Diamond Deliberations

I arrived home from work at lunctime on Maundy Thursday (early stand down for the Civil Service) to find another parcel on the dining room table from 'distant lands' containing not one, but four 'items of loveliness' for me to review. Suitability gobsmacked, I contacted Rob Lee and let him know that all items for review in F&C must now be sourced through Michael at F&C. I would though, do a full review of each and post it on UKWorkshop, in the manner of the now long departed, and woodwork depleted, Alf. I think the jury's still out in Canada, but I have the feeling the 'parcels of loveliness' will dwindle very shortly to zero...
Whilst I'm on the subject of UKW, I mentioned last week that it's been a while since we had a competition. Things progress, as they usually do and by default, the mods in their infinite wisdom have allowed me to take the reins of this one. It remains to be seen exactly the format that it'll follow, but I've already got a outline of the basic plot and have one member who's willing to forgo all sanity later on to judge the entries. Steve will also kindly donate a prize and I'll knock up a 'Blokeblade' so it just remains now to find one or two others to judge it later on as well as a few more prizes.
The most interesting development in the 'shop though is shown in the pics and that concerns the elm burr. It's always a leap of faith with these things, 'cos you never know what it's going to look like when it's opened up...it might be full of cracks and voids rendering it pretty much unusable. After a lot of careful thought, I decided where and how I was going to cut it (having firstly planed a flat on the rough surface) The process is a bit akin I suppose to cutting a rough diamond, (though a bit less fraught) as you only get one chance...any mistakes can't be rectified and the whole lump of wood has to be consigned to the bin, which would be a tragedy. Fortunately, my deliberations were sound and after putting on a new bandsaw blade, I sliced up some really good 3mm pieces of the burr which were immediately then glued to the wide cherry rails in the AirPress. The bottom panel was also veneered at the same time...this'll go into the frames where they cross over.
SWIMBO did me an immense favour yesterday as well by finding a Chinese to English translator on Google. It can't have escaped your notice that there's an Oriental fan of these inane ramblings and it's only when it was translated did I realise that it's commercial garbage for some lighting company in Shanghai, so to the bloody cretin who's posting comments in some unintelligible language...please stop, as from now on all your crap will be instantly deleted.