Glues and hooves and veneer

Been maintaining blog silence for a while because we've been offline at home while we changed internet provider (Talk Talk truly are abysmal).

In the meantime Kenny the dog has been doubling in length, height and badass attitude and I've managed to acquire some new woodworking knowledge and a few tools to make it look convincing.

My bench adorned with some fetching new tools

Last week was veneering - not a craft for a sensitive vegetarian. I spent most of last week covered in animal glue... a product of melted down hide and hooves that is warmed gently over hot water for use. It smells like something that has died but you do get used to that. 

It is irritatingly sticky and messy though and should only be used by skilled, organised and coordinated craftsfolk. 

I managed to stick myself to the bench and cover my veneer panels with thick residues that will take a week of finishing and polishing classes to remove.

That said, I was chuffed by my veneered panel with Zebrano edging (oh yes) and a line and a jolly 2-tone star in the middle:

Next I start work on my small box. I am making it out of French walnut which is a gorgeous wood with a slightly salmon coloured tone to it. 

French Walnut planed flat

I'm hoping for some precise and eminently beautiful dovetails to join it all together and a stunning veneered lid. It's early days...

I am also learning how to do technical drawings and plans.
This is a plan for a small box

Bonus content... Our visit to Cockings Sawmills, Midhurst, West Sussex.

Precision

After a week of skinning various pieces of wood to reveal their inner beauty, i put down my plane.

In response to my bleatings about RSI, John (Cabinet-maker-in-chief) showed mercy and introduced me to the art of the dovetail joint.

A seasoned dovetailer of his calibre can make the whole exercise in precision look like a simple process of light sawing and delicate wood love with a chisel. I found it slightly less simple.

His show-and-tell session lasted no more than half an hour and resulted in an immaculate no-gaps-joint.

Around six hours later I produced a joint that looked a bit like a set of badly looked after teeth.

He examined my offering while endeavouring to find some small redeeming feature to use as means of encouragement.

He couldn't.

"It's all about precision, you see." he reiterated.

My head swam with examples of my innate lack of precision both practical and intellectual.

Kenny drools over my dovetails

I ignored them and set about a new set of dovetails, my tongue poking out in concentration - like a 6 year old learning to write.

I will learn precision, I will!

Days passed.

I sawed and chiseled away at four further dovetail sets, each one improving minutely in quality on the one before.

The fifth was no triumph but would serve its purpose.

John, probably running out of ways of turning negatives into positives, has redirected me to my cast-aside Clifton jack plane.

RSI

Two weeks in to my new cabinet-making course and I have a Repetitive Strain Injury in my right hand and arm.

It's largely due to my inept use of my newly purchased Clifton No. 5 1/2 Jack plane, a bloody great lump of cast iron, 15 inches long. It is the #1 tool in your cabinet-making box. You have to be able to flatten wood with it.

The day it arrived, I was shown how to dismantle it completely and ready it for use before putting it all back together again.

I rounded off too-square-edges with a metal file, I buffed and polished the flat surface that hosts the blade that I made lethal with first a grinding stone and then sharpening and polishing stones.

 I planed a piece of wood until it was gleaming like glass; I then sawed it in half length-ways and planed the newly exposed surfaces perfectly flat so that I could glue them back together again AND NOT SEE THE JOIN. I could - a little - but I was quietly pleased with my first planing exercise.

I have since made a 'scratch stock' and a 'veneer hammer'. I used the scratch stock to put inlay in my shiny, planed, re-joined piece of wood. Nice.

So the next challenge is to make a saw block ... or some similar name... (not good on the requisite cabinet-making vocabulary yet) it involves planing nine pieces of wood on all four sides and sticking them together.

I spent eight hours planing on Friday.

Yet I have only done six of the pieces of wood and only on two of their four sides. Crap. I was doing it wrong.

Then, I inadvertently sharpened my plane blade into a smile. Cabinet-makers prefer straight lines.

My right hand is swollen and numb, my right arm is tight with strained muscle and my shoulder and back are stiffened with the physical exertion.

Tomorrow I'm back at my bench (not my 'desk' as I keep calling it - to the chagrin of John, the Cabinet-maker-in-chief) and I'm going to wipe the smile off the face of that blade and with some more feverish strokes with the Clifton Jack plane I will continue to flatten those nine pieces of wood into something pretty and possibly useful too.

An injury update will appear here soon.

Holy Ghost! - Some Children

Been feeling very sleepy after last night's Africa mega-mix at Bush House.

Needed a tune to rouse me and get me outta this house. Michael MacDonald guests on this Holy Ghost! groove.

I love it.

Bon Iver Holocene

BON IVER "Holocene" from nabil elderkin on Vimeo.

I think this is the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen.

Heading Home - for the final time

Today is my last day in the African service of the BBC. I have some butterflies in my belly as the day's end nears.

I've been here for the best part of 12 years. I've worked with some tremendously clever and big-hearted folk. I've travelled to some amazing, awe-inspiring places in the name of my job. And I've learnt so much about a complex and beautiful continent.

But mostly it's the people.

To everyone who taught me stuff, to everyone who showed me friendship and to everyone who put up with my moods and shortcomings. Thank you.

Let's drink a cup and then I'll head home.

I'll Be Doggone - Marvin Gaye

I'll be doggone... it's finally happened.

I'm able to take voluntary redundancy following a two month recruitment process to find a suitable replacement from within the ranks of those 'under notice'.

That follows an eight month period of consultation... on cuts, and where the axe should fall.

There are a few hoops left to be jumped through but - I'm out!

From mid-August I will not spend four hours a day commuting to work; those four hours will be mine to do with as I wish.

I'm very, very happy.

And, we have a new puppy called Kenny; he is very lovely but he craps A LOT.


YNWA.

1991 Come in from the Cold - Joni Mitchell

I adore this track, it reminds me of the early nineties, my early twenties and my wonderful friend, Paul.

We shared a tiny bedsit in Bayswater and played each other vinyl and cassettes of the music we loved.

He bought this album for me on CD - and it wasn't even my birthday!

We were mostly skint; I was a student and he was a postie.

One time I convinced my bank to extend me £50 over my student overdraught, so that he and I could buy food.

I got destracted and spent it all in Tower Records.

"I can't eat those!" he exclaimed in mock indignation.

Then we settled in for the evening, listening.

He probably hated 50% of the selection but that was fun for both of us.

He could bemoan my lack of taste. I could ridicule his music snobbery.

That was 20 years ago.

And Joni singing "Come in from the Cold" in her smoke-rounded tones takes me back to that room full of love and warmth and laughing.

We are going to see My Morning Jacket together in a couple of weeks. I can't wait. I love being his friend.