Last Weekend and Yesterday

Last weekend was the Hamilton Wood Working Show. I didn't need anything so my trip to the show only cost me about $100.00, including admission, coffee, fudge and.....

this large slab of tulip wood.   I see a small coffee table for our living room sitting there.  It is filled with hair line cracks that I will have to address as part of the project.  I am thinking epoxy, or maybe just many coats of varnish, since most of the cracks are quite narrow. Anyway that is sitting there awaiting my attention.  Also I bought some new style sanding discs by Freud.  I'll report on the disks when I have used them a bit.

  Yesterday I did a shop maintenance project that has been hanging around since before Christmas.

 Last fall I was walking in the neighbourhood and found this cabinet sitting on the side of the road.

    The cabinet is missing a door and needs two shelves made but is basically sound. Beside it was free and that is the best price. Oh yes, the small plastic bag has hinges in it. My plan was to put it on the wall near my table saw and get rid of a chest of drawers I was using for storage.

  You can see that the three drawer chest doesn't make the best use of space. Also the chest was old and cheap and the drawers didn't slid very well, several times I have pinched my fingers closing the bottom drawer. 

  I used French Cleats to hang the cabinet on the wall. 

   This project was made complicated by the fact that the wall was not very stout or straight.  I have put the wall up as a quick divider in the basement and hadn't expected it to carry much load.  This wall is only one step stronger than a canvas partition designed to keep the saw dust out of the pantry and storage in the back.  When you are building a wall, don't build a cheap/flimsy wall, even it you are in a hurry and don't think it will matter in the future, sure as heck it will matter in the future.  I made extra work for myself yesterday because the wall had been made with very crooked 2 x 3 I salvaged and so hanging the cleats were a challenge, only over come with lots of long wood screws and magic words.

  Once the task was completed (mostly, I still need to make and hang a door) I discovered that the chest of drawers was filled with crap, much of which I threw away anyway.  I think it is a good idea to go through every cupboard and drawer in your shop occasionally to see what you have hidden away for a rainy day. Then throw a bunch of it out. Be honest, be ruthless.

  

     

   So... this is what is left of the dresser.  Most of the wood will end up in a fire pit someplace this summer but there is a bit of it that will be used for some small projects, boxes and the like with K and C.  There even  maybe enough to make a door for the cabinet.

  I will sort out the wood bits and make a door and it will all be good.

cheers, ianw

  

Balance Bike Plan and Finished Project

  Last week I posted a couple of videos showing how to make a balance/glide bike.   Since then a link showed up on my Pinterest account here is an actual plan for a bike.

    Today I began the process of applying coats of shellac, sanding and varnish to the small three drawer storage cabinet.

  The drawers are about 8 inches square with aromatic cedar ends, plywood sides and bottom. The body of the box is white cedar and the top is maple and mahogany.  This entire project was made from materials available in my shop.  The top was cut down from boards I edge glued for another project years ago.  I never throw anything away and on this project it paid off.

cheers, ianw

Latest Cabinet Complete

 Now the third cabinet is finished, the doors are hung and finished with orange shellac and spray varnish.

The door frame is 1 1/2 inches wider than the shelves so that I can hang things inside the door, or in the case of the two hammers, out side the shelves.

  The is a successful project, and all that I had to buy was the hinges. The poplar used for the frame was here in a corner and the door skin was left over from other things. All together this section of the work shop is getting to look kind of professional. 

 With this cabinet I had the hardware in hand before I build the unit. Even the doors were a pain to hang this unit turned out better than the one on the right. For the cabinet on the right I didn't have the right kind of hinges and that spoiled the end result.

  If you are planning to build something like this there are 100's of plans on the internet and lots of how to videos on You Tube. There is nothing that I can teach anyone on this project, other than square must be square, close will give you nothing but heart ache.

  p.s. I have also found that my back is steadily but slowly improving.

Up Dates on Previous Blogs

I have been working away on a repair/restoration job for 10,000 Villages and here are couple of photos of how the job is going.

  That is one of the panels that needed repair. Not only was it cracked but also out of alignment, you can see how much material I had to sand away to get the two edges level. Sanding naturally removed the original finish, now I had to re-stain the panel as best as I could to get a reasonable match with the surrounding wood.

  You can see the colour match is pretty good although the repair to the crack is still visible. Once I put a couple of coats of shellac and wax the finished repair is going to be OK. I don't know if I had, had endless times and resources  whether  I could have hidden the cracks  completely or not.  To have really made the cabinet look good would have involved  making new panels and the way that the builder had glued and pegged everything together I doubt if I could have got the cabinet apart. Sometimes a job just turns out the way it does.

  This vase has a glass vase inside thereby making it a water proof wooden vase.  I made this vase from the recycled spruce from the senior's centre roof.  Spruce is a distinctive and broad grain but not unattractive, and much to good to be used as fire wood.

  As I was working out today's topics an interesting article showed up in my in box.

" Your First Tool Kit" , I agree with everything that he has included.  That would be a good tool kit to take to a shop that supplied all the standard power tools.  I would add to his list a shop knife,  Robertson screw drivers and a coping saw.


  The last thing to talk about today.

  I made a palette for when I am mixing paints.  The paints that I use on toys and other small projects come in tubes or small bottles. A palette gives me some place to mix and manage the paint I need for the project.  I even got fancy and  put a thumb hole in the palette to make it easy to hang on to.  I made this because I was tired of mixing and fiddling with paint on little scraps of wood or card board.