Nakashima Style Wall Cabinet

The new edition of Furniture and Cabinet Making has an article by me on the making of a Nakashima style wall cabinet using some wonderful English Walnut. I'm getting good publicity this month!

The article outlines the making along with a detailed plan and dimensions. Anyone wishing a free copy (of the article) can contact the editor Derek Jones via e mail derekj@thegmcgroup.com  and he will gladly forward a PDF.

There were some pretty meaty through dovetails on the corners but everything went together well.

Coming next month is an article on saw guides including a review of my magnetic dovetail guide. The picture below shows the guide being used in an unconventional manor and with a narrow bladed English saw instead of a wider bladed Japanese saw. I'll be intrigued to see what they think, but I'm also slightly worried!!

D&M Tool show.

 Every year D&M hold a very popular power tool show at Kempton Park Racecourse.It is always very well attended and people come to buy. Outside the entrance there are always a couple of marquees demonstrating tools for log conversion, very timely with gas prices going up by 9% today!

The Festool stand is always a pleasure to visit, here is a customer trying out the new extra large Domino machine, it was very impressive and is capable of fitting much larger and longer Dominoes. I have the smaller version which is a great machine and more than adequately sized for the work I do. But if that changes I would be very tempted.

When I have come here in the past I have always added to my Bessey clamp collection, but I have reached the stage where I have enough. The newer version of the bar clamp is vastly superior to the old one and I have sold my old ones on E Bay.

Although I didn't buy any clamps I couldn't resist this pivoting attachment which will be a lot quicker than making up angled blocks. I just hope when I have the need, I remember I've got them!

My other purchase was a set of top quality and innovate spanners from Wera. My set of crappy Chinese spanners will be going straight in the bin.

'Good Woodworking' mini smoother review.

6 months ago I gave Andy King of Good Woodworking magazine a few of my tools to try and I had forgotten about it. So it was a very nice surprise to see a two page spread on my Mini Smoother in the latest issue, it even managed to get on the cover as well!

Andy really liked the plane and was very complimentary as you can read below. This was particularly meaningful as Andy is well known for being very truthful in his product appraisals.

I've had plenty of interest and a few orders already, thanks Andy!

Wonderful Rippled Ash Hammer Handles.

A few years ago I bought half a log of lovely rippled ash, how I wish I'd bought the other half. I've made a couple of pieces of furniture but it's not easy to use wood that's this figured with some subtlety. It's unusual to   find ash rippled all the way to the heart.

The lines look like band saw marks but this is fresh from the planer.

Here are the two boards, 2" thick and enough for well over 100 hammer handles.

After a trip to my good turner friend Jim, here are some of the handles unfinished.

These are the handles after a few coats of lacquer rubbed out to a nice sheen. The colour changes from pure white to the dark olive of the heartwood, my favourite.

The handles are matched up to their heads ready for wedging with contrasting bog oak. They are then pinned  with 3/16" brass rod to make sure they stay put.

Making Brass Hammer Heads.

At the European Show I sold out of my chisel hammers, at the end of the show I was asked if I could sell my demo hammer, so that went as well! Time to make some more.
The heads are 1 1/4" diameter and the hole is 16mm (5/8"), a large bite. I have tried drilling pilot holes to relieve the drill cut but I've found it easier and more accurate to go straight in with a large HSS drill bit.

Here is my drill press set up with a tight fitting wooden carrier which is positioned using my adjustable fence and stops. I can highly recommend the Flip Stop system pictured, it is superbly well made and has no play whatsoever, it is expensive but well worth the money.

Here is my Meddings drill press, heavy duty and accurate. I bought it second hand and they are well worth searching out. Three phase models are much cheaper than single phase although you'll need the appropriate power supply or a converter which will cost another £200.

Here is my converter which has proved reliable and easy to use. A £10 extra is the variable speed control which is vastly more convenient than changing belts, does anyone ever do that??

Here is the resulting hole, care has to be taken to get it central and there are always a few rejects in a batch.

Here are 105 heads with the holes drilled, that's about 5 hours of boring work....... (sorry!)

The next stage is to shape the rounded end on the disc sander with 80 grit. This is then worked through 120 and 240 grit to smooth things out.

Next is 320 grit on the excellent Kirjes pneumatic drum sander, this was worked against the previous scratch marks to smooth the curves.

Polishing was done on a Creusen buffing machine using blue compound with the resulting heads shown below.

I'm sure there are quicker ways of achieving this result, but the numbers don't warrant gearing up with expensive machinery. Any help with speeding up this process would be most welcome.

20th Century Design auction.

I attended a local auction of 20th century design at Woolley and Wallis in Salisbury. I was surprised to see this original Shaker Mount Lebanon No7 chair for sale and was even more surprised to see the bidding stop at £320, well short of the £400 reserve. I nearly bid but I have a lovely chair made by Brian Boggs which is similar and not to my wife's taste.
The wood was thin and extremely delicate and it was in very good condition.

Here is the makers stamp on one of the rear rails.

This is a Robert Mouseman oak stool which was in good condition. The estimate was £200 -£300 and it went for £320, these are very collectable.

Here's a close up of his trademark carved mouse on the front edge of the seat.

This office chair by Charles and Ray Eames was very comfortable and it good working order, its build quality was so much better than anything you can but today. With an estimate of £80 - £120 this was definitely tempting, although I didn't get a look in with bidding finishing at £300!

This was a very fine refectory table by Ernest Gimson. It was on the small side at just over 6' and was beautifully proportioned, I wasn't the only one to think so and it went for £7,000, way above the £2-3,000 estimate.

Here is another very fine table this time by Gordon Russell, it had the same reserve as the Gimson one above but only went for £2,000.

This was a modern Carl Hansen Wishbone chair designed by Hans Wegner. A great looking and very comfortable chair although I didn't like the plastic feeling black lacquer and it only went for £220. If you want one of these much better to go for one from the 1970's they feel and look much nicer.

And pictured below is my prize, the only reason I attended the auction. A large 12" wide bowl in Mahogany (not Rosewood as per the catalogue) made by the late great Alan Peters. It had an estimate of £80 - £120 which I thought was very reasonable; so did others and I had to part with £220 + commission to get it.
I gave it a good clean with orange oil and '0000' wire wool and then two thin coats of Osmo satin matt to bring it back to former glory. I am happy.

Heidi's Bench

Just to show it's not all toolmaking in my workshop, here is my latest project. I haven't blogged the progress as I've written an article for Furniture and Cabinet Making magazine and they don't like their projects appearing somewhere else first.  The top is figured oak and the legs are Wenge. It is 7' long and designed to be used as back up seating for dinner parties.

The single wedged tenons for the rail have been executed the 'Barnsley' way for strength and good looks.

The figured oak top was curved for comfort. Getting this smooth and even was no mean feat over the full 7' and added considerably to the making time; but well worth it.
Heidi is a good client and she seemed very pleased with the result.