Resolving Resolution

With the current festivities under way, the 'shop has been locked up for a few days, but there's been a little done on this current project.

Firstly, the drawer dust boards have  been made, oak and oak veneered ply with a walnut lipping.

Secondly, the oak runners for the lowest drawer have been inlaid into the bottom, together with a very strange oak rectangle in the middle what's got a hole at one end...

Very odd, but why?  The answer lies here.... but you still don't know what the little hole is for!  All will be revealed later, which means that unless you can guess the answer, you're going to have to grit your teeth and resolve to make a binding New Year's resolution to keep on reading this drivel.

















The drawer unit is shown assembled dry.  There was almost a goof of unimaginable proportions here which I'll document later on.  Suffice to say that I didn't really have what passes as my pitiful brain fully engaged but there was just...say again, just enough material for me to get away with the 'fix'...

















Finally, a shot of the double Krenovian style door latches.  I made them 15mm deep as I inserted 10mm oak filler plug into each on as mdf isn't the best thing to hold a screw...and besides, if the latches were ever removed, the sight of some nasty mdf is going to cause someone to wrinkle their noses and exclaim...."eweeeeee....why did he have to use that stuff?"

So here we are, the end of yet another calamitous year on the 'Blokeblog', with no doubt many more calamities to come in the following year.  Wherever on this small Earth of ours that you happen to be reading this, I hope you've had a most excellent Christmas and I wish you and yours a peaceful and prosperous New Year.

Panel pondering?

A little more has been done on this latest piece as the first pic shows the basic cabinet...constructed from 2mm veneers of walnut over 15mm mdf with 10mm lipping mitred at the corners.  Jointing with 6mm Dominos.

All well and good thus far.

I then came to the rear panel, where again I had some smaller pieces of English Walnut to play with...

...all of which were about the same size as the door panels, so that the intention is that the rear should be a mirror of the front.

Except that I want to include a small drawer unit on the right hand side, which means that only two of the panels will be used and I'll have to find a bit of something else (not quite so striking) to go behind the drawers, which I think I've got lurking somewhere...

Onwards and upwards...

One for the chop...

Maple...hard, rock maple.  Nice timber but I don't happen to use much of it, though I did just happen to have a decent, longish board around 140mm wide and 50 thick.

At least I thought it was a decent board until I started to machine it...and thats when all the tiny splits and checks appeared, so as far as using it for a bit of furniture, it might as well have been some kindling because that's all it was really fit for.

However, I've had a bit of hankering for some time now for a nice chunkable chopping board to accompany the knives I bought earlier in the year in Japan, so rather than burn this bit of maple, why not turn it into a thick cutting board?...after all, the splits and cracks won't really matter.

The board was then ripped, planed, skimmed and re-jointed with a double row of biscuits on each glue line... that's 36 of the things in total!  I also flipped each piece through 90deg so that the entire chopping surface is now quarter sawn and it was finished with a chamfer all round.

Having finished it this morning, I can think of one or two things that could be sliced up on it...

Normal service...

...on the Blokeblog will be resumed shortly.  At the moment I'm just finishing off laying a solid t&g oak floor on the upstairs landing which will be the very last part of the mammoth job of redecorating the hall, which I began just before we went to Japan in early May and regular readers who've nothing better to do with their time will know how I just love dipping into the paint pot...one of my most favourite occupations...

Laying the floor was easy enough, it's just the fiddly, awkward bits round the door openings and at the edges which have proved a mite time consuming, so fear not, dear peruser...once I've done with this little job, normal service will be resumed.