Pressing engagement

Knobs.

When I'm making a project that involves a bit of drawer work, this is the bit that can cause me so much angst it makes my head spin (easily done!) I've had dozens of ideas for the drawer pulls and each time I've rejected them...too small, not the right shape etc etc. Although pulls are one of the smallest parts of piece of work, to my mind they're one of the most important. After all, when someone goes near the project, the chances are that it's the drawer pull they'll home in on and touch first of all. So many times I see a great piece of work which has been spoilt by the inconsiderate use of inappropriate drawer pulls...it's almost as though they've been planted there as an afterthought.

I digress, as usual. Last night, I suddenly remembered that in Alan Peter's book, there's an illustration of one of his pieces with laminated, curved drawer pulls...and slowly the cogs 'up top' started to grind. Having biscuited the ebony end caps on the top, I was left with some thin slivers of ebony, far too good to just consign to the waste box, so I decided yesterday to knock up a mould using 18mm mdf and laminate four of the slivers to form some 8mm thick curved drawer pulls.

The result was that the AirPress was left running all night as the only suitable glue I had was a slow setting epoxy, but in retrieving them this morning it looks like they've pulled down over the mould quite well...not perfectly as the laminates were quite thick and ebony is fairly unbendy stuff, but good enough.