More New YouTube Videos

New Videos Out Now on YouTube

Five of the recently filmed videos are out now, six more to follow in the next day or two.
1. Veritas Shooting Board Plane.
2. Piston fit tray part 1
3. Piston fit tray part 2
4. Soft closed lid
5. Using the Barron magnetic guide

Nice Beds from France

Matthieu from France has sent me lots of pictures of his work as those familiar with my Blog will have seen. This time he has turned his hand to beds, in his familiar style, using dovetail keys, cracks and flowing curves.

The first one in ash is my favourite and the one shown below is in oak.

Wood Sale Coming Up!

In the next couple of months we will be moving house, which means the workshop as well. Unfortunately the next garage (workshop) is smaller so I'm having a clear out. Each one of these large compactor sacks is filled with shavings from the 200 litre planer drum and the pile in the background with offcuts (firewood). I've spent the last three days planning up and trimming some of my waney edged, air dried boards. Some I'll be keeping and the rest I'll be selling off in the next 4 or five weeks.

Above is some of the smaller stuff to be sold and below some of the bigger boards. I'm only about a quarter of the way through my stock so plenty more work to go yet! All the wood for sale is bone dry and planed flat on both sides. I'll keep you posted with the sale date.

Paul Sellers Box

Nathan from Rochester in the US sent me these pictures of a very nice Paul Sellers box he made. It features a single large dovetail on each corner and was made for his Grandma from a piano lid salvaged by her from a fire 60 years ago.

He kept a part where a hinge was attached rather than cut it off, a nice reminder of it's former use.

It's true colour shone through in the sunlight shot below, a lovely deep red.

First Time Dvovetail from the US

 Dan sent me these photos of his first dovetails cut with a 1:7 magnetic guide. His words,

'Just got my 1:7 dovetail guide through Highland Woodworking and already love it. I cut my first joint about 10 minutes after opening the box, and it worked even better than I could have hoped. I have attached a photo as proof of my new-found "talent". I thank you for all your efforts, and wish you much continued success.'

Below is Dan's second attempt, pretty good!

Cute Little Dovetail Markers

I decided to make myself a couple of dovetail markers with a 1:6 angle, my favourite.
The woods are hard maple and Macassar ebony, which needed plenty of care to get a good fit.
My Bill Carter mitre plane made quick work of cleaning up without tear out.

They are quite small at 45 mm long x 35 mm wide, but plenty big enough for anything I'm likely to make. The maple is 5 mm thick and the ebony 8 mm.

The finish is shellac, which holds up the nice stripes in the ebony.

Curved Dovetail Box.

Having recently made a box with angled dovetails I decided to have a go at curved dovetails, not so easy!

The woods are birds eye maple and Brazilian mahogany.

The base is padded with a lining of green pig suede.

The starting point was to lay out the radius of the dovetails and decide on their size. This way the thickness of the piece for the pins could be established as well as the number of dovetails.
It was also a useful exercise as it showed that the normal end pins would have looked very chunky. So instead of having half pins on the end I went for five full pins which looked much better.

In order to get matching curves on the pins and tails I 'assembled' the box using double sided tape and then marked out the radius from the template above. It was important to get both ends flush and square.

The result after roughing on the band saw and smoothing on the disc sander. I used a fine 220 grit disc which was a little slower but much less risky and it left a very fine finish. The parts were all marked up with coloured dots before separating carefully with spreader clamps.

I had initially expected to use the side of my cutting gauge designed for curves but this lost it's support before reaching either end so was no good. Instead I had to decide on the depth and then use the curved piece as a template and vice versa for the pins, not ideal!

Here is a tail board marked out and then dovetails cut. The bottom of the tails was simply cut square rather than try to follow the curve over such a short distance. Doing the same to the pins gave a good fit in the end.

Here is a pin board which looks a bit ungainly, although as you can see form the first pictures it looks much better when assembled. Maintaining a flat interior face was essential as a reference surface and keeps the interior of the box nice and square.
I really like the look of this box although it showed me the need to be dead accurate with my dovetail spacing as well as the angles, rather than eyeballing it. I will be devising a jig which will enable me to achieve this more accurately on the next box.

Really Nice Dovetailed Toolbox.

Lawrence sent me these photos of his attractive walnut tool box, with a place for everything.

These little zebrano boxes were made from an article in Fine Woodworking. Not the easiest wood to work in but he's done a great job.

Miniature Furniture

Here is some wonderful work by Anny in Belgium, please note the scale.

I have always been drawn towards small work, but this is minute, just check out those dovetails below!

Customer Projects

Here's a lovely chunky document box made by Matthieu from France.

Dovetail keys on the corner and butterfly keys on the lid.

Simon finally got to kit out his toolbox, it looks spookily just like mine!

Bob from NJ USA made this very solid looking and very well made step stool.

And lastly a nice little tissue box made by Kevin for his mother in law.

YouTube Videos Coming Soon.

I'm well overdue making another batch of YouTube videos and the cameramen are booked for the 18th June.
I don't think people realise the time and effort required to produce the videos, writing and re writing the script, which I don't follow anyway! Making all the props, doing dry runs, preparing the workshop, sharpening all the tools and doing countless re takes.

Here are some shots of a box with angled dovetails which I will be showing how to do in one of the videos. The angled and mitred linings look complicated but are easy to achieve with the right set up on the shooting board and I will be showing this technique in another video.

The 10 or so videos should all be edited and posted by the end of the month.