Success

A big Whoo Hoo, standing ovation and hearty slap on the back for sometime blog reader and long-time nephew, JMF, who's heard today he got a First in his finals. Well done, Jimbo. All that work deserved nothing less.

And to think I can still remember him tottering about in a nappy, building sand castles.*

And nephew #2 has managed to articulate beyond the teenage grunt to declare The Chair "comfortable", which I shall take as raging enthusiasm, given his usual communication skills... 'Course he also said he doesn't know where to put it, but that's his problem.*

*The aunt giveth, the aunt taketh away...

Gone

The Chair has departed for its new owner.

I feel bereft.



Managed to dash off a brief round-up of the making and burn it to a cd to go with it, so I've been chained to the 'puter instead of further playing with the planes. However, here's a pic of the 39 and the absence of right angle twixt sole and side in the hopes that Mike will make a suitable pronouncement on it in the comments box! Looks like the sole is convex from side to side too.



Not that I'm either upset or unduly surprised. I expected it to need work and I'm not crossing any bridges with it until I've taken it to bits and had a proper look to see what might need to be done. There's no reason why it can't work, given some effort on my part. Heck, if I can get a Groz block pane to take a whispy shaving...

But a more cheering sight of the unhoned, unadjusted smoother taking a - thickish - shaving. I think I could get to really like this plane, especially once it's properly sharpened and adjusted...



Oh, there's the addition of a manual for the Lewin Universal plane on the Boat Anchor page, btw. A proper page on it is up next - I hope.

Fin

You know me, I can't do finished project pictures for toffee, 'specially as the weather has finally broken and it's been lightly raining on and off all day. But anyway, the comb got glued on.

And being a fool hardy idiot, here's the join for your inspection. The right side is PDG, but the left leaves something to be desired, I fear. Frustrating 'cos it was really, really close to being spot on. Heigh ho.

Anyway, a bit more wax to finish and here are the mug shots for the police record. Hold still, please...





I'd like to thank all the blog readers who gave freely of their advice, encouragement and praise - worth its weight in gold as far as I'm concerned - and those who were just read-only. It's been one of the steeper learning curves I've been on and there's lots I'd like to tweak (f'rinstance how that back stick has wandered off like that I don't know, but it could be much better), but that'll have to wait until the next one...

For the record, from the kick-off it's taken 141 days and the making or acquisition of five templates, four go/no-go gauges, three jigs, three travisher-a-likes, two scrapers, two books, one re-handled gouge, a shave pony, oh, and of course, one auger bit extension.

But I may have missed something.

What's next? Something with right angles I think, just for the novely...

Comb over?

I saw, I shave, I scrape, I sand - and yes, I apply a couple of coats of shellac. It's just resting lightly on the sticks for the finishing, so it'll be a little lower than that.



So? Okay? Hideous? Do I care? Well yeah, of course I do, but I'm fairly happy with it so suggestions for alteration are going to have to be well-argued.

The join, btw, is definitely there but really the grain match isn't half bad. It would have helped if there hadn't been that dark sweep through the top piece, but as I feared before I started, you simply can't tell what exactly it's going to look like until it's been cut to final shape.

Beech Comber

I know, I know; tardiness in blogging is probably a capital offence. But I mean really, how excited would you be with blogs about removing glue squeeze out? Really? There was minor excitement when I did some of it outside, in an effort to avoid getting roasted, but there was only so much that could be done and it didn't justify bandwidth writing about it. Of course I could have bored you all about the 12" Disston No.5 back saw I got for a fiver, but I didn't think you'd want to know...

Anyway, the arm sticks are flush with the arm and most of the glue ooze is gone (bet I still find a bit somewhere...) so it's on to the comb. I cut one piece for that way back in April to aid me in posing my design question, when the consensus was I'd have to make it taller. But I thought I'd try it as-is first, just in case. So I got a rough idea of th required angle, set up the bevel and went at it with a 1/2" dowel bit. You may be wondering where the brace is in this shot:



It's up here... Verily, the extension does make sighting accurate angles easier. 'Course I had my hand over my head to bear on the pad, but it was a lot more comfy than it probably looked.



Anyway, with the holes bored I tried another go of the slimline comb.



TPTBs said "too thin" too, so off to the bandsaw to cut the second part from an adjacent area of board, then out with the jack and plane the mating surfaces of the two pieces to fit. Seems like an age since I used a bench plane, probably because it is... Did my best to line the pieces up but that PU glue is horribly slippery.



A quick clean up of the inner curve to get an idea of whether the join's going to look okay, and here it is. Ignore the way the whole thing looks lop-sided; it's ot really. Well not that much anyway... Of course the comb still has to get shaped and properly finished, but does it look okay to you?

Glue, brute force and prayer

Oh, and wedges...



I gather it's a habit of Persian carpet weavers to incorporate a mistake in the pattern deliberately, so as not to offend Allah by having the audacity to create something perfect. Let's put it this way; I ain't going to be troubling him at all...

Sticking with it

It must be said, if I had to make such a silly New Year's Resolution as "I will not be buying tools unless I need them", choosing to make a chair was the ideal project to give me the excuse to claim plenty of "need". Yeah, I did a Bad Thing and put the plastic where my tool-making should have been and bought a rounder by Ray Iles courtesy of Classic Hand Tools. As we've come to expect, order placed on Thursday, delivered on Friday morning, put to work on Saturday. Bellissimo. And for any of the nay sayers who claim you can't buy a new tool ready to work straight out of the box, I say get one of these then. Except it came in a bag and not a box, but you know what I mean... Worked a treat and gave me the 5/8" thickness in the middle of the long sticks that I was worrying about without having to break sweat.



So stick shaping and sanding went on apace over the weekend. Took me about 30 minutes a long stick by the end just for the shaping with a spokeshave, which is slooooowwwww, but not as slow as when I started... This is an irritating stage of proceedings because a lot of effort's being expended but it doesn't look like anything much has happened. Just trust me, eh? And yes, I know my attempt at a less cluttered back drop is pants. Let's not talk about it.



Anyway we're back to endless wiped on coats of shellac (sound familiar?), which at least has the virtue of drying nice and fast in this heat. Plus the nature of chair construction provides me with a ready-made drying rack. Excellent. Still got to cut the short sticks to near final length, kerfs for the wedges and then I suppose it's a case of glue, brute force and prayer...



Then there's the crest rail to do. Ack.

Devilish Work

Well I'm glad I took time out to make the chair devil, 'cos it's doing a smashing job. Seriously, if you have need for a round spindle/dowel/handle and no lathe, this could save you a lot of grief. It's not just useful for chair-making.



Anyway the short spindles are more or less done, althought the fit of the tenons to the arm need a little tweaking before it'll come togther properly - as you can see. Still it's looking so-so, at the very least I can make a low back chair now, even if the back and comb is a disaster.



No one's going to take it for anything but handmade though...

Slow and steady

Be warned, I'm drinking a tall, cool glass of Pimms while typing this, so if it ends up incoherant you'll know the ratio of Pimms to lemonade was on the strong side...

Right, I promised real pictures of the jig in use, didn't I? Well they're not as clear as they might be but I'll explain.

Most important bit was the use of "blue tak" in the countersink to hold the hemisphere in place. Also big gobs of it under the upper boring guide, which was also clamped in place with a soft-jawed clamp. First time those clamps have actually proved useful... Meanwhile on the backside, a couple of spring clamps hold a bit of lath to lengthen the angle sighting reference. All very colourful, confusing and cluttered. But it did work.

On the whole it'd probably have been easier to break out the 'leccy drill...

Anyway, I finished up the hole boring in the arm, as you may have gathered, and was able to bore the ones in the seat. This may have gone well, or it may not have - I won't know until I start fitting sticks.



Those'll be the sticks I haven't finished yet in fact. Okay, I know I said I wouldn't, but the bulk of the tenon sizing I've done on the lathe. Yes, slow and steady wins the race, but at this rate I'll be coming last in the next race but one so Things Had To Be Done. Still got all the shaping and arm tenon sizing to do on the long sticks though, 'cos a whippy length of 3/4" square stock is not particularly lathe-friendly when you're steady-less. Kinda wish I'd made a rounder now; I did think about it but it never got any further than that.



Anyway, that's the progress. At least it is progress!

A little light pillaging

Oh deary me, I meant to be posting pictures of successful completion of hole boring by now, but what with one thing and another... But I have recovered the camera from the workshop, so at least I can satisfy your curiosity about that hemispherical object. Wadda you mean, what curiosity...?

It's all because of a cunning "Straight Shooter" jig in the "Cheating at Chairmaking" article in April 2005's Popular Woodworking. Not that it exactly eliminates all skill, but it helps a lot. At least I hope so, but I won't know unil I'm done... Anyway, you put a wee countersink at every stick point in the seat into which you place the hemisphere...



... which is attached to the bottom of your simple straight shooting jig; the upper part of which has a guide hole for the bit to bore the arm that's in line with the hemisphere.



Thus, with any luck, your arm hole angle should line up with the destination point in the seat...



Actually it worked out slightly more complicated than these pictures suggest, so I'll try and remember to take another real action shot when I do the remaining three arm holes and explain what lengths I had to go to to allow for the fact I wasn't using a power drill and thus didn't have a spare hand to hold the jig...

Half my no workshop time has been down to the extreme temperatures therein during the afternoons - about 100°F, but the main inexcusable slacking off was in order to hit the car boots at the weekend. Fine weather and thus rich pickings. My main hope was I'd stumble across a 5/8" dowel bit or improved pattern centre bit for the chair, and for a brief moment on Sunday morning I thought I had. Saturday saw an unexpected visit to my usual Sunday haunt and I snarfed a tapered reamer bit (half a GBP) and a back saw by "Mitchell" of Limehouse for a quid. The latter, with the help of Hand-saw Makers of Britain and British Planemakers, I reckon to be by William Henry Mitchell of Commercial Road, London, operating between 1861 and 1915. I went for it 'cos it has one unusualy large saw nut, plus also the small size handle like the other saw I so recently acquired (but in much better nick).

Sunday saw an trip right down to Hayle RFC's car boot sale, which is fairly large and well attended but I haven't been since 2004. Usually the Tall Scotsman frequents it, but he was not to be seen - at least 3 or 4 other tool people were though, so I had plenty of drool material. Early on I came across the bundle of six dowel and centre bits and for a brief moment thought I'd hit the jackpot, but alas, every other size but 5/8" it seems. I still bought them though, 'cos dowel bits have the advantage of actually being the size they say they are, unlike regular auger bits which tend to be a little oversized. And centre bits with lead screws are a bit more efficient in hardwoods than the cheaper, plainer variety. Anyway, for a pound they weren't exactly overpriced, especially given their excellent condition.



What else did I see...? Well one tool guy had all sorts, but not cheap. I hesitated over a mitre saw jobbie with back saw and mitre clamp combined, but it was missing a shoe on one of the clamps and the saw wasn't great, plus where would I have put it? So I passed. Lots of oval bolstered mortise chisels, poorly rehandled (polyuckathene on funny shaped handles? No thank you), a nice ebony mortise gauge with filed down pins, stack of back saws and hand saws in partially rusty state. All stuff I'd have been gathering up, probably to resell if I'm honest, if only he wasn't charging so much. Nice to see old tools do exist in numbers in Cornwall outside my workshop though... Also fell in with a couple I've bought from in the past, but the wooden plane they had that I thought was going to scratch my moving fillister itch (thanks, guys...) turned out to be missing the depth stop, so I moved on. It was definitely ratchet screwdriver day though; I must have seen 20 and more - funny how one item type tends to dominate on any given day, isn't it? Also saw quite a few chisels, which has been far from the case recently, including a set of Sears Craftsman black plastic-handled butt chisels. Never thought to see those here; kind wish I'd picked them up now, just for the novelty... Anyway, it was a good eyeful of tooliness as far as round here is concerned, so I came back tired and hot, but also happy and not too much poorer!

Man Kicks Ball

Today's Big News

Wayne Rooney Kicks Football!

I know. I couldn't contain my excitement either...

But actually that wasn't the Big News I had in mind. Please, don't come up with critique of stick spacing now 'cos I've commenced to start boring the holes... It's not fast progress, but it's as accurate as I can manage so I'm hoping tortoise-like behaviour rather than hare-brained effort will win the day. Unfortunately the camera's still in the w'shop and there are two crazy parrots flapping about twixt me and it, so piccies will have to wait. But shortly there'll be explanation of that oddity that's no doubt been causing you to die with curiosity since April. Or then again maybe not.

Meanwhile a certain Antipodean has helpfully handed out rotten fruit to bystanders and then shackled himself into the public stocks by linking to his latest review/article/appreciation on WoodCentral. The self-appointed LN rottweilers just make me sick, but I fear I can't find in in myself to whole-heartedly support the beleaguered one either. Not to the extent of justifying some of the comments that have been thrown about, mind you... Either way, every other "reviewer" gets caught in the crossfire which personally I could do without. On balance, while I have every sympathy for him, I also wish he'd stop promoting his stuff quite so relentlessly - I can't help but feel it's just asking to annoy folks.

And finally, I think it must be summer. There's an unfamiliar ball of flaming gas visible in the sky during daylight hours, not a cloud to be seen and the temperature in the w'shop comfortably (or rather uncomfortably) topped 80°F. Sometimes you do have to pay the price for having copious amounts of natural light...

Sticky Situation

So this deciding where exactly these sticks are going to go is proving rather more problematic than I'd expected. For a start the suggested places in the seat given in The Chairmaker's Workshop really don't work for me at all. Primarily because the doubler on the arm, as per the plan, seems to be a little bit short to take the designated six long sticks... and secondly, the short stick angles look, well, a bit naff frankly. So casting aside the plan I've turned once more to John Brown and used a mixture of his suggested spacing and what I think looks right. Perhaps unwisely I'm now about to ask you lot what you think too...

But first, the easy bit; making up the line 1" in from the edge that the seat mortises will, all being well, follow. My workshop essential, electrician's blue tape, provides a non-marring surface to take the pencil line.



Then lots of faffing about trying to gt the arm in just the right place and firmly, but not finish-damagingly, clamped in place. Little bits of that non-slip matting, like router mat but thinner that gets sold for kitchen and household use, I find is the bee's knees for this kind of thing, fwiw. To my delight the back support proved to be enough to keep the arm in place while I played about with the stick spacing. Unfortunately the sticks themselves rolled about at every opportunity, so I had A Brainwave. More blue tape to stand in for the stick positions. It's not perfect, but then neither is having the sticks leaning against the inside of the arm. At least this way the darn stuff will keep still.



Well that's good, but you don't get the height, so with the aid of some Blue Tak (aka "Handi-Tak" in the US apparently) I stuck the back sticks in place. They're not perfect, but they do give a better idea. What d'you mean it looks odd? Try squinting a bit... Yeah, you're right, the background isn't ideal but I didn't think of that until too late.



Five sticks across the back isn't ideal, but they do fit and four looked a little sparse. And if you count each long stick as two - above and below the arm and add up all the sticks then it comes to 18, one for each year.

I've lent the back sticks in a little, but I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not. Anyway your thoughts are, as always, welcome. I may take no notice, mind you, but they're still welcome... The really worrying thing about all this is that even minute variations in the tape spacing looked Good or Bad - how in heck am I going to bore the holes that accurately...?

Catch

Yes, I know. But I'm afraid the blogging is just a reflection of the intermittent nature of my woodworking at the moment. However I have done a little work on the chair; applying shellac. Yeah, don't say it, I know that too - I could have done that ages ago. Except somehow I'd forgotten that I hadn't and I really want to have the finish in place to repel the glue when I come to do the sticks. And the last thing I wan't to do is bore the stick mortises first and then have them filling up with shellac and generally being a nuisance. So here I am, applying numerous coats of shellac - again. Looking pretty nifty though, I think. Am I prevaricating before embarking on drilling holes in it? Well wadda you think...

Other than that, nadda, zilch, nowt. Principally 'cos I've been under the weather and just couldn't face it. Instead I wallowed in a double bill of Cary/Hitch in the form of To Catch A Thief and North by Northwest courtesy of an exchange of a duplicate copy of The Curse of the Were Rabbit from my birthday. It was quite a revelation to see NbyNW in all its clarity instead of the very elderly print I've only ever seen before. Even when I went to see it at the cinema it was in a shocking state and you really didn't get it in its full glory. (I'm not that old, but it was on in the Haymarket just before I left London and I couldn't resist seeing it. Unfortunately I missed Vertigo). Anyway, if you haven't seen the crop duster scene in a cinema you haven't lived. Just thought you'd like to know that... The nice thing about both those films is there's absolutely zero woodworking to be distracted by. I was watching Sleepless in Seattle as well (okay, don't groan. Chick flicks aren't so-called for no reason. I expect you've all caught the Sleepless/Cary Grant link. I'm fairly sure I'm not obsessed...) and had to rewind to see if I could identify the plane in the kitchen fitting/awkward client scene.

I couldn't.

Then of course there's been the cricket and the delights of watching a useless 45 minute highlights package through a snowstorm. i.e. The laughable excuse for a picture we get on channel 5. Half the time I have less chance of picking up the ball than Monty Panesar. May all the cricketing gods rot the ECB's and Sky bloody TV's soul - except they don't have one. But on the plus side, or possibly minus, Stick Cricket has recaptured my interest with their new Club Challenge. 10 balls to get as many runs as possible with an extra ball for every boundary - but no idea what type of delivery it'll be. Slightly tricky, but the chance to do my bit for Surrey CCC is too much of a temptation. Best score so far has been 120 (bowled last ball or it would have been 125 - dammit) but I'm more your lower order contributor of vital (quality not quantity) runs. Anywhere in the region of 50 and I'm a happy batswoman. Although -10 wasn't a particularly pleasing score...

All of which is making large portions of the readership go "huh"? Or more likely "yawn". Sorry. Either skip it all, or if you're really crazy there's a choice of semi-serious and quite helpful or really unhelpful but absolutely accurate explanations of the great game. Just don't try tickling someone's googly round the corner or you might give a sitter to short leg. You've been warned...

Size does matter

Having done a few measurements and tried a few things, I think I can just about to work around the problems of length and breadth posed by the famous auger bit extension. You see the "chuck" is very, very ingenius, but it's also larger in diameter than my required 5/8" holes - so obviously it can't go through those holes. That also means the combined length of the "chuck", which is quite long, and the bit I use can't exceed the distance between the arm and the seat of the chair. That's about 8 1/2", which isn't much. So all auger bits are automatically out, even dowel bits (if I had one). So I turned to the centre bits; an improved centre bit with a lead screw proved to be the only one capable of making any kind of dent in the beech, but the nearest I have is 1/2". Bum.

So here's the plan. I bore the hole in the arm with a regular 5/8" Jennings bit. The I thread through the ABE with the 1/2" bit chucked in from below, then I just start the 1/2" bit enough to give the lead screw the angle. Remove the arm and follow up with the 5/8" again, hoping I can keep the angle right. I thought about putting out a plea for a 5/8" improved centre bit, but a) this is getting ridiculous, and b) as the bits get bigger, they also get longer... I even considered getting a brand new spoon bit if it'd do the job, but measurement from a picture suggests it's miles too long.

All I need now is a day when I don't feel like death warmed up and a gallon or two of courage and I'm good to go. You'll know when 'cos I'll either be so elated I'll be unbearable - or so depressed, well, ditto...!

It Augers Well

It's not that I've been neglecting the blogging; I was already to do some, honest. it's just I've been suffering from a nasty case of the Little Green Light Twitch. That is the, hah, "always on" broadband internet connection has been largely off. Well intermittent, anyway. I sit here with one eye on the little green light on the router telling me if I'm still connected or not, hence the Twitch. It comes on just long enough to start to load a page, but not long enough to complete the job. Uploading pics or Blog postings has been impossible. Heck, I've only just managed to download all the spam to my inbox... It's particularly bad PM, which is when I usually blog, so I thought I'd try and snatch a window of opportunity now instead.

Workshop time has been as intermittent as the connection, but I did start off on a task I was meant to have started about 6 months ago... The delay isn't all my fault, to be fair, but still the guilt has been building just a leetle. Anyway, sooner than find myself awash with meaningless bits of scrap with joints and mouldings on them I thought I might as well make a functional, but hideous, tote for my sharpening gear out of meaningless bits of scrap...



Not my finest work, huh? I also played with some cut nails (all the wrong size for the job, but the smallest I can find) inspired by a certain article and DVD. I got the nails a while back, but this seemed a good moment to actually have a go. The finished look is ghastly, 'cos the heads are far too big, but the principle seems reasonable enough, Trouble is it's going to take an awful lot to get away from the "nails are bad" philosophy I've grown up with.

Next step is really going to be meaningless scrap territory, but it might be fun once I get started. It's getting started again that's the trouble.

However, that may be delayed while I return to The Chair. Remember that? The birthday it's due for is this Friday and I've broken the news it's not done yet in the birthday card. Not my fault though, remember? I was waiting for something. Look what the postie brought this morning:



Whoohoo!

But I still don't know who the Generous Galootish Benefactor actually is. I mean I have suspicions, but too many to be sure. I've asked the seller if he's willing to divulge and once I hear back I shall express my thanks on the list, whether I know the answer or not. No Good Deed shall go unpunished...

There's just one tiny cloud on the horizon. I'm not sure if it's going to solve my problem after all that. Ack. But then I often look at something and think "that's not gonna work" and it turns out I've totally mis-judged dimensions or something, so I have confidence that I'm just being my usual alarmist self. It's a dead cool bit of kit anyway; very clever "chuck" system, simple but ingenious. And hey, it did get here in time. Kind of...

Pottering

Not the best of piccies of the chestnut, but I was concentrating on getting it stowed rather than taking its portrait. Had to lop off a bit on two of the boards or they wouldn't fit in; always a worry as you try to decide the best place so you won't curse yourself some months down the line. Naturally this tailor-made space for them wasn't in existance until I'd had a bit of a tidy up of the timber store; not before time mind you, so it's an ill wind... Except it isn't, but no-one says "it's a fair wind etc etc" do they? Not sure I can rely on the moisture meter much, but it's definitely wetter than stuff that's been in the w'shop for at least a month (new purchase, currently on offer for under 20 quid at Axminster - while the cat's away the mouse will place an order in the certain knowledge of being able to squirrel everything out of sight and avoid those awkward questions... ) Hopefully the workshop will be dry enough, but no so dry as to over-hasten the drying completion. Bit of an experiment, this one, 'cos I haven't had any air-dried stuff since the dehumidifier was set up.

Meanwhile I pottered about doing all sorts of odd things that have been on the to-do list for ages. Came across this little pattermaker's shave that I'd forgotten about (and might have been handy for the chair seat - d'oh!), so drilled out the knackered screw, re-tapped for M6 and used one of the approximately 200 shouldered thumbscrews I bought at the car boot last year to bring it back to working order. Only 199 to go... Kinda cool; I know it's a patternmaker's shave 'cos I bought it from the patternmaker who made it. Also did a couple of oval turning experiments and I think I know more or less how to go about the task a bit better than I have before. Well in all honesty it can't get much worse. Oh yes, and the last thing in the picture is actually to do with the chair. Bet that'll have you puzzled...