For Dana

JOY!! A comment on a post from last year landed in my in box this week.

Someone had seen my final term project design on the May 2012 post Cabinet-making and was interested in seeing how the big adventure had turned out.

I'm afraid I haven't taken any proper portfolio photos of  "The Dandy" yet because it is so tall and I haven't figured out how to get it all on a decent backdrop etc. So these are phone pics and a bit noisy; but you get the idea.

Here is "The Dandy" in the corner of our office:

And some detail shots:

So... There you have it. And thank you Dana for asking, I'm really chuffed at your interest.

Caroline

Wye Oak

After spending most of November creating a series of beautiful hard wood storage boxes out of three colours of woods: American Black Walnut, American Cherry and Maple. (You can see final product here) I have moved on to a new commission to design and make two oak blanket chests.

The oak that I am working with has come from Latvia via English Woodland Timber and I was amazed when I machined it into components to reveal a gorgeous warm and creamy texture to the wood. The finished products are going to be beautiful.

It's still early days but this is where I'm at with it thus far.

Wonderful oak, hey?


So.... according to Wikipedia, The Wye Oak used to be the biggest white oak tree in the US. It grew in Maryland  but was felled by a storm in 2002.

I was looking it up because I want to post Wye Oak's (the band) track "Civilian" as the next track in my woody music series. So here you go:





Oh the oaky oaky cokey..... etc

Felt lining

I've been making a presentation box for a canteen of cutlery out of English Cherry. The joints are through dovetails and the lid is veneered with a yew burr. Lovely.

All the woodworking stuff went very smoothly and enjoyably... It looks great with the pair of Brusso quadrant hinges that I've fitted to allow the lid (which will be lined with the knives) to rest open at 95 degrees.

Then I got on to the cutlery rests/slots.

Lining the tiny slots that I had created with a soft felt material was like Extreme Blue Peter - with blades.

I finished the fiddly felt bit at home today in a sawdust free environment.

The base of the presentation box

Bring on the finishing and polishing.

And here's a wood-y tune:

September Work in Progress

An old pine rafter from Brighton's Recycled Wood Project, chopped in two to fit in the back of the car, machined back to the beautiful pinky orange of aged pine, ready to be made into a coffee table and display cabinet for a huge Lego model of the Star Wars Milennium Falcon.

The raw material

An early dry clamp-up

Glued up and lined. 

Just need the top, bottom and sides now...

Progress report (Sapele and birch cabinet)

I've spent most of today in the machine shop, readying a second batch of components for the next stage of constructing my cabinet. It's noisy and tiring in there.

The carcass, shelves, munting, drawer runners, guides and dust boards are all complete.

I still need to veneer the back board, construct and shape the stand and there is also the small matter of making eight drawers. (Whose silly idea was a cabinet with eight drawers?)

We had a class outing to the veneer shop (Capital Crispin Veneers) somewhere in East London last week. Piles and piles of veneers in a huge warehouse at the back of the Galleon shopping centre - where is that??

John - Master woodworker and wise  man - was very taken with the Malaysian Tiger Wood veneer... (orangey and stripey) But he managed to resist.

I came away with a roll of ice birch veneer for the doors and drawers of my magnificent cabinet! It has some very pretty grain figuring and a small amount of ripple which will look beautiful when polished up.

So tomorrow... back to the machine shop to prepare the rest of the drawer components... 16 drawer sides, 8 drawer backs, 8 drawer bottoms...

Or fashioning a set of dancey feet to stand the beast on.

We'll see.

(pic caption: The top section will have two shelves (but they're just sat on top of the drawer section for now!) the asymmetric drawers are still to be built)

Cabinet-making

For my final  project while still a student on John Lloyd's fine furniture-making course, I am making a cabinet. Initially I was thinking of making a corner cabinet but as I was making sketches and plans I decided against it because there would be less usable space within it.

This is a basic sketch of my idea. The swooping serpentine curve will form the edges of the top section's cabinet doors. It will then flow through the middle section of eight drawers and down through the lower cabinet door to the cabinet's foot where it ends with a flourish.

The cabinet will be about 2 metres tall by 40cm wide and 30 cm deep.

I went to English Woodlands Timber to get the wood on Friday. Warehouse man, Graham, helped me nose through piles of boards to find the ones that I wanted. 

The carcass will be constructed from Sapele, a tropical red-coloured hard wood, the batch that I selected my boards from had been imported from the Democratic Republic of Congo. 

Most of the cabinet's front will be from Maple which is a beautiful light coloured wood with a very close grain.

Unfortunately the wood won't be delivered until Tuesday/Wednesday and so in the meantime I think I'll be making a few templates for all those curves...

A library for Vincent

Vincent was once a magnificent creature roaming around some fecund forest somewhere, escorting his does and wrestling the male competition with his impressive antlers.

That was some time ago.

Now his head hangs grandly on a living room wall in Brighton, East Sussex.

I have been commissioned to create some shelving in his alcove.

The room is blessed with sunshine for a good portion of the day, the sash windows reach from floor to high ceiling and a beautiful modern chandelier hangs in the centre of the room.

Because of the light and the proportions of the room, the decor is bold with pieces of dark wood furniture and a rich red on the walls.

I've been asked to fit three shelves: One running the width of the space and two more floating shelves next to the desk.

After some discussion of options, my client has plumped for American Cherry timber. A good chunky thickness for the long shelf and a slightly lighter weight for the shorter shelves alongside the desk.

I start work April 10th. Very exciting.

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.