found a suitable use for it.

Onwards and upwards.

Mismatch! I hate hinges.

 After finishing off SWIMBO's 'Treasure Box' I've been noodling around in the workshop for the last few days making another little box, this time using some Laburnum 'oyster' veneers: 

...first used on furniture in the early 16th century. I had one little bit of timber which was sufficient to just make enough 'oysters' for a small box which 'er indoors has again purloined.  Never having used this type of veneering process before it was an 'interesting' experience and one I don't care to repeat!

All things being equal (which they usually aren't in any of my wood mangling procedures) the little box went together quite well.  I decided to use some Holly that I acquire from Stourhead years ago as an edge banding and also as a feature to mask where the top had been separated from the box; all pretty standard wood faring stuff.

The only hinges even worth considering for any half respectable box are Andrew Crawford's smartHinges which although hideously expensive are ridiculously easy to fit, just requiring four passes on the router table, one for each leaf.

The caveat is that you have to fit them properly! 

Each machined slot has to be precisely 42mm long and if there's any deviation from that exact measurement, the lid simply will NOT match the top.  The issue is that the slots are made on the router table, but each pair is machined in a different direction; two left to right and the other pair right to left.

A 34mm spacer needs to be made to set the slot lengths and of course once the table has been set up, trial slots can be made, ensuring of course that you check to see that they're exactly the same length. 

I made the trial slots, but being a complete an utter eejit bereft of all remaining brain cells, I neglected to check the lengths and assumed, as you would, that all was 'hunky doodly.' It wasn't though as one was less than 0.5mm too bloody long, which had the effect of 'corkscrewing' the lid when it was fitted.  You can faff around with this sort of fitting and adjustment til the cows come home, but in the end I decided to fill in the errant slot:

...and re-machine it again, this time a gnats cock less. Fortunately I haven't fiddled with the router table so the 'set' will still be fine. 

On a brighter and more positive note, this weekend I started a much larger job:

...which will be an interpretation of one of Jim Krenov's pieces, 'The Spalted Owl' cabinet though my one will be made in some outstandingly figured English Ash with a stand in Paduk.

Although it's much larger, it'll be a bloody sight easier to make than this sodding little box!

Treasure Box

After a fraught few months in which this job (on more than one occasion) nearly became bandsaw fodder it's finally done n'dusted:

There were a whole load of trivial, niff-naffy things that conspired to make to make it increasingly more irksome to complete, so ultimately I had two options: walk away from it or pass it bodily through the bandsaw.  I'm glad now that I decided to walk because now it's all complete, it looks quite respectable.

The marine brass hasp was expensive but worth the outlay.  However, it was very crudely polished and had to be take apart and re-finished using some of SWIMBO's diamond grits on a felt bob in a small Dremel drill; that took a complete day!  The polished M4 domed brass nuts complete the finished hasp once it had been re-assembled.

The drawer boxes were made in some very acceptable Victorian mahogany, dated roughly at about 1860 and the fronts are Birds Eye Maple, epoxied in place.  One of the intensely annoying bloody niggles was that they had to be fitted to the openings at least thrice and the second time was after they'd been polished so that had they to be done all over again! Thankfully, a touch of candle wax after polishing eased the fit so they all slide in quite nicely now. Drawer pulls and slim wedge for the hasp made in African Blackwood.

The underside consists of a couple of plinths in Bog Oak:

 

...secured in place with some maple buttons and No.7 c/s brass screws. I'm not convinced though that I used quite enough buttons to do the job; a pundit who shall be nameless thought that I could do with a few more!

I fully intended to sell this thing but whilst I was doing the final wax polishing, SWIMBO sauntered into the 'shop one Saturday morning just to see what was going on.  I mentioned in passing that I was going to flog it 'cos I was bloody fed up with it, whereupon she immediately said..."you'll do no such thing as I'll have it. It's now mine!"

Being of reasonably sound mind, I didn't have much choice in the matter, so it's now been found a spot on top of her:

...English Walnut chest of drawers that I made for her a few years ago. Suffice to say that it's already got a few 'treasures' located within and I dare say that a few more will find their way into the interior in due course.

ROMANUS NUMERI

It has to be said, I'm a bit of a history nerd, period. It doesn't really matter what sort of history; I'd probably draw the line at something really esoteric like the role of Confucius in ancient China or whatever it was called then, but you get the drift. I like noodling around in the past and trying to imagine what it was really like 'back in the day' to use an oft quoted phrase.

I'm a sucker for a decent history series on the TV and there are some particularly good presenters such as Dan Snow and Lucy Worsley. Bettany Hughes does some excellent stuff as well:

...and great though she is, she does have a couple of outstanding attributes that make it very difficult for a chap to concentrate on the program for any sustained time. Another particular favourite is Professor Mary Beard:




.......who may not be quite so outwardly forthcoming as our Bettany, but this is what Wiki has to say about her:

'Dame Winifred Mary Beard, DBE, FSA, FBA, FRSL is an English classicist specialising in Ancient Rome. She is a trustee of the British Museum and formerly held a personal professorship of classics at the University of Cambridge'.

The Prof. has a very engaging style as she merrily cycles along the ancient Appian Way, stopping her red bike now and again at some obscure Roman tomb to read the Latin text, some 2000 or so years old. The salient point though, in case you missed it, is that she can read the inscriptions and tell us what that long dead Roman is saying to us in the present day.

Strangely, I'm in awe of her ability to decode those old texts; it's something that I would love to be able to do. Some people of my generation yearned to play the guitar and blast out all the Stones and Beatles riffs; I wanted to learn Latin and read the ancient inscriptions in Rome.

What though, (and you're right to wonder) has all this meandering got to do with wood mangling? Most of the time, I scribble all over the work in pencil to mark stuff (face side, edge etc) and it's especially useful to use sticky dots:




...to identify the corners of a drawer say, when cutting dovetail joints, but at some point the dots and pencil scrbblings have to be removed; then you're stuck! A really elegant way to mark which bit goes with what is to use a 3mm chisel:







...to inscribe some ROMANUS NUMERI, remembering that '9' is IX not VIIII as I once did!

I think Professor Beard would approve.

The Last Retort

Many years ago, when I built the current workshop I didn't really commit too many brain cells to the placement of the workbench once the build had been completed and it was ready to install.  I naturally thought, as you do, that in front of a South or East facing window would give oodles of natural light.

And it did! 

So much so that that there was far too much sunlight falling onto the bench surface and I almost needed dark anti-glare snow goggles to see anything. Within the hour it had been hoiked over to the other side of the 'shop where it now happily remains. The upshot of this epic removals episode (the bench is a bit 'heavy') was to ensure that I had enough artificial light to see what I was doing which for the most part was easy enough to sort out, but on some specific occasions shadows were created which caused difficulties. 

Standard twin fluorescent lights provide the 'shop lighting, though these 'ye oldy' fashioned tubes are no longer available in the DIY stores and have been replaced with LED equivalents that just slot into place in the original fitting. An old 4' tube is also mounted directly over the bench and gives a general pool of light over the top but it's not enough so some time ago I purchased a couple of these lamps from Axminster:

 These little jobbies are quite superb, having six LEDs within the housing and provide enough light for them to be used in an operating theatre.

But they're still not enough!

Cutting 'shovetails' is a specific job where a beam of light needs to be directed in front of the saw; the lights shown wouldn't provide such a beam so I was a bit stuffed, to put it mildly. I'd used all sorts of lights in the past to shine light on the saw blade with little success.  Then the little grey cells, or what's left of them, aligned and I suddenly remembered that just before I left a past life donkeys years ago, I happened, by the purest off chance😁, to 'acquire' a test tube holder and widget from one of the labs.

As last resort, I used a chrome steel bar from an old printer and fitted it to a heavy oak block onto which went the fully adjustable 'widget' to hold a rather excellent little clip on light from Ikea.

The light is now directed to exactly where it's need; it doesn't prevent me from cutting on the wrong side of the line (it has been known), but it helps.

 

Notes of white spirt with a linseed oil finish...

 A blog hasn't been forthcoming recently and is probably a little overdue, so apologies to those unfortunate enough to have been biding time with imminent anticipation over the last few days, but there's been 'stuff' to do which is outside the remit of The Blokeblog...such as painting and gardening.

These days t'interweb and especially places like Instagram seem to have no end of snippets of handy (or otherwise) information for the aspiring woodmangler or not as the case may be.  They're all intended to be short cuts; interesting, quirky techniques designed to save time, money or both.

Sometimes they're clever, ingenious almost and worth committing to memory, that's provided of course that you or I (in this case) have got a few spare functioning brain cells left. In many instances though, what's shown in the clip is bloody dangerous, especially when it shows large lumps of spinning steel perilously close to pink, fleshy digits.

When I was a callow 'youf' these little snippets were called 'tips n'tricks'; modern, savvy parlance refers to them as a 'hack' but the only time I've ever had a so called 'hack' is when I've had a stinking cough and felt like death warmed up.

Here's a question though.  How many times have you opened a tin of varnish or Osmo PolyX (which skins over at the drop a proverbial hat) and found that there's a thick, armour plated skin on the surface that requires a sharp knife to remove? Once you've removed it there's a better than even chance that it'll drop back into the now gloopy liquid and then you've got to fish it out with a stick, not to mention all the usable stuff that you've got to try and recover back into the tin. Being a tad parsimonious, it used to irk me beyond belief!

Recently though, I came across a really good 'hack' and for what it's worth, all you need is an empty wine bottle, a plastic funnel and one of those clever little jobbies that suck most of the air out of the bottle. Being partial to a glass or three of the 'vino collapso' a half empty bottle of wine is a thing that simply doesn't exist; a snowball would have a better chance in Hell.

 

It's the air that causes the contents to skin over; remove most of the air and the contents will stay pristine! The stuff in the bottle is a rubbing polish and consists of equal parts of white spirit, boiled linseed oil, polyurethane varnish and Osmo PolyX. It's been in there for around three months and shows no sign of deteriorating.

It's not though, recommended to decant a glass to accompany a thick, juicy steak.