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. 

  

Walkabout

As some readers may have guessed, I've been a big fan of the late Jim Krenov for many years; I have all of his books, some very early editions in hardback and I even have one of Jim's smoothing planes, made by his own fair hand, complete with his test shavings, box, packing and paperwork and autographed 'JK'...and no Pickard, you still can't have it😆. He wasn't the easiest bloke to get along with; martinet is a word that springs readily to mind, but over the decades he produced a folio of highly desirable and unique pieces, made to commission or for galleries and all of which have never been offered for sale since they were first snapped up.

Some would say, with an element of truth, that many of his floor standing pieces are simply 'boxes on sticks' but it's only when you try to make (as I've done) a 'box on sticks' do you realise that some of them are fiendishly difficult to build.

Apart floor standing pieces, JK also did many, many wall hung cabinets and I have several interpretations in the house, one of which is shown below:

This one has a slightly convex door and is made in English 'pippy' Oak; there was just enough left over from a previous project to make it, having a couple of centre hung internal drawers:

...with a solid oak, panelled back. The drawers have very rare Cuban Mahogany sides; my grandad gave me the material when I first started this wood mangling lark in the early 70's.  It came from the then Westminster Bank in Colchester, Essex, ripped out when the original fittings and fixtures were 'modernised' in the early 60's:

As the door has no handle, it needs one of Jk's unique little 'invisible' openers; it can't be seen from the front or the underside, but simply moving the lever:

...nudges the door forward a few mm. If anyone would like to know how to make them (not difficult once you get your head round it) I'm quite willing to do a post or two to explain in further detail.

It looks really quite special, hanging as it does on the spare bedroom wall and did for about a month until I glanced at it one day as I was passing and thought it looked a bit strange, something not quite 'right'.  The reason was soon evident:

The wood was bought as air dried 30mm thick planks and had been secondary conditioning in my nice warm 'shop for at least two years, but within three weeks of hanging the finished cabinet indoors, the bloody door had warped about 3mm at the top! The upshot is that when time permits and I have another suitable bit of oak, I'll make another door and hopefully, this one won't go walkabout.

Canada, the 51st State?

 Those of the current readership who dip into this verbal tosh from time to time will no doubt be convinced that the recent resurrection of 'The Blokeblog' has sadly been neglected, withering by the wayside as no profound witterings have been produced for the last few weeks.

There's a very good reason though as I've been on my travels, namely to Canada; more specifically to British Columbia and the Canadian Rockies. SWIMBO  and I set off at the end of May to partake in a driving tour of a smallish section of BC/Alberta which included several well known towns and cities (Vancouver, Victoria, Tofino, Whistler, Jasper, Banff etc) at the same time passing through a couple of truly spectacular chunks of of the Rockies.

To say Canada is large is a gross understatement; the country is vast with a capital 'V' and even on our very moderate three week tour, we managed to clock up a respectable 1780 miles. Unlike Europe, there's no comprehensive passenger rail network which means that you need to drive everywhere so that every other day, I was behind the wheel for hundreds of Km, the longest distance being 489 Km (304 miles) from Banff to Kelowna.

The title though, of this entry is one that in any self-respecting Canadian's viewpoint is liable to earn me a damned good flogging, if not at least a severe online admonishment! Over the course of the trip, I thought long and hard about it and to my mind, the influence of the USA in this part of Canada is almost overwhelming. It would be churlish to offer a figure but I'd say 80% isn't far off.

Here's a few examples. In the above image, the hotel in Lillooet (where we stopped for lunch), with a line up of Harley Davidson motor cycles parked up outside could be anywhere in the mid-west of the USA.  The language spoken, to this British ear, is almost identical with perhaps subtle nuances that can be detected.  The road system follows the same pattern as the USA (this of course is to be expected) and the vehicles on the roads being identical to those across the border. There's a huge preponderance of enormously powerful 'trucks', many with four driving wheels on the rear axle.  I'm six foot tall and the bonnets (hood) of these things came up to my shoulder level; one I saw with a raised suspension had a bonnet level with the top of my head!  It's very disconcerting as you're pootling along and some good ol' red necked boy in  a 5.7 litre Dodge Ram comes tearing past on the inside lane!  One last example is the food; it's almost entirely how you'd expect to dine in the USA with ubiquitous fast food eateries being the norm.  That said, it's not dissimilar now to the UK. 

To look at the reverse side of the coin, what makes the visitor aware that he's in Canada? The most striking example is the French influence, even in BC.  All road signage (and it's not nearly as good as the UK, even if the road surfaces are generally much better) is in English and French.  Another example is the traditional Canadian fare of 'poutine' (chips, gravy and cheese curds)...

...which I studiously avoided, much to the derision of my son.  The pic above shows a typical eatery in Sun Peaks, a little skiing resort where we stayed for a couple of days. As a side note, I visited the eastern side of Canada in the early 70's and I found the influence of 'la belle France' far greater.

The Canadian Rockies have been well documented with articles and photographs beyond number; any casual search on t'interweb will bring up an avalanche of information, but one of the highlights for me was seeing a bear ambling across the four lane highway whilst driving to Banff. With some cunning driving which was entirely unintentional, I managed to get to within 2 metres of this bad boy.... 

...munching his lunch of dandelions in a gully by the side of the road. This was one of many pics taken by Alyson with the car window rolled down and you can clearly see a flower in his jaws.

A controversial post without doubt and one which might earn me severe criticism, if not a damned good flogging as previously mentioned! 

Did I enjoy Canada and BC though? Absolutely. 

Would I do the driving again?

Absolutely not.

Parsimonious writ wrong...

 I tend, whenever possible, to be a little with careful material and consumables so I thought I'd be extremely clever the other day when I glued together the four sections of Bog Oak panels.  It was imperative that there was no 'squeeze out' in the long, black tunnel of the interior as first and foremost, it would have been almost impossible to remove it. Second and foremost, that's where the drawers were eventually going to run smoothly; any lumps and bumps and they wouldn't.

I got every set up and it all glued together perfectly with the minimum of glue...or so I thought. It appears though, that I was being just a mite too parsimonious and didn't apply quite enough.  As the box was subjected to the stresses and strains of sawing in half and cleaning up, the joints on the underside started to come adrift!

Sacre bleu! 

Panic mode then set in until I realised that I could screw the offending sections together:

In addition, I'd rather usefully collected a 'baccy tin of Bog Oak sawdust:

...which I intended to use to fill all the blemishes, cracks and tiny bits of 'break out'; if you haven't used it, Bog Oak is extremely brittle.  Mixing the sawdust with a little CA adhesive forms a filler which matches the wood exactly and sets rock solid, so that once applied and sanded smooth...

...it becomes almost impossible to see where the 'fill' is located.  As a Brucie Bonus, all the fills will be completely covered by the two plinths, so will never be seen.

I can see you wondering though, what on earth is a 'Brucie Bonus'? Those resident in the UK and of a certain age like Andy Pickard will immediately know; for those unfortunates living in distant climes, Google is your friend😂 

Dangerous Territory!

 For many years, my 'shop door has sported a very usual sign, bought in the Falklands when I visited in 2008.  Not for me the very boring 'Man Cave', or even 'Bloke Cave' nor the very twee 'Dad's Workshop' but one that simply says....

...which somehow implies that dangerous territory lies within and the wary enter at their peril. Not so, but the subject of this blog is one that arouses the hackles on most woodmangerler's necks; sharpening or more specifically, stropping! The Schwarz mentions that 'sharp fixes most things' and he's correct...mostly.
 

I've been doing this woodwork lark since the early 70's and like most people who indulge, I've been chasing that elusive 'perfect' edge for most of the last fifty odd years.  We can never hope to achieve the perfect edge or even as so many pundits say, an edge 'like a razor' because it don't happen.

However, for woodwork and cabinet making purposes, you or I can get pretty damned close!

We all have our preferred methods of obtaining a respectable edge on our hand tools.  Over the decades, I've used most of them and am currently using Shapton Pro ceramic stones (2000 and 8000g) as well as a Veritas honing guide which results in a pretty good, workable edge.

Here's the thing though....believe it or not, you can get it much sharper with a strop!

 For years, I've played around with various strops and have had mixed results; perceived wisdom recommends adding some sort of gloopy, abrasive paste to the leather which is mostly green Chromium Dioxide and up to a point, this works quite well, but it soon breaks down, forming a disgusting, slimy, ineffective mess in and on the leather which doesn't work...so you have to keep on adding yet more gloop!

 A while back, I was perusing the Axminster web site, which as many know can make a severe dent on the wallet, when I came across their 'Rider' strop system:

...so I thought, as you do, 'in for a penny etc' and hit the 'submit' button on the 'puter. The whole system is eye wateringly expensive (it could be made in the 'shop much more economically) but it actually works superbly.

Surprisingly, the rather good info sheet that comes with it mentions that a gloopy abrasive paste is NOT REQUIRED although if applied, it does speed up the process.

Only light pressure is needed, both on the back and bevel; I give each around half a dozen passes on each of the three grades of strop, the last being English Bridal leather.  Cleaning is achieved by simply using a decent suede brush on the napped strop and a really good, proprietary leather cream on the other ones:

The edge achieved is perceptibly far sharper and if you wisely invest in the system, you're ill advised to test it in the time honoured way by shaving a few hairs of your arm!  

The 'Glue-Up' and after.....

 Some stuff has been done of late on the Suda Kenji box, or is it a cabinet? It was glued up recently in stages as it's too complex to do it in one 'hit', so the image below shows the central shelf glued into the sides and even that was done in two steps to make sure it was dead square:

I'm always a bit wary of the 'open time' of modern adhesives, much as I like them as they're just too short in warm weather.  Titebond III which I've now reverted to 'grabs' almost instantly and you've got about ten minutes before it starts to set, which for a complex glue up is just too damn short! In my wisdom, I thought I'd try out some epoxy adhesive with a 30 minute 'open time'...

...which really is excellent as it takes all (or most of) the stress out of the operation. The main box or cabinet was glued in two stages without mishap:

The top and bottom were glued on separately with the job being very cunningly elevated off the assembly table by using a couple of bits of 6mm ply. If that isn't cunning I don't know what is! 

Once all was set hard, the entire box was sawn in half using a Japanese cross-cut saw; not easy in Bog Oak but even harder was to plane the end grain surfaces of each of the two boxes to a mating fit. If I mention that Bog Oak has a density of around 60lbs p.cu' you'll be able to appreciate just what an ordeal it was.

You can't see much detail from the picture above as it's like looking into the Black Hole of Calcutta, but there's roughly a 97% match, so all that's required with a very sharp, very finely set block plane is to take some very skimpy shavings to remove the last 3% for a 100% mating fit.

Accident & Emergency

A strange title I fear for the rejuvenation of this long neglected blog, but all will shortly be revealed.  I quite often have a natter with my mate Andy Pickard, shown on the left sans Tilley hat for which he was on the short end of of some considerable verbal abuse.  Being a true Yorkshireman, it would be easier for Andy to get the proverbial blood out of a stone than part with any cash!

I diverge though.  We both share an interest in not only woodwork (he's a bit of a half decent wood spinner) but also in Japan and those who've delved into these meanderings in the past may recollect a few entries from 2012, in which I detailed at some length my initial thoughts on the country.  Andy read the Blokeblog when I first published it and immensely sad though it is, subsequently as well though the following years; even more to his detriment, he re-read the whole lot a few days ago! 

The outcome was that he suggested that it would be a 'good thing' if I were to start it again and such was the pressure that he used to twist my arm that I ended up in A&E (ER to those in distant climes across the 'big wet') so I'm struggling away typing with just one hand.  Those who've had the misfortune to read this sorry missive in the past will realise that I have a tendancy to slightly exaggerate😅

To cut a long story sideways though, I've decided to re-vamp the Blokeblog, with a view to producing a weekly instalment giving some insights as to what's been happening in the 'shop, or not as the case may be as those past distant readers will realise that the cock-up fairy is a frequent visitor.  Even though I try my utmost, she comes a calling when I'm not expecting her and the blog in many instances has been about ways to mitigate or repair her unwarranted intrusions. 

Much has been produced (reasonably well) in the last few years and it can be viewed on my FB 'Wilton Woodwork' page, which I use as an online photographic record. The same can be said of my current Instagram account, which is Rob Stoakley (woodbloke 52) and I usually make an entry every week or so, which is then automatically shared with Facebook.

I was initially a little sceptical about re-starting the blog, as it's nearly a decade since it was last published.  Things have moved apace in the online world though, with the preponderance of Utoobers (some of whom are excellent, the caveat being 'some'), Vloggers (whatever they are) also including TV woodworking programmes which for the most part are truly abysmal as well as a multitude of different social media platforms. A blog then, might seem a bit 'old hat', but if you feel otherwise, I'd be very grateful for a measure of reassurance in the comments.

So, you may ask...what's currently happening in the 'shop? Last November, we had the chance to see 'up close and personal' in Japan an exquisite cabinet by Suda Kenji, not dissimilar to the one in the British Museum: 

To say that his work fabulous is somewhat of an understatement. I was able to visually examine one of his pieces and my nose was less than 100mm from it; it was not exhibited (as were all the other items on show) behind any glass!  Seeing this little cabinet was like an itch that needed to be scratched; the four quarter sawn pine, veneered panels shown below in Bog Oak:

 ...form the basis of the cabinet, but dear reader, if you want to find out more you'll have to keep tuned for the next exiting instalment!