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

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...