K is a good helper

  I confess to having project envy sometimes.  I see photos and videos of other woodworkers making heirloom projects with heirloom hand tools and I admire their workmanship and am stunned by the beauty and cunning of their projects. Most of my wood working is more basic than theirs but it does have its own special rewards.

  Our kid's house is to be heavily renovated shortly and to get their building permit the city had protective fencing built around the big trees in their yard. Since the job was ordered by bureaucrats and completed by drones the fencing blocked access to the back gate,the garden shed and the garden. So last Monday Kieran and I got busy and cut a couple of gates into the government fence so that the rest of the yard would be useful.

 I cut the sheet stock with my reciprocating (or noisy) saw and K held the shaking fence for me. He was a big help because without him the fence would have shaken to the point where I wouldn't have been able to complete the second cut.

 My recip saw is another of those tools that sit in their cases for months but when the time comes there really isn't a better tool for this job. 

  Kieran is wearing the hard hat, gloves and tool belt given to him by my old university chum Clive. A big shout out to Clive, K loves his work gear. We cut a section out of the fence in front and on the other side of the big tree. 

 After cutting the section out we added wood around the edges to create a frame that stiffened the piece and gave use something to drive screws into when adding the hinges. I started the screws and then K used his 4 volt screwdriver to finish them off. He worked steadily and drove dozens of screws, he is a six year old with real focus on his tasks. 

  Yes, I still have project envy, this project was not very fancy but the heirloom part is the proud little boy with his tool belt, work gloves and hard hat. And he was a real help, that extra pair of hands was invaluable when cutting the sheet stock and hanging the gates.

cheers Ian and Kieran

Folding Table Finished

Last week I built a small folding table to be used on our deck. I began with rough oak and after joining, planing, scraping, sanding and finishing I ended up with this:

  The table is the perfect height for holding a beverage on the deck.
  As for folding out of the way:

  The one set of legs pull free and side in between the permanent legs. Assembled you get a  fairly solid, quite stable little table. 

 Finishing the table was a bit of an odyssey.  Since I used oak for the table I decided to put a filler coat on before applying the final finish. I sanded the parts to 220 grit giving the edges special attention. Once sanded I wiped the table down with a tack cloth and applied a coat of 1:1 shellac, I had some garnet shellac already mixed so I got a seal coat and some tinting.  After the shellac dried solid, 24 hours, I sanded everything fairly heavily again to 220 grit which cleared off some of the surface colour but left the wood very smooth. Two coats of Minwax Poly with light sanding between coats and a final buffing with paste wax and the table is done. 

  I have found that getting a really smooth finish on oak is easier with a dedicated sealer coat.  If I don't use sealer than I end up having to put extra coats of finish on anyway. Sealers don't show runs and if you use shellac, can be faster and smoother than extra coats of vanish, in my opinion.

 The weather has turned dry again and it is time for coffee on the back deck.

cheers, ianw