My Next Project

Laurie , the tree guy, dropped by this morning with a trailer load of silky oak for me. The deal is I make a table for him in exchange for half the wood. Sounds good to me. Not sure if it will be indoor furniture grade or something more rustic for outside. I guess the wood will tell me after I clean it up a bit.
Stay posted for a picture of the build.

Ran the plane over the silky oak this morning, it comes up a treat. I will be getting lots of plane blade sharpening practice in the near future.

Friday 1st November 2013 update.
Ok it Friday and we have roughed out a couple of pieces of the silky oak and made our selection for the table top.

Thursday 13th November 2013
More work on the silky oak table to today. We discovered the outside patio wasn't flat enough to get a true surface to Mark the slabs off, so started looking around for something more suitable. Well Gaye's kitchen floor proved to be just right, so inside with the slabs for marking.

Then off to the backyard for more flattening.

 Gaye can't help herself. When she sees a planed piece of wood .... Out comes the shellac.

Wednesday November 27th 2013.
The table is moving along. We found some legs at the Big Shed and some lovely recycled Oregon  at the Wood Zoo which I have managed to make into a suitable table base. So here we are taking over Gaye's kitchen for the dry set up. .. It's the flattest piece of floor in the house. ... The Oregon, I think is the imported variety of Douglas Fir fromNW North America. The original plank was 10" x 4 meters and cost $80. I split it for the rails and ends an made a couple of stretchers from another $10 length. I'm happy I found it. I was concerned Ithat I may not be able to find the right species to compliment the the silky oak top.

All in all the project costs to date are;
Legs $20
Fasteners $30.. A bloody rip odd. (8 mm  washers cost 0.19 c each )
Epoxy glue .. $15
Blood... A little
Sweat... Heaps
Tears.. Non to date. Oh except for the price of washers.

December 12th and the work on the table continues after a brief pause. I was concerned that the timber had not stopped moving around, especially cupping.so left it a while to settle down. I determined to glue a piece of 12mm marine ply to the back of the central plank. The purpose was two fold, 1 to bring its thickness in line with the outer slabs and 2 to help stabilise and flatten it.

Once again Gaye's kitchen floor was utilised for the glue up. In the fist pic you can see where we have  clued in some spacers to fill up the deeper saw cuts which were too deep for the planer to take out.

 In the pic below Gaye is vacuuming the red back spiders which had taken up residence in  lumps of gum I used as weights for the glue up. Hmm,, maybe I should have checked that before I brought them inside.

December 18 2013 table update. Today we slotted the edges for inserts and glued up the table top using West 105 epoxy resin and adhesive filler.

Finally a Pic of Phantom Under Sail.

Breeding Planes

I put a couple of planes in the back of the cupboard a while back. I swear I never knew they were a breeding pair....

Vic's Project.

During Vic's latest visit she embarked on her most complex project yet and that was to make a dovetail box. We used some of the Cyprus that I had quarter sawn a little while back and what an extraordinary job she made of her first hand cut dovetails. The initial project was to make a slide top box, but as always, the wood dictated the end result, and we ended up with a beautiful natural edge open Box/tray. Here it is before finishing. No pic, but a little shellac and it came up a treat.

Another Stanley Plane for the Collection.

I got this one from Michael. This is an early (1910 to 1918) Type 11. It has cleaned up very well and is the bigger brother to the early model No 2 I already have.
According to my research it is the last model before major changes in 1919 which include the higher front knob and larger 1 1/4" brass adjusting nut. In my humble opinion the lower knob looks far better.

Mia comes for a Visit

It's Friday at 1420 and Mia and Mom come for a holiday. 

Here we are at the Avalon Airport waiting for Mia and Mom to arrive. ... And there they are ...

We decided to go for an around about car trip home and went to look at the paintings on the wall of the tunnel at the south end of the new ring road.

Ahhhh, Grandmother heaven.

Me??? The center of attention... No way!!!

Almost a full house.

So this is jelly? Don't see this at home 

So this is an Iced Vo- Vo?  Never see these at home... I love visiting Pop and Gran.

Theses ear muffs are cool. Where's the snow?

Music lesson.

Dad an Maddie missing Mia.

GC's pay a Visit

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Trying some Quarter Sawing On the Barwon River Cyprus

Subject: Trying some Quarter Sawing On the Cyprus to try and display any figure that may be lurking in the wood.

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