Upgrade

Having returned from Yandles a few days ago, I managed to pick up a really nice board of English Cherry about 43mm thick. There were several splits and cracks in it but I reckon there's more than enough to do both the coffee table and the plane restoration projects. There were some even thicker 75mm boards there but the bloody galling thing is that I can't convert them into useable sizes as my portable c/s and table saw will only cut to about 53mm. It's for this reason that I've decided to try and upgrade my workshop machinery over the next couple of years, starting with a much bigger bandsaw (at least a 10" depth of cut) so that these bigger lumps of timber can be processed. A bigger bandsaw will also enable me to cut wider veneers but to do that effectively, I need to plane one of the cut sides so I'll need a wider P/T and so it continues....
I finished reading Robert Ingham's book yesterday and am truly gobsmacked by the quality and sheer precision of his work. I'm not sure that I like all his designs, but no one could argue that the man don't know what he's talking about...outstanding. There are one or two of his pieces though that could be used as a basis for the coffee table frame but one of them might be a non-starter as I'd need a bandsaw with a bigger depth of cut than my current one...bugger! I'm can see that I'm really doing a quite excellent job of convincing myself to change my gear.
On the other hand, the maple picture frames turned out really well. I tried this time to get a finish straight from the plane (my Veritas BU smoother) with only a minimum of sanding using a very worn out bit of 320g paper and much to my surprise, it worked! I finished them with a few coats of blond shellac and wax and just need to get hold of some glass this weekend to finish them off.
Steve is coming down the weekend of the 25th and 26th Oct so I'm starting to get my head round what material is going to be needed in the 'shop for the practical work. I've already outlined to him the schedule for the two days and it's pretty actioned packed, so I'm really looking forward to that, ought to be a great weekend.